Let’s talk shinies

The advent of materials processing (normal and specular maps) in Second Life brought about a number of changes to the way things are rendered, compared to how they used to be – at least for those of us whose graphics cards allow us to enable the Advanced Lighting Model (formerly known as “deferred rendering”. Now, when this new capability was added, many people started jumping up and down about how “irrelevant” or “useless” it was, about how only… twenty users in total would be able to see materials, how it would really kill the performance of everyone’s viewer, etc.

I’m going to speak from my own experience. Up until this month, my main machine for using Second Life was a laptop. A 2009 midrange model, with a dual-core Intel T4300 CPU, 4GB of main RAM, and an ATI (now known as AMD) Mobility Radeon HD4500 graphics card. Those in the know understand that this was hardly “high end” even then, and it became antiquated relatively fast. I can’t vouch for how other people with older, and probably lower-spec, dedicated graphics cards, or with integrated Intel chipsets, would fare, but, ever since the 2012 updates to the rendering pipeline were made, I was able to run in deferred (ALM) practically all the time – without shadows and ambient occlusion. Yes, I know my computer’s performance wasn’t much. It was usable, though, and the in-world pictures I once envied so much were now within my reach. So, I believe that ALM, which is a prerequisite for viewing materials, is within the reach of more people than was believed back then.

Nowadays, I’m the happy owner of a laptop with a fourth-generation dual-core i7, 8GB RAM and an NVidia GeForce GT840M, as well as a desktop with an i7-4770K CPU, 16GB RAM and an ASUS ROG Poseidon GTX780 graphics card. As one would expect, my machines’ performance in SL is a few orders of magnitude above what I once was used to. Still, I have the feeling that, as beautiful as SL looks right now, it could be even more spectacular, had some rendering capabilities (i) not been removed with the advent of materials processing, (ii) been added.

LSL control of materials available for beta testing

Things moved faster than I expected. So, Maestro Linden announced in last night’s Server Beta meeting that Simon Linden’s work for LSL control of materials (normal and specular maps) is now available for testing on Aditi (the beta grid). The regions allocated for testing are roller-test102 and roller-test103, both on channel DRTSIM-253. They both have the server-side scripting support. I will remind you again that the SLurls are on Aditi. Of course, this is all a beta testing stage, so everything is work-in-progress, and the Lab itself is testing these new capabilities.

Liara Okiddo’s “The Botanique”. Observe the raindrops on the stone pavement; normal maps are used, besides the diffuse (texture) maps, and they are animated for a truly exquisite effect – provided, of course, that your graphics card can handle it. Click on the image for a larger version. Original image by Liara Okiddo.

You can find more information on the Wiki page of the Server Beta User Group. I provide the details below as well.

LSL control of materials on its way

UPDATE: Inara Pey reported that Maestro Linden announced the availability of Simon Linden’s work for LSL control of materials on Aditi (the Beta grid). Things have indeed moved faster than I expected, so I’m updating the post accordingly. Anyway, the regions available for testing are roller-test102 and roller-test103, both on channel DRTSIM-253. For more information on testing these capabilities, which are still under development, as well as information on known issues, please read Inara’s post.

This is hardly breaking news, as Inara Pey has already covered the recent developments in her blog; I wanted to post about this, but I was really swamped with RL and this kept me. At any rate, here’s the (belated) low-down.