Windlight Settings

From SLIS Second Life Wiki

In the most recent Second Life viewer release (1.19.1.4), a new rendering technology called "Windlight" was added. Windlight rendering adds an additional burden on your graphics card, however it is possible to disable Windlight rendering (see Item #1 below).

For students or faculty who are having performance issues with the new viewer, you may want to try disabling Windlight rendering.

Although the world won't look quite as dynamic with Windlight disabled, you should get a boost in performance (a higher frame rate).

Items #2 and #3 are some additional information on tweaking the graphics preferences in 1.19.1.4 (and also 1.20):

1. Disabling Windlight rendering: Edit -> Preferences -> Graphics -> Custom -> Uncheck "Atmospheric Shaders".
2. Optimizing your Graphics settings: If you are having problems with the new viewer, you may want to experiment with your graphics preferences. Torley Linden offers a tutorial that discusses each of the graphics preferences: http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/04/11/tip-of-the-week-30-graphics-preferences-guide/
3. Additional suggestions from Pastrami Linden for optimizing your graphics settings:

For users who are experiencing problems with the newest viewers (1.19.1.4 or 1.20 RC), here are some tips from Pastrami Linden. Pastrami was the project manager for the team that developed the new Windlight rendering technology that was incorporated into the 1.19.1 viewer.

(Your graphics preferences can be found under: Edit -> Preferences -> Graphics).

Pastrami Linden: "At the LOW setting practically every old card should run as fast or faster [than previous viewers]. LOW for those who don't know is in reference to the Graphics Quality/Performance slider. To get to this, go to Edit, then Preferences, then Graphics. By pulling that slider to LOW you are ensuring you're back to basics.

This is also a GREAT technique for anyone who thinks the new viewer is now slower, etc. There is a 99.9% chance you WILL be faster at LOW. LOW is close to equal to the old viewer, but with settings like draw distance set VERY low.

To understand what is happening here, click the "Custom" check box to the right of the slider. That slider is actually controlling the many variables exposed when you click "Custom". It's a basic version of going through and clicking yourself. So a great first approach, is start at Low, no matter what card you have. Then, try bumping it up one step at a time- to Medium, then High, etc.

The BEST practice to do is, start at Low, turn on Custom, then try each setting individually. This way you can get the features you want but scale back the ones you don't. We've tried to make things as clear as possible with the titles, but you'll have to become a bit of a graphics head if you want to tweak for the way you want!

At Low, every card just as before is supported, and 99% likely you will have a faster experience than 1.18, no matter the card. It's just up to you to then find the sweet spot with features/speed that you like.