[#VWR-3657] Meta-Issue: WindLight Glow Bugs and Quirks

1. Second Life Viewer - VWR

Meta-Issue: WindLight Glow Bugs and Quirks

Created: 05/Dec/07 11:16 AM Updated: 22/Jun/09 03:23 PM

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Component/s:

Graphics

Affects Version/s:

First Look: WindLight

Fix Version/s:

None

Issue Links:

Relates

This issue Relates to:

MISC-398 Meta-Issue: Meta-Issue Organization

This issue is related to by:

VWR-3893 WindLight: Everything glows with Atmospheric Shaders on

VWR-4193 Switching users on Windows XP: Upon retuning to the viewer -- EVERYTHING GLOWS.

VWR-11364 Glow effects overpowers and obscures object details

~~VWR-3438~~ WindLight: Glow (including water reflections) shows through HUD objects

~~VWR-3508~~ glow defaulting to 0.77 on objects made before windlight

~~VWR-3379~~ Windlight - Glow + other factors? create shimmering artifacts on some hardware

~~VWR-3459~~ Glowing Surfaces Cause Strange Rendering of Speech Indicator

~~VWR-3490~~ Windlight - Low Glow settings obscure color tints under full daylight w transparent objects

~~VWR-3385~~ Some reflections from glow sources including in your tag and prims

~~VWR-3297~~ sparkle on water shows through prims with alpha textures

~~VWR-4214~~ Glow effect passes through alpha textures where alpha is actually "solid".

~~VWR-4286~~ Glow remains glowing when surface invisible

~~VWR-11412~~ Glowing Objects

~~VWR-4008~~ Invisible objects with glow still have visible glow.

~~VWR-3124~~ WindLight: Glow not working on some ATI 2xxx graphics cards

~~VWR-3593~~ Windlight glow effects are rendered out of alignment with the objects that produce them

~~VWR-3215~~ WindLight: Build tools > Texture tab shows Glow value for objects you can't modify

SVC-1640 Particle Glow Parameters for llParticleSystem

~~VWR-3346~~ Particle Glow

~~VWR-3114~~ WindLight: Make glow scriptable

Description

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An attempt to collect the various glow bugs from the mire and organize them. Or, a shameless campain to get more visibility for my pet peeve issue of the week? You decide!

Link your glow-related JIRA's here.

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Change History

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Torley Linden added a comment - 13/Dec/07 12:57 PM

Thanks for linking these together, Elle! You're a great help.

I'm going to ask BigPapi, Qarl, and other Lindens who know about glow, if there's any of these we can action or otherwise resolve quickly...

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Darien Caldwell added a comment - 05/Apr/08 11:13 PM

Whoever keeps closing all the bugs concerning 100% alphaed items having glow obviously don't know anything about building. It's a serious bug that breaks content and shoudln't be shoved under a rug. reopening as a bug.

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Darien Caldwell added a comment - 05/Apr/08 11:36 PM

Having 100% alphaed objects glow removes the very reason 100% alpha even exists, which is to give a method by script to hide prims. It is fine to allow glow even up to 99% alpha, but when a script sets something to 100% alpha, it is for only one purpose, to hide the prim completely.

Why the arguments for this are invalid:

1) 100% alpha is the only way to render complex textured prims invisible. The other way to make prims invisible is to texture them with an alpha texture, but that causes one to lose all the texturing. Scripted Alpha is used by many items to have hide/show functionality.

2) all the people who want to make light beams etc by having the prim hidden, and the glow not, I agree, that is neat. But that can be done just as well by having 99% alpha with glow showing. The last 1% maks no noticable difference. There is a need for there to continue to be a way to 100% hide a prim, no matter if it's textured, fullbright, or glowing.

3) "couldn't you just switch the glow on and off with a script?" No. The only way that could be reliably done is to hard code the amount of glow into the script, and make a llSetPrimitiveParam() call in addition to the llSetAlpha() call. For moddable items, like many creators sell, they could not predict how much glow people would put on the item. They could read the glow amounts for each prim and store them, but what happens if the script is reset while hidden? That data is lost. So the glow settings could never be reliably kept. If glow was present but hidden by 100% alpha, reading and setting the glow would be unnecessary, just as it's unnecessary with texturing, fullbright, and every other texture setting. Leaving glow showing at 100% alpha breaks the precident set for all other parameters.

I hope it becomes clear that not fixing this bug will either end up breaking content, or making glow an unusable paramter on many items, much as shiny was unusable on shoes up until recently. Please reconsider and fix this bug. Thanks for reading.

[ Show » ]

Darien Caldwell added a comment - 05/Apr/08 11:36 PM Having 100% alphaed objects glow removes the very reason 100% alpha even exists, which is to give a method by script to hide prims. It is fine to allow glow even up to 99% alpha, but when a script sets something to 100% alpha, it is for only one purpose, to hide the prim completely. Why the arguments for this are invalid: 1) 100% alpha is the only way to render complex textured prims invisible. The other way to make prims invisible is to texture them with an alpha texture, but that causes one to lose all the texturing. Scripted Alpha is used by many items to have hide/show functionality. 2) all the people who want to make light beams etc by having the prim hidden, and the glow not, I agree, that is neat. But that can be done just as well by having 99% alpha with glow showing. The last 1% maks no noticable difference. There is a need for there to continue to be a way to 100% hide a prim, no matter if it's textured, fullbright, or glowing. 3) "couldn't you just switch the glow on and off with a script?" No. The only way that could be reliably done is to hard code the amount of glow into the script, and make a llSetPrimitiveParam() call in addition to the llSetAlpha() call. For moddable items, like many creators sell, they could not predict how much glow people would put on the item. They could read the glow amounts for each prim and store them, but what happens if the script is reset while hidden? That data is lost. So the glow settings could never be reliably kept. If glow was present but hidden by 100% alpha, reading and setting the glow would be unnecessary, just as it's unnecessary with texturing, fullbright, and every other texture setting. Leaving glow showing at 100% alpha breaks the precident set for all other parameters. I hope it becomes clear that not fixing this bug will either end up breaking content, or making glow an unusable paramter on many items, much as shiny was unusable on shoes up until recently. Please reconsider and fix this bug. Thanks for reading.

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Elbereth Witte added a comment - 22/Jun/09 03:23 PM

Yes, glow breaks the assumption that something fully transparent is completely invisible.
No, I'm not bothered by it and am willing to work around it where necessary.

Moreover you'd have to hardcode the alphas to restore them just like glow.

I'd actually complain more about shiny breaking on 1% transparent stuff, shiny glass would be interesting, and if shiny is just an extra render layer it can probably given equivalent alphaness..