WindLight Skies – They PAID For This?

by Pixeleen Mistral on 30/05/07 at 11:59 pm

LL’s rose colored glasses and color perception

by Inigo Chamerberlin

So, the WindLight First Look arrives, with the usual breathless Torley Linden intro. And of course, the now standard Linden chant of ‘Jir AH! – Jir AH! – Jir AH!’. But to the point – WindLight. Linden Lab PAID for this? In fact they were so impressed they bought the company?

I’ve rarely seen more unrealistic, garish effects – something I suppose I should have expected given Torley’s involvement.

1
‘Funky Funky’ preset – who could have created this bizarre aberration?

2
The ‘midday 3’ preset – Midday? Where? In hell possibly?

3
How about ‘barcelona’? just what Second Life needed to make it more lifelike! Smog!

IF it came with some decent realistic presets (because most users will use presets).
IF it came with clouds that drifted realistically instead of hurtling across the sky at ludicrous velocity.
IF the controls weren’t so touchy.
IF it were possible to punch numbers into it instead of relying on those twitchy imprecise sliders.
IF it had an ‘OFF’ button – because even ‘Default’ bears no resemblance to ’normal’ second life!
AND, most importantly,
IF it were a global effect on my estate, rather than a ‘one of, client based effect’ –
then I might be slightly interested.

As it stands, it’s nothing more than a silly set of gimmicky ‘effects’ that will do little but damage commerce in SL. Why? Well, run around with this junk enabled and nothing looks ‘right’ any more. Skin shading, clothes colours, reflectivity, transparency, etc, etc – all visuals go to hell.

4
Here’s what Second Life as we know it looks like – in case you’d forgotten

5
This ghastly mess is WindLife default preset.

SO that default preset is the ‘best’ WindLight can do? Though, to be honest it’s possible to improve this somewhat to something more like the ‘real’ Second Life. The question is, why can’t WindLife do better ‘out of the box’, as the default preset?

Until now, everything in SL has been created in a relatively standardised lighting environment. But with WindLight, that all counts for nothing! Countless hours of careful work by residents, wasted – and Estate owners can’t even lock the system so that some measure of reality prevails on their property!

This is a really, really bad move on Linden Lab’s part. Another ‘shiny’ gimmick no-one asked for that’s going to damage the Second Life experience rather than improve it. They just don’t learn.

WindLight should not be released under any circumstances until it’s possible for Estate owners to override its use and impose sane, sensible lighting and other effects on their property – or disable its use entirely on their estates. Otherwise, given the visual disaster WindLight represents, many estate owners are going to see sales tumble as visitors fail to buy well made products – that now look like rubbish.

Linden Lab should bear in mind that the vast majority of residents aren’t that keen on a Torley’oid world of oversaturated hyper bright colour and disco-like lighting. What Linden Lab should be aiming for here is realistic effects and allowing Estate owners full control – or at the very least, the option of an Estate-wide ‘disable WindLight’ function.

As an aside – it’s noticeable that feedback by any method than the wretched JIRA is discouraged – to the point of letting the blog close at 100 and pointedly throughout the post referring people to JIRA. This is as good as, to me and many others, as saying, ‘we aren’t interested in your feedback’. When are Linden Lab going to realize this? To quote from the manufacturer’s web site:

‘JIRA is a bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management application developed to make this process easier for your team.’

So, what part of that did Linden Lab fail to understand?

It says nothing about its unparalleled superiority for handling customer feedback. Because there is nothing to say on that subject. The manufacturers realize it’s useless for that. So why do Linden Lab persist in attempting to use it for that purpose?

The interface, as Linden Lab have customized it, is clunky, geekoid, difficult to navigate, unintuitive and incomprehensible. The words ‘user’ and ‘friendly’ were very obviously alien to whoever was responsible for setting this thing up – but still Linden Lab, and Torley in particular, seem obsessed with ramming it down our throats. Why?

74 Responses to “WindLight Skies – They PAID For This?”

  1. Aetuneo Novi

    May 31st, 2007

    Remember, the first look viewer is just that – a first look. A beta version (or, since I use the linux alpha version, not even that). It will probably look a lot better once they finish it.

    You can rant about releasing badly made software into the wild once it has to be used by everyone; until then, it is completely optional and you have only yourself to blame for using it.

  2. Prokofy Neva

    May 31st, 2007

    I’m so glad you’re not the only one knocking WindLight, because otherwise you feel as if you are a total grinch.

    I was aghast when I saw that awful sun they put up now, which we don’t have the option to undo to put back “the real sun” we’re used to in RL; I protested directly to Philip and told him to put the damn sun back. He didn’t see what was wrong with it. I later realized it was put in to work with this weather stuff, which is indeed ghastly.

    The lighting effects in SL have steadily worsened in the time I’ve been in SL. I have old pictures I used to use in my real estate ads and I’m stunned sometimes at the nice subtle but still brilliant blues and greens and reds and oranges of sunlight — and what I see then a year later, and now.

    A synthetic world has to look synthetic. That means in fact it does have to have a bit of cartoon and Impressionism deliberately built into it. The textures and objects that look their worst in this world are those people port directly from real life with no modification to “fit the world”. We all know how jarring it is to see somebody’s badly-made VR screen with RL trees next to Linden trees that *do* fit the world.

    In making the world look more realistic, they’ve made it look far worse — and really fake.

  3. Reality

    May 31st, 2007

    Funny, I seem to recall this being in test stages, as in it is not yet finish.

    also funny – I seem to recall (after having looked for all of about two seconds) the ability to set the effect to follow the progress of the estate’s sun settings.

    Yes, it needs work.

    It does not need users running off half baked and forgetting the very nature of the First Look Client: an in world, main grid test of a new feature.

    In the future you might want to try to remember that little tidbit before running your fingers off.

    Oh – a similar sight is generated by a shareware Terrain Generation program called Terragen. The effect at certain settings is identical to the one you see in the default preset.

    You might want to try opening the day cycle editor and setting it to use the estate cycle, then wait a while to watch the effects.

    So long as the sun is not at certain angles – every thing looks fine.

    Not that I’d expect someone as quick to bitch about something LL has done as you are to actually try that however.

    In closing Inigo: How many people have asked for a more realistic environment? Not many, but enough for LL to have done this. Hmm, clouds look real – so long as you don’t use anything other than the default setting, they move in a realistic manner. Lighting from the sun? realistic at most angles.

    What am I saying to you? Don’t bitch about something until you’ve explored every aspect of it, which apparently, you haven’t.

  4. Reality

    May 31st, 2007

    ….. and to Prokofy actually attempting to treat second Life as what it really is, a place where she does not live I am flabbergasted.

  5. Lordfly Digeridoo

    May 31st, 2007

    Looks great to me.

  6. Cocoanut Koala

    May 31st, 2007

    Jira – obvious to me from the minute they put it in. They’re not interested in aggregating the problems of the users, in terms of – for instance – suddenly getting a thousand bug reports on something. Or even in what, say, builders who build all the time might have a pretty intimate knowledge of.

    They put in Jira PRECISELY to discourage anyone not of the techiest, geekiest mindset. (They only want to play with their own kind.)

    I decided they can just do without my feedback, unless something comes up that is totally debilitating.

    And then it will be awful, because I will try to put something in Jira and get yelled at by everyone for saying it wrong or putting it in the wrong place.

    I still remember Blue Linden (who I like) telling me that my bug report to him wasn’t “exactly a traditional bug report.” Well, hey, that’s because I don’t work for them, or for anybody, fixing bugs! I thought that was their job!

    In any case, they have successfully gotten rid of 95% of the bug reports with this nighmare called JIRA, which was their entire goal.

    I bet love notes were passed around over it. I just wish the Lindens would learn K.I.S.S. – “Keep it simple, stupid.” The more unnecessarily complicated a thing is, the more they love it, it seems.

    And when something isn’t working well – ANYTHING – they always have complete faith that a more complicated system will be just the ticket.

    coco

  7. Kahni Poitier

    May 31st, 2007

    I love the WindLight stuff.

    Now if I’d quit crashing when I try to edit land….

    BUT! I KNOW that this is TEST SOFTWARE, and use it as such.

    Now if they’d just build the FirstLook building guidelines into the regular client (the colored lines that intersect objects. I LOVE those)

    And dangit! Fix the stupid screenshots. I do NOT take 512z512 square pictures. Even when I set it to other resolutions and settings, I get 512z512 square pictures.

    Meh….

  8. Lewis Nerd

    May 31st, 2007

    It works fine at home but not on my work PC – something to do with the graphics card. I think it’s rather cool actually, and all you need to do is tweak it a bit.

    In other words, spend a little time experimenting.

    As you know, I’m no LL fanboi… but when it is working properly, I think windlight will be a great addition. I just hope it doesn’t break loads of other things, like updates usually do.

    Lewis

  9. Seb

    May 31st, 2007

    Show the currentyl running SL to anyone with an actual understanding of lightning, and you’ll hear that it looks hideous. Show this, and they say it’s a step forward.

    So were does the herald stand? Let’s looks at your layout…

    THIS..

    IS…

    BETA!!!

  10. Nicholaz Beresford

    May 31st, 2007

    >> A synthetic world has to look synthetic. That means in fact it does have to have a bit of cartoon and Impressionism deliberately built into it. The textures and objects that look their worst in this world are those people port directly from real life with no modification to “fit the world”. We all know how jarring it is to see somebody’s badly-made VR screen with RL trees next to Linden trees that *do* fit the world.

    In making the world look more realistic, they’ve made it look far worse — and really fake. <<

    That’s what I first thought when I saw the videos and pictures on the blog about Windlight. Too realistic … like those skins with photos tacked on them, they stick out as if they don’t belong there. And the average ‘cartoonish’ building will just look bad against this sky, no matter what you do, because the sky is bigger.

  11. Nicholaz Beresford

    May 31st, 2007

    Besides, re JIRA.

    Feedback is on the blog, and I’ve just read through it … I doubt there will be anything new from post 101-200 that has not been said the same way 10fold in the first 100. And JIRA is a bug tracker, Torley clearly says so, where do they say that you should use it for feedback?

  12. Simondo Nebestanka

    May 31st, 2007

    Holy crap Inigo! Umm.. wow.. I guess “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.

    I am looking for traces of “just joking” but see none.. do you really think this new feature is *not* an improvement? I am a little speechless.

    ..umm..

    Okay power of speech regained. Perhaps the controls are a bit challenging.. but it’s version one of a First Look viewer (beta squared I guess). Imagine for a second that when LL was looking at how much control to give users over avatar appearance adjustments, someone decided “no-one will go for all these sliders, there are too many options!”.. I’m certainly glad all those options are there. Likewise, most the things you’ve mentioned about WindLight are easily (even in this first release) changeable. Without too much effort you can slow down the clouds, change the sun and lighting, and get everything looking pretty much like the regular viewer, if that’s what is desired. In fact something like the regular viewer is probably what I would choose most of the time, but I’m *very* happy to have all those other options.

    When the planned future releases give power to the estate owner to decide the best lighting for their sim.. well uh.. won’t that be quite cool? To say the least? And presets will be transferrable like other Inventory items as I understand from the LL blog posts by Torley.

    From my point of view this platform *must* continually change and try new things out, and it makes perfect sense to me that attempting to enrich the visual environment would be a desirable goal for LL. My first go of this new viewer put a big old smile on my face and forced me to decide a big step towards that goal has been made.

    So yeah.. to each his own, and that’s fine.. but this is all very beautiful to my eyes.

    Peace

  13. my big penis

    May 31st, 2007

    IT’S SHOOP’D.
    I CAN TELL FROM THE LAZER AND FROM SHOOPING QUITE A FEW WOOPS IN MY TIME.

  14. yuck

    May 31st, 2007

    gross

  15. Maximilan Goldflake

    May 31st, 2007

    I’m not as concerned about looks. I turn most things off in the debug menu anyway. How about performance?

  16. yuck

    May 31st, 2007

    gross

  17. Signore Iredell

    May 31st, 2007

    It looks much better than before for me, it’s stable on my linux system (I’m NOT crashing), its performance impact on my 3-old computer isn’t noticeable. This step is not even complete right now but I’d call it a nice improvement.

  18. Ophelie Ennui

    May 31st, 2007

    I think the sky looks far too realistic against the second life landscape. I don’t hate it, but it needs a lot tweaking and softening. I don’t like the way it seems to tint everything around you, trees don’t look green anymore, prims are discolored. It’s too much the way it is now. Hopefully they’ll tone it down a bit when it’s released because it’s quite garish now.

  19. JazzHands DownPants

    May 31st, 2007

    Well, it *is* kind of disconcerting to think that (in this beta stage) nobody else is seeing what you are. Creating a consistently good-looking build is kind of difficult. An object might look brilliant when you buy it, but take it home to a different WindLight setting and it could look awful.

    But from an SL photographer’s perspective, it’s a great tool.

    As far as performance, it seems to be much less laggy than the usual sky. So that’s a good thing.

    I’m hoping to see many improvements to it, and hope LL keeps us abreast of how they plan to implement it when it is finally in the official release.

    What I would *REALLY* like to see is – while you’re sitting there reading this, do “jazz hands” for me because I said “breast”. Go ahead, it feels good!

    (haha – just kidding, you look silly)

  20. csven

    May 31st, 2007

    “….. and to Prokofy actually attempting to treat second Life as what it really is, a place where she does not live I am flabbergasted.”

    Why? By her own admission she saw real life child porn in Second Life and just somehow “forgot”; took her screenshots of the scene but didn’t care enough to contact real authorities. Apparently she thought the images, which *she* claimed were imported real life photographs, somehow became more fake in Second Life and didn’t require her to *do* anything. And that was last summer… long before this new rendering tech.

    Guess those images would look even less real now, huh?

  21. Vint

    May 31st, 2007

    Now if I’d quit crashing when I try to edit land…. => I second that.

    Anyway, after sliding and sliding and sliding and more sliding, I succeeded at getting a sort of normal view. (I tweaked the ‘pirate’ setting until I liked it.)

    Besides for the still-so-wrong shading and all the points mentioned above, I really like it. ;) It has some great potential but an ‘inforce on whole sim’ doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. Depending on your graphics card you see things different, so that would really fuck up things for some users. An ability to share fixed settings (as we share Landmarks) would be nice, though.

    btw. Did anybody notice we have now more options as it comes to our sky then we have in the ‘graphics’ and ‘advanced graphics’ settings tabs in preferences?

  22. Julia Hathor

    May 31st, 2007

    My initial reactions to Windlight mirrored Inigo’s. Realistic? Hardly, with the garish orange light and pudding brown colors during the darker hours. Yes it can be fiddled with in the controls, but most people won’t do it or won’d have a clue how to do it. I find that whoever set the presets and default didn’t even know how to do it. It does effect everything I build and I can see people sending me IM’s already on how what they bought doesn’t look the same when they get it home. Of course this is Beta, and I sincerely hope that the default & presets will be improved, the controls refined, and more controls enabled for estate owners to lock in a sky and weather system. If this is done right, it could be an improvement- as it stands now it is far from that.

    As so whether we should complain or not while it is in BETA- Of course! If everyone says the emperor’s new clothes are so rich & beautiful, will the needed changes be made?

  23. Ghoti

    May 31st, 2007

    Windlight looks great to me! It is still in FirstLook TESTING phase and it will only improve from here. When it has been fully integrated, this will add a great deal of realism to the atmosphere/weather system.

    -Ghoti

  24. Nacon

    May 31st, 2007

    Inigo Chamerberlin, you’re an idiot for a reason.

    They brought Windlight because it allows easier custom setting for Content Creators to play with. …All those setting you just checked out are pre-setting as a example. ….you know you can make it even better, right?

    (Of course, you’re an idiot, guess you won’t able to.)

    “If everyone says the emperor’s new clothes are so rich & beautiful, will the needed changes be made?”
    He’d need a raincoat pretty soon. ;)

  25. Inigo Chamerberlin

    May 31st, 2007

    Interesting – I wonder how many of you have properly calibrated monitors?
    Can’t you, those you you who are saying ‘it looks fine’, SEE the difference between the (completely untouched or manipulated) screenshot taken in the current ‘release’ version of Second Life, and the (likewise, untouched’ screenshot from the FirstLook WindLife ‘default’ preset?
    Doesn’t it strike you as worrying that the default is so different from the current version? That the contrast, brightness, saturation, colour balance and gamma are all VERY different and far less realistic?

    Surely even the FirstLook version of WindLife ought to have a baseline closer to the ‘real’ Second life we are used to – and all content has been created under?

    And yes, I do realise it’s pre-release. But it being pre-released with such a ghastly range of presets is very worrying – especially the ‘default’ preset. It looks very much as if creating those presets, rather than being entrusted to a competent graphics professional, has been hijacked by a colour crazed lunatic with absolutely no idea what they are doing and a major taste bypass.

    The worry is that these presets (especially the awful ‘default’ preset) will become legacy items – start as you mean to go on…

    If those presets remain in place then Second life is going to wind up being perceived by it’s residents as a garish mess. With, I’m quite sure, terrible effects on both the quality of subsequently created content and sales of existing content.

    This is one case where everyone, especially the content creators, really do need to draw a line.

    Prok – some good news anyway, it is now possible to make that vile sun slightly more bearable. Just clear the ridiculously mobile cloud away (you can put it back later) and if you reduce both sun sliders very close to minimum (the sliders are so coarse it’s unbelievable) you get a half sensible sun. Pure white of course, obviously no one told the person responsible for the settings that the colour temperature of the sun is NOT pure white!
    Have a go and see what you think. You’ll have to live with it, you know how slim the chances are of this being dropped. So you might as well take advantage of what plus points there are…

    Vint – yes, export and inworld transfer of settings would be very nice. That is another way in which people could ensure that we are all ‘singing from the same songbook’ so to speak.
    However, I still maintain that Estate owners should have the ability to override client settings so that visitors see what the Estate owner intended.
    I’ve spent a lot of time and money getting my island to look the way I want, and judging from visitor’s reactions, I’ve made a better job of it than many of the ‘default texture, billiard table rectangle’ brigade.
    I want visitors to see MY vision of my island, not whatever ghastly preset they have chosen from Linden Lab’s tasteless and amateurish attempts.

  26. Inigo Chamerberlin

    May 31st, 2007

    Nacon – quiet!

    When I need shit – I’ll squeeze your head…

  27. Tenshi Vielle

    May 31st, 2007

    Oh, don’t to that Inigo, that just makes a mess. Best let things lie.

    Anyway, I don’t know… I find some of the presets gross, but I actually like how they re-did the default viewing. Looks more like the “realistic” games I’m used to playing. Less washed out, more vivid. However, let’s remember here, a game is a game.

  28. otakup0pe Neumann

    May 31st, 2007

    Umm. Beta ? Not only that, but the first released beta ? Now don’t get me started on the full-bright with renderglow enabled.

  29. JimBean

    May 31st, 2007

    CHANGE IS BAD! CHANGE IS BAD!

    THE SKY IS FALLING!

    THE LINDENZ STOLE THE WATER AND WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!1!!!

  30. Lewis Nerd

    May 31st, 2007

    “It looks very much as if creating those presets, rather than being entrusted to a competent graphics professional, has been hijacked by a colour crazed lunatic with absolutely no idea what they are doing and a major taste bypass.”

    Torley?

    Lewis

  31. Nate Randall

    May 31st, 2007

    Granted I have not used the First Look viewer, but, taking a look at the two shots, one current SL and one Windlight default…I have to say I honestly prefer the windlight effect. Crisp, strong and realistic.

  32. Hazim Gazov

    May 31st, 2007

    Oh hell no, they didn’t pay for it. I paid for it, they’re just being jackasses and taking credit again.

  33. Nicholaz Beresford

    May 31st, 2007

    >> I want visitors to see MY vision of my island, not whatever ghastly preset they have chosen from Linden Lab’s tasteless and amateurish attempts. <<

    Why don’t you just ask enforce your contrast, gamma and brightness settings on their monitors also? Ahh, and ask for removal of the current client day/night overrides? And an option please to block users with uncalibrated monitors please!

    Sorry, I can see that you want to give them the opportunity to see what you did there. But a land-owner “override user side light” and a user-side “accept land owners light” are two very different things.

  34. csven

    May 31st, 2007

    “I want visitors to see MY vision of my island”

    Did Disney buy the Second Life Herald?

  35. shockwave yareach

    May 31st, 2007

    On one hand, my island and home will look much better. And this is only a Beta test? Not bad.

    On the other hand, I have no lawn furniture to sit in and watch the lovely skies, as LL hasn’t fixed the inventory issues yet.

    Maybe I can sit on a cloud, if I can find one that doesn’t have a Linden’s head in it.

  36. Inigo Chamerberlin

    May 31st, 2007

    ‘Torley?’

    Whatever made you think THAT Lewis? :-)

  37. Cocoanut Koala

    May 31st, 2007

    When I build a house, I look at it in noon, sunset, sunrise, and region settings. And often. As you all know, this already does a number on color, and you have to make sure your colors are acceptable in all these conditions.

    This new stuff sounds like – well, a person might as well give up.

    I really don’t think a world configured to look different to a million users in a million different ways is a very good idea, if that is what this will do.

    There has to be a basic static reference point for all, else it is no longer a world, but a myriad individual visions and nightmares.

    coco

  38. DaveOner

    May 31st, 2007

    If I wanted to read this much uninformed crying I’d go to the SL forums. Isn’t this site supposed to report on anything legitimate? I guess this is further proof that you don’t need to have any idea of journalism to set up a web site and call it news.

    Pathetic!

  39. Ceeq Laborde

    May 31st, 2007

    You can’t help but complain and whine about everything to do with SL Inigo. You should apply for a job at the British ‘paper’ The Sun. Perfect for you.

  40. Kahni Poitier

    May 31st, 2007

    Hehehe. +1 to Ceeg

  41. Reality

    May 31st, 2007

    Inigo – a good number of those telling you it looks fine are people that have actually used the First Look Client a bit more. Monitor settings? Please hold up yet another trivial bit hmm (calibrated for the optimum in picture quality, editing purposes)?

    Now then, the ‘default’ preset is nothing more than the original viewer’s setup re tuned to this new Wind Light engine – that much can be seen by even a blind man.

    Again, try actually using the settings – like the default – with the estate’s day cycle setup. You’ll see what I mean.

    As for your vision of your island? Considering how much a user could play around with certain effects, the differences in graphics hardware and any number of other variables …. You’d be better off personally buying each and every user the same sort of computer you have, calibrating it to your exact specifications and paying for whatever internet speed they would need to get the full effect without any lag.

  42. Inigo Chamerberlin

    May 31st, 2007

    Sorry ‘Reality’. ‘default’ preset has the wrong gamma for starters, plus the colour balance is out quite noticeably.
    Not being entirely brain dead I DO have a properly calibrated monitor and even if it weren’t, all I have to do is swap viewers with the SL sun locked and the WindLight sun likewise. They reveal radically different renderings. My monitor setup would be irrelevant. WindLight’s colourspace is based on very different settings to the current Second Life’s.
    LOOK at the screen shots for heaven’s sake! They completely bypass both my GFX card and my monitor. And the difference is obvious.

    But that’s all beside the point. I don’t like it. Like most content creators I’ve created both objects and environment to look their best in the ‘standard’ Second Life lighting.
    This gimmick has the capacity to ruin that, especially in the hands of the unwary.
    So, I want the option to disable it, or better still, override it.
    I think there will be an increasing body of like minded opinion regarding this.

    As for playing with it – I have, which is how come I know the sliders are way too coarse (try slowing cloud movement to see what I mean), the scales poorly chosen and lacking an essential feature – the ability to punch in numbers directly.

    FirstLook it may be. But it does not bode well for the future, this needs a LOT more work, and this pre-release needed a lot more thought before being unleashed.

  43. Ordinal Malaprop

    May 31st, 2007

    Well, I think it looks terrific, personally. As long as the default is to run on the day cycle, with added options available for the machiniminists and the photographers and the curious, I will be very pleased.

  44. Ananda

    May 31st, 2007

    I agree with Ordinal – the default setting, while it may need a bit of tweaking, is a dramatic improvement over the current environment and lighting. What is far more worrying in the first implementation is the miniature size of the skydome – presets may be a lot easier to fix than that will be.

  45. Bart in SL

    May 31st, 2007

    The newest eye candy: Windlight

    Today I got my hands on the latest and greatest addition of Second
    Life, Windlight. Lindenlabs bought the company behind it – good to see
    that LL has some money – and there’s already a Firstlook viewer
    available to get the first impressions of how it

  46. Inigo Chamerberlin

    May 31st, 2007

    FFS!
    I just discovered, officially, that Torley is Product Manager for WindLight!

    Well that blows any possible chance of it being developed properly I suppose. WHAT are Linden Lab THINKING of? I suspected the guy was involved from the disgusting and garish presets – now I know the full extent of his involvement…

    Welcome to the Watermelon World of Second Life!

    I really can’t believe this. That a $25 million company would put something so core to the visual appearance of Second Life in the hands of… well, I’m not going to say it, because if I’m going to insult someone (purely by telling the truth) I much prefer doing it to their face – and with Torley living in Australia there’s little chance of me ever getting that chance, more’s the pity!

    Suffice it to say that both Torley’s manic behaviour, obsession with vivid contrasting colours, and the fact that his perceptions are NOT those of the majority of us would not make him a prime choice in any company that I can think of!

    This certainly will have an effect on my future involvement in Second Life – because I really don’t want to live my Second Life in Torley’s head thanks very much.

    Yazza – fucking – rama and goodnight!

  47. Hazim Gazov

    May 31st, 2007

    More features like this! Great! Next add realistic physics, then I want rope bindings like in gmod, then elastics, and then I want physical flexi-prims, and then I want flash in-game!

  48. Reality

    May 31st, 2007

    Sorry Inigo, please try again, try using actual reading comprehension (I said nothing about your monitor or about your settings, I said citing such a thing in one of your responses was trivial) and provide technical proof that the two are so vastly different, not a screen shot.

    Playing with the sliders does not count much for actually using the client, at default, with the day cycle set to use the estate settings – try again.

    Don’t like the way it looks? Wait a while and see what happens instead of bitching and attempting to tell other people just how horrible it is.

    Don’t like who they chose as the head for the project? Too bad. Frankly, I’d rather have someone who overdoes things working on something like this …

    To sum it up: suck it up and wait like everyone else – THEN bitch about it. You already know Linden Lab is going to implement this.

  49. Simondo Nebestanka

    Jun 1st, 2007

    Inigo wasn’t it obvious that all the official blog posts were by Torley?

    Notwithstanding that the new viewer is easily adjustable to return close to the ‘traditional’ look, why wouldn’t Torley be in charge of this? Take a peek at his Flickr pictures and witness his eye for detail and passion for all that is visually stunning, or visit his blog and bask in the huge amount of creative output he’s responsible for, or watch his video tutorials to get a quick understanding of his impressive uses of the user interface and his ease of providing enthusiastic and appropriate instruction. I think he’s a very good choice of human to manage this kind of project, with the perfect skills to show users how to achieve the most from it.

    I wasn’t aware Torley lives in Australia.. are you sure about this? ‘Bugger me’ if so. (No please don’t.. it’s just a figure of speech down here :)

    You don’t have to live your Second Life in Torley’s head. The same as every single other viewer setting, just adjust it to suit yourself and Bob’s your mother’s brother.

    Peace

  50. Inigo Chamerberlin

    Jun 1st, 2007

    Simondo – Torley has made announcements about EVERYTHING! That doesn’t make him Project Manager for EVERYTHING, or does it?

    And if you are judging Torley by a few blog posts and pics you have a LOT to learn, trust me on this. Torley is either worryingly unstable, or a fake.
    Anyone who can remember Torley Torgeson will know exactly what I’m talking about – the relentless campaign to insinuate himself with Linden Lab, the endless self-serving self promotion, the careful revelations, maybe not quite as clever in retrospect, designed to garner sympathy AND give him an ‘edge’…

    Bah! Let me echo Philip for once. ‘Bring on the competition – where is it?’

    Because I want out.

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