Elonia in Second Life - V2 Beta Shadows

I was playing around with shadows again today (this time in the newest V2 Beta) and wound up on Elonia. I have always loved the work of Damanios Thetan (in fact I had an embarassing fangurl moment at the last Burning Life when I met him). His textures and builds are beautiful and with shadows enabled they're spectacular!

Shadows in the V2 Beta work slightly differently from the production V2 but the performance is a little better. I could actually cam around easier (not easily mind you) and adjust windlight while they were enabled.

To turn them on open the "Develop" menu the go to rendering and click on FramebufferObjects. You then go back in and select Lighting and Shadows and repeat the steps for Shadows from Sun/Moon and SSAO and Shadow Smoothing. Play with Global Illumination as well but note that it is experimental. I found that if I turned FramebufferObjects off it disabled the rest as well (much faster way to regain control than unclicking them all individually).

I didn't do a shot without shadows - the difference is amazing and makes the build look so much more ordinary. Even though it's not. :)

I Haz Second Life Shadows!

I upgraded my video card driver and decided to see if I could finally get some shadows working in Second Life. Hamlet had posted a link to a wonderful description of the steps to take in V2 so I tried it. Above is before...........below is after.

I second Banana's word of caution.....make sure you are all set up for the photo before you turn on the shadows. You won't be moving around much once they're enabled.

V2 Beta has different settings but I haven't figured out if they're operational yet. :)