Day 239 - Let The Sunshine In

My SL experience hasn't been the most awesome in the past few months simply because my dinosaur of a computer hasn't been able to really keep up. I lag a lot. I mean, a LOT. I had brief success switching from the old Firestorm to the Linden Lab viewer, but only for a little bit. The new version of Firestorm allowed me to move around a little more easily, but there was always a chance that something as simple as an IM could lock me up for a few minutes. Even just turning around in the house was hard! Unless I was taking a picture, I had to keep my graphics pretty low, and shadows were definitely not happening. I've powered through because well, it's SL and I love it and I just put up with it.

I kept hearing about server side baking, or "Project Sunshine" as the Lindens call it. Aldwyn kept wondering if it would help me out any. I wasn't sure, but I'll admit, I was doubtful that anything short of a new computer could help.

Sunshine started rolling out to some sims this week and tonight we headed over to one of the updated sims to see how things would go.

Y'all.

OMG.

I was able to run around on Ultra, at about 300m draw distance, with shadows on! And my shadows didn't look like crap!




I'm just so excited!! I ran all over the place with my shadows on and we teleported around to a few of the other SSB-ready sims. I finally crashed, but we were in a place with a lot of scripts and textures and I was camming around like crazy.

Oh, and changing skins and clothes? Easy as pie. I switched my skin about a dozen times, different brands, and all of them popped up almost instantly! I mean, it was ridiculously fast, especially when I'd go back to one I'd worn already.

I don't know if server side baking is the answer to everyone's SL technical problems, but right now it seems to be the answer to my biggest one.

Hey, if any Lindens are reading this, please roll out the Sunshine to Bluebonnet!! PLEASE!

If you're interested in trying it out yourself, make sure you're on an updated viewer [I'm on the latest Firestorm] and you can head to any of these sims.