Shadows in Second Life with Kirstens Viewer S 21

Our home and the stables on Fort Serenity Ranch

I've heard so much about the outstanding performance of Kirstens Viewer I was prepared to be disappointed. But nope, it's just as good as they say. I recorded a video in ultra graphics setting with a decent drawdistance (around 350 meters). My FPS stayed around 15 - 20, which is a very good result on my laptop,  just for using the ultra settings while recording.

To enable shadows in Kirstens viewer you just select it like the other graphics settings, nice not to have to memorize another set of advanced or preference settings.

There were no  problems with transparent textures at all in this viewer. I suppose the good old alpha layer annoyance is still there, but when recording shadows with Phoenix even textures not overlapping each other had bad transparency issues, like going invisible or flickering.

I must say I'm not sure how much of that is Kirsten and how much is in the regular v2. Even with the brilliant perfomance of this viewer I will use it mainly for video recording and photos. Wish I could put my finger on what it is that makes the v2 interface so uncomfortable. I worked hard on getting familiar with it when the first beta came, so it's not just the fact that it's an unfamiliar interface. Now I use it so rarely it could play a role I suppose.

How to use shadows in Phoenix Viewer in Second Life™

I managed to get shadows to work in Phoenix! It looks great, but it does slow down the FPS. I had no problems recording this video with PlayClaw tho.

Here's how to enable shadows:

• Advanced menu (if you don't see it bring it up with Ctrl + Alt + D)
• Debug
• set RenderDeferred to FALSE  (default)
• set RenderUseFBO to TRUE
• set RenderDeferred to TRUE
• set PhoenixShadowsToggle to TRUE

Graphics have to be set to Ultra to see the shadows. (Once I saw them I could lower to High, but that still gave me the same low FPS.)

When I disabled them I crashed first time, but the next time I started by setting RenderDeferred to FALSE before disabling the other two. That worked. I have no idea what those settings really do.

My own shadow didn't seem to be visible except where I had prim clothes. My boots cast a shadow. I'll have to experiment with that some other day.

I recorded the video on our porch in Fort Serenity where the Mayan Adventure begins. The Macaw parrots come from Animania.