Classic clouds

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Revision as of 07:43, 13 October 2010 by Torley Linden (talk | contribs)
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About

Before Second Life got WindLight atmospheric rendering, there existed a cloud layer that had been around since near the beginning of Second Life, and continues to do so today. Classic clouds can be seen from about 150-225 m (as mentioned on the Limits page) if you simply fly up.

Classic clouds, depending on context, can either enhance or detract from the current environment. For example, if you're skydiving, you may prefer to fly through the classic clouds (since the WindLight clouds are off in the untouchable distance). But, if you're building a skyscraper, you may consider classic clouds a nuisance. Some creators find a way to make classic clouds work with their builds, while others wish they were gone altogether. While there's not yet a server-side way to disable classic clouds for others, you can turn them off for yourself:

<videoflash type="youtube">wPlxln8AObE|640|385</videoflash>
  1. Go to World menu > Sun > Environment Editor.
  2. Click Advanced Sky.
  3. In the Advanced Sky Editor, click Clouds tab.
  4. Uncheck Draw Classic Clouds.
KBnote.png Note: Unlike other WindLight settings, the Draw classic clouds checkbox applies across all sky settings. This is confusing because of its positioning. Maybe it'll be changed in the future.

Disabling classic clouds can also provide a slight performance boost, as shown in the above video. For that reason, Quality and speed is set to Low in Preferences' Graphics tab, classic clouds are automatically disabled.

See also