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Clouds

For almost as long as there has been a Second Life, there has been a cloud layer at about 200 meters absolute. In New Babbage, the cloud layer is about 100 meters AGL. This is a true 3 dimensional permeable cloud layer. Aviators love them. You can fly through them. Air kraken can lurk in them. Linden Lab refers to these as Classic Clouds.

Then came Windlight. Now clouds are painted on the untouchable backdrop. These are pretty clouds to be sure, but forever out of reach. You cannot fly through them or get above them. They are just 2D pictures.

When Viewer 2.8.0 came out I noticed that the classic clouds were gone. I thought it was just a bug in the viewer, so I waited for V2.8.1…and the clouds were still gone. I reinstalled V2.7.5 and had clouds. Clearly there was a problem in the latest viewers.

I filed JIRA pointing out the bug. You can read it here. Shortly after I filed it, someone posted a link to a Linden task which indicated that the classic clouds had been deliberately removed.

New Babbage will hold an Air Kraken Festival in a couple of weeks and without a cloud layer,  kraken hunting will lose some of its challenge. People using non-Linden viewers can still see the clouds but most viewers use the Linden code base so you won’t have them for long.

I am livid about this. Why should we put up with 2D clouds in a 3D world? If you feel as I do, please Watch the JIRA. If enough of us complain perhaps we can get our clouds back.

 

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10 Comments

  1. Blackberry Harvey Blackberry Harvey August 11, 2011

    Can we install some phantom cloud megaprims for the festival?

  2. Breezy Carver Breezy Carver August 12, 2011

    humm i have been looking for those clouds for months !!! I wonder if Firestorm might have a solution to this problem.. for I concur it is a Problem !!

  3. Junie Ginsburg Junie Ginsburg August 12, 2011

    Something else odd about the latest version of Viewer 2 that I noticed a few days ago — night never falls. 

    :-(

    And I definitely agree that the lack of clouds is a problem.

    • Yang Moreau Yang Moreau August 12, 2011

      Night never falls? It must, meeroos still go to sleep at night. Are you sure your personal settings aren’t stuck on a permanent environmental setting? I know I have two alts that always log in with the same sky settings.

      • Junie Ginsburg Junie Ginsburg August 12, 2011

        Will spend some time looking at it more carefully tonight.  I just know that after the last upgrade a few days ago the sun stopped working right.  And on the Sun submenu, there is no “estate time” option anymore.  I tried logging in with Viewer 2 and Phoenix at the same time – Phoenix showed nighttime, in Viewer 2 it was sunny.

        I will try tinkering with it some more!

        • Yang Moreau Yang Moreau August 12, 2011

          Hm, could be then. Seems so strange they’d do away with that. I take it you had both logged in on the same parcel?

          • Junie Ginsburg Junie Ginsburg August 12, 2011

            Yep, yep…same parcel, same time.

            I will catch up with you later on what I find out!  Thanks for the ideas. :-)

        • Bookworm Hienrichs Bookworm Hienrichs August 13, 2011

          Yeah, they changed the “estate time” thing–I don’t know why.  It took me a while, but I figured out where they moved it.

          Go to World/Environment Editor/Environment Settings, and make sure “Use Region Settings” is toggled.

  4. Nathaniel Lorefield Nathaniel Lorefield August 12, 2011

    well, since the 3D clouds were basically a particle effect… we could solve the problem by making cloud rezzers just for the festival. I happen to have a few that might do.

  5. Kimika Ying Kimika Ying August 13, 2011

    This is distressing news. I don’t know the technical details but they act as though they are generated by the viewer, so my hope is that third party viewers will keep this feature.

    We must have clouds!  Exhibit A: 

    (A tea party from Spring of last year, suspended from a balloon just above the clouds. Do not do this during Air Kraken season.)

     

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