finally i have confirmed that my computer and new video card can in fact render shadows in second life. however.. it only rendered them in one room of my house AND i could not take a photo of them T_T as soon as i hit the screenshot button the preview that appeared was black and the tiny preview in the screenshot ui was void of shadows, and all lighting for that matter.. it just looked like the world in full bright (which is awful btw..) so i have no proof of my short glimpse of shadows.. but i saw them… they were beautiful.
it took me 3 tries, the first time i hit true on renderDeffered it paused the client and then jumped back to false. the second time i hit true, it made my screen go black and i had to relog. the third time though… SHADOWS. i squealed really loud and my mother told me to stfu. but i sat there and watched my avatar be washed in light and shadow from our tv room windows. i walked around a little and found that it sank my fps down to 4, which for me is not too bad as i only average about 10 here and on my old card 4 was max for me.. so i didn’t really notice the lag as most would. the only thing i didn’t like was that i had no anti-aliasing and everything was awful and jagged.. and my eyeballs were shiny. as i walked, i moved into another room and realized.. er.. no shadows here.. there were windows and the room was in a position that the sun should have hit those windows but the room was just blank. the back porch too, which is nothing but windows, had no shadows cast at all. just the one tv room where i had hit true in. then i tried to take a photo in the tv room and had all that junk happen, got angry and rage quit lol. when i came back shadows were gone.. just blank black screen when ever i tried to turn them on.
but of course this stuff is all still in what.. alpha stages? so we have a long time to wait for them to finish tweaking and roll out something everyone who’s card can handle it can use… i’m just happy i got to have a peak… and even if i can’t leave them on all the time, at least i know if they do fix all those weird problems, i can sneak it on and off like i used to do with windlight before i got a card that could handle that.