Do You See What I See? More Musings on Experiences in Light and Graphics in Public Places

 I have become fascinated by the differences in the region's settings and what we "see" in different viewers and settings. So, I have started to go places, take a snapshot and ask if that is what someone else there "sees", and what viewer are they using. I have the new materialsenabled  server-side appearance Firestorm: "High" graphics, not "Ultra" in settings, no change to sim environmental settings, pics are "raw" -  no picture changes except cropping in some cases. I wanted to see sims where settings were made for a group of people, not necessarily purely landscape/environmental sims.

It started yesterday morning with me seeing this. There's too much brightness and the textures are rather blurry here. (read previous post of my apology, here, because this is not what the designer sees).

I was feeling bad, like I had done something wrong for expressing my opinion, so, here I am sitting in the dunce seat at Club AI. This seat is off to my left of the stage with bright lighting on the stage. Lighting looks good, appropriate, yes, plenty of shadows but I'm not washed out and ashy. This is just high graphics, shadows are NOT enabled, this is from the ambient lighting.

Here are a bunch of glowing lights and wall lighting, view from the dance floor at AI.

This is another club, The Velvet, near some bright lighting, glowy lanterns, mesh textures.

The Velvet in a darker area.

 This is the music venue, Guthries, next to a table lamp and bright walls.

 Back at Alt7. Where is that brightness coming from? The bright lines on the cheek bones? The grungy shadows on the face? I am told there are no lights here, except some spots that project on the walls.

Mariah at Alt7 has the same view. Lighting (or it's effect) from above make cheekbones stand out and the rest of the face is in shadows. Mariah was sitting in an area under the steps, a place you would assume to be darker, in the shadows. This is what makes many people resort to face lights.

This is Rara's, an outdoor music venue, enclosed, the sky is background, not Linden Skies. There are lots of mesh textures and the lighting is late afternoon with a strong sun. You can see an unrezzed tree in the background, my draw distance wasn't all the way up. In this strong light, avatars and objects look good, although in hot-feeling lighting.

This is the front of Rara's showing ambient and local lighting on the house. (Kris Wapole was playing :))

The lighting here looks natural. These were what a friend saw in the new FS, same as me. These 2 pictures were taken as the sun moved to more sunset, and became "cooler", the bottom a little later that the previous.

Well, here's my final opinion, designers need to be aware that most people do not have PCs running ultra graphics. Public sims, that expect a wide variety of avatars to visit, should adjust their graphics to what most people will experience as a good or excellent environments, not questioning their own settings and hardware capabilities. I can enjoy virtual environments that are a sci-fi experience, or have atmospheres that relate to the story being told, but I think for highly social settings the ambience needs to project pleasing and inviting environments. Just MHO.