Facelight Foolishness

It's not pretty when a facelight gets out of control!

Written 22 March, 2009

Facelight Foolishness

In Second Life, only eight local lights can be seen at one time (if you have local lights enabled and your graphics card is up to it). The sun and moon count for two, so really only six local lights can be viewed at one time.

Light-emitting prims, properly placed and configured, can make subtle and beautiful effects on avatars and on the land. We use them on Whimsy to highlight features and add ambiance to natural areas.

A subtle facelight can highlight an avatar at night, casting light to attractively highly an avatar's face. It counts as one light source, but sometimes that's a suitable tradeoff.

But what happens when four avatars are standing around, each with a facelight? Or eight? or twelve?

Well, the video card renders the lights sources that are closest, so the light prims in the environment will probably not be visible-- nor the sun and moon. And only the eight avatars closest to you will have visible light on their face.

Considering how few light sources we can see, why in the world would a seller put four or five light prims in their face lights or hairdos?

And here's an even better question-- why do so many sellers make their facelights so bright they wash out everything within a 10-meter radius (including the face of the avatar they're supposed to highlight)?

Above is an example of an out of control facelight.