Shadows!

My final graphics wish for Second Life is here: Shadows. I've been trying to use them on the excellent Kirstens Viewer (Web) but had poor results and I continually crashed or horribly lagged. With today's release of the Phoenix Beta viewer (Web) my whole computer froze and required a restart after trying to activate shadows. But the recent official Project Viewer (Web) from The Lab worked great and it's features are in the newest official viewer, v2.7.1, along with the new Search (which popped up unexpectedly last night in the previous official viewer, actually). Read more about the new viewer on the official blog (Web) and then download it (bottom of the same page) for results like these:

Without shadows, this scene is lifeless despite realistic textures that are properly applied.

With shadows, the same scene takes on more depth, including (to my surprise) the water. Makes me glad I put that palm tree near the bar in my SL8B build.

Despite the lack of crash, there is still some lag on my 512MB ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card inside my 27" iMac (with all the latest drivers) but at least my avie can move, I can cam around, and take pictures. The feature can easily be turned on and off so I can pose, set the Windlight they way I want it (I have 400+ options that I installed), get the shadows on, and then take pictures or just lounge about. Kudos to the Lab for making shadows work with very little pain.