[sldev] A patch to address attached lights and particle sources

[Able Whitman]

Howdy,

It's been a while since I've been active on this list, or in SL in general.
Alas, work and (real) life have consumed most of my free time for quite a
while now. Mostly I've been lurking here, but I have always enjoyed the
interesting and often spirited discussions.

Anyhow, I'm trying to slowly get back up to speed with the current state of
the viewer, since I haven't taken a serious look at the source since around
the time voice was introduced (and boy howdy was THAT a ways back). To that
end, rather than try to tackle big new features or major architectural
issues, I've tried to do some small, but useful, improvements to the viewer.

One of my contributions is
VWR-6540<http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-6540>:
Add options to selectively render attached lights and attached particle
sources. (An alternate title might be "Let people turn off bling attachments
and facelamps".)

This patch adds Advanced menu options to disable particle sources and light
sources that emanate from attachments.

Attached particle sources can not only be annoying, but they also contribute
a lot to the Avatar Rendering Cost, so if bling annoys you or you're in a
busy area, turning it off can help reduce visual lag.

Attached lamps (usually facelamps) can also be annoying, in that they can
interfere with ambient or environmental lights that happen to be part of
neaby builds. Mostly this is due to the fact that most people aren't aware
that there is a 6-light limit. I see a lot of people with 2 or 3 attached
lights (although I've seen some people with 6 lights, and one time as many
as 30! attached lights), and as they move around a sim, local stationary
lights can flicker on and off depending on your location.

The patch is attached to the JIRA issue, so I won't attach it here. It's
fairly straightforward; particles aren't drawn if their source object is an
attachment, and light sources whose source is an attachment are simply
omitted from distance sorting when the viewer selects which ones to render.

Cheers,
--Able
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