[sldev] branches/shadow-draft missing llrender.cpp

[Brad Kittenbrink (Brad Linden)]

Matthew Dowd wrote:
> So your target audience is those that are technically savvy enough to 
> be able to check the power and cooling requirements of a new graphics 
> card, dismantle their PC, remove a graphics card, safely insert a new 
> one, reassemble the machine, sort out the inevitable driver clash as 
> the machine tries to load the driver for the previous graphics card etc.
>  
> So not the typical home user - who just expects to buy a box and it to 
> work until it needs to be replaced or needs to buy in time of a 
> technician/engineer to make hardware changes.
> Not the typical business who might need to upgrade 100 machines in a 
> department - and then might risk invalidating his support service 
> should unauthorised personnel open the computer box.
> Not the typical University/College student who almost universally has 
> a laptop these days
> etc.
>  
> OK, so I'm stretching what you said - but these 'that GPU is three 
> years old  so "it's beyond obsolete"', 'it's only $50 to get a new 
> card' etc. all just support a perception that SL is aimed at 
> techno-geeks running up to date hardware or that LL is out of touch 
> with the typical user from the audiences LL wishes to attract.
>  
Second Life is not aimed at the target audience you describe, or indeed 
at any one target audience.  And although the audience you describe is 
portrayed in rather harsh terms, you are to some extent correct in 
describing the target audience for the shadow-draft branch and the 
RenderDeferred debug setting.

Second Life is, and always has been, many different things to many 
different people.  It is simply too huge for all people to have the same 
experience with it, and it's not worth trying to make their experiences 
identical in any case.  Diversity is what makes Second Life great, and I 
see this development of experimental features for residents who are 
technically adept enough to take advantage of them to be a noble goal in 
that direction as long as they don't interfere with the experience of 
normal users.

-Brad