Every now and then someone contacts me to say that his house or furniture doesn’t look like it does in my store or Marketplace pictures. The reason, of course, is the difference in Windlights, which makes a huge difference in the way something looks in Second Life — look at the difference in these three pictures:

Viewers are different but in Firestorm I access Windlight choices in the Quick Prefs in the bottom menu. If you have something like “Region Default” selected, that just means your viewer switches to whatever Windlight the region owner has selected, wherever you go. This can be a handy setting, esp somewhere that requires special Windlight, but decide what lighting you prefer.

To me, the SL default wind light is dark and dull. Its like a gray film is over everything. Experiment with Windlight choices to find the one you like best.

I have created some of my own Windlights for my store; I like changing them out every now and then.

A custom Windlight I often use in much of La Galleria has a soft, bright, golden light, and can be downloaded here:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BwQIH7zjucBhZVdLdGdJY0pvLWs&usp=sharing

In order to activate this Windlight after downloading it, you must install it on your computer.

To do that in Firestorm, type ” user settings” in the preferences search field, and it will locate the Windlight folder where you can drop a custom Windlight.

Here is information from Strawberry Singh about where/how to install a custom Windlight on your computer so it will show up in your Viewer list: