Alpha mask highlight vanishes under alpha blend highlight when highlighting transparent faces
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AlettaMondragon Resident
Since the V7 viewer was introduced there is a major issue with highlighting transparent faces which often renders it completely useless. If there are alpha blended and alpha masked surfaces in the same scene, once an alpha mask highlight happens to be behind an alpha blend highlight, it doesn't render behind the alpha blend highlight.
See the screenshots below.
First highlight transparent (Ctrl+Alt+T).
Rez a cube and set the default transparent texture on it or change its transparency to 100%.
Then rez a second cube, set the default transparent texture on it, switch alpha mode to alpha masking and set mask cutoff to 100%.
Then place the alpha mask cube behind the alpha blend cube and move your camera view so that the alpha blend cube will be in front of the alpha mask cube. The blue highlight will vanish behind the red highlight.
Also see the expected behavior screenshots from a V6 viewer. This used to work like this forever before V7 viewers and it is crucial for particular workflows.
In a large scene where you have alpha blended and alpha masked faces and you need to make sure invisible parts of these objects are not reaching over borders or places where they shouldn't, the alpha blend highlights will cover any alpha mask highlight under or behind them. Now instead of seeing the entire scene when highlighting transparent, we need to turn off alpha blend highlights to check for alpha mask highlights. It breaks this workflow completely and makes it complicated, it also takes a lot more time to check a scene.
Another example that is very important is that vehicles have alpha blended windshields. If you need to highlight transparent while in a vehicle because you hit an invisible obstacle, with the current behavior you can't see the alpha mask highlights at all, again unless you turn off the alpha blend highlight. And then you need to check for the two kinds of surfaces separately while you are supposed to be traveling.
Another issue is that the red highlight of the alpha blended faces is extremely bright and also more transparent than it used to be (difference visible in the screenshots), so it is very difficult now to work with alpha blended textures on objects without getting a headache, and the edges where the texture is too transparent cannot be seen properly. I can't see the reason behind this, there is no benefit of making the red highlight so bright. I assume the transparency of the texture is simply the result of the new rendering system, but then the texture should have been remade to look like it used to be before V7.
Please restore the full functionality of the alpha highlight system to how it used to be before V7.
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AlettaMondragon Resident
Dan Linden I've just checked out the "fix" for this in the SL Viewer 2026.02 preview, as well as a Firestorm preview that has already imported the supposed fix. The alpha mask highlight issue is gone now indeed, but the other aspects got
much
worse:1: Transparency highlight from HUD attachments is completely missing.
2: The transparency highlights got even much brighter than before.
Screenshots:
Firestorm 7.2.3.80036 (same behavior as in SL Viewer 2026.01), dark: https://prnt.sc/nXv-RBS9g8NK Notice how bright the red highlight on the trees inworld is compared to the red highlight on the HUD. It is very similar to the difference "fullbright" makes on textures inworld. All highlights used to be as dark as on the HUD in this picture before V7.
Firestorm 7.2.3.80036 (same behavior as in SL Viewer 2026.01), daylight: https://prnt.sc/TpXjUSOph4il Notice how bright the red highlight on the trees inworld is compared to the red highlight on the HUD. It is very similar to the difference "fullbright" makes on textures inworld. All highlights used to be as dark as on the HUD in this picture before V7.
Firestorm Nightly Preview 7.2.4.80397 (same behavior as in SL Viewer Preview 2026.02), dark: https://prnt.sc/DiNdfzWFrn6X Notice that the HUD has no alpha highlight at all. Alpha mask blue highlights show through now as intended but the entire highlight overlay got even brighter, a lot.
SL Viewer Preview 2026.02, daylight: https://prnt.sc/dPFeb5oWR3ck Notice that the HUD has no alpha highlight at all. Alpha mask blue highlights show through now as intended but the entire highlight overlay got even brighter, a lot.
This can be a showstopper for creators who make HUDs or adjust HUDs for their products, I think I'm not the only one who first assembles the HUD links rezzed inworld, then adjusts the parts while wearing it on the HUD. Editing parts with transparency will be nearly impossible with the highlights missing.
The other problem is this excessive brightness on the highlights. If most people were fine with how bright it already was, and only some of us got headaches from this, now this is at least 4 times brighter and it is going to burn out more people's eyes while trying to work with transparent objects.
Dan Linden
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Dan Linden
Thank you for the report, AlettaMondragon!
Issue tracked at https://github.com/secondlife/viewer/issues/5007. We have no estimate when it may be implemented. Please see future updates here.
A workaround in the meantime is to turn off Transparent water in the Advanced Graphics Preferences.
AlettaMondragon Resident
Dan Linden Thank you Dan, I like this workaround!