Highlight Transparent still broken, now HUD Attachment highlight is missing

As you can see in my last comment added here on 30 March 2026 which was ignored ever since: https://feedback.secondlife.com/bug-reports/p/alpha-mask-highlight-vanishes-under-alpha-blend-highlight-when-highlighting-tran

After the "fix" for the previous issue by RyeMutt in the SL Viewer 2026.02 preview, as well as in 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. This is apparently because the alpha debug overlay is included in the HDR exposure pipeline which increases the brightness of these textures, it also makes the red and blue alpha highlight visible on reflections on objects when "highlight transparent" is enabled. This shouldn't happen, the highlight shouldn't be included in reflections and it should be rendered separately so that it wouldn't be affected by lighting and it wouldn't affect reflections.

Now that the missing transparency highlight on HUD attachments will be in the next Firestorm release, creators and anyone else who edit HUDs and need to see their transparent parts will have to revert to 80036. While there was a workaround for the vanishing alpha mask highlight, there is apparently no workaround for the missing HUD attachment highlight.

https://secondlife.canny.io/admin/feedback/bug-reports/p/highlight-transparent-still-broken-now-hud-attachment-highlight-is-missing

Reproduce the missing HUD attachment highlight and excessive brightness using the viewer versions and screenshots cited in the report. Start by tracing the Highlight Transparent rendering path, including the alpha debug overlay, HDR exposure, lighting, and reflections. Done means transparent HUD parts are highlighted and the overlay is not incorrectly bright or visible in reflections.