Environmental Enhancement Project (aka EEP!) Feedback Thread

[Neural Blankes]

Ok, so, I'm a couple years late to the EEP party, but this is the feedback thread, so here's mine:

I'm sure there are a lot of great suggestions on what could be done to improve this, but for me the biggest one that jumped out at me was the differences between the sun and moon as objects.
I would propose that the sun/moon objects be changed to be identical in their properties and limits.   This would allow for binary star system scenes (which I'm positive have already been mentioned), and it would also allow for proper lighting when doing scenes such as the following, where the secondary moon is substantially dimmer on the sun facing edge that it would be in a realistic situation: 
 

[Stevie Davros]

2 hours ago, Neural Blankes said:

Ok, so, I'm a couple years late to the EEP party, but this is the feedback thread, so here's mine:

I'm sure there are a lot of great suggestions on what could be done to improve this, but for me the biggest one that jumped out at me was the differences between the sun and moon as objects.
I would propose that the sun/moon objects be changed to be identical in their properties and limits.   This would allow for binary star system scenes (which I'm positive have already been mentioned), and it would also allow for proper lighting when doing scenes such as the following, where the secondary moon is substantially dimmer on the sun facing edge that it would be in a realistic situation: 
 

There is a known glitch that makes the moon graphic appear a lot dimmer than the sun graphic. This bug was recently introduced as it was not apparent in the Firestorm  EEP Beta, but is now a problem in the Second Life Viewer and the Firestorm viewer, and I guess all the other viewers as well using the Linden Labs code.

[rhonin Nissondorf]

random idea,  i replaced the sun with a star field i did a quick cut out of and enlarged it to max,   just a rough draft. but the idea has promise and i just need to move it around so its in the back ground for photos.

[Stevie Davros]

1 hour ago, rhonin Nissondorf said:

random idea,  i replaced the sun with a star field i did a quick cut out of and enlarged it to max,   just a rough draft. but the idea has promise and i just need to move it around so its in the back ground for photos.

There is a lot of scope for interesting skies. The only real limit is the tiny file size for the replacement Sun graphic of 1024x1024 pixels...  If you start with a much higher resolution image and make it 300 DPI and then reduce it to 1024x1024 in Photoshop or similar app you will get the best results.

[Jasdac Stockholm]

My biggest gripe is that they decided to not include all the Firestorm windlight presets, which means that my games now render broken sky settings due to missing presets. And locking EEP to experiences means it's completely useless in sandbox  & open source games.

I guess I'll have to spend my Christmas break writing an RLV/notecard based alternative to this stuff. What a headache.

Edited December 27, 2020 by Jasdac Stockholm

[MoiraKathleen]

39 minutes ago, Jasdac Stockholm said:

My biggest gripe is that they decided to not include all the Firestorm windlight presets,

A large number of the FS windlights were converted to EEP settings by FS staff, and are in the Inventory Library -> Environments folder.  Perhaps the ones you used are there.  It probably won't solve all your issues with your games, but perhaps it will help alleviate some of the work for getting things fixed back up.  

[KT Kingsley]

6 hours ago, Jasdac Stockholm said:

My biggest gripe is that they decided to not include all the Firestorm windlight presets

Tommy Terrible has saved a lot of people a lot of work and imported all the FS Windlight settings and made them available for free on Marketplace: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Firestorm-Default-Sky-Windlights-for-EEP/20088838

Edited December 27, 2020 by KT Kingsley

[Illumine Demina]

Where is the appropriate place to give feedback on Firestorm's UI implementation for EEP?  Or is it basically the same as the LL viewer? - I'm unfamiliar with it or their relationship.

Thanks in advance.

Edited December 27, 2020 by Illumine Demina

[Jasdac Stockholm]

Alright so a possible workaround for those working with the RLV @setenv_preset command:

You can use @setenv_asset:uuid=force instead. But this means you'll need the UUID. I took the presets @KT Kingsley referred to and copied their UUIDs onto my server. Then setup an API so you can convert preset names to UUIDs.

The API is a simple GET request to: https://jasx.org/api/windlight/?SKY=<sky1>,<sky2>...

Example: https://jasx.org/api/windlight/?SKY=[TOR] Night - Nocturne,[TOR] Night - Anwar

Response:

{
    "SKY":{
        "[tor] night - anwar":"0c65d69d-f19b-3317-b24d-592d128a6b4e",
        "[tor] night - nocturne":"81903a0f-c102-bd2c-aad0-e16e92ad841b"
    }
}

The preset names in the response are always lower case, since the RLV command is case insensitive, and this will make it easier to compare.

Hopefully this will help someone automate the process of converting their presets to UUIDs.

Edited December 27, 2020 by Jasdac Stockholm

[Anita61 Anatine]

On 12/27/2020 at 5:13 PM, Illumine Demina said:

Where is the appropriate place to give feedback on Firestorm's UI implementation for EEP?  Or is it basically the same as the LL viewer? - I'm unfamiliar with it or their relationship.

Thanks in advance.

https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/file_a_jira is the place where you can report issues. 

[TaiChica]

I have to say I find this "Improvement" anything but. The general shared lighting is harsh to the eyes, making items that have been created as full bright a menace to the eye. Applying the old mid day setting is somewhat helpful, but then you loose the lovely change of day the old estate setting used to display. My ability to do photography is also ruined, as the photo tools slider has been replaced with this sun moon item, and it is not the same, I cannot get the same result with it. Over all my sl experience has been woefully disappointing  with this new system. I am a visual person, and what was once engaging to me now is basically irritating. God help the newbie. Sorry to be negative, but it is my experience.

[Nethya Emor]

The FPS drop for implementing EEP is an abomination that sends SL performance years back. Even while using the default skies and not something particularly spectacular, the performance hit is too high. 

You can spend 10,000$ on a PC and it will still run EEP horribly, barely making any difference between it and a 700$ PC. Please find a way for SL to at least somewhat scale off of GPU performance.

 

[sandi Mexicola]

4 minutes ago, Nethya Emor said:

The FPS drop for implementing EEP is an abomination that sends SL performance years back. Even while using the default skies and not something particularly spectacular, the performance hit is too high. 

You can spend 10,000$ on a PC and it will still run EEP horribly, barely making any difference between it and a 700$ PC. Please find a way for SL to at least somewhat scale off of GPU performance.

 

I wish EEP worked better also!  The only things that I know that work are either turning off water, or turning off water transparency.  I think one or the other or both of these solutions might change the color of the sky though.

[Eduardo Minghuang]

5 minutes ago, Nethya Emor said:

The FPS drop for implementing EEP is an abomination that sends SL performance years back. Even while using the default skies and not something particularly spectacular, the performance hit is too high. 

You can spend 10,000$ on a PC and it will still run EEP horribly, barely making any difference between it and a 700$ PC. Please find a way for SL to at least somewhat scale off of GPU performance.

 

Just go 1 version back. A lot of us do and enjoy SL as it supposed to be. 

We can enjoy 1-1,5 years windlight this way 🙂

Hopefully there will be a hack before we are forced to use EEP

[sandi Mexicola]

1 minute ago, Eduardo Minghuang said:

Just go 1 version back. A lot of us do and enjoy SL as it supposed to be. 

We can enjoy 1-1,5 years windlight this way 🙂

Hopefully there will be a hack before we are forced to use EEP

Or, just maybe... EEP will eventually work.  

[Nethya Emor]

20 minutes ago, Eduardo Minghuang said:

Just go 1 version back. A lot of us do and enjoy SL as it supposed to be. 

We can enjoy 1-1,5 years windlight this way 🙂

Hopefully there will be a hack before we are forced to use EEP

Oh I got both, no worries there.

And LL, please start the transition to Vulkan already. 

[Sominel Edelman]

I didn't try EEP until today. Frankly, I am horrified. Most contrast, saturation and crisp shadows are gone and the clouds appear in front of my mountains with EEP instead of behind them with Windlight. It looks like everything is veiled. The EEP pictures were made with the latest Linden Lab viewer, the Windlight pictures with Firestorm-Releasex64 6.3.2.58052. I don't dare install the latest Firestorm viewer, scared I won't be able to go back to the incredibly beautiful options Windlight has to offer. I understand and support a lot of the possibilities EEP has to offer when it comes to sharibility, but this is too much of a loss for me. Please reconsider or make major adjustments...

[Europaa]

The thing I miss the most is the Windlight slider control. I would choose a preset then by using the slider change shadows or light day to night etc and capture a scene. The best photos are organic and on the fly. This restricts creativity by having to mess about to create a present before a capture. If I'm missing something here I apologise otherwise it's daft and makes photography a pain.

[KT Kingsley]

I think you're looking for "Personal Lighting".

In the LL viewer it's in the top bar menu World/Environment/Personal Lighting... In Firestorm I generally use the button in Quick Preferences.

[sandi Mexicola]

1 hour ago, Europaa said:

The thing I miss the most is the Windlight slider control. I would choose a preset then by using the slider change shadows or light day to night etc and capture a scene. The best photos are organic and on the fly. This restricts creativity by having to mess about to create a present before a capture. If I'm missing something here I apologise otherwise it's daft and makes photography a pain.

Supposedly, sliders will be coming back at some point.

[Stevie Davros]

The personal lighting control is not as fast as the old slider, but I got used to it pretty quickly. I actually like the changes in EEP. The ability to switch between entirely different cloud, sun and moon textures is marvellous.

[KjartanEno]

Since the last Firestorm release, specularity has been reduced again. Unlike the Firestorm 6.4.5 beta of last year, however, the sun and moon still do show shine. At least two 3rd party viewers that I know of (since I do not use the LL viewer on Linux) have the updated 'shine code' if anyone wishes to see the difference: Cool VL Viewer and Kokua.

[arton Rotaru]

1 hour ago, KjartanEno said:

Since the last Firestorm release, specularity has been reduced again. Unlike the Firestorm 6.4.5 beta of last year, however, the sun and moon still do show shine. At least two 3rd party viewers that I know of (since I do not use the LL viewer on Linux) have the updated 'shine code' if anyone wishes to see the difference: Cool VL Viewer and Kokua.

I did a quick test with the Cool VL Viewer. Looks like this is something I can live with. It's not yet what it used to be in Pre-EEP, but hey, I don't want to be too picky after all the mess we went through since April 2020.

[Chic Aeon]

According to Inara's blog post on the meeting, the devs are still working on EEP fixes (like specularity) and also adding in some code from 3rd party viewers. So things may get better eventually.  That was good to hear. I am not moving over from Windlight until I have to :D. 

[Rosie Gray]

We've been doing a bit of experimentation on the Confederation of Democratic Simulator sims with the new settings. Having a puzzle trying to figure out how to get rid of an unwanted rainbow at sunup and sundown.  The weather is meant to be overcast.   There is no Moon or Sun image in the settings and the color of both these components is the same as the gloomy sky.  Still, we end up with a rainbow.  Any ideas on how to be rid of it?