Environmental Enhancement Project (aka EEP!) Feedback Thread

[Kyrah Abattoir]

1 minute ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

Actually certain WL or EEP settings can knock your FPS lower.  Generally foggy environments will knock you down about 5FPS.

Interesting, you'd think it was all done in one pass.

[Henri Beauchamp]

6 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Non-ALM rendering is getting canned in a near future last time I checked, and so is non-EEP lighting.

I don't see it ”canned” any time soon (and never in my viewer !)... You are probably confusing the possibility to disable ”basic shaders” (now removed from the EE renderer), but those would only affect pre-v2.1 OpenGL, and the WL renderer already could not render things correctly with basic shaders off.

As for deferred rendering (AKA ALM), I personally dislike it a lot and pretty much never use it myself: it makes everything look blurry and gloomy while non-deferred rendering is crisp and vibrant. Not to mention a lowered FPS rate in ALM, which becomes even more critical with the EE renderer...

Edited July 15, 2020 by Henri Beauchamp

[Mollymews]

is it just me or is it that the mainland EEP is not the same EEP as when we press Sunrise, Midday, Sunset, Midnight on the World \ Environment menu

i have been using the defaults and the mainland EEP seems to be different to the default pre-sets which is a little bit disconcerting when using the menu to change the time of day setting

i got a fix by applying the Library Default EEP to my parcel, just really wondering why mainland seems to be some EEP other than Default

Edited July 18, 2020 by Mollymews
some

[Whirly Fizzle]

On 7/18/2020 at 10:30 AM, Mollymews said:

is it just me or is it that the mainland EEP is not the same EEP as when we press Sunrise, Midday, Sunset, Midnight on the World \ Environment menu

i have been using the defaults and the mainland EEP seems to be different to the default pre-sets which is a little bit disconcerting when using the menu to change the time of day setting

i got a fix by applying the Library Default EEP to my parcel, just really wondering why mainland seems to be some EEP other than Default

I can't remember the details of what exactly went wrong but the mainland default environment is indeed broken & ugly & LL know about the problem.
As far as I know it's not going to be an easy fix because currently the fix will involve some poor Linden manually going to every mainland region to change the environment setting. Ooof.

[Mollymews]

48 minutes ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

As far as I know it's not going to be an easy fix because currently the fix will involve some poor Linden manually going to every mainland region to change the environment setting. Ooof.

ooof and ouch!

Somebody Linden might want to create an account called Poor Linden (tm Whirly Fizzle), and give all these kinda jobs to them 😺

[Stevie Davros]

5 hours ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

As far as I know it's not going to be an easy fix because currently the fix will involve some poor Linden manually going to every mainland region to change the environment setting. Ooof.

Gee, I would have thought some sort of script automated process could sort that out. Don't they do that sort of thing for their updates already?

 

[Willow Wilder]

If anyone is interested, Firestorm QA has a beta viewer with EEP! available for testing. To use this viewer, please join the inworld group

Phoenix-Firestorm Preview Group  secondlife:///app/group/7ba4569c-9dd9-fed2-aaa7-36065d18a13c/about

Note this is not a support group, but part of the Firestorm QA testing groups, thus support is limited. 

Save the Group Guidelines notice to understand how the group works. 

Save the Take II - RC Firestorm Beta 6.4.5.60798 notice and attachment, and follow the instructions. 

 

 

Edited July 20, 2020 by Willow Wilder
failed to mention EEP! derp

[iceing Braveheart]

On 7/20/2020 at 6:24 PM, Willow Wilder said:

To use this viewer, please join the inworld group

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF283pORG2E

[Willow Wilder]

2 hours ago, iceing Braveheart said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF283pORG2E

I'm perfectly okay with this. Very few people have what it takes to be a Firestorm beta/preview tester. In many cases, the most simple things, seem to be the most difficult to manage. 

[iceing Braveheart]

6 hours ago, Willow Wilder said:

I'm perfectly okay with this. Very few people have what it takes to be a Firestorm beta/preview tester. In many cases, the most simple things, seem to be the most difficult to manage. 

i have heard this before

is there any particular reason firestorm beta is not public like linden labs?

https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/viewer.html

I stopped using groups a very long time ago after i found out that groups were bank robbers and stealing real life currency from me

[Willow Wilder]

1 minute ago, iceing Braveheart said:

is there any particular reason firestorm beta is not public like linden labs?

We're not Linden Lab. 

About Firestorm

 

[Qwestor Janus]

On 7/21/2020 at 1:24 AM, Willow Wilder said:

Firestorm QA has a beta viewer with EEP! available for testing.

 

Oh no! I tried this. Firestorm also will have this ugly sharp "moon shadows" without penumbra and "midday" with a strange cyan tint of light? No, no, no! ☹️

[animats]

Quarry Hill, New Babbage, non-EEP viewer

 

Quarry Hill, New Babbage, EEP viewer (Firestorm)

Fog still seems a bit off. Also, that one red full-bright tree doesn't seem to get fog effects.

[Stevie Davros]

Is the EEP Firestorm pic with the closest you can make EEP match to Windlight, or with the same setting copied over?

[animats]

1 hour ago, Stevie Davros said:

Is the EEP Firestorm pic with the closest you can make EEP match to Windlight, or with the same setting copied over?

I didn't create the environment for that region, so I can't say.

The red tree, though, looks like "full bright" being done after applying the environment. "Full bright" just means emissive, independent of lighting, and fog dimming should still apply.

[Penny Patton]

11 hours ago, animats said:

I didn't create the environment for that region, so I can't say.

The red tree, though, looks like "full bright" being done after applying the environment. "Full bright" just means emissive, independent of lighting, and fog dimming should still apply.

More than likely it's the windlight imported without any tweaking. I suspect it's just a fact that we'll have to tweak all imported windlight settings to achieve the looks they had pre-EEP.

As for the tree, that's actually normal. TPVs did something a while back that made it so fullbright was effected by atmospheric effects but as far as I know the stock SL viewer still displays fullbright items like this. I suspect TPVs will fix this again once everyone is on the same page regarding EEP.

[Chic Aeon]

1 minute ago, Penny Patton said:

More than likely it's the windlight imported without any tweaking. I suspect it's just a fact that we'll have to tweak all imported windlight settings to achieve the looks they had pre-EEP.

 

Agreed but as far as I can tell, NOW there are some settings "missing" from EEP that make it a bit problematic (and pretty much impossible to make a NEW sky with Windlight parameters).  These would be the  brightness and contrast color ramp. I have a LOT of homemade settings with high contrasts.

 

They do import fairly well, but I can see no way to MAKE them using the new tools.  Maybe someone has figured how to and can enlighten me. That would be great.    Hence I have all my personal Windlights backed so that hopefully I won't lose those.  Some of my old ones are already in the viewers, but not the ones I use most often NOW :D.  Don't want to give those up. 

 

I don't plan on worrying about all that until I absolutely have to.   

[Penny Patton]

I have noticed, in Black Dragon at least haven't tested it on other viewers, that windlight settings that include - in the name won't import. You get an "invalid character" popup. Hopefully that gets fixed, almost all of my custom windlight settings are like that.

[Stevie Davros]

4 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

They do import fairly well, but I can see no way to MAKE them using the new tools. 

Is it not easy to take any sky file and change all the parameters to create a new look?  Apart from the different way they look in the viewer (which is up to LL to address), all the sliders and options are still there?

[Chic Aeon]

2 hours ago, Stevie Davros said:

Is it not easy to take any sky file and change all the parameters to create a new look?  Apart from the different way they look in the viewer (which is up to LL to address), all the sliders and options are still there?

No, some are missing or at least hidden so much that I couldn't find them.  The ones that make the contrast. The ones I tried to make all ended up very FLAT looking --- not what I wanted.   This is a "ramp" setting between sunlight and ambient light". If you know how to make a HIGH CONTRAST EEP then I would love to know. Screenshots appreciated.  

[Stevie Davros]

I'm not sure what you mean, can you add a screen cap of the old Firestorm window that has the settings parameters you refer to, here are the old Firestorm Windlight and new Beta EEP settings windows that I have been using.  Phototools and other Firestorm popup windows look the same to me.

[Stevie Davros]

I have been busy testing out the new EEP using the Beta Firestorm with EEP, and also the Second Life Viewer with EEP. I have specifically been in the past few days looking at replacement astronomical graphics for the Sun and Moon to create a range of alternative looks. I have tested making new sky files, importing PNG alpha masked color graphic files of the recommended dimensions, applying the imported graphics to sky files, switching between sky files and checking out the appearance between viewer apps.  And finally I have uploaded some replacement Sun and Moon graphics and sky files to Marketplace for others to check out. The entire process went quite smoothly and I did not encounter any issues.  I do realise, of course that this is a minor aspect of the EEP implementation. Next I shall be moving into cloud textures and emulating as close as possible my old Windlight files inside EEP. This is where I know things will start to get interesting...

The files I have worked on so far are here, if you are interested to have a look: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/204498

As an aside,  in the major Second Life groups on Facebook I have noticed a very low level of knowledge about and understanding of EEP.

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Stevie Davros said:

As an aside,  in the major Second Life groups on Facebook I have noticed a very low level of knowledge about and understanding of EEP.

Well since most of us use Firestorm and the Firestorm crew deemed EEP "not ready for prime time" (hence the not counting version in Beta) I suspect that many folks don't care or plan on working too much with EEP until it is more finalized and in the main Firestorm viewer. 

 

So not surprising there isn't much knowledge. The Lab lost a lot of enthusiastic folks along the very long road.  A few seem to be working on some great stuff so perhaps eventually it will all get there.   Fingers cross since it doesn't appear to be going away.  My three month after official release test did show some big improvements. That's a good start. 

[Stevie Davros]

Yes I have noticed even in the past few weeks a change in the way variance works, it creates some very effective swirly mist now with the right settings.

[Coby Foden]

Moonrise in EEP enabled viewer. Firestorm 6.4.5 (60799) Jul 22 2020 22:31:10 (64bit) (Firestorm-Betax64)
This is nice, but the shininess in materials is totally too strong. Avatar skin with slight shininess which in Windlight viewer looks very nice, but in the EEP viewer it looks like very heavily oiled skin, especially so with local lights. All things which have materials shininess are badly broken in EEP.