Environmental Enhancement Project (aka EEP!) Feedback Thread

[Tymus Tenk 3]

my custom windlights have always been such a major part of the environments i've created on my Calas Galadhon Park regions over the years... I'm all for improving the SL experience, but right now I'm grumbling as there appears no easy way to convert my existing windllights in the current EEP viewer .. or am i just too old to catch the solution?    I think i would have preferred waiting until all could have been incorporated into the official SL & Firestorm viewers with a smooth transition and conversion of ones existing custom windlights.   

[animats 1,990]

I finally tried the EEP viewer. Is the sun supposed to be that huge at sunrise? Mainland defaults.

 

[HP Darcy 4]

I wonder whats the fun of this EEP if you can't sail or fly anymore? The complete sailing environment around The Blake Sea is going down the drain. Just rezz a boat and try it your self Lindens, this time not with your high end video card your boss gave you. Sim crossings don't work anymore for people with a 'normal' graphics card. 

[Whirly Fizzle 4,832]

On 3/29/2019 at 4:04 AM, dstauffsl2 said:

Why should i have to look at some ugly default when i had 200 beautiful windlights that don't work anymore?

Your legacy windlights will still work.

If you are using a legacy (non-EEP) viewer, you should still be able to use your legacy windlights as normal - either applying them locally or applying them to your parcel (if using Firestorm)  or applying them to your region.

If you are already using an EEP enabled viewer, you can import your windlights to EEP settings.

What problem are you having with the legacy windlights?

[dstauffsl2 8]

12 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

No.

But you could switch to the official EEP beta viewer ahead of schedule

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Alternate_Viewers

No SL blogger is going to use a LL viewer.

 

[Fionalein 4,782]

1 minute ago, dstauffsl2 said:

No SL blogger is going to use a LL viewer.

because we all know they (bloggers that is) never keep up with recent developments ...

[Whirly Fizzle 4,832]

17 hours ago, animats said:

There was just a Third Party Viewer meeting. Is the viewer EEP code ready for inclusion in Firestorm yet?

It's already merged into Firestorm & bugs are being fixed.

If you self compile:

https://bitbucket.org/Ansariel/phoenix-firestorm-lgpl-eep-integration/src/default/

https://bitbucket.org/Ansariel/phoenix-firestorm-lgpl-eep-ripout/src/default/

It's not been decided if we will go with "integration" or "ripout" yet.
Integration - allowing legacy windlight xml to still be loaded into Quick Prefs & Phototools.
Ripout - legacy windlight xml support totally ripped out of Quick Prefs & Phototools.

[Whirly Fizzle 4,832]

11 hours ago, Tymus Tenk said:

my custom windlights have always been such a major part of the environments i've created on my Calas Galadhon Park regions over the years... I'm all for improving the SL experience, but right now I'm grumbling as there appears no easy way to convert my existing windllights in the current EEP viewer .. or am i just too old to catch the solution?

It's actually pretty easy.

Using an EEP viewer, first create a new sky, water or day setting, depending on whether you want to import a custom fixed sky, water or day cycle.
You can do this in 2 ways.

World -> Environment -> My Environments.
Click the + button & choose new sky, new water or new day.

Or, open inventory, Click the + button -> New Settings -> Choose new sky, new water or new day.

Once you have your new setting created, via "My Environments" or directly from your Settings folder in inventory, double click the new setting you just created to open the editor.
The click the "Import" button top right & the file picker will open.
Browse to your custom windlight xml & "Open"

Your legacy windlight is now imported over to EEP and you can save that setting.

[Whirly Fizzle 4,832]

4 hours ago, HP Darcy said:

I wonder whats the fun of this EEP if you can't sail or fly anymore? The complete sailing environment around The Blake Sea is going down the drain. Just rezz a boat and try it your self Lindens, this time not with your high end video card your boss gave you. Sim crossings don't work anymore for people with a 'normal' graphics card. 

How does your graphics card affect region crossings?

[loverdag 237]

I was told yesterday, that EEP won't allow photographers to edit anything, even not basics as light angle.

Thats not so bad news for skilled photographers who don't have problem to turn EEP off and to use their own WL instead, but its bad news for sim owners / builders who will put effort into making / buying EEP,  making it part of their builds and then they will find out there is no way how to make decent pictures with the EEP included (without Photoshop). So their places will be shown on Flickr, destination blogs etc. without it.

Maybe its not big deal for many, hard to say.

But a lot of places has its own Flickr groups, the owners encourage visitors to take pictures and to share them with others and I beleive they won't be happy about this. Especially not if they wouldn't be aware about the EEP limitation before they will create it / buy it. 

 

[Whirly Fizzle 4,832]

1 hour ago, loverdag said:

I was told yesterday, that EEP won't allow photographers to edit anything, even not basics as light angle.

Thats not so bad news for skilled photographers who don't have problem to turn EEP off and to use their own WL instead, but its bad news for sim owners / builders who will put effort into making / buying EEP,  making it part of their builds and then they will find out there is no way how to make decent pictures with the EEP included (without Photoshop). So their places will be shown on Flickr, destination blogs etc. without it.

Maybe its not big deal for many, hard to say.

But a lot of places has its own Flickr groups, the owners encourage visitors to take pictures and to share them with others and I beleive they won't be happy about this. Especially not if they wouldn't be aware about the EEP limitation before they will create it / buy it. 

 

This is likely the problem you heard about: BUG-225921 - [EEP] Add the ability to locally modify an environment at any location

With EEP you can:

• Locally apply any EEP setting you have in your inventory. This works the same way as locally applying any windlight setting on legacy viewers. You can locally apply an EEP setting at any location.
• If the EEP setting in inventory is modify to you, you can edit it and choose to save the changes as a new setting.
• If you own the parcel or the region (or are a region EM), you can edit the parcel or region environment locally & either discard the changes you made, save them to inventory as a new setting or apply your changes to the parcel or region.

With EEP you cannot locally modify the EEP settings that are set on a parcel or a region you do not own or have the rights to edit in the land settings.
So for example if you wanted to take a photograph on Parcel X using Parcel X environment settings, you cannot locally change the sun position etc to get the shadows in an aesthetically pleasing location for your shot. You would have to choose another environment setting that you have & apply it locally in order to edit it to fit your shot.

Hope that makes sense.

 

[loverdag 237]

19 minutes ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

This is likely the problem you heard about: BUG-225921 - [EEP] Add the ability to locally modify an environment at any location

With EEP you can:

• Locally apply any EEP setting you have in your inventory. This works the same way as locally applying any windlight setting on legacy viewers. You can locally apply an EEP setting at any location.
• If the EEP setting in inventory is modify to you, you can edit it and choose to save the changes as a new setting.
• If you own the parcel or the region (or are a region EM), you can edit the parcel or region environment locally & either discard the changes you made, save them to inventory as a new setting or apply your changes to the parcel or region.

With EEP you cannot locally modify the EEP settings that are set on a parcel or a region you do not own or have the rights to edit in the land settings.
So for example if you wanted to take a photograph on Parcel X using Parcel X environment settings, you cannot locally change the sun position etc to get the shadows in an aesthetically pleasing location for your shot. You would have to choose another environment setting that you have & apply it locally in order to edit it to fit your shot.

Hope that makes sense.

 

Yes, it makes sense and it is confirmation of the problem I wanted to poin out.

Being visitor somewhere usualy mean NOT to have any rights about local EEP, so sims owners should be aware that visitors, destination bloggers etc won't be able to use their local EEP for taking pictures.

[loverdag 237]

If I understand correctly how it will work, solution could be:

- as owner of the place create your own EEP

- give it for free as gift on landing point with "mod" settings

To have our own mod copy in inventory should allow us to edit the EEP inworld, so it would be usable for pictures same as we can use WL today.

Is that correct? 

[Whirly Fizzle 4,832]

10 minutes ago, loverdag said:

Yes, it makes sense and it is confirmation of the problem I wanted to poin out.

Being visitor somewhere usualy mean NOT to have any rights about local EEP, so sims owners should be aware that visitors, destination bloggers etc won't be able to use their local EEP for taking pictures.

If a sim owner wants a photographer like yourself to take photos of their region using the EEP settings they have applied to the region (sky/water) then they will have to pass you the EEP settings assets with modify permission they used which will allow you to locally apply those EEP settings and then tweak the sun direction etc to suit each shot.

I'm quite expecting a lot of the popular photography regions to have their EEP settings up on the marketplace for L$0 (or in a box for sale at the landing point)  so photographers can buy them to work around this problem.

Edited March 30 by Whirly Fizzle

[Whirly Fizzle 4,832]

10 minutes ago, loverdag said:

If I understand correctly how it will work, solution could be:

- as owner of the place create your own EEP

- give it for free as gift on landing point with "mod" settings

To have our own mod copy in inventory should allow us to edit the EEP inworld, so it would be usable for pictures same as we can use WL today.

Is that correct? 

100% correct.

Anyone can choose to locally apply different EEP settings from inventory that they can edit locally though & then take their shots.

EEP is only a problem is you want to take shots of an-others land with the land owners chosen EEP settings - for example if a sim owner tasks a blogger to take shots of their region using the provided EEP settings.

On a legacy viewer, you would just make sure the viewer is rendering the land owners chosen water and sky settings & then create a new sky & new water that would automatically be prepopulated with all the land owners settings & then edit them to suit each shot - change sun angle for correct shadow placement, tweak gamma etc etc

On EEP you cannot do this unless the land owner provides their EEP settings with modify permission so you can locally apply & tweak them.

Edited March 30 by Whirly Fizzle
Further clarification.

[loverdag 237]

21 minutes ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

100% correct.

Anyone can choose to locally apply different EEP settings from inventory that they can edit locally though & then take their shots.

EEP is only a problem is you want to take shots of an-others land with the land owners chosen EEP settings - for example if a sim owner tasks a blogger to take shots of their region using the provided EEP settings.

So it has solution but it would mean the local EEP must be created from full perm textures. I don't see that happen too often.

My point was about the situation you mentioned in the last sentence - sim owners will buy expensive EEP to make their places look interesting for visitors - and then they will be dissapointed about not seeing the EEP on pictures taken on their places. That was the problem I wanted to higlight. Before EEP will become fully alive, there should be some good information campaign to make people informed about how it exactly works, to make them aware what they are about to buy and what limits it has.

(For myself, as photographer, I don't have problem not use them at all and stuck with classic WL.) 

 

 

Edited March 30 by loverdag

[animats 1,990]

7 hours ago, HP Darcy said:

I wonder whats the fun of this EEP if you can't sail or fly anymore? The complete sailing environment around The Blake Sea is going down the drain. Just rezz a boat and try it your self Lindens, this time not with your high end video card your boss gave you. Sim crossings don't work anymore for people with a 'normal' graphics card. 

Huh? Sim crossings and graphics card should be unrelated.

(Unless something is so slow at an EEP transition that it introduces a momentary huge lag. I've demonstrated before that 1000ms of lag will cause a double region crossing to fail every time. Lesser lag increases the odds of trouble but does not guarantee it. Anyone else seeing this?)

[Shudo 254]

15 hours ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

If a sim owner wants a photographer like yourself to take photos of their region using the EEP settings they have applied to the region (sky/water) then they will have to pass you the EEP settings assets with modify permission they used which will allow you to locally apply those EEP settings and then tweak the sun direction etc to suit each shot.

Gosh no, I keep my lighting unique and secret.

But does this mean nobody can take photos any more in my regions using their own sun angle?

If so, sheesh, it goes from bad to worse.

[Whirly Fizzle 4,832]

4 hours ago, Shudo said:

But does this mean nobody can take photos any more in my regions using their own sun angle?

It means nobody can take photos in your regions using YOUR EEP setting you put on the region using their own sun angle.
They can however locally apply a different environment they have modify rights to and edit sun angle in that.

While we are discussing photography problems with EEP, I really hope these 2 bugs gets fixed before release. Both are serious issues for photographers.

BUG-226635 - [EEP] In-world objects, land and avatars are largely unaffected by atmospheric settings when ALM is enabled

BUG-226627 - [EEP] EEP shadows are peely-wally

Edited March 31 by Whirly Fizzle

[Linnrenate Crosby 17]

Hi Raider and Whirly... based on the things you found out at my place. Is it some way i can modify my light script so it will work like it should until we all are on EPP viewer. Raider you mentioned a big difference between pre-EEP sun position and EEP sun, so i'm wondering if i somehow can add that difference into my script because now seeing the light lit at almost midday are really annoying me

This is my timer logic:

    timer()
    {
        sun = llGetSunDirection();
        // If z <= 0 it's below the horizon so it's night time
        if (sun.z <= 0)
        {
                turn_on();
        }
        // If z > 0 sun is in the sky so it's daytime
        else
        {
            turn_off();
        }
    }

Edited March 31 by Linnrenate Crosby

[CoffeeDujour 4,262]

I'm thinking sundial based mechanics are dead with EEP in part because of the new sun, in part because EEP doesn't follow the shared experience mantra.

[Whirly Fizzle 4,832]

llGetSunDirection works just fine on EEP regions as long as you are on an EEP viewer.

26 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

because EEP doesn't follow the shared experience mantra.

What do you mean by that?

With legacy windlight the user could choose to override the region windlight locally.
On EEP viewers you can choose to override the parcel or region windlight/environment locally too.
In that respect EEP is no different from legacy windlight.

[CoffeeDujour 4,262]

2 minutes ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

llGetSunDirection works just fine on EEP regions as long as you are on an EEP viewer.

What do you mean by that?

With legacy windlight the user could choose to override the region windlight locally.
On EEP viewers you can choose to override the parcel or region windlight/environment locally too.
In that respect EEP is no different from legacy windlight.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LlReplaceAgentEnvironment

[CoffeeDujour 4,262]

The awesome EEP cake is missing the frosting.

Posted feature request for image based skybox support that only requires a single checkbox and would let environments be literally anything we wanted without the need for mega prims, hacked in distant geometry, ownership of an isolated full region, etc etc etc.

The sky could be painted over a city-scape, stars and planets, distant fluffy clouds, whatever you liked with no additional textures required. Industry standard for games.

Requires 1 checkbox. 1 background cube.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-226636

[Linnrenate Crosby 17]

3 hours ago, Linnrenate Crosby said:

Hi Raider and Whirly... based on the things you found out at my place. Is it some way i can modify my light script so it will work like it should until we all are on EPP viewer. Raider you mentioned a big difference between pre-EEP sun position and EEP sun, so i'm wondering if i somehow can add that difference into my script because now seeing the light lit at almost midday are really annoying me

This is my timer logic:

    timer()
    {
        sun = llGetSunDirection();
        // If z <= 0 it's below the horizon so it's night time
        if (sun.z <= 0)
        {
                turn_on();
        }
        // If z > 0 sun is in the sky so it's daytime
        else
        {
            turn_off();
        }
    }

After 3 hours monitoring the sun vector i've been able to fix my light script, what i needed to do was to replace

if (sun.z <= 0)

With

if (sun.z <= -0.68)

In the timer event. Now the lights work as they did before EEP was rolled out. Of course i will need to revert this change once EEP are on all different viewers.