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Environmental Enhancement Project (aka EEP!) Feedback Thread


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1 hour ago, Penny Patton said:

I'm not sure this is a fair assessment. It assumes nothing will, or perhaps even can, be fixed as far as EEP's remaining bugs and issues. I'm still pretty excited for EEP, assuming those remaining issues do get fixed. Customizeable sun/moon, skies as inventory, parcel windlight settings that don't rely on your visitors already having a viewer with pre-installed sky settings. These are all things I expect the userbase will eagerly embrace.

 We should, of course, all remain critical of EEP, keeping the pressure on LL to fix what needs fixing, but it's premature to be outright dismissive of it.

Well I guess that is why I had the word CHOICE in caps :D.    I am not sure if you have been in Sansar (don't remember anything specific you have said one way or another) but  Experience creators there pretty much have EEP type power. The lighting there can be fantastic.  It also comes with its own set of problems (pretty big ones for inside of buildings).   

 

EEP can users still override the settings and most of the userbase that "I" know do that.    So I am still in the CHOICE camp.   I hope that the devs get it all together --  primarily because I know how long and hard people have been working on the new feature. 

 

It is important to remember that not all LL "improvements" and new features have been heartily embraced by the masses.  

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2 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Well I guess that is why I had the word CHOICE in caps :D. 

The choice to which you were referring to in caps was pretty clearly the choice between EEP and Windlight. That's not at all the same as the choice between parcel/sim and local sky settings, which is what you seem to be saying now. The latter I'd agree with wholeheartedly. The former? Eh. Either LL gets EEP to work well, or they don't. If they don't, then they shouldn't ship it. If they do get it to work well, then there's no reason to give people a choice between EEP and Windlight.

2 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

It also comes with its own set of problems (pretty big ones for inside of buildings).

In most videogames, building interiors are their own separate map from the outside environment and/or change the sky settings while you're indoors. That's how they manage to get indoor lighting right. I can't speak for Sansar, but SL users tend to want to put the indoor environments in the same setting as the outdoor environment, using the same sky settings, which is where the lighting problems with windlight come into the equation.

2 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

It is important to remember that not all LL "improvements" and new features have been heartily embraced by the masses.  

Like windlight. People were up in arms about that when windlight was new. It was almost identical to the conversation we're seeing with EEP. Here we are over a decade later and you'd be hard pressed to find an SL user who'd be happy to go back to SL's pre-windlight lighting.

I'm not suggesting we blindly accept whatever LL throws our way, I'm just saying that context is important.

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1 hour ago, Penny Patton said:

The choice to which you were referring to in caps was pretty clearly the choice between EEP and Windlight. That's not at all the same as the choice between parcel/sim and local sky settings, which is what you seem to be saying now.

No, same "choice" in my mind.  I meant EEP or Windlight(R) with the choice being for the user to decide -- pretty much what we have now with the folks ON EEP viewers seeing EEP and the folks NOT on EEP viewers seeing something close to Windlight(R) .  EEP can still be over-ridden by the individual user unless that has changed. So there is still no guarantee (as there is in Sansar) that people will see the land as the designer planned. Personally I never use the local Windlight anyway. I am certainly not alone there. 

 

   Just my point of view. Well, not only mine, so let's say "a popular view".    

 

I  ALWAYS  loved Windlight(R) ^^.  I never EVER went back to the default days cycle. I only check  out the default settings when I am setting up in an event to make sure those using those default setting can still see my stuff :D.

 

We don't need to agree.  :D

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Not much in the way of EEP news at this week's dev meeting. Sounds like we will be getting another EEP preview viewer either in the next couple of days, or maybe Monday. Depending on how long it remains in QA. According to Oz they fixed the brightness issue and a lot of other bugs. Oz said that the remaining bugs mostly effect people running SL at lower graphics settings.

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Again, after rolling restart, no atmospheric haze, and sun only in default position, can't be moved (when applying to region). I'm glad this battle is finally almost over for me, won't be dealing with region light settings, letting mine go. Although SL being considerably darker overall isn't great.

Edited by Morena Tully
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On 9/18/2019 at 6:54 PM, Morena Tully said:

Again, after rolling restart, no atmospheric haze, and sun only in default position, can't be moved (when applying to region). I'm glad this battle is finally almost over for me, won't be dealing with region light settings, letting mine go. Although SL being considerably darker overall isn't great.

For one it is too dark, for the other too bright and for the next this or that does not fit. Linden's standard settings are a compromise to make it so good for everyone. But it should be clear that it can never and will never be possible for everyone to do it right. For this you can create your own personal setting and experiment e.g. with the gamma fader. For this purpose, for example, the manual on http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Environmental_Enhancement_Project . All in all, however, it has nothing to do with the actual functionality of EEP, but purely with personal feeling and Linden can hardly do anything about it, because it is different for everyone.

On 9/20/2019 at 2:11 AM, Penny Patton said:

LL just hired two new graphics people

Linden can hire 100 Graphic designer but they never can make it right for thousends of User. Some of them allways will find something in the Default Settings and handle it to Linden insted of making an own and for themself perfect Setting.

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1 hour ago, Miller Thor said:

For one it is too dark, for the other too bright and for the next this or that does not fit. Linden's standard settings are a compromise to make it so good for everyone. But it should be clear that it can never and will never be possible for everyone to do it right. For this you can create your own personal setting and experiment e.g. with the gamma fader. For this purpose, for example, the manual on http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Environmental_Enhancement_Project . All in all, however, it has nothing to do with the actual functionality of EEP, but purely with personal feeling and Linden can hardly do anything about it, because it is different for everyone.

Linden can hire 100 Graphic designer but they never can make it right for thousends of User. Some of them allways will find something in the Default Settings and handle it to Linden insted of making an own and for themself perfect Setting.

Absolutely right. It needs to be a compromise. When I'm o-nline there are always between 40,000 and 45,000 people onli.ne. You can't do it right for everyone. Creating own settings for my place was not so hard to do by importing some WIndlight settings. Detail changes I do when EEP is in a more stable version in Firestorm. I'm happy that EEP goes further improved! Good job for now Linden!

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7 hours ago, Miller Thor said:

For one it is too dark, for the other too bright and for the next this or that does not fit. Linden's standard settings are a compromise to make it so good for everyone. But it should be clear that it can never and will never be possible for everyone to do it right. For this you can create your own personal setting and experiment e.g. with the gamma fader. For this purpose, for example, the manual on http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Environmental_Enhancement_Project . All in all, however, it has nothing to do with the actual functionality of EEP, but purely with personal feeling and Linden can hardly do anything about it, because it is different for everyone.

Linden can hire 100 Graphic designer but they never can make it right for thousends of User. Some of them allways will find something in the Default Settings and handle it to Linden insted of making an own and for themself perfect Setting.

Default settlings are what I mean when I say much darker overall. Sure, I can make personal settings, and have lighting more to my taste, but for example in Bellisseria, I *used* to enjoy using regional, because it was quite lovely there. But now the past week, even a sunny afternoon looks exactly as if a solar eclipse is in progress. It's so dark, using regional default isn't even an option any more. There is no way to adjust gamma in graphics options, it's only for making personal environment settings that override regional.

One would think a "compromise" standard light stemming from EEP would be a realistic look we see in RL. This dark gloomy light is not realistic, and a far cry from an upgrade. Seeing recent pictures on these forums, when people use defaults, everything is so dark you have to squint to see details. Daylight pictures, mind you. It's not my graphics, every single other game I play have days that actually look like daytime.

I'm sorry I'm so vocal about this. Light and sound in SL has always been a fascination with me, they are like foundations of creating a mood and vibe with almost everything else. When one of those two things are off, it throws ME off. If I have to always use my own light and sound, I feel a disconnection from the virtual world around me. I probably belong in a padded cell somewhere. Knowing this is the first step in recovery, right?  :D

I'll back out of this thread for real now. What happens, happens, and I'll adjust however I need to. But if this is how default SL is going to look now, it makes me sad.

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On 9/18/2019 at 5:54 PM, Morena Tully said:

Again, after rolling restart, no atmospheric haze, and sun only in default position, can't be moved (when applying to region). I'm glad this battle is finally almost over for me, won't be dealing with region light settings, letting mine go. Although SL being considerably darker overall isn't great.

We also experienced this yesterday following rolling restarts, no haze whatsoever leaving 4 of our regions looking stark and quite horrid.

We followed the advise given by Dan Linden in BUG-227645. Concierge support restarted the regions, and moved them back to the main server channel which made no difference at all. multiple restarts later by concierge and no change at all. It would appear that we are stuck with this, for now.

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  • Lindens

There was an issue on the servers that was scaling down the fog values when translating from the simulator EEP settings into legacy Windlight. (Scaling them down so that they were practically 0.)

We have a fix for this and are rolling it out to an RC today as in simulator version  2019-09-24T17:23:00.531200.

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2 hours ago, Rider Linden said:

There was an issue on the servers that was scaling down the fog values when translating from the simulator EEP settings into legacy Windlight.

Would LL be so kind as to publish the relevant code, so that it could be integrated without having to reinvent the wheel into viewers that keep the Windlight renderer (this way, the viewers that support EEP settings but don't use the EEP renderer could render Windlight settings corresponding to EEP ones, even when the EEP settings do not come from the region itself) ?

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28 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

Would LL be so kind as to publish the relevant code, so that it could be integrated without having to reinvent the wheel into viewers that keep the Windlight renderer (this way, the viewers that support EEP settings but don't use the EEP renderer could render Windlight settings corresponding to EEP ones, even when the EEP settings do not come from the region itself) ?

As I mentioned above.  This is a simulator, not a viewer, issue so there is no code to publish. 

All simulators on the grid at this point maintain EEP settings internally and do a translation to the legacy windlight when a viewer requests the environment through the old cap.  It was this translation that was applying the improper scaling on our end.

Conversely, if a viewer changes the environment using the legacy caps and sends Windlight to a simulator, we do the translation on our end into an EEP setting.

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1 hour ago, Rider Linden said:

All simulators on the grid at this point maintain EEP settings internally and do a translation to the legacy windlight when a viewer requests the environment through the old cap.  It was this translation that was applying the improper scaling on our end.

The idea is precisely to implement the same conversion algorithm into viewers capable of dealing with EEP settings (at both the inventory/asset and LLEnvironment levels) but that won't adopt the EEP renderer (instead keeping Windlight's renderer). The Cool VL Viewer v1.26.23 (i.e. the experimental branch) is one such viewer (you can even edit the EEP settings in it, apply them to the region, etc, but of course, you cannot see EEP settings applied locally rendered as their equivalent Windlight ones).

I could code such a feature myself, but why reinventing the wheel ?...

As I explained in a previous post, I am for now undecided about what I will do regarding EEP (and more precisely its renderer): I could adopt it (if it improves enough to avoid loosing FPS when compared to the old Windlight renderer), or implement Windlight rendering of EEP settings (via this conversion algorithm, for non-region/parcel settings)...

Edited by Henri Beauchamp
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  • Lindens

The viewer's corresponding conversion code has been there for some time (It was put in place so that an EEP viewer could still update the environment on a Windlight simulator, and has never been removed, even after the whole grid switched.) 

You can find it in llsettingsvo.cpp. (found at the link).  Search the file for methods named convertToLegacy( ), there should be three of them.  The viewer conversions do not have the issue that impacted the simulator. 

Be warned.  The legacy Windlight format does not include a number features such as customization for clouds and heavenly bodies, independent moon position, and several others.  These improvements are stripped in the conversion. 

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50 minutes ago, Rider Linden said:

The viewer's corresponding conversion code has been there for some time (It was put in place so that an EEP viewer could still update the environment on a Windlight simulator, and has never been removed, even after the whole grid switched.) 

You can find it in llsettingsvo.cpp. (found at the link).  Search the file for methods named convertToLegacy( ), there should be three of them.  The viewer conversions do not have the issue that impacted the simulator.

Yes, I already spotted this, but convertToLegacy() calls convertAtmosphericsToLegacy() and there, is a comment saying:

Quote

// These may need to be inferred from new settings' density profiles
// if the legacy settings values are not available.

And the whole conversion depends on the actual presence of SETTING_LEGACY_HAZE key in the EEP settings LLSD... Should I conclude that this key is indeed (and will stay, in the future) present in the EEP settings ?

Quote

Be warned.  The legacy Windlight format does not include a number features such as customization for clouds and heavenly bodies, independent moon position, and several others.  These improvements are stripped in the conversion.

It should not be hard to add configurable textures for Windlight's Moon, Clouds and Sun... The independent Moon position would just be a missing feature.

Edited by Henri Beauchamp
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  • Lindens

At some point in the future (EEP2) we will be implementing density profiles which will give better control over things like haze, distance fog, god rays and ambient colors.  

This isn't until some unspecified future though so you should be fine with using SETTING_LEGACY_HAZE for the time being.  Again, just be aware that they are considered legacy at this point and may be missing from future versions of the a settings asset.  (At which time you'll have to infer what the values of distance_haze, distance_multiplier and ambient_color should be.)

 

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hmm it says eep viewer and downloaded it from the alternate viewers site within secondlife...is there another link i need for the CORRECT viewer? im unsure where to look

3 minutes ago, Rider Linden said:

@skylarmalone.  That appears to be a non EEP viewer.  That floater was removed in the the EEP viewer.  

For the legacy Windlight viewers the windlight XML files are located in the Second Life install directory under:  ./SecondLifeRelease/app_settings/windlight

 

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The download for the current EEP viewer is https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/viewer/6.4.0.530150.html

You can check which viewer you are running by opening Help>About. For EEP the first line should read: "Second Life Release 6.4.0.530150"  

Windlight XML files are still included with the EEP viewer but it does not use them.  You can find all of the old Linden Lab Windlight files (and many of the Firestorm Windlights) in your inventory under Library>Environments.  You can use these directly on your land or copy them into "My Inventory" and edit them to create your own environments. 

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35 minutes ago, Rider Linden said:

The download for the current EEP viewer is https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/viewer/6.4.0.530150.html

You can check which viewer you are running by opening Help>About. For EEP the first line should read: "Second Life Release 6.4.0.530150"  

Windlight XML files are still included with the EEP viewer but it does not use them.  You can find all of the old Linden Lab Windlight files (and many of the Firestorm Windlights) in your inventory under Library>Environments.  You can use these directly on your land or copy them into "My Inventory" and edit them to create your own environments. 

tysm got the right viewer now going over how it works! :)

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