Environmental Enhancement Project (aka EEP!) Feedback Thread

[KjartanEno]

2 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

I told you on my forum that your system probably had an issue with the frequency or power governor and/or with the BIOS settings for the max package power and/or max socket current...

Which apparently only affects the performance of Cool VL Viewer? Come on, Henri, I want to work with you on this. You're a smart person. This is a puzzle. I want to figure it out. Fine. It's your viewer. I'll lurk, following progress and updates, and leave it at that.

Posting a personal TPV benchmark of all current Linux viewers comparing EEP to WL on an EEP feedback thread is off topic? 🤐

[Henri Beauchamp]

54 minutes ago, KjartanEno said:

Which apparently only affects the performance of Cool VL Viewer? Come on, Henri, I want to work with you on this. You're a smart person. This is a puzzle. I want to figure it out.

Look, I just made another test, in Aditi, in an empty sim so to avoid different surrounding avatars in different viewer sessions, but with some scenery so that it does tax the renderer. The sim is Moonberry Bay, at pos 117,181,21 (on the pier, looking SW towards the shore). All settings to the max (with specific settings in both viewers set so they are the same, i.e. mesh multiplier LoD factor set to 1.0 and Classic clouds off in Cool VL Viewer, Render LOD Factor limited to 3 and terrain details LoD to 2 in Firestorm), 512m draw distance, camera angle set the exact same way (this is super important since the default camera angle of view is different, the one in my viewer being behind the avatar (Z=0) while it is slightly above in other viewers, meaning you pick up and render more objects in the distance in my viewer while you render more floor/terrain in others !), all shadows and no SSAO/DoF blur when in ALM.

Cool VL Viewer:

WL, non-deferred (ND) rendering: 65fps

WL, ALM: 55fps

EE, ND: 43fps

EE, ALM: 39fps

 

Firestorm v6.3.9 (WL);

ND: 26fps

ALM: 22fps

 

Firestorm 6.4.5 (EE):

ND: 30

ALM: 26

 

This is an easy bench for everyone to reproduce... Amusingly, Firestorm 6.4.5 (EE) seems faster to render this scene than v6.3.9 (WL)... It might be an effect of the new alpha textures batching code in the EE renderer...

Edited August 24, 2020 by Henri Beauchamp

[Aida Lundquist]

@KjartanEno and @Henri Beauchamp

Comparing Apples and Strawberries

You both can't compare FPS on each's different setting. Everyone uses a different view and so the FPS are very different. For example when I stand on my postand at home Cam fixed to position with Firestorm I have 35 FPS  in Ultra  SL on monitor 1 with resolution 2650x1600 pixels and a second monitor with 1920x1080 that shows this text. FOcus is on Firstorm because when the focus is on th eother monitor the FPS for Firstorm dropps a lot because its running in background. On the current EEP Beta .6.4.5.60799 with exact the same pose, exact the same resolutions and exact the same cam pose I have 31 FPS. This means you both should have exact the same view to the same object in the same resolution then you can compare the FPS with each other much better. When I go to my Studio with all walls black in the background with my avatar on the same pose stand in Firestorm 6.3.9 WL I have 136 FPS and on EEP I have 85 FPS.

Only to show what really is worth an FPS value without anything else compared between different PCs It makes absolutely no sense to only name the viewer and the CPU and Graphics and tell an FPS value that isnt comparable. Just saying.

Only for Info: CPU Intel 7700K with 14% Overclock. NVIDIA Geforce GTX 2080 Ti

Edited August 24, 2020 by Aida Lundquist
Added CPU and Graphics for info

[KjartanEno]

3 hours ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

Look, I just made another test, in Aditi, in an empty sim so to avoid different surrounding avatars in different viewer sessions, but with some scenery so that it does tax the renderer. The sim is Moonberry Bay, at pos 117,181,21 (on the pier, looking SW towards the shore). All settings to the max (with specific settings in both viewers set so they are the same, i.e. mesh multiplier LoD factor set to 1.0 and Classic clouds off in Cool VL Viewer, Render LOD Factor limited to 3 and terrain details LoD to 2 in Firestorm), 512m draw distance, camera angle set the exact same way (this is super important since the default camera angle of view is different, the one in my viewer being behind the avatar (Z=0) while it is slightly above in other viewers, meaning you pick up and render more objects in the distance in my viewer while you render more floor/terrain in others !), all shadows and no SSAO/DoF blur when in ALM.

Since you suggested it, I did some tests at that location. Lovely place.

1 hour ago, Aida Lundquist said:

Only to show what really is worth an FPS value without anything else compared between different PCs It makes absolutely no sense to only name the viewer and the CPU and Graphics and tell an FPS value that isnt comparable. Just saying.

I'm more interested in the differential between viewers on my computer, which may or may not be representative of the experience of other residents. So, consider this a personal benchmark. Images are included at the links below. Rather than using someone else's settings, I use what I'm accustomed to. As Henri says, benchmarking is an art.

My settings across all viewers in this test, which is fairly typical of my general usage:

 ALM, SS Ambient Occlusion, Terrain Scale High, Shadows: Sun/Moon + Projectors, Object-object Occlusion, Water: All Avatars and Objects, Avatar Physics Max, Draw Distance 128m, Max Particle Count 3072, Max non-impostor 12, Post Process Quality Max, RenderVolumeLODFactor 2.0, Flexiprims Max, Trees Max, Avatars Max, RenderTerrainLODFactor 2.0, Sky Max, Hardware Skinning, Terrain Detail High, Anisotropic Filtering Enabled, Antialiasing 2x, VSync Disabled, Texture Memory 2048 MB, Enable OpenGL VBOs, Enable Stream VBOs, No Texture Compression, No DoF, 1920x1048 windowed, and mesh multiplier LoD factor set to 1.0 on Cool VL Viewer.

Environment set to midday for consistent shadow rendering framerates. (EDIT: It would seem that Firestorm 6.3.9 was not at midday, but close enough that I consider the result acceptable.) I cammed around upon login to rez the surrounding mesh and textures on each viewer so as to provide a consistent loading of the entire scene as would be typical of normal usage. I have my own scripted avatar camera control. Pressing ESC (SHIFT+ESC in Cool VL Viewer) puts the camera in the same location. I allowed the scene to settle down for a few minutes after camming the surrounding areas before arriving at the framerates I've recorded. I press CTRL+9 for the default field of view.

My system is running Linux, kernel 5.5.12-desktop-1omv4001, Mesa 20.0.7. I have a Ryzen 1300x (4 cores) @ 3.575 GHz, MSI B450M motherboard, 16GB (2x8) DDR4 3200 RAM (@3200 in BIOS), Sapphire Nitro+ SE AMD RX 580 8GB. My monitor is 1920x1080 144Hz adaptive sync. All viewers were tested with operating system in Performance mode.

I've attempted to make as fair of a comparison as possible. These are all from the official downloads. Clearly EEP presents residents with a real framerate hit. Whether further code optimizations can improve the current state of things remains to be seen.

Singularity 1.87.8193 WL 32 fps
Firestorm 6.3.9 WL 27 fps
Firestorm 6.4.5 EEP (beta) 22 fps
Cool VL Viewer 1.28.0.6 WL 24 fps
Cool VL Viewer 1.28.0.6 EEP 20 fps

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w0ufziaq3soqesc/CoolVLViewer12806EEP.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mc2dhtgix5zj6by/CooVLViewer12806WL.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/39bpry6fkvh83q9/Firestorm639.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/h1ql39e6da3trs4/Firestorm645.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kz7kao79x0eyl6n/Singularity1878193.png?dl=0

Edited August 24, 2020 by KjartanEno
formatting

[Henri Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, KjartanEno said:

My system is running Linux, kernel 5.5.12-desktop-1omv4001, Mesa 20.0.7. I have a Ryzen 1300x (4 cores) @ 3.575 GHz, MSI B450M motherboard, 16GB (2x8) DDR4 3200 RAM (@3200 in BIOS), Sapphire Nitro+ SE AMD RX 580 8GB. My monitor is 1920x1080 144Hz adaptive sync.

And this is just now that you reveal you are using ”adaptive sync”... What happens when you turn it off ? Mind you, when in adaptive sync mode, the driver may purposely slow down the frame rate in order to better sync with the monitor...

Quote

I press CTRL+9 for the default field of view.

And like I explained, the default field of view in the Cool VL Viewer is NOT the same as in other viewers... You must edit the corresponding debug settings (CameraOffsetDefault for the Cool VL Viewer and CameraOffsetRearView for Firestorm) to get them to match exactly, or you will get a different amount of objects in the FOV, meaning a different load for the renderer.

Edited August 24, 2020 by Henri Beauchamp
Added FOV issue

[Aida Lundquist]

37 minutes ago, KjartanEno said:

Firestorm 6.3.9 WL 27 fps
Firestorm 6.4.5 EEP (beta) 22 fps

This difference is near the same as for me with Firestorm on Windows at my home. I too dont see the 50% Henri mentioned. But it varies alot depending what is in view. Go to a Club with 50 people and the difference is even smaller because the lag of moving people drops the FPS on bith versions of the viewer about 20% but depends a lot how many moving people are in the view.I dont switch between viewers because I do often photos in Clubs when a relog is problematic because it may be full 🙂 And I like all the features I have with Firestorm. I tried the Black Dragon aand Alchemy once but the user interface is a cruel for me (like the LL Viewer). It isnt a critic about the viewers because everyone shall use the vier(s) they like most. And I like Firestorm a lot. Irs onlymy personal preference.

[KjartanEno]

@Henri Beauchamp,  I included links to images to show that the viewers are rendering almost identical scenes in case anyone wants to compare. The framerate is also visible since these are screenshots of the desktop. Current Mesa drivers on Linux support a tear and stutter free variable refresh rate for modern AMD GPUs when used with DisplayPort on adaptive sync monitors. It is what it is, and I've said all I had to say.

[Henri Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, KjartanEno said:

@Henri BeauchampCurrent Mesa drivers on Linux support a tear and stutter free variable refresh rate for modern AMD GPUs when used with DisplayPort on adaptive sync monitors. It is what it is, and I've said all I had to say.

Adaptive sync is like VSYNC, but at a variable rate: if you use it, you will NEVER get the maximum frame rate from your games, for the driver inserts pauses whenever the frame renders too soon to be displayed in sync with the next monitor frame. You CANNOT get the best performances in frame rates with adaptative sync of VSYNC. The Cool VL Viewer does not try to switch sync modes on/off, unlike some other viewers. As for tearing, I never saw any here while I have no sync scheme set for my driver: simply use triple buffering and you will be tear-free and with the best frame rates.

You are free to use your driver settings the way you like, but then do not come and complain about low frame rates !!!

This is my last message on this topic.

Edited August 24, 2020 by Henri Beauchamp

[arabellajones]

I run Firestorm 6.3.9 with the frame rate limiter set to 30fps, half the frame rate of my monitor, and that works pretty well. There's plenty of margin. Long draw distances, crowds of avatars, and shadows all drag it down. My CPU rarely goes over 10%. I have some old hardware, some not so old, that gave me a pretty cheap box for the power.

I am seeing some people boasting about some crazy expensive hardware. Are there enough of them to be worth selling to?

Firestorm 6.4.5 is the Public Beta. If there's later versions, with faster code, they're not saying anything in public.

I don't feel EEP is stable enough to rely on for creating content, whatever viewer you might use.

[arton Rotaru]

3 hours ago, arabellajones said:

I don't feel EEP is stable enough to rely on for creating content, whatever viewer you might use.

Unfortunately, this is very true!

There are a bunch of EEP fixes in the latest Love Me Render RC viewer. The issue with too weak spec reflections from the sun/moon has been worked on as well. Now the reflections are way too strong, though.

Edited August 25, 2020 by arton Rotaru

[KjartanEno]

1 hour ago, arton Rotaru said:

Unfortunately, this is very true!

There are a bunch of EEP fixes in the latest Love Me Render RC viewer. The issue with too weak spec reflections from the sun/moon has been worked on as well. Now the reflections are way too strong, though.

I may have to log into Windows and check the Love Me Render RC out. Whether you feel it is too strong or too weak, what I'm looking for is consistency between point/spot lighting and sun/moon lighting. The former is still stronger than it was in WL viewers, and many do find "shiny" = "pretty." No doubt further adjustments will be made.

[KjartanEno]

I have an update on the whole adaptive sync issue. My monitor has an OSD option to display the current actual framerate. When running any viewer, it remains at 144Hz. Furthermore, adaptive sync only works on full screen applications that are not blacklisted in the file  /usr/share/drirc.d/00-mesa-defaults.conf. To be sure, I added the lines:

        <application name="Cool VL Viewer" executable="cool_vl_viewer-bin">
            <option name="adaptive_sync" value="false" />

and ran Cool VL Viewer in full screen mode. There was no effect on the framerate. I still got ~20 fps in EEP rendering while the monitor showed 144Hz. There was no adaptive syncing. I have inserted the line "export vblank_mode=0" in the cool_vl_viewer launcher (in place of the Nvidia specific launch options). There is no vertical syncing to presumably lower the framerate. Furthermore, at the same location where I ran my tests yesterday, I ran Cool VL Viewer in windowed mode and made the window approximately 1280x720. The framerate stayed at ~20 fps. This is not a GPU limited scenario. This is renderer code slowing things down.

[KjartanEno]

I booted up the Windows 10 partition on my computer and then did some stuff in RL. By the time I got back to it, things had settled down. I got the Love Me Render viewer to update, and I downloaded several current TPV to continue my benchmarks. More on the benchmarks in another post, since at this time I want to make some observations on the sun/moon specular shine fixes.

I have to say, in my opinion it is much better. While the sunlight specular is stronger than it had been in the WL viewers, at least I can say now that the sun actually shines. It is proportional to the spot/point light specular shine now, in my opinion. I think I can work with it. I guess the question remains whether, as arton Rotaru says, they are too strong, and thus breaking a lot of existing content. I would have to see these changes ported over to Firestorm's code so that I can compile a version usable on Linux. Then I would be able to make more extensive tests.

Below are some images I took using the Love Me Render viewer. My avatar's skin uses alpha channels on the specular and normal maps to vary specular hardness and environmental reflection amount. As a result it is by no means a uniform flat shine.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6d57m2sswr5ge53/LoveMeRender-Spotlight_Only_1.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3ap0tqghk0jov0d/LoveMeRender-Spotlight_Only_2.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2swwldjn2vmo7vz/LoveMeRender-Sunlight_Only_1.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/slky5pzkdjm8b8h/LoveMeRender-Sunlight_Only_2.png?dl=0

[arton Rotaru]

29 minutes ago, KjartanEno said:

I guess the question remains whether, as arton Rotaru says, they are too strong, and thus breaking a lot of existing content.

Well, at this current state, it's totally out of question that it breaks a lot of content. You will always find some materials, which have a rather settle shine anyway, where the differences are rather subtle. Everything else is completely blown out right now.

[Stevie Davros]

2 hours ago, arton Rotaru said:

Well, at this current state, it's totally out of question that it breaks a lot of content. You will always find some materials, which have a rather settle shine anyway, where the differences are rather subtle. Everything else is completely blown out right now.

Is it possible to amend the default sunset to achieve the same look as non-EEP?  Could it be the settings for default sunset that are part of the problem?

[arton Rotaru]

6 minutes ago, Stevie Davros said:

Is it possible to amend the default sunset to achieve the same look as non-EEP?  Could it be the settings for default sunset that are part of the problem?

I don't know. It's the same for Midday, Sunrise, and Midnight as well. I haven't played with any EEP Sky settings, because all I ever use in SL are the 4 default settings. Well, mainly it's just Sunset, and Midday. Because there are keyboard shortcuts for those.

[KjartanEno]

Here are a few images using Alchemy 6.3.6 (Windlight) and LL's Love Me Render RC.

There is a flat normal texture with a gradient of 0 to 255 in the (8 bit) alpha channel and a specular texture with black, dark grey, light grey, and white, which is repeated on each half. Additionally the specular texture has a gradient in the alpha channel going in different directions on each half. The diffuse color is black.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Material_Data

What you see in the images:

1. The bottom of the prim has dull reflections, and the top of the prim has sharp reflections. "A higher alpha value [in the normal map] will result in specular highlights that are brighter and tighter." - Wiki

2. The top left and bottom right will show environmental reflection (that mirror-like shine), and the bottom left and top right will have no environmental reflection. "A lower value in the alpha channel [of the specular map] will diminish the impact of the environment map reflections on the surface of the object." - Wiki

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rhtwumxk49i0fva/AlchemySunsetSpecularTest.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uiq6kv5c10jc0e2/AlchemySpecularSunset.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rqpevfr8hgr06jl/LoveMeRenderSpecularSunset.png?dl=0

I could post an LSL script to apply the UUIDs of these textures to a prim if anyone is interested.

2 hours ago, Stevie Davros said:

Is it possible to amend the default sunset to achieve the same look as non-EEP?  Could it be the settings for default sunset that are part of the problem?

As seen in the images, EEP Sunset is definitely not the same as WL Sunset. To do further tests, I want a Linux viewer like Firestorm with this update. I'll have to keep an eye out on the Firestorm development updates to see if and when it gets these changes, and then I'll compile a personal version for testing. I need more extensive testing without the 512MB texture memory limit of LL viewers, and Linux viewers run significantly faster on my system. I have some more personal benchmarks that I made today in Windows, and the results were surprising to me. (Hint: Windows is a slug!)

Edited August 26, 2020 by KjartanEno
clarification

[KjartanEno]

Adding to my previous post, one more image showing EEP sunset specular shine in the just released Kokua 6.4.7. This is sun/moon light only, and it's the current state of EEP, not counting Love Me Render. You would see the same result in Firestorm 6.4.5 beta as well.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3jb5gyhqh8sjb2v/Kokua647SpecularSunset.png?dl=0

Now THAT is totally unacceptable, even if the colors are more aligned with what is seen in a WL viewer. The top of that prim should be at least as bright and reflective as the image taken in Alchemy viewer (see my previous post).

EDIT:

I started playing with the personal lighting in that scene. The Sunset preset does indeed have a very weak looking sun on current viewer releases, and there appears to be no way to increase the sunlight's brightness enough to make it look like WL Sunset.

However, I moved the sun higher in the sky and cranked that sun brightness to the max... and the result shows that a strong sun specular shine is possible in the current release viewers.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/f3tgztq64a1rabv/Kokua647SpecularShine.png?dl=0

@arton Rotaru, I am not so sure that Love Me Render is fixing the specular so much as changing sun & moon light settings overall. Making it possible to set the sun brighter will in turn 'fix' the lack of specular shine.

@Stevie Davros, I think you are 100% correct. It's not the shine that's broken, it's the preset.

Edited August 26, 2020 by KjartanEno
more relevant info

[Stevie Davros]

41 minutes ago, KjartanEno said:

@Stevie Davros, I think you are 100% correct. It's not the shine that's broken, it's the preset.

Yep, I have been making a large number of sky files and I have figured out settings that minimise a lot of the issues and produce really nice results for what I am trying to achieve. Dropping back to a default settings really makes things look rather blah...

[arton Rotaru]

37 minutes ago, KjartanEno said:

Adding to my previous post, one more image showing EEP sunset specular shine in the just released Kokua 6.4.7. This is sun/moon light only, and it's the current state of EEP, not counting Love Me Render. You would see the same result in Firestorm 6.4.5 beta as well.

Well, I jira'd this back in April already. What counts now is the Love Me Render viewer. Things are going forward from that. TPV which are just waiting for further releases from Linden Lab are pretty much obsolete in this regard.

 

40 minutes ago, KjartanEno said:

@arton Rotaru, I am not so sure that Love Me Render is fixing the specular so much as changing sun & moon light settings overall. Making it possible to set the sun brighter will in turn 'fix' the lack of specular shine.

I'm not that much interested in how the Lab is going to fix it. All that matters to me is that it is going to be fixed.

[KjartanEno]

Here is a script that creates the materials seen on the prim I've been showing:

default
{
    state_entry()
    {
        llSay(0, "Click to change my texture and materials.");
    }

    touch_start(integer total_number)
    {
        llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast(LINK_THIS,[
        PRIM_COLOR,    ALL_SIDES, <0,0,0>, 1.0,
        PRIM_TEXTURE,  ALL_SIDES, "5748decc-f629-461c-9a36-a35a221fe21f", <1.0, 1.0, 0.0>, <0.0, 0.0, 0.0>, 0.0,
        PRIM_NORMAL,   ALL_SIDES, "473d11b5-8080-1061-b916-8695e34b301e", <1.0, 1.0, 0.0>, <0.0, 0.0, 0.0>, 0.0,
        PRIM_SPECULAR, ALL_SIDES, "41ed9bea-e332-f96b-7861-e94c4b741138", <1.0, 1.0, 0.0>, <0.0, 0.0, 0.0>, 0.0, <1,1,1>, 255, 255 ]);
    }
}

Another useful test object anyone can create is a black sphere. Once you have a sphere and have made the diffuse color black, set a blank specular texture, a white specular color, glossiness 255, and environment 0. Use the sphere to see how the reflection dims as you set the sun and moon closer to the horizon in production EEP, while the reflections stay bright in Love Me Render.

The Love Me Render EEP Sunset can be made to look like a WL Sunset if one edits personal environment settings. What I'm seeing in my tests is that Love Me Render increases the maximum sun/moon brightness achievable with the settings. It also makes it possible to get that level of brightness even when the sun or moon is on the horizon. Since the maximum possible brightness has increased, any environmental settings already created will look brighter in LMR than production EEP viewers currently show them. This will make specular materials appear to have more shine under sun/moon lighting, and it appears to allow a higher scene contrast.

In the images, Kokua is set to twice the 'normal' sun luminescence to get about the same brightness on surfaces and specular shine on materials as the image taken from Love Me Render RC. It's not just about brightness, though, because there are other differences in the way that shine is being calculated along the specular exponent and environment (mirror-like shine) component.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/euwdqamq2ai6ori/Kokua647-Midday-x2.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tn8uco3xyjm5ayt/LMR-Midday-Default.png?dl=0

So, yes, the existing Sunrise and Sunset presets will appear to be broken because of some changes. The issue to fix isn't the shine, it's that the presets need to be adjusted to the new lighting intensity, in my opinion.

[KjartanEno]

Now for some fun with EEP... These images aren't about the skies, however. These images were captured with the Love Me Render RC viewer (in Windows) to show how the new specular changes look. There is only sunlight causing the shine on surfaces in these images. In most places it would be hard to render a lot of scenery due to the texture thrashing that LL's viewers can experience. So, let's go sailing!

1

2

3

4

5

In all but the last picture, the avatar has a 'wet' effect applied to the 'tattoo' mesh layer over the main skin mesh layer. In the last image, the avatar only has the BoM skin with normal and specular map materials.

[Pat Perth]

Is llGetRegionSunDirection() broken? It worked perfectly in a script yesterday, now it doesn't.

[KjartanEno]

On 8/25/2020 at 2:21 PM, arton Rotaru said:

Well, at this current state, it's totally out of question that it breaks a lot of content. You will always find some materials, which have a rather settle shine anyway, where the differences are rather subtle. Everything else is completely blown out right now.

This is not a simple and effective repro setup that 'can be reproduced by anyone.' It does nothing to show where the actual issue exists. All it shows is that one of your preferred presets no longer provides what you expect. It completely ignores the effect of the alpha channel in normal and specular textures with regards to materials because you simply applied a 24 bit white blank [specular] texture to a mid gray prim and looked at one or two presets in the viewer. If you don't like the Sunset and Midday presets, complain that the presets themselves are currently broken.

'An astronomer, a physicist and a mathematician are on a train in Scotland. The astronomer looks out of the window, sees a black sheep standing in a field, and remarks, "How odd. All the sheep in Scotland are black!" "No, no, no!" says the physicist. "Only some Scottish sheep are black." The mathematician rolls his eyes at his companions' muddled thinking and says, "In Scotland, there is at least one sheep, at least one side of which appears to be black from here some of the time."' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_joke

Edited September 4, 2020 by KjartanEno
clarification

[arton Rotaru]

2 minutes ago, KjartanEno said:

This is not a simple and effective repro setup that 'can be reproduced by anyone.' It does nothing to show where the actual issue exists. All it shows is that one of your preferred presets no longer provides what you expect. It completely ignores the effect of the alpha channel in normal and specular textures with regards to materials because you simply applied a 24 bit white blank texture to a mid gray prim and looked at one or two presets in the viewer. If you don't like the Sunset and Midday presets, complain that the presets themselves are currently broken.

You are talking just plain nonsens. smh