Guys its 2019 what can we bring to SL this year

[Rhonda Huntress]

1 minute ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

if it's free people will automatically assume that it's inferior.

QFT

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

RTX support! (But, yes, mirrors.) 

 

P.S. I have a super secret project that's about to be released into SL this month that's by no means as much as a tech challenge as ray tracing shadows and reflections. Hope people will still like it.

Edited January 2, 2019 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Solar Legion]

Every time a similar thread pops up, someone chimes in concerning Mobile devices ... No, they are not "the future" (not yet) and no, not a single one currently on the market - or even planned - is powerful enough to run a proper Second Life client.

You want a mobile client? Use what is out there or code it yourself.

[Maryanne Solo]

17 hours ago, WinTrain said:

 

Then you do not have a good phone. It's simple as that.

Ahh applesauce hmmm?   in the education circles I work in ALL mobile phones are known as "fail phones" and so it shall continue. (not the discipline of I.T atmo). There is nothing more heartbreaking than seeing students failing because of their obsession with disposable rubbish. To "game" on one of these would be agony would it not? 

Edited January 2, 2019 by Maryanne Solo

[Love Zhaoying]

If there’s a party, I can bring the hot dogs.

[Kurshie Muromachi]

On 1/1/2019 at 7:25 AM, chibiusa Ling said:

One thing iv been giving thought to is learning C++ and starting to mess around with the viewer code, I have some neat ideas I would like to implement. What about the rest of you?

Even if I could code C++, OpenGL, and decipher the SL codebase and architecture, there's still an underlying issue. A lot of my ideas are back-end related and getting the Lab to do anything back-end related would probably be shot down in an instant. IMO, for anything major to be done with SL, it would require not just front-end implementation, but much back-end implementation as well.

[chibiusa Ling]

13 minutes ago, Kurshie Muromachi said:

Even if I could code C++, OpenGL, and decipher the SL codebase and architecture, there's still an underlying issue. A lot of my ideas are back-end related and getting the Lab to do anything back-end related would probably be shot down in an instant. IMO, for anything major to be done with SL, it would require not just front-end implementation, but much back-end implementation as well.

Share your ideas. What would you change?

[Kurshie Muromachi]

9 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

RTX support! (But, yes, mirrors.)

I'm going to take a wild guess here and assume that real-time ray tracing support requires having a physically-based material system in place.

A quote from http://www.kinematicsoup.com/news/2016/6/15/gamma-and-linear-space-what-they-are-how-they-differ

Quote

 

When using the gamma pipeline in rendering, textures are passed into shaders, gamma corrected. Next the lighting is calculated. After, the final image is output to the display and adjusted by the display’s gamma value. This behavior, while simple, is not physically correct. In real life, light behaves linearly, which means that each contribution from multiple light sources added together give the correct intensity. Because of this, shading is done in linear space, but in the gamma pipeline the input colors and textures remain in gamma space. This means the result of the shading is not truly accurate, but after the display’s correction it is often good enough. However, with increasing demand for immersive, photo-real rendering, this is no longer a suitable method.

Therefore, typical practice in PBR is to use a linear pipeline. Here, the input colors and textures have their gamma correction removed before shading, putting them into linear space. When shaded, the result is physically correct because the shading process and inputs are all in the same space. After, any post effects should be computed while the frame is still in linear space, as post effects are typically linear, much like shading. Finally the image is then gamma corrected so it will have the proper intensity after the display’s gamma adjustments.

 

So, I'm assuming SL content that created currently under a gamma-based system, will not look good in a linear system. I don't know if there's a simple conversion fix for that but if not, it would literally mean that to support RTX, that a new SL would have to be created on a separate grid and client in which people will transition to over time.

EDIT (Added reference): Here's what Adam Frisby of SineSpace also said on a bit of a relevant topic. (Comment pulled from New World Notes)

Quote

 

I'm a bit of a biased source; but I do know 3D graphics engines, and in my personal opinion shaders aren't a magic bullet. (I say this as someone with a pretty soft spot for SL - I spent many years in there, and wish it the best!)

SL's renderer is ancient - it's a 2001-era engine that has been retrofitted a couple of times to try drag it a little bit further into the modern age; to do this kind of thing justice, you'd have to do a total rewrite of the renderer. The highly optimised renderer that preserves a lot of quirks to ensure rendering compatibility.

Your first problem will be backwards compatibility - upgrading the renderer means replicating all those quirks (e.g. 'invisiprims') - because breaking existing content is a strict 'no'. This is going to make life hard; for two reasons.

1) To light things properly, you need to live in 'linear' colorspace - everything in SL is designed for gamma, and taking gamma content and putting it in linear looks garbage - washed out gray with no vibrancy. Everyone will revolt.

2) Modern rendering now is a purely PBR ("Physically Based Rendering") workflow - to realise the benefits of that, all the content needs to be upgraded to it. Unfortunately, there's no magic "make this PBR" wand - you need to think in terms of materials, not textures; and often PBR materials need 3-5 textures per set, instead of where you only had one or two in the past.

Those need to be created for petabytes of legacy content; and again, if you don't - it looks a bit garbage. Either everything is plastic, clay or metal, or some godawful mix of the three.

This is worse because 'Diffuse' texture maps with lighting baked in, don't look good in PBR (where you need to separate lighting from color information).

Keeping content looking modern for the long term (10+yr horizon) - requires a healthy amount of forethought and planning explicitly for it. More input data than a single texture helps a lot too. (Look at film rendering for hints at what is to come - what they're doing today, games'll be doing in 5-10 years)

That however; is not the only problem, the next problem you're going to face is performance - GI (Global Illumination) can be tackled in a few ways, but due to SL's architecture ("potentially, nothing is static") about 90% of those options are off the table (baked GI is the best in terms of performance) --- you're left with a bunch of realtime voxel solutions which have nasty light leakage on fast moving objects or scenes, or horrendous framerate impacts.

This is compounded by the average system spec, which is now getting quite old; and 'modern' computers tend to be laptops with underpowered Intel chipsets -- your average user does not have a gaming PC.

Finally, the biggest problem is the lack of lighting - modern game scenes often have hundreds of lights within the scene, placed by professional lighting artists to achieve the nice mood lighting you get. SL's existing content doesn't have that because there's no real way to place those kinds of objects within a region easily. Ditto reflection probes and other modern 'tricks' for realistic rendering. (With mostly-static scenes, you can at least do a nice radiosity bake which makes up for this.)

I feel the images/video used actually don't really show the gulf between where modern rendering is at; this is Unity's current tech demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDsRfbfnC_A

The screenshot listed is one of theirs from over 3 years ago... and I'm sure Unreal's current demo is even better (although Unreal has problems with virtual worlds due to content loading/unloading issues) --- that's today, by the time this is implemented (which is a 2+ year project), the technology will be even further ahead --- the brains in rendering these days is jumping all over the realtime raytracing tech Microsoft, AMD and nVidia just announced; which looks potentially phenomenal.

If you want to make this happen, you need to accept that content'll have to be re-authored, or at the very least, tweaked, and "old stuff will look quite bad" - which might be better suited for a '2.0' product where that kind of thing can happen.

 

 

Edited January 2, 2019 by Kurshie Muromachi
Added additional reference

[Jules Catlyn]

Not sure what 2019 will bring but i am sure i will bring a pile of this 

[Syo Emerald]

8 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

Every time a similar thread pops up, someone chimes in concerning Mobile devices ...

Reminds me of the PR distater around Blizzards Diablo announcements at BlizzCon and the infamous "Do you guys not have phones" line from one of the staff members on stage. 😂

[Kurshie Muromachi]

1 hour ago, chibiusa Ling said:

Share your ideas. What would you change?

More like change and add but to name a few...

• PBR rendering or even the RTX as suggested (sorry I just like cool tech) (Maybe even Metal support for Mac lovers?)
• Yes, mirrors. Allow it to be setting driven so that it doesn't get abused to overload a user performance.
• Bring back the spirit of in-world building utilizing actual mesh creation tools. Doesn't have to be advanced, but a worthy spiritual successor that feels like an intuitive 3D app. This could be setup within local cache space so it's not server-end till you publish to mesh import tool but you lose in-world collaborative creation support.
• For Niran's Black Dragon In-world Poser tool to allow others to see your custom pose and even modify other avatars via permissions (like animation dialog permissions that can be revoked anytime)
• Utilize the mesh creations tools above to allow editing of existing mesh so that I can customize clothing, furniture, etc. (ex., to fit my needs or fix mistakes made by creators who don't respond). Mod permissions required of course.
• A much better mesh optimization system so that people who don't like retopo'ing their creations can utilize a system that handles it the best that it can for them. Doing it by hand is still the best way to go, but not everyone wants to invest so much time into mesh workflow.
• Would love to see some better gaming potential within SL
• Would also like to see something done with LSL scripting. Oddly, I never see many posts in topics like this regarding the scripting side of things. Scripting is just as much of an important side. Maybe something like a HUD API for creating HUDs. This could tie in really well with gaming, too.

Edited January 2, 2019 by Kurshie Muromachi

[Whirly Fizzle]

2 hours ago, Kurshie Muromachi said:

For Niran's Black Dragon In-world Poser tool to allow others to see your custom pose and even modify other avatars via permissions (like animation dialog permissions that can be revoked anytime

This is coming!
STORM-2150 - Inworld Posing Feature

[Kurshie Muromachi]

1 hour ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

This is coming!
STORM-2150 - Inworld Posing Feature

I don't see any status update that supports allowing you to share your current pose with others and I also don't see any status update on supporting the ability to pose other people. I can see saving a pose to disk or to inventory and then sharing it with someone, but something more like clicking a button to share your current pose on the spot or take over someone elses avatar on the spot (assuming privileges accepted). That's where the back-end aspect of my comment comes in because Niran asked them about this and apparently the Lab wasn't going to support it.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

5 hours ago, Kurshie Muromachi said:

More like change and add but to name a few...

• PBR rendering or even the RTX as suggested (sorry I just like cool tech) (Maybe even Metal support for Mac lovers?)
• Yes, mirrors. Allow it to be setting driven so that it doesn't get abused to overload a user performance.
• Bring back the spirit of in-world building utilizing actual mesh creation tools. Doesn't have to be advanced, but a worthy spiritual successor that feels like an intuitive 3D app. This could be setup within local cache space so it's not server-end till you publish to mesh import tool but you lose in-world collaborative creation support.
• For Niran's Black Dragon In-world Poser tool to allow others to see your custom pose and even modify other avatars via permissions (like animation dialog permissions that can be revoked anytime)
• Utilize the mesh creations tools above to allow editing of existing mesh so that I can customize clothing, furniture, etc. (ex., to fit my needs or fix mistakes made by creators who don't respond). Mod permissions required of course.
• A much better mesh optimization system so that people who don't like retopo'ing their creations can utilize a system that handles it the best that it can for them. Doing it by hand is still the best way to go, but not everyone wants to invest so much time into mesh workflow.
• Would love to see some better gaming potential within SL
• Would also like to see something done with LSL scripting. Oddly, I never see many posts in topics like this regarding the scripting side of things. Scripting is just as much of an important side. Maybe something like a HUD API for creating HUDs. This could tie in really well with gaming, too.

• PBR rendering, (that's only lil snarky me talking there) It's a bit like giving gravy to pigs. If there is one thing SL creators have proven so far is that they will take every new feature and abuse it just enough for it to be a problem.
• I 100% agree with your wish for inworld building to come back, but I don't know how Linden Labs could do this, prims while nice had the bare minimum functions you would expect from any 3D package and inworld mesh building would have to provide a LOT to be something more than a frustrating initiation to 3D modeling.

Something like crocotile3D integrated to the client would be really simple to use and powerful enough to actually make "things".

 

• Call me an elitist but if you dislike remeshing, maybe you shouldn't do 3D modeling at all. I wish we could extend the 100K limit from animeshs to cover each and every mesh but i also know it will never happen due to legacy content. Most designers won't remesh unless they are paid to do it, or forced to.

[Kurshie Muromachi]

17 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

• PBR rendering, (that's only lil snarky me talking there) It's a bit like giving gravy to pigs. If there is one thing SL creators have proven so far is that they will take every new feature and abuse it just enough for it to be a problem.
• I 100% agree with your wish for inworld building to come back, but I don't know how Linden Labs could do this, prims while nice had the bare minimum functions you would expect from any 3D package and inworld mesh building would have to provide a LOT to be something more than a frustrating initiation to 3D modeling.

Something like crocotile3D integrated to the client would be really simple to use and powerful enough to actually make "things".

• Call me an elitist but if you dislike remeshing, maybe you shouldn't do 3D modeling at all. I wish we could extend the 100K limit from animeshs to cover each and every mesh but i also know it will never happen due to legacy content. Most designers won't remesh unless they are paid to do it, or forced to.

1. Abuse will be a factor in many things. Sometimes the abuse isn't meant to be negative but rather uninformed or lack of feature support by LL. At times people just love to push the limits for creative expression. The problem comes when it's not prevented or reconsidered early on from blowing up into something that becomes out of control that there's a risk of breaking much existing content later on.

2. Some points to make...

• Prims don't allow actual vertex editing if it came down to that. In some cases, I've seen content where just a few areas/patches of a mesh needed adjustment (that I didn't create to begin with). Even the Crocotile 3D you mentioned seems to allow some form of vertex/node editing.
• Someone else on the forum also brought up the idea of parametric modeling capabilities which can be powerful and can do some very interesting things beyond prim torture.
• It gets people to create interesting mesh in-world without having to disconnect or AFK from SL.
• Prims add faces/verts that aren't necessary for certain designs especially very elaborate ones. If the design gets very detailed, this could add up. I did a 300-400 prim design once that I had to break up in chunks for avatar attachment and the processing of that was noticeable. Why so many pieces? It was all the little pieces I did for elaborate detailing but it was very fun doing it in-world.

It doesn't have to be frustrating if it's intuitively designed. Good UI/UX, progressive disclosure and contextual design can help with that. This tool isn't so much a replacement for complex 3D apps but a way to get beginners to intermediates to have fun creating in-world.

3. I agree with you about remeshing but something to be aware of. I think there are cases where a well made remesher and even LOD processor can handle those cases just fine. The current one could be better I think. Tools like ZRemesher show the possibilities of topology remeshing and there are some auto LOD tools out there that also show possibilities. It used to be that in Photoshop you had to manually do things, but it's getting better where those manual tasks are like magic now. Now, if you're doing something like complex character/creature design, organics, or need good flow for animation/deformation purposes, then a dedicated 3D app can work best for that. Who knows what the future holds for more magic, though. As far as animesh goes, unfortunately I'm not up to speed on it and not familiar with this 100K thing you speak of. 🙁

[Kyrah Abattoir]

12 hours ago, Kurshie Muromachi said:

As far as animesh goes, unfortunately I'm not up to speed on it and not familiar with this 100K thing you speak of. 🙁

Animeshs have special restrictions applied to them, the big one is that you can't have an animesh that is more than 100K triangles and it counts the whole linkset.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

fleximesh and mesh that doesnt clip through an av.. 

[greek Wingtips]

This would be a good time for LL to revamp SL and give a new injection of life, 

[Violaine Villota]

What would I WANT to see brought to SL this year?
As @Drake1 Nightfire said, fleximesh!!! That would be the biggest, because seriously, neither the rigged meshes nor the flexis look right as a skirt. 
I also wish that the materials could render velvet, but we don't always get what we want...

But because we may never see that day, I guess I'm going to have to buck up and make mesh fairy wings. And clothing, as I now realize that I'd have more customers if I were to sell something that human avatars might want.

 

[NiranV Dean]

On 1/2/2019 at 11:06 PM, Kurshie Muromachi said:

I don't see any status update that supports allowing you to share your current pose with others and I also don't see any status update on supporting the ability to pose other people. I can see saving a pose to disk or to inventory and then sharing it with someone, but something more like clicking a button to share your current pose on the spot or take over someone elses avatar on the spot (assuming privileges accepted). That's where the back-end aspect of my comment comes in because Niran asked them about this and apparently the Lab wasn't going to support it.

Yes LL wasn't going to support neither of my requests.

1. Direct control over others, even just locally. Is a no-go due to abuse potential.

2. Server side support (e.g seeing others pose in semi real-time) is something LL wasn't directly against but would rather avoid, just like any other server change. They don't like touching the servers.

What LL instead proposed was a way to export and share the poses as inventory items such as animations, whether it is locally exporting them as .anim files or directly uploading them as such into SL. I was obviously against that since it was neither the plan nor was this ... indirect money-gated posing what i initially envisioned when i made the Poser. I wanted free posing any time, anywhere, with any animation, no limitations whatsoever, most useful to fix clipping/broken poses/animations. It was meant to be a on-the-fly-fix-it-yourself feature rather than what it is slowly becoming = a full fledged posing and animation editor and the first actual new inworld creation tool since a long time... how far plans can go wrong...

[animats]

We could lobby Twitch.tv to allow video of SL. At least in General areas. Twitch is scared of sex and does not allow videos from SL for that reason. Not being on Twitch means you're invisible to many users.

Look at the list of prohibited games. All the others are all sex, all the time. SL doesn't belong on that list.

[Resi Pfeffer]

My wishlist since 12 years:
A updated parent-child system, when it comes to link any type of prims. One parent is just not enough, and makes a realistic ferris wheel (almost) impossible.

[Kurshie Muromachi]

18 hours ago, NiranV Dean said:

Yes LL wasn't going to support neither of my requests.

1. Direct control over others, even just locally. Is a no-go due to abuse potential.

2. Server side support (e.g seeing others pose in semi real-time) is something LL wasn't directly against but would rather avoid, just like any other server change. They don't like touching the servers.

1. Why not just enforce a permissions system to prevent against abuse similar to how animation calls request for permissions? The viewer can even allow the user to revoke such permissions. I certainly know that Firestorm has such a feature for revoking permissions.

2. Perhaps to LL it's just not a largely requested feature that the risk of touching servers isn't worth it. *shrugs* I mean, if you're already touching the server with other feature implementations (BoM, Animesh, EEP, etc), then why not other server features?

[Selene Gregoire]

3 hours ago, Kurshie Muromachi said:

why not other server features?

LL has only so many employees to assign to such projects. These things all take time to code, test, recode, retest, rinse and repeat until they've worked out the worst of the bugs only to release it on the grid and find more bugs. 

It takes time. Lots and lots of time. And they have to pay those employees for that time so they can only do what the budget allows for.

[Pussycat Catnap]

23 hours ago, NiranV Dean said:

2. Server side support (e.g seeing others pose in semi real-time) is something LL wasn't directly against but would rather avoid, just like any other server change. They don't like touching the servers.

They have a whole team dedicated to touching the servers. I'm fairly certain it's the biggest development task they have. They just don't touch them in the special places some of us might want. But if you look at SL over the last few years, a lot of major issues have been improved. Users keep finding ways to ignore or work around improvements and retain flawed experiences - but that doesn't mean a lot of stuff hasn't been fixed.