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Unpopular opinion:

I don't really notice this "overly shiny" problem. From what i could gather so far is that this issue is almost exclusively a human issue and seems to be solely related to bad (or none) specular maps. My avatars use specularity too and if anything they now look even better than before. The only times i've seen specularity being way too much is on... you guessed it, human bodies and seeing that they always want to appear super shiny and oily it doesn't surprise me that now they look super waxed. All furry avatars (even those who use human bodies) don't seem to have any specularity issues really. Objects around also all look pretty normal, didn't notice any objects yet being too shiny. This leads me to believe that it is once again simply an user issue... people building on possibly broken features or implementations or not delving deep enough into the technical aspect to do it right and it just comes around to bite them in the ass at some point.

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15 minutes ago, NiranV Dean said:

Unpopular opinion:

I don't really notice this "overly shiny" problem. From what i could gather so far is that this issue is almost exclusively a human issue and seems to be solely related to bad (or none) specular maps. My avatars use specularity too and if anything they now look even better than before. The only times i've seen specularity being way too much is on... you guessed it, human bodies and seeing that they always want to appear super shiny and oily it doesn't surprise me that now they look super waxed. All furry avatars (even those who use human bodies) don't seem to have any specularity issues really. Objects around also all look pretty normal, didn't notice any objects yet being too shiny. This leads me to believe that it is once again simply an user issue... people building on possibly broken features or implementations or not delving deep enough into the technical aspect to do it right and it just comes around to bite them in the ass at some point.

I haven't seen noticeable issues either -- certainly not with my stuff but I never bought heavily into the materials thing because items could look really BAD under some Windlights.  It certainly might have something to do with viewer graphics settings though.  My only thought on that. I use one step down from ultra, no DOF. 

 

 

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5 hours ago, NiranV Dean said:

Unpopular opinion:

I don't really notice this "overly shiny" problem. From what i could gather so far is that this issue is almost exclusively a human issue and seems to be solely related to bad (or none) specular maps. My avatars use specularity too and if anything they now look even better than before. The only times i've seen specularity being way too much is on... you guessed it, human bodies and seeing that they always want to appear super shiny and oily it doesn't surprise me that now they look super waxed. All furry avatars (even those who use human bodies) don't seem to have any specularity issues really. Objects around also all look pretty normal, didn't notice any objects yet being too shiny. This leads me to believe that it is once again simply an user issue... people building on possibly broken features or implementations or not delving deep enough into the technical aspect to do it right and it just comes around to bite them in the ass at some point.

Unpopular opinion?....OK. It just doesn't has anything to do with what is really going on.

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6 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

I haven't seen noticeable issues either -- certainly not with my stuff but I never bought heavily into the materials thing because items could look really BAD under some Windlights.  It certainly might have something to do with viewer graphics settings though.  My only thought on that. I use one step down from ultra, no DOF. 

 

 

What made me, and still makes me wonder the most, regarding the specularity issues, is that how few people chimed in to complaining about this as of yet. When I first installed the official EEP viewer, 2 days after it's release, I immediately noticed the broken specularity. At that time it was way to weak, and some aspects of it completely broken. (See Jiras I linked in this thread.)

So my hopes were, when Firestorm will do it's official EEP release, more people would actually notice what is wrong, and start voicing their concerns. Fortunately a few actually did.

I certainly understand that it's not that obvious to see if you actually never, or very limited created content with materials. You simply don't know how the content from other creators is intended to look, unless you do direct comparisons between the Pre-EEP and the EEP viewer. On that particular content.

I guess the majority of residents still have Advanced Light Model turned off. That's the only graphics setting that affects the rendering of specular maps in the first place.
Maybe some people run around with Env settings where materials won't show the issues much. Like at sunset, the specular reflections are actually weaker than they used to be in the Pre-EEP viewer.
Objects in the shadows don't show spec either.

So maybe you really have to look for it, and do actual comparisons between EEP and Pre-EEP viewers at various Env (windlight) settings, on content that actually has materials applied.

Creators who actually did work with materials all the time, do know how their content looks, and they immediately notice when something isn't as it used to be.

For things which have only a subtle shine to it anyways, like fur, the difference isn't as obvious indeed. For everything else, the spec is just completely blown out now.

Edited by arton Rotaru
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33 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

What made me, and still makes me wonder the most, regarding the specularity issues, is that how few people chimed in to complaining about this as of yet. When I first installed the official EEP viewer, 2 days after it's release, I immediately noticed the broken specularity. At that time it was way to weak, and some aspects of it completely broken. (See Jiras I linked in this thread.)

So my hopes were, when Firestorm will do it's official EEP release, more people would actually notice what is wrong, and start voicing their concerns. Fortunately a few actually did.

I certainly understand that it's not that obvious to see if you actually never, or very limited created content with materials. You simply don't know how the content from other creators is intended to look, unless you do direct comparisons between the Pre-EEP and the EEP viewer. On that particular content.

I guess the majority of residents still have Advanced Light Model turned off. That's the only graphics setting that affects the rendering of specular maps in the first place.
Maybe some people run around with Env settings where materials won't show the issues much. Like at sunset, the specular reflections are actually weaker than they used to be in the Pre-EEP viewer.
Objects in the shadows don't show spec either.

So maybe you really have to look for it, and do actual comparisons between EEP and Pre-EEP viewers at various Env (windlight) settings, on content that actually has materials applied.

Creators who actually did work with materials all the time, do know how their content looks, and they immediately notice when something isn't as it used to be.

For things which have only a subtle shine to it anyways, like fur, the difference isn't as obvious indeed. For everything else, the spec is just completely blown out now.

Well there were tons of people complaining loudly about "too shiny". Maybe that was with advanced lighting turned off; I wasn't paying that much attention. But the screenshots they showed were pretty awful. animats was one of the posters if I remember correctly. He would have more info.   Was this happening from the early testing or did you find it when the LL  EEP viewer went live as the default viewer?  

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1 hour ago, arton Rotaru said:

What made me, and still makes me wonder the most, regarding the specularity issues, is that how few people chimed in to complaining about this as of yet. When I first installed the official EEP viewer, 2 days after it's release, I immediately noticed the broken specularity. At that time it was way to weak, and some aspects of it completely broken. (See Jiras I linked in this thread.)

So my hopes were, when Firestorm will do it's official EEP release, more people would actually notice what is wrong, and start voicing their concerns. Fortunately a few actually did.

I certainly understand that it's not that obvious to see if you actually never, or very limited created content with materials. You simply don't know how the content from other creators is intended to look, unless you do direct comparisons between the Pre-EEP and the EEP viewer. On that particular content.

I guess the majority of residents still have Advanced Light Model turned off. That's the only graphics setting that affects the rendering of specular maps in the first place.
Maybe some people run around with Env settings where materials won't show the issues much. Like at sunset, the specular reflections are actually weaker than they used to be in the Pre-EEP viewer.
Objects in the shadows don't show spec either.

So maybe you really have to look for it, and do actual comparisons between EEP and Pre-EEP viewers at various Env (windlight) settings, on content that actually has materials applied.

Creators who actually did work with materials all the time, do know how their content looks, and they immediately notice when something isn't as it used to be.

For things which have only a subtle shine to it anyways, like fur, the difference isn't as obvious indeed. For everything else, the spec is just completely blown out now.

All my current avatars don't even have fur, they have scales, and they are quite reflective too. My parcel uses materials a lot too and i haven't seen anything i'd consider worse. Oh well.

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1 hour ago, Chic Aeon said:

Well there were tons of people complaining loudly about "too shiny". Maybe that was with advanced lighting turned off; I wasn't paying that much attention. But the screenshots they showed were pretty awful. animats was one of the posters if I remember correctly. He would have more info.   Was this happening from the early testing or did you find it when the LL  EEP viewer went live as the default viewer?  

Well, during the development of EEP, even Linden Lab figured out that it wasn't an as straight forward task to implement EEP as they initially thought it would be. So it was announced that EEP was put back on the shelf and do things slowly, and more carful as initially planned. I thought that was a good decision and I was quite happy with that decision. I haven't paid any attention to EEP then any further. Then, more or less, all of a sudden, well, after they got rid of Sansar actually, they thought, we have to push out EEP now, because any serious viewer development would be hampered otherwise.

Boom, they released that buggy EEP mess, that it was, as their official release viewer. That's when I installed it.
I haven't seen much complaints besides me, and less than a handful of other people in this forum about that time.

Edited by arton Rotaru
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1 hour ago, NiranV Dean said:

All my current avatars don't even have fur, they have scales, and they are quite reflective too. My parcel uses materials a lot too and i haven't seen anything i'd consider worse. Oh well.

Look, it's not about if you or me like, or doesn't like the current behavior. It's about what it is now, and what it was before.

Let's look at an image I have taken that shows Linden Lab content, made by a Mole. I have chosen Mole content deliberately because I knew people will come by and just say things like you did, that people are just too stupid to make material maps and the like. Now you still can say that the Moles are too stupid too, but all that is not the point.

The point is, if this Mole wanted that road to be as shiny as it is in EEP (left side) he already could have done that in the pre EEP viewer as well. There was no lack of shinyness in the old viewer. Not at all. Looking at that road, the Mole actually put in some effort to make that road look nice and convincing (right side, pre-EEP).

Just go there and check for yourself. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Horizons%20Galatea/168/72/23EEPvsNon-EEPHorizons.thumb.jpg.6b7a5290a8c09f4225b431b11612ba1d.jpg

 

 

Edited by arton Rotaru
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7 minutes ago, Pomeline Pancake said:

Seems okay for me. RTX 2080 Super

That's great for you. It doesn't make the issue any better though. Your graphics card is also totally irrelevant. Any card that is capable to turn ALM on renders pretty much the same. There is nothing in the SL viewer which would take advantage of any of the features an RTX card has to offer.

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1 minute ago, arton Rotaru said:

That's great for you. It doesn't make the issue any better though. Your graphics card is also totally irrelevant. Any card that is capable to turn ALM on renders pretty much the same. There is nothing in the SL viewer which would take advantage of any of the features an RTX card has to offer.

Oof. My bad.

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4 hours ago, arton Rotaru said:

Look, it's not about if you or me like, or doesn't like the current behavior. It's about what it is now, and what it was before.

Let's look at an image I have taken that shows Linden Lab content, made by a Mole. I have chosen Mole content deliberately because I knew people will come by and just say things like you did, that people are just too stupid to make material maps and the like. Now you still can say that the Moles are too stupid too, but all that is not the point.

The point is, if this Mole wanted that road to be as shiny as it is in EEP (left side) he already could have done that in the pre EEP viewer as well. There was no lack of shinyness in the old viewer. Not at all. Looking at that road, the Mole actually put in some effort to make that road look nice and convincing (right side, pre-EEP).

Just go there and check for yourself. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Horizons%20Galatea/168/72/23EEPvsNon-EEPHorizons.thumb.jpg.6b7a5290a8c09f4225b431b11612ba1d.jpg

 

 

The one on the left looks more correct to me ,its a reflective surface with the sun directly overhead. It *should* be that shiny, no?

Edited by Gage Wirefly
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11 minutes ago, Gage Wirefly said:

The one on the left looks more correct to me ,its a reflective surface with the sun directly overhead. It *should* be that shiny, no?

No. The answer is already in the the post you qouted.

To make that clear. This is just a single example that shows the difference between the 2 viewers. Nothing more. There is 7 years of content, since the introduction of materials in 2013 out there.

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3 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

No. The answer is already in the the post you qouted.

To make that clear. This is just a single example that shows the difference between the 2 viewers. Nothing more. There is 7 years of content, since the introduction of materials in 2013 out there.

I'm sure some things will have to be changed, corrected or be broken moving forward.  The whole idea of supporting years old content with new updates like EEP is not up to LL, it's on those creators.  I think EEP is a giant step forward.

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4 hours ago, arton Rotaru said:

The point is, if this Mole wanted that road to be as shiny as it is in EEP (left side) he already could have done that in the pre EEP viewer as well. There was no lack of shinyness in the old viewer. Not at all. Looking at that road, the Mole actually put in some effort to make that road look nice and convincing (right side, pre-EEP).

Just go there and check for yourself. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Horizons%20Galatea/168/72/23

I did go over and test using the latest Linden Viewer along side the next to newest (no EEP) FS viewer which "I" call the BOM viewer :D.    My results were similar and I guess I misunderstood what you were saying because I thought you were arguing that there wasn't ENOGH shine now (which seemed odd considering what others had said).  So anyway here are my shots which are similar to yours.  

 

My only other comment in THIS case is that I went through about 20 Windlights settings (the ones I use the most) and could only find ONE that showed any shine at all in the BOM viewer when seen in a more normal view as you would wander the road or take photos.  I do understand though and have seen other super shiny walls and such and that was very bad. 

Also the LODS in that area are PAINFUL so I cropped out as much of the triangle dance as I could (very depressing). 

 

Anyway, here are the shots. 

1040133198_FSBOMviewerroad.jpg.f748f60692d8883e7e48d7aab04b3b89.jpg

 

422288132_horizonlindenviewcurrent800.jpg.6dcbd2e64810c95e613210464da9eece.jpg

1451975111_FSBOMviewergroundlevel.thumb.jpg.14ff6bdae695f9c7b329b68ad3842506.jpg

1708535053_horizonlindenviewcurrentground_level.thumb.jpg.d9da76625da555cc949b832ef9492789.jpg

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1 minute ago, Gage Wirefly said:

I'm sure some things will have to be changed, corrected or be broken moving forward.  The whole idea of supporting years old content with new updates like EEP is not up to LL, it's on those creators.  I think EEP is a giant step forward.

Changing the specular intensity on such a drastic level is a totally unnecessary change. There is no benefit for anybody in it. If people have wanted more shiny surfaces they could have done that before already. 

I really don't care about change, so I don't even complain about EEP in general. I just point out issues which I think are easy enough to be corrected in the shader. It just has to be done.

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While I was over at Horizons testing I also wanted to make sure that I had all my favorite Windlights (as well as practice some more) before installing the new FS viewer.   And while looking through them I found that NOW --thanks to the change to NVIDIA from default that Gage recommended, I have a perfectly love night sky AS IT WAS INTENDED.  

 

So that is a huge step for anyone having issues (granted most folks really don't care that much).

 

This is the night sky that I imported. It was the one I used at the two sim SL15B build (think that was the correct year).  I turned on my facelight to have some "excitement" in the foreground.  When I had viewed this using DEFAULT graphics in Win10 the sky was completely white (yes white). So a huge improvement for me personally. 

 

841319221_Nightskiesnownight.thumb.jpg.c022d5f40c5cb877dbb91edb179a317c.jpg

 

 

Edited by Chic Aeon
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20201217_horizons.thumb.png.47c1c3a56f6720942b00d3d028662dab.png

To me it looks like the road specular (shininess) setting of the road is just made wrong from beginning and we see this all over Second Life. I had to set the glossiness of the car high (right side of picture) in order to make a similar high shine like the road surface.

Graphic settings: Ultra graphics with everything maxed out, light set to Midday

Viewer: Firestorm 6.4.12 (62831) Dec  3 2020 22:34:49 (64bit / SSE2)

GPU: GForce 1060 6 GB with NVidea driver version 451.67 (07/09/2020)

Windows 10 version 10.0.19042.

Car: Own build with materials.

 

Edited by Rachel1206
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14 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

My results were similar and I guess I misunderstood what you were saying because I thought you were arguing that there wasn't ENOGH shine now

In the initial official EEP release, the specular intensity was way too low. That was what I have pointed out back then. Also in a Jira. The Lab did work on that issue, but they overshot the target obviuosly. So now we have to try to make them willing to give it another try.

The fact that we went from way to low spec intensity, to way too strong specular intensity doesn't make me buy that this is an unavoidable change for the better either.

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3 minutes ago, Rachel1206 said:

20201217_horizons.thumb.png.47c1c3a56f6720942b00d3d028662dab.png

To me it looks like the road specular (shininess) setting of the road is just made wrong and we see this all over Second Life, as creators do not get it right. I had to set the glossiness of the car high in order to make a similar high shine like the road surface.

Graphic settings: Ultra graphics with everything maxed out, light set to Midday

Viewer: Firestorm 6.4.12 (62831) Dec  3 2020 22:34:49 (64bit / SSE2)

GPU: GForce 1060 6 GB with NVidea driver version 451.67 (07/09/2020)

Windows 10 version 10.0.19042.

Car: Own build with materials.

 

Again, this is not about what one thinks should be right or wrong. This is about the drastic change between the viewers.

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2 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

Again, this is not about what one thinks should be right or wrong. This is about the drastic change between the viewers.

Nods, I understand the point. It is a huge difference, and makes me speculate, if the former viewers enforced the usage of material glossiness and shininess in a not appropriate way.

I never seen any reference numbers of calibration - does such a thing exist in SL?

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28 minutes ago, Rachel1206 said:

Nods, I understand the point. It is a huge difference, and makes me speculate, if the former viewers enforced the usage of material glossiness and shininess in a not appropriate way.

I never seen any reference numbers of calibration - does such a thing exist in SL?

It probably would be helpful to have that somewhere for reference. As it stands, a lot of creators just slap a spec map in things just to say "Materials." I was saying in the pet peeve thread before EEP went live on the FS viewer, a lot of objects have the specularity of a matte plastic storage bin. Do my jeans, really need to have a specular shine?

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31 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

Again, this is not about what one thinks should be right or wrong. This is about the drastic change between the viewers.

You can actually argue that it's the old windlight that got it wrong.

Look at these two specular maps:

bilde.png.27d1a47197f750c376c605466d71d611.png

They are both for rusty oil drum tops compare them directly but you can see the difference in the overall darkness. The one to the left is from one of the 3TD collections of CC0 assets and fairly typical of what you'd use in most game engines. The one to the right is what I had to come up with to get a decent shine without overfocusing the reflection under the old windlight. I'm not saying one is right and the other is wrong and I'm definitely not saying EEP got the normal and specular map handling right. But there is an argument for trying to comply with the de facto industrial standard(s).

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