New updated enviroments

[FairreLilette]

8 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Just go back to the previous FS viewer.  LL KNOWS it is wrecking your textures and does not care so at ticket will get you nowhere. It isn't FS; it is EEP in general.  Again, those of us paying attention have known this was in the works for years now (and not been happy about it).  The FS folks as far as I know don't "love" EEP either. 

I did...I ditched the EEP viewer and re-installed the old one.  The textures are still borked or broken.  Certain textures don't want to rez, and then the textures will rez but then de-rez again...and then repeat....and repeat....and repeat....rez/de-rez...rez/de-rez...over and over.

I could not get through to FS support inworld, so I reported it.  

EDIT:  Let me check with SL LL viewer to see if my textures stabilize at all and what else may be up here.  

Edited December 12, 2020 by FairreLilette

[ChinRey]

3 hours ago, Tari Landar said:

It makes me sad to see them continue on that pattern when the potential to be better and do better is right there at their fingertips.

I really hope it was a one-off slip and not the (re)start of a trend but we'll see. The transition to cloud hosting gives me some hope here. It's too early to be sure of course but so far it seems like an absolutely brilliant execution of a very difficult strategic development project.

Even so, in case some Linden happens to read this, I'll repeat what I said when they announced the Return Of The Sansar Programmers: Make sure they are properly house trained this time, they weren't when they left. And also, always remember: one lean, mean well coordinated development team beats three rockstar programmer hands down every time.

Oh and please kill that LoveMachine! Second Life is supposed to be a professional commercial product, not an open source project maintained by unpaid volunteers in their spare time.

(Edit: Maybe I put too much of the blame on the Love Machine? See my next post.)

Edited December 12, 2020 by ChinRey

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 hour ago, RowanMinx said:

If employees got an incentive to bring out new features, what should we do with the employee that gives us something more complicated and buggy (EEP)?  I still don't understand the reasoning behind it.  What was wrong with sharing WL settings if someone came to your region?  A lot of places did that.  I, personally, will not be seeing anyone's oh so awesome EEP as once I'm forced to use an EEP viewer, I'll have it set at my own personal WL as I do now.  

The only time I do use a region WL is when I'm doing a mostly landscape photo and the region recommends using what they have set.

I'm just not seeing the LOVE for the actual SL residents in this whole update?

ETA:  I'm not whining at you specifically, @Silent Mistwalker.  Just in general and yours was the last post.

You took the words right out of my mouth. 

I use a certain WL when building or when I need a good, clear shot of something (Nam's (?) Optimal Skin and Prim). Those 3 are the ones I use the most. Other than that, unless I am taking shots or doing a photoshoot, or some other kind of work that requires good lighting (runway modeling), I look for the day and night cycles. I'm a sunrise and sunset watcher.  I even take time in my survival games to watch them.

There isn't anything wrong with WL that some updating wouldn't solve. EEP was not needed and from what I've seen wanted by only a very small percentage of people, mostly photogs. Most of what the photogs wanted had already been provided by WL and at least somewhat improved on by TPVs like FS and Black Dragon. But only those things that do not impact what others see. Something that LL has always been adamant about. Your experience(s) in SL are unique to each person and LL tries to preserve that at all costs. Yet, they don't hesitate to shove unwanted features down the throats of the people who are part of the system that pays their wages, so to speak. No, they don't get their paychecks from the customers. What they overlook is the fact that without customers, they don't get a paycheck. No customers, no job at LL.

It's all about managing the service and the customers which is contrary to the LoveMachine concept. LL has created a paradox and can't figure out how to escape it.

[Seicher Rae]

6 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

EEP was not needed and from what I've seen wanted by only a very small percentage of people, mostly photogs.

I can't speak for all of the SL photographers, BUT... the ones I know, including me, HATE EEP.  Just sayin. That small percentage of people I don't think were photogs.  I think it was probably about 3 cranky, old, region owners who are loud and have LL's ears. Just a guess.

Or a drunken/stoned party where someone came up with the brilliant idea and no one bothered to tell them otherwise when/if they sobered up.

[Seicher Rae]

12 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Unfortunately LL is still running the "Love Machine" scheme, one of Cory Ondrejka's less than brilliant ideas. The Love Machine is a popularity contest where LL employees vote on which development projects they like the best and there is even extra money to make for the developer who can come up with the most popular ideas. The result is of course that projects that the Lindens fancy themselves tend to be preferred over the ones that would be more useful for the customers.

Are you effing kidding me? I have never heard of this.

This is one of the dumbest things I have heard of. I know they are in hippy-dippy SF, but c'mon. 

Cool. I think a great idea would be how to maximize cooking grilled cheese sandwiches on the heat of under-cooled desktops in the LL office! Imagine how neat that would be. Everyone likes grilled cheese, well except for HandCrank L, so this will be a favorite project! Let the money roll in!

This does explain an awful lot.

Now, if we could get an explanation on Forum moderation besides "we can't tell you how the internals work"...

[FairreLilette]

41 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Second Life is supposed to be a professional commercial product, not an open source project maintained by unpaid volunteers in their spare time.

Yeah, I just went into the Second Life and it's archaic.  I hadn't seen the SL viewer for many years, but it's back in 2010 or so it seemed to me.  Not to mention there are hardly any tools I could see under GRAPHICS; it had an 'advanced' but still not much there and no textures over 512???????????  It's the Firestorm team that really made SL beautiful and amazing.  I will never forgot the first time I rezzed on a Firestorm viewer and the colors were so vibrant...it was EEP to SL way back then.  Firestorm made SL a beautiful world.  I wonder if LL knows that?  Thank you FS team volunteers!  

[Rowan Amore]

50 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

Yeah, I just went into the Second Life and it's archaic.  I hadn't seen the SL viewer for many years, but it's back in 2010 or so it seemed to me.  Not to mention there are hardly any tools I could see under GRAPHICS; it had an 'advanced' but still not much there and no textures over 512???????????  It's the Firestorm team that really made SL beautiful and amazing.  I will never forgot the first time I rezzed on a Firestorm viewer and the colors were so vibrant...it was EEP to SL way back then.  Firestorm made SL a beautiful world.  I wonder if LL knows that?  Thank you FS team volunteers!  

Yes, they should stop trying to come up with something 'new and improved', suck it up and implement things from firestorm that keeps people using it instead of their own viewer.  You'd think it would be a no brainer when a major part of your user base refuses to use the product you provide.

 

[ChinRey]

40 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

Are you effing kidding me? I have never heard of this.

This is one of the dumbest things I have heard of. I know they are in hippy-dippy SF, but c'mon.

I did some more research and it turns out I overestimated the LoveMachine's importance and especially the money side of it. If it's still run the way it originally was intended at least, it's only small symbolic amounts, nothing to make fuzz about. It actually looks like a really good idea as long as it's done with moderation. (It was Cory who had the idea and Philip who developed it btw, not the other way round.)

But the dual problems of Linden Lab being an echo chamber and the lack of internal coordination are very real and very obvious. The latter is also something that often occur in Glassdoor reviews of LL, even the ones that are generally positive (as most are). A prominet "game guru" on YouTube once described SL as being "created by developers for developers". That's not entirely true of course, all the Lindens I have met at least have been really nice people who genuinely wanted to be helpful, but you can't really help much if you don't udnerstand what the problem is.

[ChinRey]

29 minutes ago, RowanMinx said:

You'd think it would be a no brainer when a major part of your user base refuses to use the product you provide.

Oh yes, it's a no brainer. It means: "those guys are doing our job for free so we don't have to. Nice!"

[FairreLilette]

35 minutes ago, RowanMinx said:

Yes, they should stop trying to come up with something 'new and improved', suck it up and implement things from firestorm that keeps people using it instead of their own viewer.  You'd think it would be a no brainer when a major part of your user base refuses to use the product you provide.

 

Yeah, I agree.

And, update on my texture status.  I believe it is the region I am in again...probably needs a restart.  So, I do not believe the problems I am currently having are related to FS EEP viewer, it was just a major coincidence.  But, two days of this since I had downloaded the EEP viewer but then ditched it and went back to the old viewer so I thought it was related BUT I am rezzing textures just fine on several other regions I just went too.

But, with what you said above...I agree 100%.  FS made SL magical.  Like I said, I will never forget the first day I rezzed on FS viewer...it was like Dorothy in Oz and no exaggeration either.  The colors were so vibrant and the avatars much more becoming.  The viewers are like night and day.  

[Rowan Amore]

And can we all just start calling it what it is?  Environmental Exasperation Project.

[Chic Aeon]

On 12/11/2020 at 9:01 AM, Penny Patton said:

Most of the complaints I'm seeing are:

• the interface
• Linden Lab's default skies

I imagine TPVs will streamline the interface in time, and Linden Lab's default windlight skies were bad so I'm not overly concerned about either of those issues. I'll continue to use my own settings for the most part.

What does worry me:

• the lack of contrast Chic talked about
• faint/few stars when maxed out
• the intense shine on everything

 I'm not sure if the lack of contrast is an EEP shortcoming, or if we're all just so new to the settings that we haven't figured it out yet.

 I like that the new stars twinkle, but I swear that no one at Linden Lab must have ever seen a night sky outside of a city.

 I thought I heard LL was going to reduce the shine issue? Or did they decide not to? I was under the impression that that was what Firestorm was waiting on before implementing EEP. I suppose this is something the userbase can fix by adjusting the materials settings, but it won't be easy and it won't happen quickly, given the sheer amount of affected content.

On the whole, I've only played with EEP a little so far and have had mixed results, but I'm not sure how much of that are the limitations of EEP or my own lack of familiarity with the settings. I adore the new features, I really do, but I worry that we won't be able to make SL look as good as it did with windlight. Time will tell.

 

Well since a lot of folks for over a year (and contusing) and some  much more techie than I have been trying to "fix it ourselves" I am guessing that most of the issues you have are NOT you.   

 

In theory the Love Me Render inclusion in the default viewer was supposed to fix the shine. I haven't looked closely at my own stuff but I wasn't seeing a lot of issues anyway. Something I should do I guess. 

 

My sim environment got broken in the EEP server mess so I sort of fixed that.   Messy.  The bit about water disappearing is certainly a biggie but the biggest issue (even though I am royally upset about the contrast slider disappearing) is that so many folks are reporting huge losses of framerate. That is a BIG DEAL and could cut the population down a bunch.  Hopefully LL will just just shelve EEP without fixing a few more thing LIKE FRAMERATES. 

 

THAT being said I thought I should go check things for myself. MY fps are consistent between viewers.  And I see no shine on MY stuff. Both good things for me personally.  I have a GTX 980 card so not all that fast these days but it works fine for me (except that black screen crashing issue).    

 

As far as I can tell and only from the way "I" like things to look point of view, SL will not look as good under EEP as it did under Windlight unless some more changes are made. Since it took LL years longer than expected to get this far, I don't have great hope for monumental fixes that make us all oooh and aaaah. BUT I would be very happy to be surprised on that. 

 

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, Chic Aeon said:

I don't have great hope for monumental fixes that make us all oooh and aaaah. BUT I would be very happy to be surprised on that. 

 

Just once it would nice if they said, "We effed up!  We're sorry!  We didn't listen!  We're tossing EEP like you've asked!"

Sighs...alas, this will never happen nor the fixes.

[Penny Patton]

10 minutes ago, RowanMinx said:

Just once it would nice if they said, "We effed up!  We're sorry!  We didn't listen!  We're tossing EEP like you've asked!"

I wouldn't like for them to toss the baby out with the bathwater. Some of the features in EEP are great.

• the ability to share settings as inventory
• replacing and resizing the sun/moon textures
• being able to set multiple day/sky settings to a single parcel
• being able to script environment settings

If LL can fix the handful of more serious issues (like the moon turning dark if it gets anywhere near the horizon, and the apparently very fixable fps issue some people are reporting) I expect within a year of people playing with these new features it will become more and more difficult to find people who want to go back.

[Gage Wirefly]

It could be that EEP is also the beginning to more rendering engine betterments down the road, or at least I hope so.  As for now, I am still learning lights and shadows with it and it is really not that different from the other way-just have to take some time to see how things work now. 

[Qie Niangao]

5 minutes ago, Gage Wirefly said:

It could be that EEP is also the beginning to more rendering engine betterments down the road...

I think you can count on that. Per a recent post on @Inara Pey's blog:

Quote

[8:29-13:50] general discussion in chat and voice on how best to manage user  / creator expectations on what may “break” or be altered as a result of upcoming work on the viewer’s rendering system.

• There may well be “breakages” / changes because an overhaul of the rendering system is unlikely to try to achieve a “like for like” swapping of issues between one rendering pipe and another, but to try to improve things as and where possible; as such, so “breakages” are perhaps inevitable.

and much more worth further reading.

Creators in SL may not appreciate how much of their content is based on arbitrary coding choices in current or past generations of the rendering pipeline. Things tightly tuned to those artificial characteristics are just doomed to sad outcomes ahead -- which has only been delayed by years of such limited development that the old accidents seem "correct" and everything else "broken."

[Chic Aeon]

8 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Creators in SL may not appreciate how much of their content is based on arbitrary coding choices in current or past generations of the rendering pipeline. Things tightly tuned to those artificial characteristics are just doomed to sad outcomes ahead -- which has only been delayed by years of such limited development that the old accidents seem "correct" and everything else "broken."

And now and then I actually make "good" decisions LOL.  But I am very sad for creators that will have most of their items "broken". The last time I remember a change this big was when Havok came in and many to most scripts just didn't work. We lived through that and I expect we will live through this.

 

IF there is INDEED a plan from LL, then I think it would be extremely wise to let the populous  know. The last official word on EEP that "I" heard was just before EEP went live on the main grid with  Ebbe saying that they knew lots of things weren't working and that lots of things would break and "live with it" (my words but basically the idea).  He said they were done with EEP but obviously that wasn't true as some things have been fixed after the global release. I can only hope that they at least try and fix the damage that is being done.   

 

This isn't any kind of a new take on things from the company. Changing the rules over and over again was why I left Sansar.  They would tell us to do one thing and then next month it would be broken and we had to start all over again. finally I had enough. Enjoyed my time there and the people but really, being a puppet is not my thing. 

 

OK that was a good semi-vent. Long day with broken things here; know I am not alone. May you all have a good day or sleep depending on your place on Mother Earth. 

[Silent Mistwalker]

7 hours ago, Seicher Rae said:

I can't speak for all of the SL photographers, BUT... the ones I know, including me, HATE EEP.  Just sayin. That small percentage of people I don't think were photogs.  I think it was probably about 3 cranky, old, region owners who are loud and have LL's ears. Just a guess.

Or a drunken/stoned party where someone came up with the brilliant idea and no one bothered to tell them otherwise when/if they sobered up.

We know different people. The whole EEP thing started well before 2017. LL just didn't announce it until 2017. They were talking about it 10 years ago. lol

[Silent Mistwalker]

6 hours ago, ChinRey said:

(It was Cory who had the idea and Philip who developed it btw, not the other way round.)

Not according to Cory and his own words on his own blog that I posted with a link to the blog page. I wonder why he would say it was Philip's idea and he (Cory) developed it if the truth were the opposite.

[ChinRey]

3 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Not according to Cory and his own words on his own blog that I posted with a link to the blog page. I wonder why he would say it was Philip's idea and he (Cory) developed it if the truth were the opposite.

Ummm... Not that it's important but quoting from Cory's website:

"One of my tasks was to invent a new system for employees to give each other feedback, one that would be fun, so easy everyone would use it, and that would generate interesting aggregate information about how individuals and the company were doing."

and:

"Philip loved the idea and renamed it “The Love Machine.” He carved out some time and built the first prototype implementation in November of 2005."

Edited December 13, 2020 by ChinRey

[Silent Mistwalker]

12 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Ummm... Not that it's important but quoting from Cory's website:

"One of my tasks was to invent a new system for employees to give each other feedback, one that would be fun, so easy everyone would use it, and that would generate interesting aggregate information about how individuals and the company were doing."

and:

"Philip loved the idea and renamed it “The Love Machine.” He carved out some time and built the first prototype implementation in November of 2005."

No where does that say it was Cory's idea. It says it was one of his tasks to invent the system not the idea. Which agrees with what he said on his blog. A task is not an idea. 

You posted the exact same link I posted which I also quoted from. Go back and read my post again.

http://ondrejka.net/metaverse memory/2009/11/16/whats-in-a-name.html

I know I am not reading his words incorrectly. 

 

Edited December 13, 2020 by Silent Mistwalker

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, Penny Patton said:

I wouldn't like for them to toss the baby out with the bathwater. Some of the features in EEP are great.

• the ability to share settings as inventory
• replacing and resizing the sun/moon textures
• being able to set multiple day/sky settings to a single parcel
• being able to script environment settings

If LL can fix the handful of more serious issues (like the moon turning dark if it gets anywhere near the horizon, and the apparently very fixable fps issue some people are reporting) I expect within a year of people playing with these new features it will become more and more difficult to find people who want to go back.

All the reasons listed will be used mostly by a minority of people IMO.  Most people I've known over the years either use region WL or choose one that they use everywhere.  On a day to day basis, it's an irrelevant thing.  The fact it negatively effects a larger group than it positively effects should tell them something.

[Solar Legion]

1. Havok has been in the Second Life Viewer code since before I signed up in 2006 - you must be talking about one of the updates that borked things
2. Some of the present issues have fixes external to whatever Linden Lab did
   1. At least one person - not sure if it was here or over in the FS Blog comments - noting that their frame rate issue was being caused by a particular windows update
3. At least one "fix" implemented by Linden Lab introduced some problems and needs to be reworked (Object Occlusion in water distortion/reflection)

I'd have more to list but I just rolled back out of bed and am considering just rolling back in.

[arton Rotaru]

2 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Creators in SL may not appreciate how much of their content is based on arbitrary coding choices in current or past generations of the rendering pipeline. Things tightly tuned to those artificial characteristics are just doomed to sad outcomes ahead -- which has only been delayed by years of such limited development that the old accidents seem "correct" and everything else "broken."

That's the case for any rendering pipeline. You can only create for what is given, and not for what it might could be in some time in the future. It's always artificial characteristics. Even PBR is just an approximation of the real world. And even then you have to follow to what is given depending on the PBR method used in a particular rendering pipeline.

 

Edited December 13, 2020 by arton Rotaru

[MoiraKathleen]

There have been a lot of users who have been using an EEP viewer since the time EEP came out, so there is some number of users out there who have not experienced such dire consequences that they felt the need to switch to a non-EEP viewer after it was initially rolled out.  I'm sure I am not the only user who has not been using FS or a non-EEP viewer.

If I had an FPS drop, it was pretty minimal - maybe a couple of FPS less, but FPS can also change just depending at which neighbor's parcel one is facing.   

I've done a fair amount of moving around and redecorating houses and parcels since EEP came out, and I only remember 1 shrub that had serious texture issues, to where I stopped using it and replaced it with a different shrub.  [ETA:  I just looked at the shrub again, and it's rendering much better now than it did some months ago, so there have been improvements made.  The way it looks now, I'll go ahead and use it again.]

I know that there has been a long list of issues, JIRA's and discussions by those who create windlights and depend on them a lot for photography, region ambiance, etc., since testing first began, so I am not discounting that there are people who are facing major issues related to it. I just don't know if it's a fact that it negatively affects a larger group than it positively affects (or doesn't impact one way or the other). It does certainly seem to be a 'your mileage may differ' type of thing, and I do hope that LL will continue to work on the issues that were, and continue to be, raised. 

Edited December 13, 2020 by MoiraKathleen
added an update