New FS Viewer...6.4.13...Looks Like BLEEEEEEEP!

[Qie Niangao]

1 minute ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

(Creating a Vulkan viewer is being looked into, but no work has begun as yet as far as I know).

They may be looking at it still, but I read they were disappointed to learn how many SL users would be left behind, running on Windows PCs so old they cannot handle Vulkan. Eventually LL will need to do something on the Mac side because Apple no longer supports OpenGL on Macs. At one point Vulkan was hoped to be viable on all platforms (although a little kludgy on the Mac side).

[Rowan Amore]

3 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

I know you said there is a viewer I can use other than EEP that is not blocked now but many are saying that the change cannot be avoided or it appears that way anyhow...it will go to EEP only sooner or later...?  I dunno.  I appreciate you finding out there is a viewer that is not blocked.  

I wanted to discuss somethings about EEP and lighting because there is a problem with reviews on MP giving one star for some shapes and skins and the review saying something along the lines of 'don't buy this product, the picture you see on MP was photoshopped and your skin or shape won't look anything like that'.  That is not a good thing for creators but I see it a lot.  Now, what do you think is going on with those reviews saying that photo is photoshopped?  The deal is it's not photoshopped it's a windlight photo, probably Annan Adored or CalWL and many users in SL don't even know how to turn a windlight on to view their skin.  They think all the "pretty" photos are photoshopped, so I can see SL wanting to go towards EEP for that reason alone, although MIDDAY is still there and many will use it.  It's not going to solve the problem of many users thinking all the pretty photos are photoshopped, imo.

Everyone uses different windlights/EEP.  Always have and always will.  What you have failed  to understand or acknowledge from the countless posts I've made concerning it, it will be the Advanced Lighting that will effect your builds more so than either lighting option.  As YOU have said, the LL viewer is fine WITHOUT advanced lighting ON.  I was trying to give you the option to go back to the previous viewer where I'll assume you were happy and had advanced lighting ON.  At least until you get your graphics card issue sorted out.  

I don't know what percentage of skin creators create their skins with Advanced lighting in mind.  I'd guess it's a good amount.  That makes the biggest difference.  If you have it turned off, of course the skin will look different regardless of your lighting. Probably different in a bad way.

[Jenna Huntsman]

10 minutes ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

Pretty sure it was figured out back on Saturday that your system is running on the integrated chip rather than an actual Graphic card.. Which would cause all your SL issues. 

AMD's APUs are actually okay. At least compared to Intel's offerings.

Nowhere near as good as having an actual GPU though.

Source: have a laptop with an AMD APU (FX-9800P). Runs SL okay, so long as ALM is disabled.

8 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

I know you said there is a viewer I can use other than EEP that is not blocked now but many are saying that the change cannot be avoided or it appears that way anyhow...it will go to EEP only sooner or later...?  I dunno.  I appreciate you finding out there is a viewer that is not blocked.  

I wanted to discuss somethings about EEP and lighting because there is a problem with reviews on MP giving one star for some shapes and skins and the review saying something along the lines of 'don't buy this product, the picture you see on MP was photoshopped and your skin or shape won't look anything like that'.  That is not a good thing for creators but I see it a lot.  Now, what do you think is going on with those reviews saying that photo is photoshopped?  The deal is it's not photoshopped it's a windlight photo, probably Annan Adored or CalWL and many users in SL don't even know how to turn a windlight on to view their skin.  They think all the "pretty" photos are photoshopped, so I can see SL wanting to go towards EEP for that reason alone, although MIDDAY is still there and many will use it.  It's not going to solve the problem of many users thinking all the pretty photos are photoshopped, imo.

You'll get that regardless of EEP or even WL. Seam issues are caused by a lot of things, to list a few:

• Do the body and head mesh line up correctly? (perfect example: Genus Head on a Legacy body will *always* have a seam as the meshes do not align).
• Do the material maps blend correctly? (example: Kalhene body and a Lelutka head. The meshes align correctly, but the Kalhene does not blend it's material maps, resulting in a seam).
• What altitude are you at? (Long standing SL oddity, regions use floating-point numbers which run out of decimal points at high altitudes, causing meshes to misalign).

Changing Windlight generally is never a fix for any of these, it will only hide it, and only on your screen. As many a person has said, Demo demo demo to check that these things are correct before making a purchase.

6 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

They may be looking at it still, but I read they were disappointed to learn how many SL users would be left behind, running on Windows PCs so old they cannot handle Vulkan. Eventually LL will need to do something on the Mac side because Apple no longer supports OpenGL on Macs. At one point Vulkan was hoped to be viable on all platforms (although a little kludgy on the Mac side).

Yeah, I heard that too. I think I said in an earlier post that I hope they put some work into optimizing the existing OGL viewer, to buy them time to get a Vulkan viewer right. This also serves a dual purpose as the more time they have to develop a Vulkan viewer, the more likely that aforementioned hardware is replaced with something that is Vulkan-compatible. Or at least, LL could shift the OGL viewer to a 'maintained' state, where it doesn't receive new features, just critical security and compatibility updates.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

2 minutes ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

AMD's APUs are actually okay. At least compared to Intel's offerings.

Nowhere near as good as having an actual GPU though.

Source: have a laptop with an AMD APU (FX-9800P). Runs SL okay, so long as ALM is disabled.

I'm going to guess that your chip is a damn sight better than the AMD Radeon HD 7480D she is using.. 

[Jenna Huntsman]

1 minute ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

I'm going to guess that your chip is a damn sight better than the AMD Radeon HD 7480D she is using.. 

Ouch. Pretty sure that doesn't even get driver updates any more. Waaay too old.

Sidenote: FX-9800P supports Vulkan. Just saying LL.

Edited April 12, 2021 by Jenna Huntsman

[FairreLilette]

11 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

  As YOU have said, the LL viewer is fine WITHOUT advanced lighting ON.  I was trying to give you the option to go back to the previous viewer where I'll assume you were happy and had advanced lighting ON.  At least until you get your graphics card issue sorted out.  

Yep, this is true.  The materials in LL is maybe two points better but not enough.  

 

14 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

I don't know what percentage of skin creators create their skins with Advanced lighting in mind.  I'd guess it's a good amount.  

I don't believe the photos I am speaking about on MP are advanced lighting at all because as far as faces, there haven't been advanced lightings until recently.  And, now with the free Catwa HDPro, there is a big interest now, I am sure.  But, no, these were and are just photos with Annan Adored and CalWL windlight which makes a huge difference in how one's skin and avatar look compared to just MIDDAY, and all these reviews were pre free HDPro head.  Shapes get this 'oh it's photoshopped but your avatar will look nothing like the photo' too kinds of reviews because shapes are selling the whole look with a style card, skin included in the look and I know it's just a simple windlight setting and not shopped.  Maybe with EEP, an EEP lighting can now be included with a demo.  

[FairreLilette]

8 minutes ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

Ouch. Pretty sure that doesn't even get driver updates any more. Waaay too old.

Sidenote: FX-9800P supports Vulkan. Just saying LL.

Wow, is that why I seem to have difficulty getting the update to work?  I also read some AMD drivers do not need to update unless it is for a specific game on the AMD site.  

However, above you say you cannot run materials or have to have it disabled while I have not had to do that except in busy regions but that all went away with the cloud.  With the cloud I was running on high and materials in super busy events and I wrote that in several posts on the forum.

[Jenna Huntsman]

4 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

Wow, is that why I seem to have difficulty getting the update to work?  I also read some AMD drivers do not need to update unless it is for a specific game on the AMD site.  

However, above you say you cannot run materials or have to have it disabled while I have not had to do that except in busy regions but that all went away with the cloud.  With the cloud I was running on high and materials in super busy events and I wrote that in several posts on the forum.

Could be. Old drivers cause all kinds of weird issues. Heck, even new ones do, but usually it's better documented (See all the threads about avatars being blue from around December, when a faulty AMD driver was shipped via Windows Update. Had been fixed by AMD by the time it had been pushed, but a lot of people don't update their drivers manually and thus encountered the problem).

My problem with materials is mainly because the 9800P isn't the best chip ever, and has a pretty bad cooling solution, so while I can run ALM enabled, I'd be able to fry an egg on the keyboard and my framerate would probably be around 10.

The lag you mention in heavy regions may not have been client related, as with Uplift a lot of the server-side lag has gone, resulting in 'less lag'. The problem here is that 'lag' is a very general term, and more often than not in SL people blame Uplift for 'lag', when the lag they're seeing is clientside.

[FairreLilette]

16 minutes ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

and more often than not in SL people blame Uplift for 'lag', when the lag they're seeing is clientside.

I had the reverse is what I'm saying.  My lag was way, way less once in the cloud.  Pre cloud, MID graphics setting, no ALM and still lag at busy events.  In the cloud, HIGH graphics setting, ALM engaged and I'm zipping around lag-free in super busy areas like it's a completely new world.   

It feels a bit forced upon us to change and I'm not even sure I'm all that crazy about the high def stuff.  Some of us really still like the older stuff (appliers even) just as much or better.   I'm not sure I want a shiny face.  I kind of like matte better.  

Well, it is what it is.  I will change to the old ways/viewers for now.  At least that's available as I've heard with bitcoin mania, cards are scarce or expensive or something?  

And, I do thank you for all your help in understanding all this.  I was mainly wondering why LL okay, FS can't even get a good look in regular lighting, forget materials here even with FS...I mean just regular lighting I cannot get a good look now with new viewer but LL is not so bad.  It's a mystery here.

Edited April 12, 2021 by FairreLilette

[Jenna Huntsman]

13 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

I had the reverse is what I'm saying.  My lag was way, way less once in the cloud.  Pre cloud, MID graphics setting, no ALM and still lag at busy events.  In the cloud, HIGH graphics setting, ALM engaged and I'm zipping around lag-free in super busy areas like it's a completely new world.   

It feels a bit forced upon us to change and I'm not even sure I'm all that crazy about the high def stuff.  Some of us really still like the older stuff (appliers even) just as much or better.   I'm not sure I want a shiny face.  I kind of like matte better.  

Well, it is what it is.  I will change to the old ways/viewers for now.  At least that's available as I've heard with bitcoin mania, cards are scarce or expensive or something?  

That's part of my point - is the lag you're describing FPS (which *in theory* shouldn't have been affected by the cloud mode), or physics lag? (Lag when moving your avatar, movement is unresponsive, feels like you're walking through treacle or something of the like). Physics lag would be vastly improved with the new server hardware (as SL, unlike most games*, processes avatar physics serverside).

If you like the older stuff, that's fine - but you'll need to adapt to how things change. Sometimes that may mean having to switch viewer. It happens. I switch all the time for various reasons.

R.e. hardware, it's not just Bitcoin that has the market in a tailspin, but silicon shortages (because COVID), and vastly increased demand (because COVID & work from home), meaning hardware is really hard to come by, at least at a reasonable price. If you're looking for an upgrade right now, it'd be better to ask some of your more 'techie' friends if they have a spare GPU that isn't being used, and throw them a couple bucks to buy it off them, and maybe a little extra if they come fit it. Just make sure it's hardware from at least 2015 onwards, for futureproofing. That'd be up to you though, but that's what I'd do.

Of course, that doesn't apply to a laptop. If you're on a laptop, then.. well, you're screwed. Better wait out the shortages.

Edited April 12, 2021 by Jenna Huntsman

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

They may be looking at it still, but I read they were disappointed to learn how many SL users would be left behind, running on Windows PCs so old they cannot handle Vulkan. 

They have to do something.

Either we get harsh content caps and actual target system requirements, or we get a new render engine and see how far we get before that's on its knees.

Doing nothing causes everyone to lose.

[Chic Aeon]

Here is a comparison of the last Firestorm Windlight viewer and the current Linden viewer.  Aside from resizing to make smaller there was no editing.   The objects on land appear very close to the same look.  The major difference is the diffusion where the sky meets the water.  The tail light looks bad in the Linden viewer though.  The texture appears almost completely flat rather than bumpy glass. Sort of spoils the object.  So still some work to be done it seems. 

 

EDIT: Same exact graphics settings except for things I could not change  in the Linden viewer.  I see also that the ground is a different hue and the shadows are taking up some of the ground color underneath.  Likely there are other differences people will notice too. 

 

Some textures are also continuously loading over and over and took forever to load.   This on my brand new super fast 3070 computer.  

 

 

Places with red "X"s are reloading. There is a huge plant that isn't loading (you can see a similar one in the main shot above).   

 

 

I was going to play around with the current EEP some more but think I will pass on this for now.  

Edited April 12, 2021 by Chic Aeon
deleting some incorrect comments - the textures never stopped reloading

[Jenna Huntsman]

2 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Here is a comparison of the last Firestorm Windlight viewer and the current Linden viewer.  Aside from resizing to make smaller there was no editing.   The objects on land appear very close to the same look.  The major difference is the diffusion where the sky meets the water.  The tail light looks bad in the Linden viewer though.  The texture appears almost completely flat rather than bumpy glass. Sort of spoils the object.  So still some work to be done it seems. 

 

Some textures are also continuously loading over and over and took forever to load.   This on my brand new super fast 3070 computer.  They seem to have stopped the on and off dance now after about four times.  

 

 

Places with red "X"s are reloading. There is a huge plant that isn't loading (you can see a similar one in the main shot above).   

 

 

I was going to play around with the current EEP some more but think I will pass on this for now.  

Does the taillight have glow? Kinda looks like it to me. Might explain why it doesn't look 'glassy', though I couldn't tell you why the glow isn't rendered under WL.

I know that in the EEP viewers, materials rendering has been changed to address a long-standing bug which meant that 'baking' materials from modelling software wouldn't render in SL properly because of a fault in the SL shaders. Unfortunately, this does have a side effect in that it changes how materials are rendered, but if that is the case, it's intended behaviour.

[Chic Aeon]

10 minutes ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

Does the taillight have glow? Kinda looks like it to me. Might explain why it doesn't look 'glassy', though I couldn't tell you why the glow isn't rendered under WL.

I know that in the EEP viewers, materials rendering has been changed to address a long-standing bug which meant that 'baking' materials from modelling software wouldn't render in SL properly because of a fault in the SL shaders. Unfortunately, this does have a side effect in that it changes how materials are rendered, but if that is the case, it's intended behaviour.

Have no clue as this is a no mod item and not mine :D.   But I am sure Thor wouldn't be to happy and no way to "fix" really as no sales trail.    It did seem "better" to me than the last time I checked.   

 

Artistically (RL art teacher) shadows ARE suppose to have the underlying color of the object when painting (well from some artist's point of view anyway) but the land tones are quite different and that is a bit bothersome.    So eventually ----  maybe it will work out.

 

Not sure about the baking issues. I haven't ever had any problems -- except that of course the SL textures don't look as good as the RENDER you see in the viewport.  But the advantage of baking over materials is that most people see the item in a very similar way -- where as relying on normal and specular maps can be tricky as some folks don't see those at all. 

 

I have no plans on redoing any items for EEP but so far as I can tell I haven't found any that needed it --- so that's good.    Will see as we move into 1022!

 

 

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, FairreLilette said:

I don't believe the photos I am speaking about on MP are advanced lighting at all because as far as faces, there haven't been advanced lightings until recently.

Um, Advanced Lighting Mode has been around for years.  As far back as 2013 if not longer.  As to when creators started creating with it in mind, that would be up to each individual creator.

Anyway, you're missing the point I was trying to make.  

[Jenna Huntsman]

10 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Not sure about the baking issues. I haven't ever had any problems -- except that of course the SL textures don't look as good as the RENDER you see in the viewport.  But the advantage of baking over materials is that most people see the item in a very similar way -- where as relying on normal and specular maps can be tricky as some folks don't see those at all. 

Sorry, felt like I must have used the wrong word there. What I meant, was using a high-poly model to generate normal & specular maps for use on a low poly version. Must have got some terminology mixed up.

Though I hope you provide an 'unbaked' version of those items! I usually have ALM enabled, and I try to buy content which has been made with ALM in mind (uses the norm & spec maps) and doesn't have lighting effects baked into the diffuse layer. Really annoys me. Especially on skins.

[FairreLilette]

23 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Um, Advanced Lighting Mode has been around for years.  As far back as 2013 if not longer.  As to when creators started creating with it in mind, that would be up to each individual creator.

Anyway, you're missing the point I was trying to make.  

No, I'm not talking about Advanced Lighting in and of itself.  I'm talking about bump maps and speculars are now in the new HDPro heads.  If there are bump maps and speculars in the old heads, I've never heard of that.  There are even new specular eyebrows one can buy that I just saw the other day and I never saw those before.  But, I'm not looking for a duel about it.  

Edited April 12, 2021 by FairreLilette

[Rowan Amore]

9 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

No, I'm not talking about Advanced Lighting in and of itself.  I'm talking about bump maps and speculars are now in the new HDPro heads.  If there are bump maps and speculars in the old heads, I've never heard of that.  There are even new specular eyebrows one can buy that I just saw the other day and I never saw those before.  But, I'm not looking for duel about it.  

And you need advanced lighting ON to see those correctly regardless of your windlights/EEP settings.  

Edited April 12, 2021 by Rowan Amore

[FairreLilette]

1 minute ago, Rowan Amore said:

And you need advanced lighting ON to see those correctly regardless of your windlights/EEP settings.  

That wasn't my point.  You don't have to view skins with advanced lighting on.  Why would you need to view a head with no bump maps or shinies with materials on?  You don't, and as a matter of fact, just changing to Annan Adored or Nam's or CalWL without materials on your older heads when trying on skins makes a vast difference in how a skin looks - a vast difference.  Materials for heads is new.  K, this is enough now.  

[Gabriele Graves]

Lelutka heads have had materials support since Simone was released as Bento at least, years ago.  It just wasn't exposed in the way we are used to seeing today is all but it was there.

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

Sorry, felt like I must have used the wrong word there. What I meant, was using a high-poly model to generate normal & specular maps for use on a low poly version. Must have got some terminology mixed up.

Though I hope you provide an 'unbaked' version of those items! I usually have ALM enabled, and I try to buy content which has been made with ALM in mind (uses the norm & spec maps) and doesn't have lighting effects baked into the diffuse layer. Really annoys me. Especially on skins.

I don't USE normal or specular maps for my items (well 95 percent at least, but "bake" all the ambient shadows and shine IN the main texture.  There was a reason I chose that method.  I don't like CAST shadows on items either but in general my items have "ambient" shadows.  So you just may not be my audience and that is fine. I am definitely in the minority since I also make very low poly items with (OMG) actual physics models that work for the houses LOL (smiling).  

 

Here is an example if I wasn't clear with MY terms.   

 

Darn, hit reply without pictures. 

 

My GOAL is to have things look pretty much the same for the VERY wide variety of viewer settings people use.   Not a new "ethic" as I did the same when I was in multimedia web design.   I think the folks down at the bottom deserve to see things "prettily" as well as the folks that can afford the big bucks computers. 

 

So hopefully we are straight on terms and method now :D.   

 

Edited April 12, 2021 by Chic Aeon
adding info and pesky spelling

[FairreLilette]

14 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Lelutka heads have had materials support since Simone was released as Bento at least, years ago.  It just wasn't exposed in the way we are used to seeing today is all but it was there.

Oh, that's interesting.  But, it doesn't have anything to do with my original post and point which is the skins receiving bad reviews on MP for not looking like the photo that shows on MP was that those photos are not photoshopped as the reviews say but the lighting exists already in the viewer which many don't know about nor know how to use.  As far as bump and shiny on faces, it's quite far pronounced now with the new Catwa HDPro which many of us received for 1 linden, even eyes have it now.   Plus, now eyebrows one can buy too.  But, still those photos are not photoshopped was my point.  

[Rowan Amore]

22 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

That wasn't my point.  You don't have to view skins with advanced lighting on.  Why would you need to view a head with no bump maps or shinies with materials on?  You don't, and as a matter of fact, just changing to Annan Adored or Nam's or CalWL without materials on your older heads when trying on skins makes a vast difference in how a skin looks - a vast difference.  Materials for heads is new.  K, this is enough now.  

Not sure what your point is then.  You've mentioned using bump maps for your builds.  Fine.  You have now changed to a viewer that only looks good with advanced lighting OFF.  Your own build will look different to you regardless of your windlights since you won't see any of the bump map stuff.

MY point was...until you sort out YOUR graphics issue and can run well with advanced lighting ON, why not switch back to your old FS viewer (the link I posted about older viewers) so that you can build with advanced lighting as you used to otherwise, you won't be able to build with bump maps as you won't see it.  Lordy.

I'm only talking about YOU and YOUR viewer and builds.  I don't care about skins which you brought up.  Just your stuff.

Anyway, done banging my head against the wall.

 

[Rowan Amore]

.

Edited April 12, 2021 by Rowan Amore

[Tarani Tempest]

1 minute ago, FairreLilette said:

Oh, that's interesting.  But, it doesn't have anything to do with my original post and point which is the skins receiving bad reviews on MP for not looking like the photo that shows on MP was that those photos are not photoshopped as the reviews say but the lighting exists already in the viewer which many don't know about nor know how to use.  As far as bump and shiny on faces, it's quite far pronounced now with the new Catwa HDPro which many of us received for 1 linden, even eyes have it now.   Plus, now eyebrows one can buy too.  But, still those photos are not photoshopped was my point.  

Catwa heads have had materials enabled for years. I used the specular slider way back when Catya was first released.  What is new about the HDpro is more about the "HD" textures now being used.  Materials are nothing new in SL for mesh heads... or anything for that matter.