Do you use Advanced Lighting in SL? a little poll!

[Rolig Loon]

1 hour ago, Jaylinbridges said:

I can tell who has the weaker systems by how many times they crash in an hour at our club.  They will need to buy a new computer, or find a solitary hobby in their skybox, once ALM is forced and PBR is the standard.

It would be really interesting to see some statistics that count tell us how much of the SL population really is playing on potatoes. I suspect that LL has a fairly good idea, and I suspect furthermore that the population is a lot smaller than most of us think. For one thing, the fact that LL is moving rapidly toward PBR and other features that will assume people have at least mid-range machines suggests that they aren't afraid that a lot of people are going to leave in frustration. For another thing, it's getting harder and harder to buy a potato these days. We aren't the only game in town demanding decent graphics and computing power. Manufacturers are raising standards to keep up, and even Wal-Mart special laptops are a good step up from potatohood. Without any statistics, I can't do much better than guess. Still, my bet is that the average person in SL has a better machine than we think.

[Chic Aeon]

yes, everything ON always except DOF (sometimes for photos). 

[Istelathis]

I've almost always have it on, the exceptions are rare but usually when I am packed in with a ton of other avatars and the viewer has slowed down to a crawl will I turn it off.

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700HQ CPU @ 2.80GHz (2808 MHz)
Memory: 20366 MB (Used: 3790 MB)
Concurrency: 8
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 19045.3324)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 4096 MB

 

I've submitted my vote, but do not have a google account on this browser so I am not sure if it saved it or not. 

Edited August 19, 2023 by Istelathis

[Jaylinbridges]

Here's the kind of system I am talking about, an HP Pavillon desk laptop, purchased new about 3 years ago.  The owner was told this was the perfect system for Second Life, because it was a gaming computer.   Most non-tech peeps would have no idea they were being lied to by some no nothing salesman.  She has no idea how to upgrade the system memory to  32GB, and integrated graphics is not upgradeble.   Tell me how this will work with PBR and Firestorm:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 4500U with Radeon Graphics          (2370.54 MHz)
Memory: 7542 MB
Concurrency: 6
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 11 64-bit (Build 22621.2134)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics
Graphics Card Memory: 512 MB

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 30.0.14046.0
OpenGL Version: 4.6.14802 Compatibility Profile Context 21.40.46 30.0.14046.0

She already crashes in busy clubs.

 

Edited August 19, 2023 by Jaylinbridges

[Rolig Loon]

1 hour ago, Jaylinbridges said:

Here's the kind of system I am talking about, an HP Pavillon desk laptop, purchased new about 3 years ago.  The owner was told this was the perfect system for Second Life, because it was a gaming computer.   Most non-tech peeps would have no idea they were being lied to by some no nothing salesman.

That really is sad.  I know there are people trying to run SL with dreadful computers.  I've dealt with some of them in the Answers forum for years. Maybe it's wishful thinking, though, but I really do suspect that they are a small minority. I have quite a few SL friends who are not techies at all but who have computers better than my own -- which, as you noticed, has a mid-range gaming profile. The price for a fairly nice machine that can handle SL is quite reasonable and manufacturers are learning that people expect much better than the machines they were selling years ago. 

[Solar Legion]

3 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

Here's the kind of system I am talking about, an HP Pavillon desk laptop, purchased new about 3 years ago.  The owner was told this was the perfect system for Second Life, because it was a gaming computer.   Most non-tech peeps would have no idea they were being lied to by some no nothing salesman.  She has no idea how to upgrade the system memory to  32GB, and integrated graphics is not upgradeble.   Tell me how this will work with PBR and Firestorm:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 4500U with Radeon Graphics          (2370.54 MHz)
Memory: 7542 MB
Concurrency: 6
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 11 64-bit (Build 22621.2134)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics
Graphics Card Memory: 512 MB

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 30.0.14046.0
OpenGL Version: 4.6.14802 Compatibility Profile Context 21.40.46 30.0.14046.0

She already crashes in busy clubs.

 

Point blank: If one is going to go shopping for something, one should not make a choice in store no matter how pushy or suave the salesperson is. Get their recommendation, go home, look it up or ask a friend (if possible).

Predatory salespeople exist. The above is one way to avoid being taken in by them.

Those specs are not for any sort of gaming machine - whatsoever. They were sold a glorified Word Processor (at best).

[Anna Nova]

I always have as much graphics as I can get, fairly old system now:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Eight-Core Processor (4148.56 MHz)
Memory: 32043 MB (Used: 2360 MB)
Concurrency: 16
OS Version: Linux 6.4.10-arch1-1 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri, 11 Aug 2023 11:03:36 +0000 x86_64
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 11264 MB

OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 535.98

I especially like having the shadows,  for me that makes SL come alive.  Of course, at big events I turn everything down...

[Aethelwine]

I turn ALM off when sailing on boats that would otherwise look like they are full of water. I would love it if they could make invisiprims work with ALM.

[Prokofy Neva]

No, of course not! Because it drags my SL to a halt, and adding it does NOT repeat NOT make SL more beautiful!

It makes SL more blurry, and in fact a lot worse.

Never touch that "improve graphics" button as it makes your game far worse!

[BilliJo Aldrin]

never, the effects are minimal, but it would kill me, i'm just barely on sl as it is

[Theresa Tennyson]

9 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

And what are your system specs?  Do you operate this way in clubs with 50 avatars?  This whole survey is flawed by only asking forum members.  We are mostly graphics nerds with modern systems and photographers who obsess about making pretty pictures.   Hardly the typical SL resident here - not even clos

 

Are you sure? If anything, I'd say it's more likely that the forum skews to, "If it was good enough in 2008, it's good enough now."

[Sid Nagy]

Can one turn them off?
🤪

[Conifer Dada]

I have advanced lighting on nearly all the time.

I did make a setting with much lower graphics, with no shadows or particles, specifically for use on arrival at a busy venue while everything rezzes, after which I return to advanced graphics. But I find it hardly makes any difference to FPS or rezzing speed, so I don't use it much now.

I find that draw distance is what affects FPS and rezzing more than anything else.

[AmeliaJ08]

LL and Third Party Viewer devs should really do a Steam style hardware survey. Maybe they even collect the data already.

Would be useful for creators to know exactly what to target and interesting for nerds to see if what people say about SL users being very out of date is true.

To answer the question though, yes always. Slider is one notch from Ultra (can't tell the difference), all ALM features on, I reduce shadows/water one down from the top setting and shadows quality to 3. If I'm somewhere busy and frame rate is <30 I'll usually just reduce draw distance and imposter avatars to cope, I don't really need it to be smooth in those types of places (clubs) though.

SL is certainly very fast with its lighting engine disabled but doesn't look nice. Also if you've got materials disabled there's likely things about your body you might not like but you probably can't see!

 

Edited August 19, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Blush Bravin]

ALM and shadows on all the time for years now. The only thing I adjust when in a very laggy venue is to turn down my draw distance, which is normally around 200. Honestly, SL looks washed out and oh so dull without ALM and shadows to me. 

My current specs:

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz (3600 MHz)
Memory: 16228 MB
Concurrency: 16
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 19045.3324)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 11264 MB

But I ran both with my previous two computers as well. They weren't anywhere close to these specs.

Edited August 19, 2023 by Blush Bravin
Added specs

[Bree Giffen]

I have ALM turned off when shopping because I don’t need beautiful shadows to see a full bright vendor image on a wall.  I turn ALM on when I go home to try on the demos. I also turn ALM on when exploring regions that are well designed. Parks and beaches get ALM. Welcome areas no ALM. My computer can run ALM all the time but turning down graphics for better FPS, frames per second, is a typical gaming thing. 

[AmeliaJ08]

14 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

Here's the kind of system I am talking about, an HP Pavillon desk laptop, purchased new about 3 years ago.  The owner was told this was the perfect system for Second Life, because it was a gaming computer.   Most non-tech peeps would have no idea they were being lied to by some no nothing salesman.  She has no idea how to upgrade the system memory to  32GB, and integrated graphics is not upgradeble.   Tell me how this will work with PBR and Firestorm:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 4500U with Radeon Graphics          (2370.54 MHz)
Memory: 7542 MB
Concurrency: 6
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 11 64-bit (Build 22621.2134)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics
Graphics Card Memory: 512 MB

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 30.0.14046.0
OpenGL Version: 4.6.14802 Compatibility Profile Context 21.40.46 30.0.14046.0

She already crashes in busy clubs.

 

Well allocating a reasonable amount of RAM-as-VRAM might help her, should let her know Of course though since there's not much to spare... the Vega 6 isn't quite as awful as Intel's UHD iGPU's though.

 

 

Edited August 19, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Marianne Little]

ALM always on, but Ambient occlusion always off. I use shadows most of the time. Sun + moon and projectors.

[MoiraKathleen]

I have ALM and shadows (sun + moon and projectors) on all the time.   

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

I forgot that it was possible to turn it off.

 

[colleen Criss]

21 hours ago, Jules Catlyn said:

This survey has been placed in a few places. Some inworld groups, Facebook etc. You will be surprised to know that after posting this on here, the percentage of people not having Advanced Lighting enabled, increased.

 

I am not surprised at all.

[gwynchisholm]

Always, the full thing:

Usually i keep shadow rendering at 1.0 instead of bumping it up as it impacts framerate dramatically.

Specs:

This gets me 60fps+ in 4K in most locations at those settings by myself, start introducing people and i need to start dropping settings to maintain 60fps+.

[CandyCole]

On 8/19/2023 at 4:20 AM, Jules Catlyn said:

Link to the poll
https://bit.ly/45fgGsJ

Was there a poll I missed asking whether we use or have a Google account, or not.

Do you have a Google account?

• Yes
• No
• Sometimes

 

[Henri Beauchamp]

On 8/18/2023 at 11:20 PM, Jules Catlyn said:

I am doing a little poll to see who uses the Advanced Lighting Model in SL. The poll only has one question and if it gives a clear picture, i will gladly share the results with the group and other creators.

Sadly, your poll will not bear any meaningful result.

The reason is that, aside from people with a ”weak” PC (no discrete GPU, 8GB or less RAM, quad core or less CPU), and for whom there is no real choice to run SL at decent frame rates (on such hardware forward rendering offers +50% to +100% fps, even when compared to the PBR renderer with all reflections off), everyone can use ALM, and will do so in some specific circumstances (e.g. avatars around wearing materials-enabled meshes that won't render ”as intended” by the creator in forward rendering mode).

I myself got a very powerful main PC, and yet there are many times when I do use the forward rendering mode instead of ALM. The reasons for not using ALM are:

• The anti-aliasing in ALM sucks rocks: the FXAA shader is terrible and blurs details in textures (example) instead of just smoothing jagged prim edges. I did implement SMAA (a backport from Alchemy's) in the Cool VL Viewer, and yet, even with SMAA, things do not look as good in many scenes (e.g. ”wobbling” edges). See the examples I gave in this post (follow the links to the pictures and video, which are still valid).
• The memory usage (RAM, but most importantly, VRAM) in ALM mode is much higher, meaning that you cannot always use the largest draw distances, which is a bother when, for example, sailing along main land coasts or flying above main land, when you need 512m to see where you are going !
• While, on a powerful PC such as mine, ALM most often performs just as good in term of frame rates, or even slightly better than forward rendering in some specific scenes, the other way around is also true, especially when ALM fills up your VRAM and you are moving or camming around, which causes VRAM memory usage overshoots (the GPU driver then spills vertex buffers and textures over to the RAM, with an enormous amount of data exchanged through the PCI bus, causing the ”freezes” and ”hiccups”).

As you can see, there are reasons for not using ALM, depending on circumstances (i.e. it's not just about the PC power): I use ALM where it makes sense (e.g. in a club of venue with avatars wearing materials-enabled meshes or attachments, or in a scenic sim making use of materials), and forward rendering where it is needed (sailing, flying, driving on roads in main land) and where materials are either rare or too far away to even notice.

@Jules Catlyn If I were you, I'd add an answer to your poll: ”Not always”.

Or even better yet, make another poll asking when and why people are not using ALM...

 

As for myself, I decided to keep supporting the forward rendering mode in the Cool VL Viewer even after PBR will be released (you may already get a preview with my dual-renderer experimental branch v1.31.0) : it will take time for PBR materials to spread over the grid, and even after it will have spread, just like with current materials, there will still be places where using PBR rendering won't make much sense, especially when you get better results with the forward renderer. Until things get ”fixed” (anti-aliasing, VRAM usage, tone mapping for PBR vs legacy contents), I will provide a choice for people to use whichever rendering mode fits best their needs depending on the various circumstances...

Edited August 20, 2023 by Henri Beauchamp

[Jules Catlyn]

I did not add the "sometimes" or "not always" option because (as i indicated before) to me that qualifies as a "NO" 

(post edited, comment was taken out of context)

 

Edited August 20, 2023 by Jules Catlyn
stated