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

[Henri Beauchamp]

19 minutes ago, Jules Catlyn said:

If you do not permanently use it, it usually means your connection or hardware cannot handle it probably.

Precisely no !

If I don't use it permanently, it is just by choice, because forward rendering provides a nicer picture and/or larger draw distances for the same memory consumption.

My hardware can handle everything you could throw at it: Ryzen 7900X + 64GB DDR5 6200 + RTX 3070, and I got a 1Gbps downlink/700Mbps uplink FTTH Internet connection.

Edited August 20, 2023 by Henri Beauchamp

[Jaylinbridges]

On 8/19/2023 at 10:56 AM, AmeliaJ08 said:

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.

Unfortunately there is no way to increase the VRAM over 512 KB in Firestorm or the SL Viewer, and with integrated graphics I suspect the actual VRAM uses more that 512 KB depending on what's left from the 8GB system memory.  Most of these integrated graphics systems are not recognized by the Firestorm preference settings, and default to 512 KB max.

Her laptop performs better than it looks like it should.  She can now survive a club with 35 avatars nearby for about an hour before she crashes.  Her laptop also gets very hot, and she needs cooling fans blowing on it so it doesn't melt down.

When she started w/ this HP laptop, her settings were too high, and she had to stay about 50 meters from the crowd and not cam to them.  I found she had draw distance set to 128, water reflections to Minimal,  and ALM was ON.  I told her to use 64 m DD, water reflections to None (opaque) and ALM to OFF.  That improved the performance, and she could get 20 fps in a busy club with 40 avatars.  Turning ALM ON and she would crash.  When she moved to Firestorm, I had her reduce DD to 32m, and set textures to 512 KB max, plus the prior settings.   But her laptop will never survive PBR with ALM.

LL must have an idea of the systems in use, at least they know your hardware configuration.  I think marketing and finance has decided if they lose 25% of active residents when they force PBR and ALM, that is acceptable, since they will make it up with newer residents with gaming systems, or smartphones.  They also think if you can't afford a better computer, then you are probably not buying enough lindens from them, so let the poor folks go back to watching reruns of The Price Is Right.  (Never mind that many of these folks spend $100 USD/month buying lindens for their inworld hobbies.) 

 

Edited August 21, 2023 by Jaylinbridges

[Kasumi Starchild]

It seems to make very little difference whether I have it on or not, so it only gets turned off when a sim is so laggy I have to enable my "busy area" preset (graphics set as low as they can go)

[Cinos Field]

Yep, always use it. The only graphics setting I have turned off is local projector shadows, because that button just eats FPS even on a gaming computer... while not adding a whole lot unless a sim was designed for it.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

With my old computer from 2012 I had to leave it off, or my frame rate would plummet.

With my new(er) computer from 2018, it does not matter whether I have ALM off or on. SO it's always on.

So my guess, whatever the outcome is of this survey, is that the percentage of people who have ALM off represents the percentage of people who's computer is six to eleven years old or older. That's past the average life-span of a PC, so my other guess is that this percentage is small and rapidly dwindling.

[Jaylinbridges]

4 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

So my guess, whatever the outcome is of this survey, is that the percentage of people who have ALM off represents the percentage of people who's computer is six to eleven years old or older. That's past the average life-span of a PC, so my other guess is that this percentage is small and rapidly dwindling.

My example above using my partners's HP desk size laptop, which is only 3 years old and still sold today, says age is not the best measure.  And my 11 year old desktop still performs OK in SL even with ALM on.  It cuts my frame rate, but still over 30 fps in a crowded club, where materials are quite irrelevant.  But it heats up my GPU just to see point lighting and dark corners.  The majority of our VIPs have ALM OFF when in a club, or crowded region.

My PC's last 20 years btw, but then I do build and upgrade them to last before they go to my PC museum.

I've been playing with the latest Firestorm alpha PBR, same as the SL Viewer 7.00 PBR, but with a UI and features I can use.  ALM is ON of course, since you can't turn it off..  Going to be a long transition to PBR.  Maybe more painful then mesh for some creators with old designs.

Edited August 23, 2023 by Jaylinbridges

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

3 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

My example above using my partners's HP desk size laptop

I guess I left laptop computers out of the equation. Unless they're gaming laptops, they'll always be the least suitable platform for SL, no matter how new they are. Perhaps the survey should have included an extra question:

Which computer are you using?

    A. Desktop computer

    B. Laptop computer

    C. Laptop computer with fancy lights

3 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

My PC's last 20 years btw

That's why I said 'average life-span'.

Edited August 23, 2023 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[AmeliaJ08]

3 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

I guess I left laptop computers out of the equation. Unless they're gaming laptops, they'll always be the least suitable platform for SL, no matter how new they are. Perhaps the survey should have included an extra question:

Which computer are you using?

    A. Desktop computer

    B. Laptop computer

    C. Laptop computer with fancy lights

That's why I said 'average life-span'.

There's a whole category of perfectly capable laptops designed to do actual work with very similar hardware to gaming laptops but without fancy lights

 

[MissSweetViolet]

When I first started on SL, my answer would have been no. However since getting a gaming laptop, it's now almost always on, I only shut it off temporally if I start to notice a performance difference, which doesn't happen often.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

12 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

There's a whole category of perfectly capable laptops designed to do actual work with very similar hardware to gaming laptops but without fancy lights

I was of course being facetious. I guess I should have typed "C. Gaming laptop or perfectly capable laptop designed to do actual work with very similar hardware to gaming laptops".

Oh, darn, I'm being facetious again.

[Crim Mip]

Always. In fact at some point, LL will remove the ability to turn it off. That may come with PBR. If turning that on slows your frame rate significantly, you may be due for an upgrade.

[AmeliaJ08]

11 hours ago, Crim Mip said:

Always. In fact at some point, LL will remove the ability to turn it off. That may come with PBR. If turning that on slows your frame rate significantly, you may be due for an upgrade.

Would be interesting to see a typically-busy region with some PBR materials objects all with Blinn-Phong (is that the right term?) 'fallback' enabled on them so a performance comparison could be made.

Edited August 25, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Cam Chattoway]

almost always advanced lighting, yes

[Victorian Magic]

On a 2020 macbook pro on FS and when  ALM and no shadows, 72m draw , no other avatars ARC  over 20000--- my   FPS  drops like a rock; with PBR will I grind to a halt?

I don't want static pixs , I live here . Why buy stuff or rent if you can't move.

 

[Qie Niangao]

8 hours ago, Victorian Magic said:

On a 2020 macbook pro on FS and when  ALM and no shadows, 72m draw , no other avatars ARC  over 20000--- my   FPS  drops like a rock; with PBR will I grind to a halt?

It may be too soon to tell. It would be nice to be able to say "Load up the project viewer and give it a try" but there are still changes being made to further speed it up. There have definitely been changes already to improve performance with the intent of offsetting some of the ALM impact, but some of those changes still need attention.

One specific example: rendering of Linden water is streamlined compared to the old viewers, with intentional effect on appearance, but the changes also introduced a collection of bugs. Those bugs markedly improved in the most recent project viewer version but still need work, so: too soon to tell how much of that particular speed-up will remain in released PBR viewers.

Edited August 28, 2023 by Qie Niangao
more accurate "project viewer version" instead of "release"