New viewer version 7.0.1.6 looks really bright and pixelated

[christinethedragon]

Hi, I just upgraded to the 7.0.1.6 viewer and it looks really bright and contrasty and like it has a low resolution....I've only ever experienced this once before and when the next version came out which was like right away I used it and the issue went away. Does anyone know why? If you can help, thank you!

[Qie Niangao]

Did you update from a previous PBR candidate viewer (one in the 7.0 version series), or from the previous "standard" release (somewhere in the 6.x series)?

If this is your first experience with PBR, there's a whole bunch of things that changed how settings work, and which settings even exist, and it'll take a while to figure all that out.

If, on the other hand, you're noticing big changes from upgrading from one PBR viewer to another… that would be kind of surprising; there should be only subtle differences, at least as far as I've noticed.

[christinethedragon]

Thank you Qie, I don't know what PBR is, sorry! Unfortunately I don't know which version I upgraded from, I've been away ☹️ Can I change something like that in the settings?

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

PBR = Physically Based Rendering.

 

[Qie Niangao]

32 minutes ago, christinethedragon said:

Thank you Qie, I don't know what PBR is, sorry! Unfortunately I don't know which version I upgraded from, I've been away ☹️ Can I change something like that in the settings?

If you've been away a while, you were almost certainly using a non-PBR viewer before. The thing is, PBR is such a brave new world for SL that it's difficult to even start explaining all the changes you'll see, and which settings to start tweaking. (Well, difficult for me, anyway.) Regardless of settings, though, it should not be lower resolution than before, although it could look brighter and higher contrast depending on what your settings used to be.

Among other things, if you hadn't enabled the "Advanced Lighting Model" before, that's now a given, so you'll be seeing a whole bunch of lighting details you wouldn't have seen before.

In the menu Me / Preferences / Graphics there's a slider "Brightness (exposure)" that you could try sliding down towards 0.5 and see if it looks a little more familiar. One thing to note is that many builds and environments were designed specifically for the pre-PBR, non-Advanced Lighting Model rendering, and some of that didn't look so great even before in Advanced Lighting viewers, so it'll be a gradual process of folks learning to take advantage of the new capabilities, with special tweaks for ambient lighting levels among many other things.

(I'm just trying to get acquainted with it all myself, so somebody who actually knows something could be more useful here.)

[christinethedragon]

Thank you! I just downgraded to a 6.x version like you mentioned and everything looks normal now, maybe I'm not ready for the advanced viewer just yet! 😏

[Charlotte Bartlett]

To give you an idea of how different things can now look.

These are raw rough screen captures from both the new PBR viewer from LL and the current non PBR viewer from Firestorm.

Image 1 with a PBR visioned EEP set up for lighting plus all PBR materials in the latest SL Viewer. (note Scene lighting not finished yet so ignore those!)
Image 2 regular 2d texture export from the same substances on the same house (same EEP setting) on the latest Firestorm Viewer.

It's honestly making creators pull their hair out so I can't imagine how confusing for users too if you have been away for a bit.
I would for now stick with the older viewer until PBR is more widely adopted if easier for you for now.

Whilst there are still bugs with the latest PBR deployment from LL, Firestorm I believe hasn't yet released PBR as more bugs are yet to be resolved (albeit it is now in Beta versus Alpha so I am going to test it this weekend myself too) - Hopefully I have that correctly stated @Beq Janus @Whirly Fizzle

I think I will still end up releasing my new PBR items soon,  with non PBR as a second version for now.  

 

[Qie Niangao]

4 hours ago, Charlotte Bartlett said:

I think I will still end up releasing my new PBR items soon,  with non PBR as a second version for now.  

(sorry, this is a bit off-topic, but I'm interested) Are you selling structures with reflection probes included? If so, are you setting an Ambiance level for those probes? Or is this all best left up to the customer, to fit their specific use (and expecting them to navigate that themselves)?

[JeromFranzic]

5 hours ago, Charlotte Bartlett said:

To give you an idea of how different things can now look.

These are raw rough screen captures from both the new PBR viewer from LL and the current non PBR viewer from Firestorm.

Image 1 with a PBR visioned EEP set up for lighting plus all PBR materials in the latest SL Viewer. (note Scene lighting not finished yet so ignore those!)
Image 2 regular 2d texture export from the same substances on the same house (same EEP setting) on the latest Firestorm Viewer.

It's honestly making creators pull their hair out so I can't imagine how confusing for users too if you have been away for a bit.
I would for now stick with the older viewer until PBR is more widely adopted if easier for you for now.

Whilst there are still bugs with the latest PBR deployment from LL, Firestorm I believe hasn't yet released PBR as more bugs are yet to be resolved (albeit it is now in Beta versus Alpha so I am going to test it this weekend myself too) - Hopefully I have that correctly stated @Beq Janus @Whirly Fizzle

I think I will still end up releasing my new PBR items soon,  with non PBR as a second version for now.  

 

Firestorm has PBR viewers, but they're available only in the preview group in world (beta quality). Two versions are out: one for Second Life, and another for Open Sim.

[Charlotte Bartlett]

3 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

(sorry, this is a bit off-topic, but I'm interested) Are you selling structures with reflection probes included? If so, are you setting an Ambiance level for those probes? Or is this all best left up to the customer, to fit their specific use (and expecting them to navigate that themselves)?

I am including probes to start as I find my way but mod so customers can adjust.  And then yes setting Ambiance.  Plus with EEP packages.  But it’s a learning curve So will adjust as we all become more commercial.

 

3 hours ago, JeromFranzic said:

Firestorm has PBR viewers, but they're available only in the preview group in world (beta quality). Two versions are out: one for Second Life, and another for Open Sim.

For content creators we need a consistent output between viewers so are straddling right now. 

[Chic Aeon]

I am not playing around yet but wanted to mention that in Sansar with I think a very similar system you could basically "ignore" the PBR by putting in grayscale textures in the panes.  I DO think that PBR  can be lovely but not everything needs to shine and reflect IMO.  So "there" I just pretended it didn't exist LOL.   I won't be looking at this closely until FS gets PBR but I did check my current builds in the PBR Linden viewer and they seem to be fine. So hopefully that holds true.  

 

[Charlotte Bartlett]

12 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

I am not playing around yet but wanted to mention that in Sansar with I think a very similar system you could basically "ignore" the PBR by putting in grayscale textures in the panes.  I DO think that PBR  can be lovely but not everything needs to shine and reflect IMO.  So "there" I just pretended it didn't exist LOL.   I won't be looking at this closely until FS gets PBR but I did check my current builds in the PBR Linden viewer and they seem to be fine. So hopefully that holds true.  

 

For me: The challenge is more EEP if you tweak it to work with the PBR materials then other items look less stellar on non PBR viewers.  That example pic above demonstrates it.  That bottom pic on my old EEP setting looks fine with standard textures. Tough when you have four regions that will gradually move over PBR so I will organize region by region to start I think. Once Firestorm is out of Beta that will be the game changer and we can then embrace if fully. 
 

Edited December 3, 2023 by Charlotte Bartlett

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Charlotte Bartlett said:

For me: The challenge is more EEP if you tweak it to work with the PBR materials then other items look less stellar on non PBR viewers.  That example pic above demonstrates it.  That bottom pic on my old EEP setting looks fine with standard textures. Tough when you have four regions that will gradually move over PBR so I will organize region by region to start I think. Once Firestorm is out of Beta that will be the game changer and we can then embrace if fully. 
 

Well to be fair LOL plenty of items with "materials" look horrible under some EEPs (hence my lack of using them for the most part).  NEW isn't always BETTER --- but going with industry standard is most likely a good long range move.   When I tested a month ago when only a few regions were active on the main grid, I really couldn't tell any difference (with the things I tested of course which were "supposed" to look the same).    https://chicatphilsplace.blogspot.com/2023/11/pbr-hits-grid-slowly.html

[Flea Yatsenko]

PBR is affected way more by the environment than materials or baked. PBR can look significantly better but you have to get the environment and reflection probes right. Otherwise it can look way worse, like "why is the blue from the sky coming into my underground tunnels?!"

There is going to be a learning curve. I think once people get the hang of it, it'll be amazing. That said, you can't turn PBR off in your viewer. But at least for the world, you can set a lot of stuff to full bright if it's baked and it'll look fine.

Even if you can't change EEP settings for the sim, you can change them in your own viewer. In Firestorm, it's just World -> Environment -> My Environments...

So really, there's two ways to go about fixing the way the scene looks. There is also an exposure setting in the graphics that you can play with and it'll make it look more like what you're used to.

You should always release a PBR and non PBR version of your products, unless you think the mobile viewer is going to completely fail. Mobile viewer won't support PBR last I heard. But no matter what a baked build in full bright, as long as it's not for an AV, is going to look fine like it always has. LL is going to eventually block non-PBR viewers besides the mobile one. And of course that won't look the same either. LL built in regular diffuse textures as a backup to PBR specifically for that reason.

There's always a rough transition period when LL gives us a major new feature like this. It was the same with sculpties, materials, etc. But Materials were massively outdated compared to other games (sorry to use that term) and PBR is an industry standard.

[Charlotte Bartlett]

25 minutes ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

PBR is affected way more by the environment than materials or baked. PBR can look significantly better but you have to get the environment and reflection probes right. Otherwise it can look way worse, like "why is the blue from the sky coming into my underground tunnels?!"

There is going to be a learning curve. I think once people get the hang of it, it'll be amazing. That said, you can't turn PBR off in your viewer. But at least for the world, you can set a lot of stuff to full bright if it's baked and it'll look fine.

Even if you can't change EEP settings for the sim, you can change them in your own viewer. In Firestorm, it's just World -> Environment -> My Environments...

So really, there's two ways to go about fixing the way the scene looks. There is also an exposure setting in the graphics that you can play with and it'll make it look more like what you're used to.

You should always release a PBR and non PBR version of your products, unless you think the mobile viewer is going to completely fail. Mobile viewer won't support PBR last I heard. But no matter what a baked build in full bright, as long as it's not for an AV, is going to look fine like it always has. LL is going to eventually block non-PBR viewers besides the mobile one. And of course that won't look the same either. LL built in regular diffuse textures as a backup to PBR specifically for that reason.

There's always a rough transition period when LL gives us a major new feature like this. It was the same with sculpties, materials, etc. But Materials were massively outdated compared to other games (sorry to use that term) and PBR is an industry standard.

I am never going to make houses full bright….

From a creator standpoint we now have a much more expensive upload cost plus double down with effort to make a non PBR version (so more uploads and effort).    Mobile viewer for now I am less concerned about.  It is now expensive per house and with two versions, time for probes on one, and the increased customer interaction it is going to cost creators to navigate. 

The cost of increased customer service too will rise significantly until better understanding of EEP interaction.   I am expecting 1 star reviews because “it doesn’t look like the picture” due to people having their own personal old EEP settings until the lighting and some remaining bugs get fixed and if customers reads notecards included (few versus many).

That being said.  I love the progress.   We are going to test a PBR house in the next Sat Sale (will have a non PBR version plus EEP package) and will be including educational materials to our customers and social media channels to help drive knowledge.    That will start to push bottom up the understanding to help people transition.

During the sale the Demo is still going to be challenging so we might move it to its own height in the region with a separate setting.  We are still mulling over how we can push things forward whilst navigating the legacy challenges and whilst we wait for Firestorm to move out of Beta.

All new challenges to have but I still think worth it for the fantastic progress to get to PBR.  It’s not perfect but it’s certainly fun to work with. 

[Charlotte Bartlett]

1 hour ago, Chic Aeon said:

Well to be fair LOL plenty of items with "materials" look horrible under some EEPs (hence my lack of using them for the most part).  NEW isn't always BETTER --- but going with industry standard is most likely a good long range move.   When I tested a month ago when only a few regions were active on the main grid, I really couldn't tell any difference (with the things I tested of course which were "supposed" to look the same).    https://chicatphilsplace.blogspot.com/2023/11/pbr-hits-grid-slowly.html

I read that!  Great article.   If you are interested coming to test my new house just shout inworld!   Would be great to get feedback. 

[Flea Yatsenko]

Full bright is only for when you bake lighting, shadows, and everything in something like Blender. No way it will work with in world builds.

But yes, PBR is going to make every product take a lot more time to finish, cost a lot more to upload too. Price are probably gonna go up for me for a PBR version. At least if you ship two versions, you can get away with a customer using the old version until they can figure out EEP and PBR.

[Qie Niangao]

10 hours ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

But yes, PBR is going to make every product take a lot more time to finish, cost a lot more to upload too. 

Why should it cost a lot more to upload, once the pre-PBR viewers are cut adrift (and the sooner the better for that)? Even so, at most upload a baked diffuse map for them and if feeling super generous re-use the PBR normalmap that should work fine. After all, they'll mostly be non-ALM users clinging to whatever they can see, so they'd never see that normalmap nor specularmap if we bother to upload them them.

Otherwise shouldn't PBR usually use three maps, same as Blinn-Phong? In fact, depending what's being created, the albedo might just be blank with a tint. Also, again depending what's being created, the whole material should be re-usable for multiple products, perhaps with tweaks of the float parameters, won't it? (Or are creators going to bake scene lighting into the AO channel? I sure hope that's not how this will actually work.)

[Flea Yatsenko]

6 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Why should it cost a lot more to upload, once the pre-PBR viewers are cut adrift (and the sooner the better for that)? Even so, at most upload a baked diffuse map for them and if feeling super generous re-use the PBR normalmap that should work fine. After all, they'll mostly be non-ALM users clinging to whatever they can see, so they'd never see that normalmap nor specularmap if we bother to upload them them.

Otherwise shouldn't PBR usually use three maps, same as Blinn-Phong? In fact, depending what's being created, the albedo might just be blank with a tint. Also, again depending what's being created, the whole material should be re-usable for multiple products, perhaps with tweaks of the float parameters, won't it? (Or are creators going to bake scene lighting into the AO channel? I sure hope that's not how this will actually work.)

The official protocol is to upload the original diffuse with Blinn-Phong since that's a fallback if PBR doesn't work. Then you upload the three PBR maps, sometimes 4 if you're using emission. If you don't upload the original Blinn-Phong diffuse, any non-PBR viewer sees your object with no textures. But honestly it depends what you are making, if you are using tiling textures and not baking it's not that big of a deal. But if you want to bake or use textures that don't tile (because you are making something organic or natural and it needs wear or whatever) you might have some problems. You're supposed to have the AO in the ORM map, doesn't mean  you need to. But from what I played around with it can make a very big difference since it's way better than the AO the viewer uses and depending on what software you're using, it can add shadows to the AO map from things other than geometry. Unless something changed, a non-PBR viewer will not use the albedo map if it doesn't support PBR. You can try looking at PBR stuff right now with an older viewer and see what I mean.

GLTF expects AO baked into the ORM texture. Doesn't mean you have to, but with what I make the baked AO makes a huge difference in quality. The SL Viewer simply can't make high quality ambient occlusion. Even if other games can do better, it's LL's game engine and they have to do the AO themselves, it's not like they are using Nvidia libraries or anything for AO.

I mean you can use tile materials and put them on everything but making any sort of super high quality stuff is going to take a lot of work. Especially if you have faith in the mobile viewer, because tiled diffuse with no AO will look horrible on mobile since the viewer probably won't be able to make AO or anything in real time. And pretty much every decent mobile game bakes most of the textures.

I really wanted AO on a separate map so you could tile and re-use the other maps and let the AO follow original UVs 1:1 but that was out of spec for GLTF so it wasn't really possible. LL really wanted to follow spec. But again it really depends what you're making. Some times tile textures work perfectly fine, like a modern and clean house. Sometimes they look absolutely awful, like stuff I make.

Don't believe me if you want but GLTF is supposed to use the AO map for more than just making parts darker, it also affects how light is reflected back.

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/LightingBakedAmbientOcclusion.html

Quote

(Or are creators going to bake scene lighting into the AO channel? I sure hope that's not how this will actually work.)

Depends on what you're making, but it's supported both ways. It's an artistic choice and even a game engine like Unity supports baking every single ORM/Light Map for every object. In fact it's built into the engine.

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

Don't believe me if you want but GLTF is supposed to use the AO map for more than just making parts darker, it also affects how light is reflected back.

Oh, I believe you, and I also read more or less the same thing somewhere else (I forget where, but it wasn't Unity). And the thing is, that's just fine if the product is basically an intact scene, such as a backdrop (or a game set), but furniture and reusable building components really shouldn't have scene lighting baked into the materials, and that's what I fear will repeat from the bad old days when everything baked onto the diffusemap. If SL is really going to be a "game"—an assembly of set-piece scenes, then scene lighting can bake down in all it's glory. I just don't think exclusively full-scene builds, furnishings and all, is a promising future for the SL economy. (On the other hand, weirdly shaded mesh hasn't seemed to bother most SL users, so meh.)

1 hour ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

The official protocol is to upload the original diffuse with Blinn-Phong since that's a fallback if PBR doesn't work.

Yes, I just hope that's a very brief transition interval. Certainly, without a PBR viewer, a PBR-only surface has no texture at all (and yeah, albedo wouldn't be much of a substitute even if they did that). Anyway, I don't mind pushing adoption a bit, but agreed that it's too soon now, for sure.

[Katherine Heartsong]

On 12/2/2023 at 12:00 PM, Charlotte Bartlett said:

To give you an idea of how different things can now look.

These are raw rough screen captures from both the new PBR viewer from LL and the current non PBR viewer from Firestorm.

Image 1 with a PBR visioned EEP set up for lighting plus all PBR materials in the latest SL Viewer. (note Scene lighting not finished yet so ignore those!)
Image 2 regular 2d texture export from the same substances on the same house (same EEP setting) on the latest Firestorm Viewer.

It's honestly making creators pull their hair out so I can't imagine how confusing for users too if you have been away for a bit.
I would for now stick with the older viewer until PBR is more widely adopted if easier for you for now.

Whilst there are still bugs with the latest PBR deployment from LL, Firestorm I believe hasn't yet released PBR as more bugs are yet to be resolved (albeit it is now in Beta versus Alpha so I am going to test it this weekend myself too) - Hopefully I have that correctly stated @Beq Janus @Whirly Fizzle

I think I will still end up releasing my new PBR items soon,  with non PBR as a second version for now.  

 

Off topic but ... oooooo, want! That patio wall on the left is perfect for a slim modernist fireplace!

[Flea Yatsenko]

5 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

 but furniture and reusable building components really shouldn't have scene lighting baked into the materials, and that's what I fear will repeat from the bad old days when everything baked onto the diffusemap.

I fear that too. Baking is only meant to take care of shortcomings of the hardware or engine. The lighting in PBR is really good, people just need to figure it out. I also worry there is going to be a pretty big amount of residents who despise PBR and will never use it, and people who can't figure it out so just go full bright with bake. PBR is good enough you can just bake props with AO and ignore scene lighting and the viewer will make it look good. ALM didn't really succeed in that very well.

I don't think it'll be as bad as materials were. PBR is an industry standard and you can pretty much use any major game engine workflow or tutorial to figure it out. PBR has a right way and a wrong way. Materials had a bunch of different good ways, a lot of bad ways. And none of them gave you consistency between what you were using to make stuff. PBR fixes a lot of stuff. It just will be a mess because you really should be supporting legacy Blinn-Phong. Which means you have to texture once, package up, then texture again, package up.

My other big fear is people won't support Blinn-Phong, mobile viewer comes out, and people are buying things with no textures, with pictures that very clearly show textures. I'm also pretty certain there's going to be a group of users who hate PBR for whatever reason and do whatever they can to make sure a third party viewer supports ALM.

[Qie Niangao]

2 minutes ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

My other big fear is people won't support Blinn-Phong, mobile viewer comes out, and people are buying things with no textures, with pictures that very clearly show textures. I'm also pretty certain there's going to be a group of users who hate PBR for whatever reason and do whatever they can to make sure a third party viewer supports ALM.

Yeah, I wondered about that: Do we think the mobile viewer won't have PBR? That would really suck. I also dread the prospect of folks clinging to ancient non-ALM ("forward") rendering in viewers, which really will hold us back.

On the other hand, I just last week finally understood the use of Ambiance in Reflection Probes, and gosh, what a difference it makes! That alone should sell PBR to the doubters: it's the tool everybody needs to make interior lighting dramatic. Now how are they going to learn to use it?

[arton Rotaru]

2 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Yeah, I wondered about that: Do we think the mobile viewer won't have PBR? That would really suck. I also dread the prospect of folks clinging to ancient non-ALM ("forward") rendering in viewers, which really will hold us back.

Last info I remember to the question; "if the mobile client will support PBR materials?", is a reply of a Linden that was something as follows. "We expect the mobile client to support the features of the desktop client." (Don't quote me on the exact wording. pls! Nor do I remember where I read that information.)

Although that isn't a "clear" answer, but enough for me to certainly skip blinn-phong materials in any future build I do.

[Flea Yatsenko]

20 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

Last info I remember to the question; "if the mobile client will support PBR materials?", is a reply of a Linden that was something as follows. "We expect the mobile client to support the features of the desktop client." (Don't quote me on the exact wording. pls! Nor do I remember where I read that information.)

Although that isn't a "clear" answer, but enough for me to certainly skip blinn-phong materials in any future build I do.

Well it's using Unity so we can make an educated guess. Only thing I can find is this old forum post on Unity forums talking about how PBR can be disabled if the settings and turned too low. So I guess Unity can support PBR but it's going to be up to LL what they actually use.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/pbr-on-mobile.585388/

The wiki is kind of ambiguous. They kind of make it sound like mobile solutions will update to see PBR. Almost sounds like they aren't discussing their own client.

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/PBR_Materials#PBR_Stand-In_Textures_and_Outdated_Viewers

EDIT: I sure wish they were a little clearer on all of this. I'd want to know if they're not going to allow third party viewers that don't have PBR, if mobile will support it, etc. Kind of hard to adopt this is new products with so much uncertainty.

Do you make new products with no Blinn-Phong diffuse, have a client not support it, then have people buying products with no textures? Or do you spend the time and effort to support old stuff only for it it to never get used when those clients are disabled? None of us know AFAIK. And it stinks because I would love to go full PBR.

 

Edited December 4, 2023 by Flea Yatsenko