New viewer version 7.0.1.6 looks really bright and pixelated

[arton Rotaru]

20 minutes ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

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.

 

 

Right, the wording is ambiguous. I think if the mobile client doesn't do PBR materials in a world full of PBR materials it's a failed product.

On Desktop my stance is like this: PBR is gridwide already, the default viewer is PBR. TPV will follow soon with non beta versions. So it's everybodys own fault to not pick a capable viewer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited December 4, 2023 by arton Rotaru

[arton Rotaru]

Oh and here is another thing. We are most likely going to see a lot of foliage (possibly other stuff) taking advantage of the Double Sided feature of a PBR material. Can't fake that with a Blinn-Phong fallback texture. So such stuff would render broken anyways on non PBR viewers.

Edited December 4, 2023 by arton Rotaru

[LipstickAndDreams]

11 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

I also dread the prospect of folks clinging to ancient non-ALM ("forward") rendering in viewers, which really will hold us back.

You mean anybody who has older hardware and can't afford an upgrade? My benchmarks for PBR viewers on the older iGPU machines I have tested don't give me good feelings about this. You don't see it now because a lot of the people aware of the coming updates are enthusiasts with better hardware (myself included to be fair,) but there is absolutely going to be pushback once Firestorm implements this.

Edited December 5, 2023 by LipstickAndDreams

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, LipstickAndDreams said:

You mean anybody who has older hardware and can't afford an upgrade? My benchmarks for PBR viewers on the older iGPU machines I have tested don't give me good feelings about this. You don't see it now because a lot of the people aware of the coming updates are enthusiasts with better hardware (myself included to be fair,) but there is absolutely going to be pushback once Firestorm implements this.

To be honest, until recently I didn't realize they'd be going full PBR for everybody, just that they'd finally kill the forward rendering path which has left creators hesitant about even using Blinn-Phong materials and even projected lights for… like a decade or more? Obviously, though, PBR is demanding more than just ALM (at least the way I'm running PBR it sure is), so I can see where that pushback may be significant.

This is a place where the mobile viewer just might buy some slack. I know folks (admittedly not SL folks) with way more graphics capability in their mid-range smartphones than their desktop PCs that mostly run QuickBooks, Excel, and maybe a browser. On the other hand there are SL folks with no smartphone at all, so it may not help that much I guess.

[LipstickAndDreams]

8 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

To be honest, until recently I didn't realize they'd be going full PBR for everybody, just that they'd finally kill the forward rendering path which has left creators hesitant about even using Blinn-Phong materials and even projected lights for… like a decade or more? Obviously, though, PBR is demanding more than just ALM (at least the way I'm running PBR it sure is), so I can see where that pushback may be significant.

This is a place where the mobile viewer just might buy some slack. I know folks (admittedly not SL folks) with way more graphics capability in their mid-range smartphones than their desktop PCs that mostly run QuickBooks, Excel, and maybe a browser. On the other hand there are SL folks with no smartphone at all, so it may not help that much I guess.

Yep. I suspect a lot of people in this category are going to either switch to the Cool VL Viewer, or just drop out of SL entirely.

As for the mobile viewer, it is based on Unity. Nothing could possibly go wrong with this!

Edited December 5, 2023 by LipstickAndDreams
peepeepoopoo

[OptimoMaximo]

On 12/3/2023 at 6:40 PM, Flea Yatsenko said:

unless you think the mobile viewer is going to completely fail.

This.

First, because it's Unity based. Its ecosystem of partially co-working features that are mutually exclusive makes it hard to release anything other than the base (legacy) rendering pipeline.

Second, the recent Unity Technology screwup with its install fee, which is still applicable to all products released from 2024 on, now "adjusted" to either a per install fee or 2.5% royalty fee on gross revenue, whichever is cheaper. So good luck with LL releasing the mobile viewer to begin with 🤣 I guess it will slowly and silently die off, like other projects (muscadine for example)

Edited December 26, 2023 by OptimoMaximo