PBR WOW!

[BilliJo Aldrin]

17 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

Just getting around to seeing this. I'm impressed!  What do you like/not like about PBR so far?

https://screenrec.com/share/IVcrQq08fb

 

SL still looks as empty as it always has, and with this new feature cutting off a lot of people at the knees, it will get even emptier. WTG LL.

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

Just need to wait for people to get a grip on using reflection probes and it'll be really good.

Silly me, I originally thought reflection probes were only about reflections. Then I actually read about the "Ambiance" setting. O.M.G., it's a whole new lighting experience to design for each interior space. 

[Luna Bliss]

            LIGHT

Light, my light, the world-filling light,
the eye-kissing light,
heart-sweetening light!

Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the center of my life;
the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love;
the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth.

The butterflies spread their sails on the sea of light.
Lilies and jasmines surge up on the crest of the waves of light.

The light is shattered into gold on every cloud, my darling,
and it scatters gems in profusion.

Mirth spreads from leaf to leaf, my darling,
and gladness without measure.
The heaven's river has drowned its banks
and the flood of joy is abroad.

Rabindranath Tagore

[Spiffy Voxel]

I'm currently running the latest Alchemy Viewer to check how PBR affects my home parcel. There are some noticeable glitches, particularly around water and some custom environments. Hopefully those can either be fixed in the code or worked around. Otherwise, I've been very impressed so far! The only real downside at the moment that I can see is that Firestorm won't support it any time soon, and that will undoubtedly slow down adoption.

[Quartz Mole]

21 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Went to the full PBR Winter Wonderland region.  Didn't like being a white cloud for about a minute or the minutes it took to load the textures (all gray buildings).  I have a year and a half old desktop that was top of the line when I bought it so not a wimpy computer).   Until they get things loading faster this will be a killer for some folks.  Those on FS have some time before the have to be on a PBR viewer so that's a plus.  I will be installing the latest FS viewer soon and skipping the PBR.   

The reflections are impressive.  That's the best part.  Also on the plus side it seems like very little old content is breaking --- a big plus.    

In SANSAR the devs managed some great things eventually with load times and PBR so it is likely that things will improve.    There have been some reports from builders with some major issues. I am not part of the beta testing LOL.   

 

2 minutes later --- well, good I waited as the FS new release has been taken off due to bugs.

https://www.firestormviewer.org/woops/

 

 

We Moles have been testing the various PBR viewers for some months now (well, we had to, to build Winter Wonderland, of course, but that wasn't the only reason).   

We use a variety of machines of all  shapes and sizes -- I'm still running a GeForce GTX 660 GPU ! -- and I don't think any of us have experienced particular performance issues with the more recent builds.   At least Windows users haven't.   I know the Mac users were having difficulties not so long ago, but I think those have now been ameliorated, if not completely fixed.

[AmeliaJ08]

I'd run Firestorm PBR alpha full time but... well the lighting just looks too odd. I'll be patient, it's nice for visiting the PBR regions and looking at pretty things but not ready for full time yet IMO especially when there's a mix of content.

 

[steeljane42]

9 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

I'd run Firestorm PBR alpha full time but... well the lighting just looks too odd. I'll be patient, it's nice for visiting the PBR regions and looking at pretty things but not ready for full time yet IMO especially when there's a mix of content.

 

In SL's case there will be a mix of content pretty much forever, unless someone will focus on making their entire region PBR-only. I know I won't, though, not only it's too much work to replace/redo every single piece in a 30k region, but in some cases gains are just not worth it. And as far as just wandering around goes, then we are stuck with a mix of full bright and glow enabled prims, sculpties, mesh without old materials, with old materials and eventually with PBR forever.

11 hours ago, Spiffy Voxel said:

The only real downside at the moment that I can see is that Firestorm won't support it any time soon, and that will undoubtedly slow down adoption.

It's not a downside given current issues with PBR viewers, especially just recently fixed(?) performance degradation over time on Nvidia cards. It's not as big of a disaster as EEP rollout was, but in my opinion PBR wasn't ready to be rolled out just yet. But someone at LL really wanted to push its release before holidays season, and they did.

Edited December 10, 2023 by steeljane42
typos

[Quartz Mole]

6 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

SL still looks as empty as it always has, and with this new feature cutting off a lot of people at the knees, it will get even emptier. WTG LL.

As I understand it, it's a myth that lots of people log into SL with very low spec machines -- LL see the default graphics settings that viewers apply when they're installed, whatever people may later set them to, and apparently the vast majority of users have machines that can easily handle medium to higher-range graphics settings.    The only sizeable constituency who use very low end machines are bots, who are logged in on text-only viewers for obvious reasons.

Certainly from I've been told, people won't find that PBR means they can't log in.   It shouldn't make a big difference to people's performance, at least not with the Official Viewer.  And that's been our experience in LPDW, where we use a wide variety of different machines,  and those of who have them, have deliberately been testing PBR viewer on our low-end backup laptops. 

If your machine can't cope with particular PBR features, you won't see them, just as not everyone has been able to use particular graphics settings in the past.  It shouldn't spoil your SL.

[JUSTUS Palianta]

I really really really really really really really really hope that there is a way to turn the graphics down on viewers still.  Just because we can run SL on warp 10 graphic settings and our computers can handle it doesn't mean we want to wear our computers out on Second Life.  People already have a plethora of reasons to not log in SL and yes hardware is one.

[elleevelyn]

2 hours ago, JUSTUS Palianta said:

I really really really really really really really really hope that there is a way to turn the graphics down on viewers still

yes we can still do this in Linden Viewer 7.x

[BilliJo Aldrin]

9 hours ago, Quartz Mole said:

As I understand it, it's a myth that lots of people log into SL with very low spec machines -- LL see the default graphics settings that viewers apply when they're installed, whatever people may later set them to, and apparently the vast majority of users have machines that can easily handle medium to higher-range graphics settings.    The only sizeable constituency who use very low end machines are bots, who are logged in on text-only viewers for obvious reasons.

Certainly from I've been told, people won't find that PBR means they can't log in.   It shouldn't make a big difference to people's performance, at least not with the Official Viewer.  And that's been our experience in LPDW, where we use a wide variety of different machines,  and those of who have them, have deliberately been testing PBR viewer on our low-end backup laptops. 

If your machine can't cope with particular PBR features, you won't see them, just as not everyone has been able to use particular graphics settings in the past.  It shouldn't spoil your SL.

Thank you for the clarification. 

Yes everyone will still be able to log in, but will everything slow to a crawl?

From what I was reading "advanced lighting" will no longer be an option, but standard. That will increase the strain on all low end computers. About the only setting i use above minimum is transparent water.

I might end up at the point I was years ago before i replaced my old computer, standing on my platform IMing and entertaining my friends there 😁

[Love Zhaoying]

You'll always have Lumiya!

[Henri Beauchamp]

14 hours ago, Quartz Mole said:

We use a variety of machines of all  shapes and sizes -- I'm still running a GeForce GTX 660 GPU !

And I still got a PC with a GTX 460 (and an Intel Core Quad Q6600 with 8GB RAM) that I also use for testing viewers... Also got a GTX660 (Intel i5-2500K, 32GB RAM), a GTX970 (Intel i7-9700K, 64 GB) and my current, main PC with an RTX 3070 (Ryzen 7900X, 64GB)... And even my Linux firewall PC is used for testing, with a poor man's iGPU (UHD Graphics 605, Intel Pentium Silver J5005, 8GB RAM).

12 hours ago, Quartz Mole said:

It shouldn't make a big difference to people's performance, at least not with the Official Viewer. 

I would agree as far as you enable ALM in the (now legacy) viewers renderer (because indeed, and as long as you keep all reflections settings turned off, the PBR renderer does perform as good or even better, in most circumstances, than the ALM EE renderer), but it is an entirely different experience if you disable ALM in the latter (i.e. use the now removed ”forward rendering” mode): on old/”weak” hardware your frame rate will double, and your VRAM usage will lower enough that all the textures will look nice, instead of half blurry.

I am sorry, but many users will find PBR too costly for their hardware, especially when they want to keep the same level of rendering quality (same resolution/viewer window size, same draw distance, same objects rendering LOD settings, textures that don't go blurry on them, etc).

14 hours ago, Quartz Mole said:

 I know the Mac users were having difficulties not so long ago, but I think those have now been ameliorated, if not completely fixed.

If by ”fixing” you mean disabling HiDPI (i.e. dividing by 4 the resolution of the render), then I suppose it is fixed... But no, really, it is not an acceptable ”fix”, and much less a ”complete fix” !

 

There are also many issues with the PBR renderer as it was shipped for release. e.g. ruined shadows or ugly ”waves-like” artifacts on water bodies surface when turning around or moving forward/backward with your avatar/camera, but also rendering discrepancies with the legacy renderer, when rendering legacy contents, e.g. full bright faces not rendering properly, semi-transparent faces with legacy diffuse textures appearing much less transparent/too opaque, legacy shininess not rendering the same, legacy (non PBR) materials not shining the same way, or appearing blueish, etc, etc...

While I welcome innovation and always have been an eager early adopter, I still think that PBR, which will be a big plus for SL in the long term, has been rushed out too soon, which will sadly cause many SLers to hate it, while they should have loved it, had it been truly ready for release.

 

This is why I decided to maintain a dual renderer (EE with forward and deferred/ALM modes + PBR) in the Cool VL Viewer for as long as LL will not come up with a properly fixed PBR renderer, and for as long as people with weak/old hardware will need an alternative. And by the way, dear Moles and Lindens, if I were you, I'd use the Cool VL Viewer to test the impact and discrepancies of the PBR renderer against EE ALM and forward modes: you can switch between the rendering modes in real time, with just the ticking of a check box, making it an invaluable tool to detect rendering issues...

Edited December 10, 2023 by Henri Beauchamp
typos

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Pop quiz: can you tell which is the old materials (Blinn-Phong) and which is the new (PBR)?

 

Edited December 10, 2023 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[AmeliaJ08]

6 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Pop quiz: can you tell which is the old materials (Blinn-Phong) and which is the new (PBR)?

 

Left is PBR isn't it? I think I see environment mapping reflection

[Henri Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Left is PBR isn't it?

The other way around, I think... 🤪

Joking... But if anything, this would ”show” how personal interpretation (and taste) does ”matter in such matters”. 🤣

And for many people, the fact you need to move your camera around an object to see the lighting changes and finally declare ”oh yes, materials (PBR or not) look definitely better !”, demonstrates how much it matters for some situations; e.g. when riding/flying/sailing in/above/along SL main land: all you care about, then, is a sharp (*) picture, with fast frame rates and as few as possible loaded but accurately rezzed textures. And, surprise, surprise, in this kind of SL usage, the super-old-legacy forward rendering mode is still the best compromise you can find !.... O.O

(*) ALM/PBR totally lame FXAA anti-aliasing shader makes things look like a blurry mess (it blurs details *inside* textures, instead of dealing only with prims edges), when forward rendering GPU's native 4x SSAA looks gorgeous.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Henri Beauchamp
typos

[Teagan Tobias]

So, from the title of the video the right is PBR, I truly don’t know.

So for the record, is it as titled and the right is PBR?

Again I don’t know and to me its not clearly labeled.

But before I find out for sure I think the right looks better in the video, at least on my computer.

[Love Zhaoying]

Not sure what the OP is about, and comments about Left / Right, since I can't see it. 

 

[Luna Bliss]

33 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Not sure what the OP is about, and comments about Left / Right, since I can't see it. 

 

Hmmm...one other person mentioned they can't see embedded videos.  I don't understand it as I'm not much of a techie person. All I can say is that you guys must have screwed-up computers.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

1 hour ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Pop quiz: can you tell which is the old materials (Blinn-Phong) and which is the new (PBR)?

Left: Dull colours, glowing lightbulb filaments look very bad, specular highlights are dull and medium grey.

At a guess, I'd say the left image is the new "Pretentious Bloody Rubbish" Lag-Render (tm).

 

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Left is PBR isn't it? I think I see environment mapping reflection

I think so. The clue is on YouTube:

Quote

This is the TBF Positronic Battle Robot. It has both Blinn-Phong materials _and_ PBR materials applied to it. One capture was made using an old Second Life viewer showing the robot's Blinn-Phong materials. The other capture was made simultaneously, using the new Second Life viewer showing the robot's PBR materials. 

We're actually seeing differences in viewer, more than materials. In the PBR viewer, the Blinn-Phong materials would also show reflections very differently. (The shoes caught my eye as having particularly detailed reflections as the robot turned.)

[AmeliaJ08]

10 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I think so. The clue is on YouTube:

We're actually seeing differences in viewer, more than materials. In the PBR viewer, the Blinn-Phong materials would also show reflections very differently. (The shoes caught my eye as having particularly detailed reflections as the robot turned.)

Seems most visible in the feet, the right one isn't reflecting the light in a natural way at all, it almost looks like baked lighting even if it isn't.

Less obvious in the body but as it turns we do see the environment reflecting in the left, it's less flashy looking for sure but more natural.

 

 

Edited December 10, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[AmeliaJ08]

14 hours ago, Quartz Mole said:

LL see the default graphics settings that viewers apply when they're installed,

Has LL ever considered making this data public? anonymized of course, much like how Valve publish Steam hardware 'survey' data each month.

For a platform driven by user generated content this data would be valuable information for creators.

Edited December 10, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Luna Bliss said:

Hmmm...one other person mentioned they can't see embedded videos.  I don't understand it as I'm not much of a techie person. All I can say is that you guys must have screwed-up computers.

Or, it's not supported on cellphones. I'm using my phone, if you count that as a "computer" then..ok!

If the video is that interesting, I'll take your word for it and try to watch it on my "computer" (not my phone) if I remember.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

28 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

it almost looks like baked lighting even if it isn't.

It's both. I used both baked specular maps and Blinn-Phong specular maps. This is not what everyone does, just me and only a few other creators that I know of. It's a matter of taste. I tend to think it just gives the object a little bit more depth and dynamic color range. I have even been experimenting with this while making PBR materials. There's a slight hint of baked speculars in the baseColor maps there too, but in the example in the video much less profoundly than in the Blinn-Phong version.