PBR WOW!

[Bagnu]

Personally, I'm waiting for Firestorm to implement PBR.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 minute ago, Bagnu said:

Personally, I'm waiting for Firestorm to implement PBR.

Don't rush them: they need to get this right. The alpha PBR viewer is horribly laggy.

[Bagnu]

11 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Don't rush them: they need to get this right. The alpha PBR viewer is horribly laggy.

I really don't think they'll rush. Well, maybe not TOO much. It's exciting though. Basically a way of raytracing.

[Bagnu]

Another interesting question. How far into to realism do we TRULY want to go. Do we want to maintain a cartoony look, or do we want to see our AV's as fully implemented RL avatars?

[Luna Bliss]

[Zalificent Corvinus]

6 hours ago, Bagnu said:

I wouldn't take anything tech related from Zalificent seriously. 

That statement is laughable, coming from somebody who goes on to say something as technically WRONG as...

 

1 hour ago, Bagnu said:

It's exciting though. Basically a way of raytracing.

PBR is not, in any way, shape, or form a "way of raytracing". PBR is most commonly used in games that do NOT support any kind of ray-tracing, It was basically rolled out at Siggraph 2010, years before the invention of 20x0 series RTX GPU cards.

 

There is NO ray tracing in PBR.

 

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Please help me understand your example.

Which clock is which (you didn't spell it out)? I assumed that the clock on the right in the second picture was PBR because of the reflection. Why is the left-side clock in the first picture white / not rezzed (if non-PBR and that is not the PBR clock, why wouldn't it be rezzed)?

Thanks!

 

Sorry. The clock on the LEFT is the PBR clock. The clock on the RIGHT is a typical baked - substance painter version that we are used to.  

So  folks in Firestorm or another 3rd part un-PBR viewer see ONLY glow on the PBR model.  When looking at the same objects in the Linden viewer both are much darker (exact same EEP, same place etc.) .

 

I adjusted the EEP so that they would both be viewable. Honestly "I" like the non-PBR better. 

This is a mod item and I am guessing from my time in Sansar I could adjust it by "cheating" so that I could actually see it in the FS viewer now. That is how I made all my things in Sansar and avoided PBR. :D.  I did NOT test that however. Someone else might want to.  In SANSAR you could put a solid color texture (just a few pixels big) in one slot of metal and a different grayscale tone for the other "problematic" shader.  I don't remember know what that was called.  

This could work differently however.  You would need to be in the Linden viewer to make the changes though. Sort of a catch22 thing.  

[Love Zhaoying]

18 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Sorry. The clock on the LEFT is the PBR clock. The clock on the RIGHT is a typical baked - substance painter version that we are used to.  

I see, so the "reflection" on the right in the second picture is "fake" / "baked".

Thanks!

[FelicityPage]

I found low end computer settings for LL's PBR Viewer. I implemented them. (see image)

FPS in sims without any avatars, and very few objects, just myself being rendered pretty much: 30FPS

FPS in sims with only objects, no avatars:

20FPS Tested at Crab Island in Belli http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Springhurst Gulf/217/171/22 

17-20FPS at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Beckridge/95/60/23

13-15 FPS at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Garden of Dreams/184/64/36

FPS in sims with avatars: 
This is for a pc with no dedicated graphics card, on wifi (see graphics preferences image)

10-12FPS, lag and freezing up when trying to do anything, at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Blue Moon Bay/182/77/24 (72 avatars on sim, but no one above 20k complexity is rendered, are jelly dolls)

7-10FPS, lag and freezing up when trying to do anything, at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Muddys Music Cafe/38/159/22 (64 avatars on sim, but no one above 20k complexity is rendered, are jelly dolls)

10-12FPS, lag and freezing up when trying to do anything, at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VELOUR/90/126/83

Help!
Anyone know how to stop my head from following the mouse in LL viewer when not using AO? ( I know how to do it in Firestorm but can't find it in LL Viewer)

How do I individually derender objects in LL Viewer? ( I know how to do it in Firestorm but can't find it in LL Viewer)

[Rowan Amore]

2 hours ago, FelicityPage said:

I found low end computer settings for LL's PBR Viewer. I implemented them. (see image)

FPS in sims without any avatars, and very few objects, just myself being rendered pretty much: 30FPS

FPS in sims with only objects, no avatars:

20FPS Tested at Crab Island in Belli http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Springhurst Gulf/217/171/22 

17-20FPS at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Beckridge/95/60/23

13-15 FPS at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Garden of Dreams/184/64/36

FPS in sims with avatars: 
This is for a pc with no dedicated graphics card, on wifi (see graphics preferences image)

10-12FPS, lag and freezing up when trying to do anything, at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Blue Moon Bay/182/77/24 (72 avatars on sim, but no one above 20k complexity is rendered, are jelly dolls)

7-10FPS, lag and freezing up when trying to do anything, at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Muddys Music Cafe/38/159/22 (64 avatars on sim, but no one above 20k complexity is rendered, are jelly dolls)

10-12FPS, lag and freezing up when trying to do anything, at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/VELOUR/90/126/83

Help!
Anyone know how to stop my head from following the mouse in LL viewer when not using AO? ( I know how to do it in Firestorm but can't find it in LL Viewer)

How do I individually derender objects in LL Viewer? ( I know how to do it in Firestorm but can't find it in LL Viewer)

There is no derender in the LL viewer.

[Paul Hexem]

21 hours ago, LipstickAndDreams said:

LL's implementation is not. Whether or not this is because they have reached the limit of OpenGL's performance capability given the overabundance of complex objects in SL, I don't know. What I do know is that the viewer's efficiency should have been prioritized before introducing shiny new crap.

Correct. We should be on a much more modern rendering tech. DX10, DX11, Vulkan... We know the possibilities are there thanks to guys like @animats. Except every time that's floated, this same kind of argument comes up.

12 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I don't think this is about the general principles of change vs. stagnation. I don't see anyone advocating for the latter.

Rather, it's about the choices LL is making, and their implementation. Any suggestion otherwise is a misreading or a misrepresentation.

It's hard to give the benefit of the doubt when every time anything's suggested to forward the technology of SL, these same arguments come up almost word for word.

Like, for example...

9 hours ago, Bagnu said:

I just looked up Roblox. Sorry, that is NOT my SL in any way shape or form. I want NOTHING to do with anything even vaguely like that.

Bolded for emphasis.

Stable servers, a modern rendering engine, reliable in-world communication, we want nothing like that in SL!

[Tomas McConaught]

I see this discussion from the perspective of a basically standard user, not an industry professional - I use prims mostly when I build, with an occasional mesh item, but that's about it.

The problem with mesh and now PBR as I see it is that we don't have the tools in SL (or if we do, they are not well advertised) that we had with prims.  Remember the Tower of Prims?  It was a great learning tool, and one that was absolutely necessary given the state of the art back then.  Have you seen the Tower of Mesh?  I doubt it, as I have not seen such a thing.  How about the Tower of PBR?

We still have a lot of creativity in SL - I am continuously amazed by it.  But not having the tools for people to have fun making things like dedicated amateurs is what is leaving us with professional monopolists in a lot of cases.  At the same time, I was shocked to see reporting that some were suggesting that prims (i.e., the tools used by normal every-day users) should be removed from SL entirely.  

I am a big fan of what SL is attempting to do these days.  Yes, there have been some missteps - I even complained about some of them earlier in this thread.  Problems happen when one ventures into the unknown.

I just think we should be empowering the community more, so that the community can multiply the efforts of the Lindens and the moles. 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

Bolded for emphasis.

Stable servers, a modern rendering engine, reliable in-world communication, we want nothing like that in SL!

Well, I think you just said it. Of course everyone WANTS a more stable platform, better rendering engine, etc. I am pretty sure that Sandor was referencing the cartoony look of Roboblox and the general "culture" of the platform, not its tech side. And that goes for most of us, of course: if we wanted to "live" in Roboblox, we'd be there instead of here.

I'm not sure what "same arguments" you're referencing, Paul; in general, I'm not clear on your perspective here. Do you want the fundamentals fixed first, before introducing new shiny? I take it that's what you mean? Can you clarify?

 

[animats]

2 hours ago, Tomas McConaught said:

How about the Tower of PBR?

That's a good idea. There's a collection of random examples of PBR over at Rumpus Room, and there are more on the beta grid. But they're not organized for instruction and training. That would be a good project for someone at Builders Brewery. We need a few little dioramas which show scenes with good materials and lighting. A good start would be a well done warm living room, with ordinary items such as wooden furniture and leather upholstery, using PBR textures that match real-world materials, and good lighting. Maybe re-decorate some of the model Linden homes at WelcomeHub.

Here are some free PBR textures. Enjoy.

2 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

We should be on a much more modern rendering tech. DX10, DX11, Vulkan... We know the possibilities are there thanks to guys like @animats. Except every time that's floated, this same kind of argument comes up.

Realize that what I'm doing in Sharpview is very bleeding edge. It's all in Rust. It uses many Rust crates that are under heavy development. I've spent several years now pushing and pulling on about a half dozen Rust projects to get things fixed on their side. It's coming along reasonably well, but it's taken much longer than it should have. You cannot yet bet a business on that technology. In a year, it may be different.

LL is taking a cautious, incremental approach, so as not to break things. I don't fault them for that. I have my disagreements with LL, but not over their cautious approach to the live world.

Remember, they tried an incompatible redo - Sansar.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

3 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

We should be on a much more modern rendering tech. DX10, DX11, Vulkan...

There is a deep problem, in the way change is often promoted in SL.

So, it comes down to a choice.

You can introduce some badly developed new shiny, that accidentally drives 30/40/50 % of your user base away because they CAN'T afford a new "leet gamerz (tm)" rig every year.

Or.

You can deliberately say "Awful Mac Propriatory Lock-In Fail Tech users on SnobBooks with Metal Arms, account for 5 % of our user base, and they are holding us back, kick them to the kerb and lets switch from OpenGL, which we originally chose because it supported the Mac cultists and PC's, to something PC Windows based that also lets us keep the PC Linux minority too".

Then you can switch to DirectX 11 or 12, which would probably be easier than switching to Vulkan.

 

3 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

It's hard to give the benefit of the doubt when every time anything's suggested to forward the technology of SL, these same arguments come up almost word for word.

See, you say something like "Lets slavishly imitate CrapBlox!" because you want...

3 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

Stable servers, a modern rendering engine, reliable in-world communication

...but the people you're ranting against hear...

3 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

A game made for 9 year olds, policed by an army of banhammer morality mods, from a call centre in Turbanistan, who don't even speak your language, a game with crappy avatars, with limited options, and a horrendous percentile take by the company on anything you make and sell there, assuming you are even allowed to make and sell stuff because it might violate the PG-9 rating

And the moment they hear that, they lose all interest in you suggesting SL imitates CrapBlox, because they DON'T want to live their SecondLives in a PG-9 rated Sharia Law dictatorship run by banhammer wielding call centre workers in the 3rd World, while forced to wear an avatar they hate the look of, in a system flooded with kids.

 

It's a PR/Marketing failure on your part, failing to understand the implications of saying "CrapBlox, we must copy CrapBlox because Zillions of 9 year olds use it!" to SecondLifers.

Same goes for people demanding that SL becomes a clone of IMVSpew, that instantly puts a lot of people off, including most of the IMVSpew Boat Peiople, who slipped past the armed guards on the beaches, to sail to SL in a 40 gallon oil drum paddling with a piece of driftwood, in search of a better SecondLife.

 

Could we have a decent PBR capable engine running under DX11, with better performance, probably. Will we? Probably not as long as LL keep chasing the imaginary "better people" who "OBVIOUSLY use Awful Mac because its more expensive".

Instead they will prevaricate, contemplate moving to Vulkan, put that off because its "too hard right now", try cram in some new shiny, that doesn't work properly and that almost nobody benefits from, like that webcam auto gurning thing, and then sulk when most of us DON'T lick the devs butt cracks in gratitude for a broken thing we never wanted.

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

3 hours ago, animats said:

Here are some free PBR textures. Enjoy.

Did you check if those are DirectX based PBR textures or OpenGL based PBR Textures, as the normal maps for DirectX and OpenGL have differences.

There's some nice wooden flooring there, but, realistically, no nicer than the ALM-Materials texture packs you can get on the SL MP, often for 1 L$ if you watch the promo offers at JuBran.

[AmeliaJ08]

14 hours ago, Bagnu said:

Personally, I'm waiting for Firestorm to implement PBR.

You and basically everyone else. Hard not to notice that despite the feature being 'launched' there's not really a flood of content that uses it... because Firestorm doesn't use it yet.

 

[LipstickAndDreams]

21 hours ago, Bagnu said:

I just looked up Roblox. Sorry, that is NOT my SL in any way shape or form. I want NOTHING to do with anything even vaguely like that.

you people took my silly analogy way too literally. too tired to explain it right now

[animats]

8 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Instead they will prevaricate, contemplate moving to Vulkan, put that off because its "too hard right now", try cram in some new shiny, that doesn't work properly and that almost nobody benefits from,

That's a concern. LL has a tendency to half-implement something, declare a victory, and go home. That happened with Project Interesting, with pathfinding, with animesh, and with large crowd support. We're maybe half way through the graphics modernization project (PBR, wide dynamic range lighting, cheaper lights, Vulkan). I hope they don't give up.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

3 minutes ago, animats said:

We're maybe half way through the graphics modernization project (PBR, wide dynamic range lighting, cheaper lights, Vulkan). I hope they don't give up.

Based off how well they did with Pathfinding, EEP, and now PBR, it's probably safer for SL if they do give up now, before they do any more damage.

[Cube Republic]

PBR content is much better, much more efficient and has a much lighter texturing overhead. Content creators don't need to bake everything down now with light and shadows. The PBR project has been handled really well by the devs, with loads of feedback being taken on board from residents. I've been involved so far as I've been to every content creators meeting since PBR was announced and there's been great communications. I've read with broad strokes a lot of posts here and many don't seem to align with the experience I've had. 

The whole pipeline has really freed me up as a creator. For example uploading 1 material at once rather than applying separate textures and the drag n drop of materials is a massive time saver, with more time saving improvements on the horizon. 

 

 

 

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

On 12/15/2023 at 1:10 PM, Arielle Popstar said:

There was quite a market for Lumiya in spite of it not being promoted to new users until they were signed up and made aware of alternative SL viewers. I would imagine there will be quite a larger market when it is being advertised on the front page because other then certain unnamed Captain Oldbies, most of the world is or has gone to a more mobile style of gaming.

And I'll keep claiming mobile appliances can do it other than for high end gamers who aren't happy with anything but the latest and greatest desktop. Granted that for the smaller screens the Lab may have to actually get inventive and clean up and streamline the MP and and inventory UI's, but there is plenty of other game platforms that have shown them how if they actually cared to look at anything other then their own backyard. According to a few articles from the last few years the industry is looking how and why PBR can be adopted to a mobile market so no doubt it is on the Lab's to do list. Link, and another

 

Evolution creation of the hunchback species 

[LipstickAndDreams]

4 hours ago, Cube Republic said:

The whole pipeline has really freed me up as a creator. For example uploading 1 material at once rather than applying separate textures and the drag n drop of materials is a massive time saver, with more time saving improvements on the horizon. 

 

 

 

Yeah, there is that. Just please have mercy on us potato users, and at least put a base color texture in the diffuse slot

[Zalificent Corvinus]

5 hours ago, Cube Republic said:

The whole pipeline has really freed me up as a creator.

Well, that's nice for you as a creator.

Shame it craps on FPS for your customers while ruining the appearance of everything they own,.

Will you still rave about it when 30/40/50% of your customers drop out of SL because their pc's cant cope with the badly designed and implemented mess.

IT'S NOT READY AND SHOULD NOT ROLL OUT YET

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

[Snip - wrong thread]

 

Edited December 18, 2023 by Arduenn Schwartzman