PBR WOW!

[Cube Republic]

My PC is from 2017 and I have everything switched to ultra, it's so crap that its probably only worth 200$ so the entry to running SL isn't that high is it? 

I'm not getting the darkness like people are reporting here and I've developed a few things in PBR . I used a mega (120x120x120m) around my woodland as a probe which made everything look more dynamic. I've not tried with interior probes yet and I'm a bit puzzled by it because the shapes are somewhat restrictive. 

'Why would 50% of my customers drop out  of SL'? Especially now that my products look better , have lower LI and use fewer resources?  Three maps are being packed into one 'texture' as it stands, and most materials will only have this combined map and normal;, color map, so there's no more mb in download for materials and as I've already said we don't have to stream baked textures now which are overly used in builds. 

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

16 minutes ago, Cube Republic said:

'Why would 50% of my customers drop out  of SL'?

"Cheesus H Toast on a chocolate crutch, this Pretentious Bloody Rubbish thing has dropped my FPS to 3, and my laptop is MELTINNNNNNNNNG!"

 

17 minutes ago, Cube Republic said:

Especially now that my products look better

Matter of opinion, SL's PBR only really improves glossy metal, and only for creators who didn't RTFM and learn how to use ALM-Materials in the first place. And they won't see your new content at all, if they can't log in without massive FPS drop, and overheating pc's.

 

23 minutes ago, Cube Republic said:

My PC is from 2017 and I have everything switched to ultra

Which means that it's probably got a lot more grunt than most non "leet-gamerz (tm)" rigs, so basically bragging that you have a power pc, so it's ok for you therefore it's ok for everyone, is a fraudulent argument.

 

19 minutes ago, Cube Republic said:

have lower LI

PBR doesn't lower Land Impact.

 

19 minutes ago, Cube Republic said:

and use fewer resources?

That is not guaranteed, potentially 4 maps versus 3.

 

21 minutes ago, Cube Republic said:

and as I've already said we don't have to stream baked textures now which are overly used in builds

No streaming a "baked diffuse" doesn't cut resource usage since you are replacing it with an unbaked "colour map".

 

You say you went to all the PBR dev meetings. Shame you learned sod all about PBR at them isn't it.

[Cube Republic]

You're the one who clearly doesn't 'know sod all' if you think '50% of SL residents are going to up and leave' because linden lab improved the graphic rendering system. 

The real percentages to look at with any new feature in SL is 

• A small vocal group of forum users are going to say the sky is falling

Yes its less resource intensive because you don't need to bake loads of textures for every composite part of a build, a 256x256 metal material can do loads of work, where as content creators in the past would bake that on.

I create PBR materials in substance designer procedurally, and have just released a PBR woodland. I taught myself to do this because I like making plants for video games, it's like my vocation, so in that respect I possibly do know a little above 'sod all'. I can reduce LI with PBR because it includes a double sided rendering feature which I can fully utilize for plants. 

 

Edited December 18, 2023 by Cube Republic

[Scylla Rhiadra]

34 minutes ago, Cube Republic said:

A small vocal group of forum users are going to say the sky is falling

I'll certainly agree that the forum is not a very representative sampling of SL residents, in lots of ways.

But with all due respect, many of the concerns expressed here are based 1) on our own experience of the performance issues associated with the new PBR viewers, and 2) a reasonably wide acquaintance with a number of non-forumites in-world who may already be struggling with low FPS, and for whom this may indeed become "the killer app," in a bad way.

I am struck by how often I'll hear from someone who loves loves loves PBR, who will reassure everyone that performance isn't a problem because their FPS on Ultra only dropped from 110 FPS to 70 FPS. At a guess, those who have been developing this, and those testing it, are going to be almost by definition people with very powerful computers: they self-select because they are already interested, or invested in, high-quality graphics.

An awful lot of SL residents do not fall into that category.

My frame rates have pretty much uniformly fallen by about 50%, using three different PBR viewers across two different computers, one of which is brand new. (Performance in the alpha FS viewer, which admittedly is still in development, rendered my FPS so low as to make it almost unusable.) I'm fortunate in that I can still function, mostly, at an FPS of between about 18 and 30, which is what I'm now getting -- but a lot of people don't have that kind of margin.

I am not, personally, against advances that "modernize" and hopefully improve SL's rendering. But I am concerned, as I've said before, that some, including people I know, are going to find the new viewers almost impossible laggy. Could this not have been rolled out after improvements were made to its performance? And with better options to accommodate such people?

Because they are not simply expendable.

[Qie Niangao]

19 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

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.

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Could this not have been rolled out after improvements were made to its performance?

There's a tradeoff, right there. Well, not so much Firestorm per se, which indeed plans PBR to be the next standard release, but the general availability of PBR in viewers will open the floodgate for PBR content, the lack of which delays adoption. It's a bit chicken-and-egg deciding when to roll out the new feature and make it standard.

The corporate animal in me thinks some Linden's year-end bonus depends on PBR being the standard viewer release (and getting the Mobile viewer to alpha, but that's a different forum, and maybe a different exec). But even without a hypothetical bonus, at some point in development it's time to fish or cut bait.

The risk now is the Lab's habit of declaring victory and moving on to the next big thing while the previous grid-stakes project is hitched together with chewing gum and baling wire. Somewhere, Karen-Barbie is already whining "Where is my planar mirror? You promised!" How long can our exec stonewall "who's the fairest of them all?"

Meanwhile, besides performance, there's still some hot garbage in the PBR viewer. Throw a little blended alpha under that new fast-rendering Linden water and see what it's made of, as one example. It's no time to unfurl that "Mission Accomplished" banner, bonus or no bonus.

Just one note about the dearth of PBR content at the moment, despite it being on the beta grid for ages: remember, testers were cautioned that everything there was in flux (uh, yeah, no lie), and once it came to Agni test channels we were reminded that premature PBR on Marketplace was strictly forbidden until it was on all regions. I'm not among the cult of creator worship, but I think they deserve some slack in this case.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 hours ago, Cube Republic said:

Yes its less resource intensive because you don't need to bake loads of textures for every composite part of a build, a 256x256 metal material can do loads of work, where as content creators in the past would bake that on.

That statement proved you know sod all about ALM materials, if a 256 metal texture can be tilled onto lots of metallic components in PBR, it can be tiled onto lots of metallic components in ALM-Mats.

 

2 hours ago, Cube Republic said:

I create PBR materials in substance designer procedurally

How you create your texture maps for upload to PBR is irrelevant, procedural, photographic, or hand painted, what matters here is HOW YOU USE THEM.

 

2 hours ago, Cube Republic said:

and have just released a PBR woodland

I know, I checked your store when I read your previous post. You "PBR pine trees" again proves the lack of understanding, there is NO advantage in SL PBR for a pine tree over ALM-Materials, none, tiled bark ambient map, with normal and roughness, vs tiled bark diffuse with normal map and the "roughness" in the alpha channel of the materials map.

That you don't understand that means you didn't learn the difference between SL BPR and ALM-Materials.

Also, £reduced LI and resources" ? A Pine tree with a Land Impact of 18 ? LMFAO.

 

2 hours ago, Cube Republic said:

I can reduce LI with PBR because it includes a double sided rendering feature which I can fully utilize for plants. 

The main LI impact on a plant isn't the single or double sided mesh but the physics, which won't change, if you were making EFFICIENT content, the change in LI would be minimal, but I suppose on something as inefficient as an 18 LI pine tree, lowering it from 19 to 18 probably seems like a big deal.

 

2 hours ago, Cube Republic said:

I taught myself to do this

Yeah it shows.

 

2 hours ago, Cube Republic said:

You're the one who clearly doesn't 'know sod all' if you think '50% of SL residents are going to up and leave' because linden lab improved the graphic rendering system. 

Peiople won't leave because of "an improved graphics system" but because for THEM, it's not "improved" and in fact severely damages their SL Quality of Life, you assume that because you have some i9 with 32 gb of ram, and a 2060 rtx, running everything at ultra, which despite the performance hits of ALM, and now PBR still delivers a potential FPS thats higher than the 60htz refresh rate on your monitor, means its all good, and that "obviously" everyone else in SL has a machine at least as good as yours.

 

They don't, somebody on an i3 laptop with 4gb ram, and intel hd graphics, might get frame rates with ALM on of less than 5 fps. seeing that hammered down to 1 or 2 by PBR won't encourage them to stay and buy 18LI LAG-trees from you.

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

31 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

The risk now is the Lab's habit of declaring victory and moving on to the next big thing while the previous grid-stakes project is hitched together with chewing gum and baling wire. Somewhere, Karen-Barbie is already whining "Where is my planar mirror? You promised!" How long can our exec stonewall "who's the fairest of them all?"

^^ THIS.

It's bothered me hearing people running around for months screaming "ooooooh PBR, wee can haz mirrors now! Futureness!" when I know it means nothing of the sort.

 

33 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Just one note about the dearth of PBR content at the moment,

Realistically, the only people whining about "a lack of PBR content" are the content creators who plan to cash in on this by exploiting consumers lack of tech savvy, and you.

Nobody else really cares, the performance issues and rendering flaws are FAR more of an issue than a lack of PBR Pine trees.

 

What is almost certainly going to happen is parasite-vendors punting out "Now with PBR and a 50% price hike" editions of old content, that offer exactly NO benefits over the old non PBR versions. I expect to see a ton of "PBR skins" for avatars with BS claims that it makes your skin look better, when it almost certainly won't. They will shove their 1024 diffuse textures into the colour map channel, shove their misused dark grey spec colour maps into the roughness channel, reuse the same normal, scream "It's PBR now, and relist on the MP at inflated "futureness" prices.

 

Realistically, 90% of "PBR content created in the first 6 - 12 months will be trash. Just like it was for ALM-Materials back when.

 

Don't forget the PRIM rings, detached from Left Hand, attached to Left Ring Finger, position edited, then relisted as "Bento Rings, within 24 hours of the Bento Launch, or the "you must now buy a Bento shape", people even tried selling "bento skin".

 

[Jenna Huntsman]

On 12/17/2023 at 2:46 AM, FelicityPage said:

lag and freezing up when trying to do anything

If you're having issues with the viewer freezing up and stalling, submit a JIRA - https://jira.secondlife.com/

The engineers who can fix this don't read these forum threads - but submitting a JIRA will bring these kinds of issues to their attention, so they can be fixed.

[Paul Hexem]

On 12/17/2023 at 3:30 AM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

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?

I mean, any time any change is suggested, either for fundamental parts of the viewer or grid, or new features, these same arguments come up. Doesn't matter what the change is, it's always the same argument. That it's going to drive everyone off the grid because it lags all the computers and SL isn't a game so we shouldn't copy anything games do.

Every time.

5 hours ago, Cube Republic said:

You're the one who clearly doesn't 'know sod all' if you think '50% of SL residents are going to up and leave' because linden lab improved the graphic rendering system. 

The real percentages to look at with any new feature in SL is 

• A small vocal group of forum users are going to say the sky is falling

I'm not the only person that notices it, clearly.

4 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I am not, personally, against advances that "modernize" and hopefully improve SL's rendering. But I am concerned, as I've said before, that some, including people I know, are going to find the new viewers almost impossible laggy. Could this not have been rolled out after improvements were made to its performance? And with better options to accommodate such people?

I've said before and I'll say it again- it's not hard to get your hands on modern hardware that can keep up, even on a budget. It might mean waiting for sales, buying a generation behind, begging or borrowing, or installing a part yourself, but it is possible. Especially today when we have so many resources, youtube, online sales, and more, that we can take advantage of. "How to replace GPU" is a 10 minute video and you'd be able to confidently do it on any computer.

SL is a game, as far as our PC hardware is concerned. We have to approach it the same way and buy the appropriate hardware.

Every hobby has recurring costs, be it parts, supplies, whatever. If your hobby is SL, the cost is upgrading PC hardware somewhat regularly. Gotta do it or get left behind. The proverbial boat won't wait for you if you're late.

[Paul Hexem]

20 hours ago, animats said:

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.

This is really what we should be concerned about, if anything.

Edited December 18, 2023 by Paul Hexem

[AmeliaJ08]

13 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

SL is a game, as far as our PC hardware is concerned. We have to approach it the same way and buy the appropriate hardware.

It is significant that appropriate-enough hardware is now becoming standard, particularly in laptops. We're talking in the past year or two though, Iris Xe or integrated Arc is probably 'enough' and will be standardised for the most part even in the cheapest machines going forward. Not ideal but enough.

I think a lot of people do attempt to run SL on older integrated GPUs though and the results are predictably awful, I wouldn't go as far as to say unusable but... it's probably close. Intel UHD graphics (the 630 which was included in chip designs for many years in the past decade) is not sufficiently powerful to run SL in Advanced Lighting Model really, same goes for AMD with their integrated graphics options, the only exception in their case being the integrated Radeon 680M and 780M that some (rare) AMD mobile CPUs have.

LL probably need to make one thing more clear to new users from now on: dedicated GPU is almost a requirement except for a few currently quite rare cases. Hopefully that changes as these newer chips start to be included in just about every laptop though.

 

Edited December 18, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Love Zhaoying]

In addition to "SHAMWOW!", this thread's title often reminds me of "TV Kid POW", which was a call-in TV game where kids shouted "POW!" into the phone to control a game.

 

[Janet Voxel]

6 hours ago, Cube Republic said:

The real percentages to look at with any new feature in SL is 

• A small vocal group of forum users are going to say the sky is falling

I’m all for a PBR viewer. I’m excited for it. However, in its current state it runs like pure doo-doo. This is a fairly recent thing as it ran great up until a couple of builds ago. 
 

The point of this whole thing was viewed as an upgrade. So it shouldn’t be running worse than it did a year ago without PBR. I’ve found myself going back to Firestorm after not using it for a loooong time. Something is not right. It’s that simple.

[Paul Hexem]

48 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

LL probably need to make one thing more clear to new users from now on: dedicated GPU is almost a requirement except for a few currently quite rare cases. Hopefully that changes as these newer chips start to be included in just about every laptop though.

That's another problem with the "It's not a game!" mentality, yeah.

LL's gotta put the hardware requirements up front just like games do, and keep the info updated. The current hardware requirements on their page are a giant lie by omission.

[Arielle Popstar]

1 hour ago, Paul Hexem said:

SL is a game, as far as our PC hardware is concerned. We have to approach it the same way and buy the appropriate hardware.

Every hobby has recurring costs, be it parts, supplies, whatever. If your hobby is SL, the cost is upgrading PC hardware somewhat regularly. Gotta do it or get left behind. The proverbial boat won't wait for you if you're late.

The problem is the forced updates without leaving the optional parameters as they were and just adding a new parameter (PBR) for those who can make use of it. The lab is so worried about breaking legacy content but have no issue forcing upgrades of questionable value that break legacy computers and graphic cards worth many times that legacy content.

There is no reason to force viewer updates when the only potential upside is a some added eye candy.

[Theresa Tennyson]

2 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

The problem is the forced updates without leaving the optional parameters as they were and just adding a new parameter (PBR) for those who can make use of it. The lab is so worried about breaking legacy content but have no issue forcing upgrades of questionable value that break legacy computers and graphic cards worth many times that legacy content.

There is no reason to force viewer updates when the only potential upside is a some added eye candy.

Who in the name of Pete's blue bicycle is forcing people to do anything? There are a variety of supported viewers that use older technology. 

[Arielle Popstar]

2 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Who in the name of Pete's blue bicycle is forcing people to do anything? There are a variety of supported viewers that use older technology. 

Only because the PBR viewer just came out for the mainstream and by FS's next release will then be a matter of time before it too is the default. The Lab is forcing the issue.

[Cube Republic]

 

Attacking peoples work, attacking their knowledge and just generally being an obnoxious all round person  isn't cool.

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

5 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Only because the PBR viewer just came out for the mainstream and by FS's next release will then be a matter of time before it too is the default. The Lab is forcing the issue.

There is nothing stopping another viewer developer to continue supporting forward rendering. I imagine Henri will do it until the heat death of the universe Second Life.

[Cube Republic]

4 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

There is nothing stopping another viewer developer to continue supporting forward rendering. I imagine Henri will do it until the heat death of the universe Second Life.

I think it's going to be on as standard, LL  want a unified graphic experience, so there won't be a toggle switch.

[Bagnu]

12 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Only because the PBR viewer just came out for the mainstream and by FS's next release will then be a matter of time before it too is the default. The Lab is forcing the issue.

Hopefully Firestorm will make it a feature that can be turned off for those that find it's too much for their graphics hardware to handle. Personally, I want PBR .

 

[Arielle Popstar]

19 minutes ago, Cube Republic said:

I think it's going to be on as standard, LL  want a unified graphic experience, so there won't be a toggle switch.

The unified graphic experience is a crock of crap considering the many and varied optional parameters that exist within the viewer. Just the different environment settings already have an impact of what one sees vs another.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

On 12/9/2023 at 3:45 AM, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Right now, if I cam around further away from and then back nearby my avatar again, I see the viewer 'forget' a lot of textures from nearby objects, as if they aren't properly chached on my local drive.

Glad to hear it's not just.me  

[Luna Bliss]

20 minutes ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

On 12/9/2023 at 2:45 AM, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Right now, if I cam around further away from and then back nearby my avatar again, I see the viewer 'forget' a lot of textures from nearby objects, as if they aren't properly chached on my local drive.

Glad to hear it's not just.me  

I second that. I was beginning to worry my new PC was a lemon, but seems the way content rezzes has changed in a recent update.

[Chic Aeon]

28 minutes ago, Bagnu said:

Hopefully Firestorm will make it a feature that can be turned off for those that find it's too much for their graphics hardware to handle. Personally, I want PBR .

 

We lobbied for that with EEP and FS but it is the "shared experience" thing and FS of course wants to be kept on the "good guys" list.  IF objects are mod -- even if they are PBR it looks like you can negate the issues --- THIS HOWEVER only if the creator has done a good job and not relied "too much" on PBR.   I basically did that in Sansar with good success.

 

MEANWHLE a question. I m not on the Linden viewer or any PBR viewer, yet lately even in places with NO PBR (like my sim) things are loading more slowly. I was even a cloud the other day and that is unheard of.  So it seems like the new rendering system is hurting the old so far as loading goes.  My sim and mostly all my created objects and still there are issue.   Ideas?