PBR WOW!

[Arielle Popstar]

1 minute ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Why would you think they are "discouraged"? I doubt that is the case -- and sometimes they do.

I rather suspect it's more that most Lindens would find the reading here dreary and depressing.

God knows, sometimes I do. 🙃

Because over the past several years there has been a noticeable decrease of posts by Lindens that in past smoothed over troubled waters. Now they just close the thread instead when it gets too volatile. Ever since the change of ownership there has been a marked change in the leadership style. 

[Candide LeMay]

LL has a small development team (presumably), but even so there's specialization among them. Is the graphics engineer going to be productive/helpful working on the chat system or vice versa? No. They all do their own thing at their own (admittedly glacial) pace. The question is - why doesn't LL hire more developers?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

47 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

I see it everywhere? like... most/all good quality clothes are, hairstyles, a lot of furniture...

Don't see it so much on buildings though I guess which is a little silly, definitely present with a lot of them though which is nice.

 

I am surprised, as I've said before, by how often I don't see normal and speculative maps used in things like structures and photo backdrops. Which seems to me nuts, as these are the kinds of objects that would most benefit from the additional texturing and visual complexity. I get the sense that some creators are, if not exactly "lazy," quite content to bake lighting effects in, rather than go the extra distance and produce maps that will create a more dynamic visual effect.

It's one reason why I've all but stopped using commercial backdrops (although there are other reasons too): they are, in many cases, just not very good. A lot of them (and there are exceptions) looks as though they were slapped together very quickly.

Edited December 18, 2023 by Scylla Rhiadra

[animats]

2 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

That's how SL works, the server sends UDP packets telling your viewer what's in front of you and with in draw distance, what it's uuid is, what textures it uses, what their uuid's are, colours, gloss/env settings, and now a whole new bunch for PBR.

It's called the "interest list".

If you checked the forums , you might even find the numerous threads, with posts by Linden devs, talking about interest lists, and why they havn't been recieved reliably for months, causing that whole "I teleported to location x and the buildings were there, i could walk into them, but they were invisible" complaints.

People like @animats and various Linden techs have posted on this. Try and keep up.

SL users should not have to be aware that the interest list system exists. This stuff is way below the user level.

A brief summary for non-technical people:

Unlike most games, SL viewers start out with no content inside them. Everything has to come in over the network. Each region is managed by a simulator program, and those talk to each other and the viewers. Simulator programs know what's in their region at all times. Viewers start out knowing nothing about that. Simulators send viewers a list of what's currently in draw range. When a region first appears, there's a big list sent, and thereafter, each simulator sends updates as you move around.

If the simulator's world view and a viewer's world view ever get out of sync, they won't get back in sync until the avatar leaves the area and comes back. Mostly they do stay in sync, but there are bugs. Currently, those mostly involve teleports and logins, where a huge interest list update is blasted out to each viewer as the avatar enters. Sometimes, especially in regions with many avatars, not all the info gets delivered. When that happens, some objects will not appear in the viewer at all. In regions with many avatars, you sometimes see some avatars with missing body parts.

Exactly why that happens is not well understood.

[Theresa Tennyson]

49 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

"Ban" them? Please, who said that?

Why, that sounds like "Communism"!!!!! 😮

No, of course not.

What IS clear is that the standard SL avatar mapping is no longer adequate. It was not, after all, designed for mesh bodies in the first place, and the fact that consumers want a different standard is readily apparent from the way in which EvoX now totally dominates the market.

In other words, it's absolutely clear that the SLUV is no longer good enough.

So -- crazy idea, but hear me out! -- what if LL worked cooperatively with mesh and skin creators to produce a new and higher resolution standard, maybe even based on EvoX, so that we didn't have four competing systems, and skin, makeup, and tattoo makers didn't have to waste their time producing two or three or four different versions of the same thing -- or hand a proprietary monopoly to just one creator.

When it comes to UV maps, one company will never have a "monopoly" because layouts aren't copyrightable. I think a certain Cat Company might have found that out a while ago. You'd need a patent and that process would be way too slow and complicated for the stakes.

I DO think there's room for standardization - the various "new" channels for the bake service are crying out for that, but getting the Lab involved is just going to create a big delay. One of the real successes in standardization in SL was "Standard Sizing" for pre-mesh-body mesh clothing. Yes, there were outliers but it really worked pretty well - and that was completely user-driven.

[Sid Nagy]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

"We'll always have BOM".

Just like we thought we'd always have WindLight.

Just like we thought we'd always have EEP.

..Maybe in 10-15 years, PBR will be replaced by the next thing!

 

So you think "We'll always have SL".....?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

When it comes to UV maps, one company will never have a "monopoly" because layouts aren't copyrightable. I think a certain Cat Company might have found that out a while ago. You'd need a patent and that process would be way too slow and complicated for the stakes.

I DO think there's room for standardization - the various "new" channels for the bake service are crying out for that, but getting the Lab involved is just going to create a big delay. One of the real successes in standardization in SL was "Standard Sizing" for pre-mesh-body mesh clothing. Yes, there were outliers but it really worked pretty well - and that was completely user-driven.

I have no particular stake in LL being involved. A standard produced by within a particular industry on their own is just fine, I think.

Arguably, I suppose, that's in effect what is slowly happening now with EvoX: it's become the new standard, and not just for LeLutka heads, by sheer force of popularity. I honestly don't know what is preventing Genus or other makers who haven't yet adopted it from doing so -- the difficulty in reverse engineering it? Would there be anything in the "rules" against producing a copycat map that was "EvoX Compatible"? Dunno.

I do think that the process of getting to even where we are now has been incredibly wasteful.

[Sid Nagy]

22 minutes ago, Candide LeMay said:

LL has a small development team (presumably), but even so there's specialization among them. Is the graphics engineer going to be productive/helpful working on the chat system or vice versa? No. They all do their own thing at their own (admittedly glacial) pace. The question is - why doesn't LL hire more developers?

When one only has a hammer ............

[Arielle Popstar]

33 minutes ago, Candide LeMay said:

LL has a small development team (presumably), but even so there's specialization among them. Is the graphics engineer going to be productive/helpful working on the chat system or vice versa? No. They all do their own thing at their own (admittedly glacial) pace. The question is - why doesn't LL hire more developers?

It seems from off hand comments made by developer Lindens at inworld meetings, that they are running from one meeting to the next, leaving little time to actually write a few lines of code for the day.

Hiring more devs would just create more need/excuse for meetings?

Edited December 18, 2023 by Arielle Popstar

[Paul Hexem]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

And an unwillingness to do consultation with residents is why the Lindens are probably discouraged from reading and participating in the Forums. 

In my experience, every consultation with residents ends with Linden Lab saying "Oh man, that sounds like it'd take a little work. We're not doing that."

[AmeliaJ08]

56 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Would there be anything in the "rules" against producing a copycat map that was "EvoX Compatible"? Dunno.

Nope.

You can't copyright a UV as far as I know. You just build your model to work with it.

Apparently the EvoX map is nothing unique either, I am told (but cannot verify) the layout is pretty much just the games industry standard more or less.

Now I'm not saying making a 3D model that works with any particular UV map is an easy thing and the fact people can do this makes me think they must be wizards but there's nothing stopping anyone making heads that work with that particular UV layout.

Of course calling it 'EvoX' might be where the lawyers get excited since I assume that is something of a trademark...or maybe not since Rebirth seemed to get along fine (in the legal sense) for declaring their heads EvoX compatible without Lelutka's blessing.

Edited December 18, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Arielle Popstar]

28 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

In my experience, every consultation with residents ends with Linden Lab saying "Oh man, that sounds like it'd take a little work. We're not doing that."

Yes that is what I was seeing, especially after Oz left. The meetings turned into little more then info sessions where attendees were told what the Lindens were willing to do rather than a discussion what they could. I lost hope that there would be any significant changes that benefitted the residents after that and am now just coasting because without hope, it is only a matter of time before people start looking elsewhere.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

3 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

You mean like how they posted that textures are delivered by HTTP now and they were surprised to discover that UDP delivery is still around but only as a glacially-slow fallback? As in, "HTTP from Svalbard would be faster"?

Is there no START to your understanding?

Pay attention. Meshes and textures are delivered to your viewer by http, from the Content Delivery Network.

But in order to stream the content from the CDN, your viewer needs to know what content to stream, specifically the UUID's, without those it cannot stream content from the CDN by HTTP, or load it from the disk cache.

 

How does your viewer find out the uuid's of the content to draw ?

The server tells it, by sending that data in...

A UDP packet.

 

This is not open to debate, it's cold hard fact. Get over being wrong.

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

 

2 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Is there no START to your understanding?

Pay attention. Meshes and textures are delivered to your viewer by http, from the Content Delivery Network.

But in order to stream the content from the CDN, your viewer needs to know what content to stream, specifically the UUID's, without those it cannot stream content from the CDN by HTTP, or load it from the disk cache.

 

How does your viewer find out the uuid's of the content to draw ?

The server tells it, by sending that data in...

A UDP packet.

 

This is not open to debate, it's cold hard fact. Get over being wrong.

 

Then you can show me some evidence that's the case, I take it. Note that I never said what you were saying was wrong.

[Ardy Lay]

/me loses all hope.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

1 hour ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Then you can show me some evidence that's the case, I take it. Note that I never said what you were saying was wrong.

Lets be honest, if I show you that you are wrong about this again. you'll twist and turn and prevaricate and try to claim it isn't so, so, why don't you ask @animats if I am right about you being wrong. He's "independent".

Oh wait, he already sort of did that

5 hours ago, animats said:

A brief summary for non-technical people:

.He's talking about you .

5 hours ago, animats said:

SL viewers start out with no content inside them. Everything has to come in over the network

That's the Content Delivery Network, I mentioned earlier.

5 hours ago, animats said:

Each region is managed by a simulator program, and those talk to each other and the viewers. Simulator programs know what's in their region at all times

The server software that runs the region you are on, and handles all the things like bumping into walls etc.

5 hours ago, animats said:

Viewers start out knowing nothing about that. Simulators send viewers a list of what's currently in draw range.

This is the "interest list", remember I told you about that?

5 hours ago, animats said:

Mostly they do stay in sync, but there are bugs. Currently, those mostly involve teleports and logins, where a huge interest list update is blasted out to each viewer as the avatar enters.

See, "interest list" again, it's sent via UDP packets, animats can bore you to death with details about "reliable packets" and "unreliable packets", and speculations by himself and various LL devs as to why they don't arrive when they should.

5 hours ago, animats said:

not all the info gets delivered. When that happens, some objects will not appear in the viewer at all.

So, the region knows a wall is there, and bounces you off it when you try and walk through it, but your viewer hasn't had that vital UDP packet that tells it what meshes and textures to check it's cache for, or stream from the CDN, so, the wall is invisible, to your viewer and thus TO YOU.

 

This isn't subject to debate, if you want documentation of the fact, learn to search the forum for UDP packets, or interest list, or content delivery network, or send a PM to a tpv dev of your choice, or even pester a Linden dev.

 

We're done here.

[Blaise Glendevon]

On that edifying note, are there any cute PBR decor items on sale? I'd love a reflective mirror for my bedroom/dressing room set up. 

[Luna Bliss]

9 hours ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

On that edifying note, are there any cute PBR decor items on sale? I'd love a reflective mirror for my bedroom/dressing room set up. 

I'd like to know that too.

And I wonder why this house would need an update. It says:

"PBR Enabled
Free PBR update once the feature is fully deployed on the live grid".

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/TSC-Medieval-House-II-PBR/25257902

[Janet Voxel]

9 hours ago, Blaise Glendevon said:

On that edifying note, are there any cute PBR decor items on sale? I'd love a reflective mirror for my bedroom/dressing room set up. 

There was one at the most recent round of Cosmopolitan. 

[Love Zhaoying]

12 hours ago, Ardy Lay said:

/me loses all hope.

I lost my marbles, I'll help you look if you help me look..

[Quartz Mole]

I'd like to remind people that the Linden Lab Official:Forum Participation Guidelines start with 

Quote

The Second Life Forums is a place to discuss ideas, experiences, and questions, and to share what you’ve learned about Second Life with each other and with us. We want to foster an honest and open exchange of ideas on our forums; to do that, we want to encourage all participants to maintain an atmosphere of courtesy and respect for others at all times. Creating a constructive place for conversation will help us build a strong, better informed community in Second Life, and make both of our communication channels and our world a more supportive and engaging place for all.

It would, I think, be generally appreciated, not least by me, if people could express their disagreements about PBR without resorting to sarcasm or otherwise belittling people with whom they disagree.    It doesn't add anything to the discussion, and I fear it can only be off-putting to people who want to ask questions about this new (at least for SL) technology but are worried about being dismissed as idiots for not understanding things.

[Love Zhaoying]

So far, I've not had the "loading" problem or "slower" problem with PBR. I use the official viewer.

The only "surprise" I had was some clothing that ended up "shiny" that I thought was not supposed to be shiny.  But, it is a tough call. Could be that "shiny" was appropriate for that clothing!

Otherwise, I have not done my own experimenting with.  @Istelathisgave some great step-by-steps that I want to try with a "cave'.

 

[JeromFranzic]

50 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

So far, I've not had the "loading" problem or "slower" problem with PBR. I use the official viewer.

The only "surprise" I had was some clothing that ended up "shiny" that I thought was not supposed to be shiny.  But, it is a tough call. Could be that "shiny" was appropriate for that clothing!

Otherwise, I have not done my own experimenting with.  @Istelathisgave some great step-by-steps that I want to try with a "cave'.

 

I haven't had any serious problems with the official viewer, or the TPVs that use PBR. It's the occasional dynamic light shifts that has me sliding the exposure level for a given scene. Sometimes the shiny stuff bothers me, that's when I set the PBR levels back to Static Only and Manual only. I don't use Ambient Occlusion, that stays off for me.

With Cool VL I have the option to toggle ALM off too, when PBR is off. I find the balance of light under PBR looking great with VL (sorry LL). The dynamic light shifts are well handled in VL IMO, so I rarely have to move the exposure level. It's usually at 1.2 for me in PBR, regardless of the viewer.

[Blaise Glendevon]

3 hours ago, Janet Voxel said:

There was one at the most recent round of Cosmopolitan. 

Thank you! When I log in, I will pop over.

[Pixels Sideways]

On 12/9/2023 at 3:57 PM, 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.

Checks my existence...

Nope, not a myth.

I use a 13" 2014 MacBook Air running OS X El Capitan  + 1.7 GHz Intel Core i7 +  Intel HD Graphics 5000 1536 MB   This is only computer I have and can't afford a newer one.

So far I can still log in using FS Firestorm version 6.6.3.67470 (6.6.3.67470).  The equivalent SL official viewer was laggy on this machine which is why I don't use it.  Plus FS has better intuitive build tools and things like an awesome area search and other features lacking in SL official viewers.

I have created a lot of content in SL including fairly large builds for SL bday exhibits using Blender generated objects and SL prims.  I have everything in my viewer preference graphics turned on except for ambient occlusion and shadows - shadows slows me way down.  As do lots of avatars so I often slide my avatar complexity setting to minimal and derender avatars who are not friends in crowded places and so far, I have been ok.

My lapdoggy does heat up like a furnace when using SL no matter what settings I use so I have to be mindful.

I can see materials - not PBR since I'm not using that viewer.  When I want to move faster and decrease object/image rez times, I switch off ALM and local lights. I also set my draw distance to 92 and only increase it when I'm building something big or want to increase area search or look at something.

There is a windlight water setting that acts like PBR and reflects the stuff around it but that's the only time I've seen actual reflections.

I use point light and reflective image light settings in objects all the time for projects and can see those.

I do think if I am forced to upgrade I may no longer be able to access SL bc of my OS which I have not upgraded yet bc I may lose some software that was on this when I got it.  And screw it up so nothing works.  If it ain't broke...

Lets not forget the sinkhole of Sansar and the intentional bad decision to cut MAC users out entirely. We MAC users sort of operate in the margins of SL as LL seems to cater to the PC crowd though I know SL/TPV viewers do include upgrades for MAC OS.  Graphics cards in MAC laptops are limited.

Anyway, just wanted Quartz to know those of us using Flintstone computers whether MACs or PCs are not a myth and the OP is correct that any new mandatory viewer upgrades may very well end our participation in SL as well as end our significant investments in content & assets we have created and purchased.

I should note that a friend with a decent PC desktop and excellent internet connectivity and so on, got killed on the latest FS upgrade bc of that inventory pic generated thing.  He had to reinstall the previous version and will likely not upgrade until all the bugs are fixed or it becomes mandatory.  So while there are cool ideas being implemented in viewers, they don't always work out of the box or can be utilized.

All new mandatory upgrade viewers should contain a legacy option so we can still access SL with older computers and operating systems.  It may not look as purdy and flashy with all the new bells and whistles but at least we can continue creating content for everyone and enjoying our experiences with friends and residents including Moles and Lindens.

xo