PBR WOW!

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

My rather clumsy point is that if someone who is as active and generally knowledgeable as Love doesn't know which to use

I didn't answer, as I felt it was a trick question. 👍🏾 It's not that I "don't know" the right answer; it's that I was trying to make a "positive" statement along the lines of, "hey guys, don't panic, we were told to let LL know about problems".

Redirecting my point to a discussion on "tickets" vs. "JIRAs" really just changes the subject. Any user should file whichever they "know" how to file; I wouldn't want to erode people's confidence in LL to take our issues seriously, which LL was trying to demonstrate by encouraging issues be reported (whichever specific language was used).

Also, there's the pretty obvious point you make that yes, LL is more likely to respond in desired fashion to the "right" error reporting. But at times, language can get a bit "squishy" and my understanding is that Lindens / Moles occasionally say "ticket" when "most of us know" that they probably mean "JIRA". 

I could search for recent examples of what we were advised literally, if you like. Let me know!

Thanks,

Love

 

[Love Zhaoying]

8 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

SL is in decline and has been for a very long time.

Not negative at all! It's rather rude that people would potentially take your statement as negative. 

[Gabriele Graves]

10 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

That would only be provable if there were a parallel universe where SL would have stayed on the status of before sculpted prims were intruduced.

It cannot be disproved either.

10 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

Some do, I don't!

To your credit but this sentiment certainly seems very prevalent in SL and on the forums at times.

10 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

With any new feature, some will leave, some others will join.

Yes that's fine as long as they are at least equal.  However, it seems like we lose more than we gain overall.  One data point for that is the often discussed inability to retain many new users for very long and the attempts to change that.

Edited December 29, 2023 by Gabriele Graves

[Scylla Rhiadra]

11 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I didn't answer, as I felt it was a trick question. 👍🏾 It's not that I "don't know" the right answer; it's that I was trying to make a "positive" statement along the lines of, "hey guys, don't panic, we were told to let LL know about problems".

Redirecting my point to a discussion on "tickets" vs. "JIRAs" really just changes the subject. Any user should file whichever they "know" how to file; I wouldn't want to erode people's confidence in LL to take our issues seriously, which LL was trying to demonstrate by encouraging issues be reported (whichever specific language was used).

Also, there's the pretty obvious point you make that yes, LL is more likely to respond in desired fashion to the "right" error reporting. But at times, language can get a bit "squishy" and my understanding is that Lindens / Moles occasionally say "ticket" when "most of us know" that they probably mean "JIRA". 

I could search for recent examples of what we were advised literally, if you like. Let me know!

Thanks,

Love

 

Sorry, Love, I wasn't trying to "call you out" or even "catch you up."

I don't know the answer to a lot of these questions as well: I've never filed either a ticket or JIRA. And I'm quite sure that you actually know more about this than I do.

My point, again, is that "Resident X," who is probably using a three year old laptop and has zero idea what PBR even is, isn't going to be in a position or have the knowledge necessary to post a JIRA or a ticket. I've said this before: when I've asked friends in-world what they think about this PBR thing, by FAR the most common response I get is . . . "Pabst Blue Ribbon? What do you mean?"

And such users are, believe it or not, pretty common in SL. And LL is missing out if it isn't hearing their voices too -- and not just of those who DO know about this stuff.

Something again that I've said before: monitoring the group chat in the FS test group, I am constantly hearing things like "I don't see any degradation of performance: I'm still running at 90 FPS." And it's natural that people who are USING computers capable of running at 90 FPS are going to be the ones in the test groups, or on the Discord channel, or filing JIRA.

But they are NOT representative of most SL users. Even less so, I'd argue, than those of us here on the forums are.

Edited December 29, 2023 by Scylla Rhiadra

[arton Rotaru]

39 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Yes that's fine as long as they are at least equal.  However, it seems like we lose more than we gain overall.  One data point for that is the often discussed inability to retain many new users for very long and the attempts to change that.

The decline or gain of the userbase,  is not tied to any features that are added, or not added. It seems like there aren't that many humans interested in virtual worlds like we would like to have. Hence, any other attempt going in that direction failed.

We have seen so many "better than Second Life" platforms come and go. We have to accept that this is a niche, and most likely will remain a niche to it's end. No matter which features you are going to implement or not implement.

But lets stick to the topic, which is PBR WOW!

Edited December 30, 2023 by arton Rotaru

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

But lets stick to the topic, which is PBR WOW!

Thank you. 

[Gabriele Graves]

1 minute ago, arton Rotaru said:

The decline or gain of the userbase,  is not tied to any features that are added, or not added.

You seem very certain of that.  Perhaps if you can share the source of your certainty, we could all benefit from knowing.

4 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

But lets stick to the topic, which is PBR WOW!

This is at least a tangentially related discussion but OK, I'm good with that.

[Istelathis]

Lol, my HP Stream loaded LL's viewer

HP Stream 14/ Celeron(R) N3060 @ 1.66 ghz / 4 gigs memory / Intel HD Graphics 400 /

Settings at default for LL's recommendations, which are low. When set to the lowest setting I am currently getting around 5 fps on average standing still.. I expect if I let the scene load completely it will shootup a bit higher but it is taking forever. I'm standing in my Bellisseria home, with no one around.  This would be torture to use, and I would not suggest it.  It has been so long, I have a hard time recalling, but I don't think it worked much better than it did when I tried it last a couple of years ago in Firestorm.

Who knows what else is going on with this laptop though, it has been a while since I have booted it, and I imagine it might be downloading some updates. 

Now to open Cool VL and see the difference

With the lowest setting on the slider which means no PBR, I am sitting at around 12 fps, LL's viewer cost me 7 fps on the HP stream.  It is not Cool VL, which is a great viewer, it is simply an budget laptop that was bought a while ago.  With Cool VL though, a lot of things are not currently loading, such as the house, the neighbor's house,  I do see a few floating windows.  I'm not sure if that would cost more FPS or not, and I am not blaming the viewer, it could just be that I am out of ram.  

 

Kudo's to the development team, the stream laptop actually loaded the viewer, which I did not expect at all.  I think with some elbow grease I could squeeze out more FPS on both LL's viewer and Cool VL.  With that said, even browsing the web on this laptop can be a pain at times.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Istelathis

[LipstickAndDreams]

50 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

Lol, my HP Stream loaded LL's viewer

HP Stream 14/ Celeron(R) N3060 @ 1.66 ghz / 4 gigs memory / Intel HD Graphics 400 /

Settings at default for LL's recommendations, which are low. When set to the lowest setting I am currently getting around 5 fps on average standing still.. I expect if I let the scene load completely it will shootup a bit higher but it is taking forever. I'm standing in my Bellisseria home, with no one around.  This would be torture to use, and I would not suggest it.  It has been so long, I have a hard time recalling, but I don't think it worked much better than it did when I tried it last a couple of years ago in Firestorm.

Who knows what else is going on with this laptop though, it has been a while since I have booted it, and I imagine it might be downloading some updates. 

Now to open Cool VL and see the difference

With the lowest setting on the slider which means no PBR, I am sitting at around 12 fps, LL's viewer cost me 7 fps on the HP stream.  It is not Cool VL, which is a great viewer, it is simply an budget laptop that was bought a while ago.  With Cool VL though, a lot of things are not currently loading, such as the house, the neighbor's house,  I do see a few floating windows.  I'm not sure if that would cost more FPS or not, and I am not blaming the viewer, it could just be that I am out of ram.  

 

Kudo's to the development team, the stream laptop actually loaded the viewer, which I did not expect at all.  I think with some elbow grease I could squeeze out more FPS on both LL's viewer and Cool VL.  With that said, even browsing the web on this laptop can be a pain at times.

Yep. The FPS ratio between the 2 viewers is close to what I have seen on multiple integrated graphics systems.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

3 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

You see, where you quoted Arton above, they clearly mentioned reflection probes. But you ignored it.

He said, fairly clearly, that with the black ambient, if there are NO light sources ( Tech hint for you, an IBL probe counts as a light source for this ) then there is no light.

He didn't say "only works if theres a probe", for anyone who doesn't use the LL fail Viewer, and who hasn't got a PBR TPV, the only thing they would know, is what they see and read HERE.

If a self proclaimed PBR expert says "no lights, no light, live in darkness!", that's what they will take from it. Especially when every screen shot of PBR shows that it's darker and gloomier than non-PBR.

There's comparison pics in this thread, same EEP, same location, where the Non-PBR shows a bright sunny summer's day with a blue sky, and the Pretentious Bloody Rubbish version shows grey skies, in mid winter.

Everything I've seen in all the PBR threads seems to imply that it's a giant leap backwards in SL Rendering. Almost as bad as the drek render in Sansar.

 

2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Any topic is an excuse for negativity. Any change a reason to criticize. Any issue a cause to panic.

Yeah the Cult of Pointless Positivity rears its ugly head again.

Somebody posts two pictures showing clearly how bloody awful LL Kludge0-PBR makes things look, and you spam the thread with "looks better to me".

Stating that a broken kludge that's been released a year or three too early, is a broken kludge, is NOT "negativity" it's customer feedback on a broken kludge that is NOT ready for release.

 

1 hour ago, Gabriele Graves said:

It seems to me that people who are complaining about the "negativity" of others here (also an expression of negativity ironically) tend to miss the fact that SL is in decline and has been for a very long time.  Does that not suggest that we lost a lot of people over the years, more than we gained and that maybe that was in part due to the many changes where people couldn't keep up?

Perhaps we missed ways of keeping them if we had cared a bit more.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think for a moment that we would be better off without the new features we have gained but we also shouldn't ignore that they likely came at a cost and so perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss concerns.

We seem very embedded in the idea that if we just implement the new shiny then hordes of new users will see how modern SL is and jump in without hesitation but it seems that in fact nothing so far has done anything to stem the continued slow drip-drip loss of existing users as far as I can tell.
 

Well the loudest Futureness Ranters are either hardware snobs who have a track record of posting "ban anyone who's PC is cheaper than mine", or Positivity Cultists, who can't abide the fact that 70% of us REFUSE to use the Official Fail-Viewer, and constantly claims ANY official change is "OBVIOUSLY better ( lick lick fawn fawn grovel grovel )".

 

It's amusing to see them ranting that "you should stop using hardware from 2003". My cheap laptop, is 18 months old, it struggles with ALM on a Non-PBR viewer, I can crank it up, to take a still picture, but that's about it. It's main problem is it's NOT a "gaming laptop" with a decent GPU, just boring old Intel HD.

 

Then there's the BS about "oh I can show you where to get a GPU for $150 that will run PBR fine. My current desktop GPU is a 1650 GT, I'm sure it can run ALM in a non-PBR viewer all the time, and I'm guessing it will run PBR, in a TPV when the TPV devs have fixed some of the stuff LL can't be bothered with.

But that "low end" GPU card cost about £200, in a sale, that's a damn sight more than $150, in fact it's the single most expensive component in the desktop.

These days, people talk about "cheap entry level" GPU's and mention RTX series cards that cost a grand or more.

 

People read threads like this, and see that if they don't have a 2024 edition gen 15 64 core i11 CPU and an entry level 5070 RTX, a rig you can pick up "cheaply for under $4000", then they won't be welcome in SL, and if they do, SL will look awful, and either they push back, or just leave.

 

[Charlotte Bartlett]

On 12/28/2023 at 4:17 PM, Pixels Sideways said:

 

I have noticed two merchants I frequent - Azoury & Scarlet Creative - have begun to use PBR in their creations, both have had to put signs out warning residents that if they are not using the new SL PBR viewer, they will only see a plain white texture, which is true.  Azoury has incorporated PBR into some parts of their new store and Scarlet into the buildings they sell.  Scarlet is aware of the issue so has included a "legacy non PBR" building in their package,

This seems like a huge *****-up on behalf of LL that if PBR effects are applied and you are not using a PBR viewer then all you see is only a blank white surface.  At least with ALM and local lights, if you turn off those features you can still see the texture without the added materials.  They will lack the depth and realism and light reflections but the texture detail and color is still there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi just so nobody is confused!

For our PBR items we hav,e per our many posts here and copious testing and involvement in multiple JIRAs, been very invested in getting a good experience for our customers.

For avoidance of doubt our PBR items work for legacy viewers and will continue to do so (so no white textures!)  We include a legacy version that does not have the reflection probes attached (the core difference) as those would be a PITA on a legacy viewer but they are fully textured so anybody visiting your house too will see a textured version no matter what viewer you use (or what version you rezzed PBR or legacy).

We put a sign since last week with our first PBR release (and our second one came out today) noting that legacy viewers will see legacy textures (not plain white or plywood materials) - > NOT that they would see a plain white texture!  https://gyazo.com/0651af329ce5aadf596aa5c8751afea2

Sorry to quote - just wanted to ensure nobody is giving misinformation about our products here on the forum.  We take it very seriously as we have been working really hard during PBR testing to ensure our customers have a great experience, no matter what viewer they use.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Charlotte Bartlett

[Paul Hexem]

4 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Yeesh, Paul, could you yell "Let them eat cake!" a little louder, please?

Perhaps you have some suggestions as to where I might best invest my trust fund?

You are in any case entirely ignoring my main point, which was that if there is substantial percentage -- even 5% -- of residents who, despite all of your excellent financial and technical advice, are driven off the platform because it has become unusable, that is going to impact on you, and me, and everyone else. It will impact on concurrency, on the SL economy, on the viability and health of in-world regions and groups . . . you name it.

I know they're just peasants, dahling, but we need them.

Who else will clean the bathroom and sweep the streets?

If I'm ignoring your point, you missed mine- You can't buy a PS2 and expect to play PS5 games on it. You can't buy a Pentium 3 and expect to play the latest Call of Duty or Forza or Sims game on it. You'd be laughed out of the room if you even suggested it.

You're literally suggesting that we hold back 95% of the users for the 5%. No other platform would even remotely entertain that idea.

Why do we do that with SL?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

57 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

If I'm ignoring your point, you missed mine- You can't buy a PS2 and expect to play PS5 games on it. You can't buy a Pentium 3 and expect to play the latest Call of Duty or Forza or Sims game on it. You'd be laughed out of the room if you even suggested it.

False analogy. This isn't Second Life 2 -- it's the same platform that people have been on, and been investing time and money in for, in most cases, years.

A better analogy would be turning on your PS2 and suddenly discovering you can not longer play it or use your existing games because of a factory update.

And even that isn't a good analogy. People almost live here -- they have businesses, friends, land. They can't shrug and move onto another parallel virtual world -- because there aren't any.

These aren't people expecting to play a new game on an old console. They are part of the existing userbase.

57 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

You're literally suggesting that we hold back 95% of the users for the 5%. No other platform would even remotely entertain that idea.

I am literally saying nothing of the sort. I accept that this is probably a necessary move. It might even be a good update -- eventually.

What I have said is that it has been rushed into service and poorly implemented. Without enough consideration for the impact upon an important proportion of the existing resident population.

And the potential loss of some of those is not going to be outweighed by new users rushing to SL because, YAY!, we have PBR now.

The transition needs to be eased into with a solution like that offered by the Cool VL viewer, offering users with older or weaker computers time to catch up. The current LL viewer compels an update.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Istelathis]

I'm going a bit over my head here, but would it be difficult to use the texture "base color" from PBR materials to simply give users who run slower computers a bit more life out of their computer, while also not requiring creators to build multiple textures for their items?  

It would look lousy for a lot of objects, the textures would appear flat, there would be no reflective surfaces, no depth, but it would provide people who run slower computers more time while making it so most of their world does not become a world without any textures.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Istelathis

[Scylla Rhiadra]

11 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

I'm going a bit over my head here, but would it be difficult to use the texture "base color" from PBR materials to simply give users who run slower computers a bit more life out of their computer, while also not requiring creators to build multiple textures for their items?  

It would look lousy for a lot of objects, the textures would appear flat, there would be no reflective surfaces, no depth, but it would provide people who run slower computers more time while making it so most of their world does not become a world without any textures.

That's pretty much exactly what I did in this pic, taken on the current (non-PBR) Firestorm: I used the base color and normal maps that are part of the PBR materials in the Blinn-Phong slots. It looks pretty good to me.

I don't know how difficult it would be to automate that, so that the viewer knew how to "read" those two textures -- as either legacy or PBR, depending on viewer preferences?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 hour ago, Charlotte Bartlett said:

For avoidance of doubt our PBR items work for legacy viewers and will continue to do so (so no white textures!)

Thanks, Charlotte: this is a valuable clarification.

I was under the impression, from what I'd read about these, that your two versions were for either PBR or Blinn-Phong. This makes a lot more sense.

And congrats, truly, for being on the leading edge of this!

[Istelathis]

10 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I don't know how difficult it would be to automate that, so that the viewer knew how to "read" those two textures -- as either legacy or PBR, depending on viewer preferences?

I think it may be done on the client side, if it is receiving data for PBR materials it could be applied to the object provided it did not have a texture by default (outside of whatever generic textures are used)  But again, this is way beyond my level of comprehension of how the viewer works.  I'm just speculating, and probably making myself look like a fool in the process 😜  There are so many factors I am unaware of that it is probably a lot easier said than done.

[Charlotte Bartlett]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Thanks, Charlotte: this is a valuable clarification.

I was under the impression, from what I'd read about these, that your two versions were for either PBR or Blinn-Phong. This makes a lot more sense.

And congrats, truly, for being on the leading edge of this!

I think a lot gets “swirled around” on these forums and then misunderstood.  I wrote about our approach to ensure no white textures a few pages back when we did the first beta release.  So appreciate in a way it got misunderstood so I could clarify. 

Also this is the reason we have been packaging beta houses with full EEP set ups and lighting etc and probes so people can test and see how they fare if they want to test on the LL viewer or Firestorm Alpha.  They are sale items when first released so 75L for the full set to keep it accessible.  

SL features are always reiterative and rough when they first come in.  Then we often see a lot of misunderstanding.  But I refuse to Iquit.  (Lol). 

But having them implement early  has allowed creators like me to really test hard and all the jiras I have raised have been quickly discussed.  It forces us in a way to progress.  I am not on any dev channels or inside groups so it’s very new for me. 

If any creator is sending out blank texture items just ask them to throw in a legacy texture as a bridge solution.  It’s simple and quick to do.  Education helps all and again one of the reason we went in early with guides included in our channels and in our builds to help folk.

I am always an optimist and just a hobbyist but I do truly enjoy the new features and puzzle solving.  

 

 

 

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

You're literally suggesting that we hold back 95% of the users for the 5%. No other platform would even remotely entertain that idea.

Based of the kind of hardware Steam reports its users having, I'd say you have those percentages literally THE WRONG WAY ROUND.

You are literally suggesting that anyone who has a PC older or cheaper than YOURS, be kicked to the kerb, if they can't afford to match your spending.

The "same old same old" thing you always suggest for improving SL, delete 90% of the grid, ban 90% of the users, shut the platform down for 3-6 months while it's all converted to some Build-a-first-person-shooter kit.

The "same old same old" that most people think is a dreadful idea, that is best ignored.

[LipstickAndDreams]

4 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

If I'm ignoring your point, you missed mine- You can't buy a PS2 and expect to play PS5 games on it. You can't buy a Pentium 3 and expect to play the latest Call of Duty or Forza or Sims game on it. You'd be laughed out of the room if you even suggested it.

You're literally suggesting that we hold back 95% of the users for the 5%. No other platform would even remotely entertain that idea.

Why do we do that with SL?

Would you buy me and all the others a PS5 in that case? No? Then be quiet.

[Henri Beauchamp]

6 hours ago, Istelathis said:

I'm going a bit over my head here, but would it be difficult to use the texture ”base color” from PBR materials to simply give users who run slower computers a bit more life out of their computer, while also not requiring creators to build multiple textures for their items?  

It would look lousy for a lot of objects, the textures would appear flat, there would be no reflective surfaces, no depth, but it would provide people who run slower computers more time while making it so most of their world does not become a world without any textures.

See this post and the Cool VL Viewer v1.32.0.4, published today.

Edited December 30, 2023 by Henri Beauchamp
Viewer published now

[Love Zhaoying]

I am reminded of all the threads with people butthurt that SL wouldn't run on Chromebooks..

[LipstickAndDreams]

2 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

See this post and the Cool VL Viewer v1.32.0.4, to be published today.

Oh my, you were able to do it. I will probably end up stealing some of your code for my firestorm fork, if thats ok. I and many others have a really bad case of baby duck syndrome with regards to the firestorm interface.

[Evah Baxton]

I am going to assume that PBR was enabled for me by downloading the latest SL viewer, setting graphics to ultra, and checking out Winter Wonderland.

PBR is more wintery looking. The water looks like ice. The lights reflect through the rocks. The light reflects off the snow. It's an improvement for sure. Hoping for more updates to make it more accessible.

[LipstickAndDreams]

11 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I am reminded of all the threads with people butthurt that SL wouldn't run on Chromebooks..

Would you buy a new system for everyone in second life who can't run the new viewer? No?