PBR WOW!

[LipstickAndDreams]

1 minute ago, JUSTUS Palianta said:

It seems SL is such a selfish game people only care about themselves.  If no one cares about the other people who log in SL you may as well be playing Sim On A Stick on a USB Stick all alone.  If a lot of people can't play SL any more it will affect your SL socially, it will affect the communities, it will affect businesses.  You will lose some of the friends you love and some of the places  much faster then we already do.  

It will continue its slow, agonizing metamorphosis into a place where only the L$ whales live, driven to part with their disposable income by countless group notices promoting sales and events of all sorts. PBR is just another push towards this direction.

But hey, that is a viable business strategy for LL. At least for a while until their network effect advantage over Opensim starts deteriorating due to the changes in the platform's userbase.

[MoiraKathleen]

1 hour ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

No body should have to read a tech breakdown of a new rendering protocol, just to log in and walk around and be able to see where they are going.

 

I haven't had any issues with seeing where I'm going.   Even using the midnight setting, things are not completely dark.  I do find that the lighting is more realistic looking for whatever lights I have around that are turned on, but I haven't had to read any tech breakdown or make any changes to the lighting that I had already been using.  I haven't added any reflection probes or made any changes to any of the new settings and I'm happily traversing around SL just as I did before the viewer update to PBR. 

47 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

1. Only about 30% of SL users use the Official Fail Viewer, and so only about 30% have been auto-updated to PBR.

2. Hardly any of those use the Forums

It was actually because of the forums that I switched from a popular TPV back to the official viewer.  It was from reading the forums all the time that I realized some viewers didn't update to new features for months and months.  So when a feature came out that I really wanted to use, I switched back to the official viewer, and I haven't looked back.  I prefer having the new features when they are rolled out, and I have not had any bad experiences or serious impacts from doing so. 

[LipstickAndDreams]

15 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Thanks, I took your complaints too seriously, as if you had a real issue.

Oh, I am complaining on behalf of a lot of others too. You think I am going to go to the trouble of forking a viewer just to keep it to myself?

[Arielle Popstar]

3 minutes ago, MoiraKathleen said:

It was actually because of the forums that I switched from a popular TPV back to the official viewer.  It was from reading the forums all the time that I realized some viewers didn't update to new features for months and months.  So when a feature came out that I really wanted to use, I switched back to the official viewer, and I haven't looked back.  I prefer having the new features when they are rolled out, and I have not had any bad experiences or serious impacts from doing so. 

For some if not many of us, having to switch to the SL viewer would lead to the loss of a great many indispensable features that exist in the TPV's that do not in the SL one. The SL viewer is basically a very basic viewer wherein it is not so surprising it runs faster then the TPV's while at the same time, being useless for a good percentage of the userbase.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

36 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

 

 

Buying a laptop instead of a desktop when you're already struggling to afford the hobby is just poor planning, no way to sugarcoat that.

You could buy a cheap desktop, which will be an experience as miserable as the laptop is now, then set a little money aside each month and slowly upgrade it to where you want to be. No need to go all in on a whole new laptop or an expensive desktop.

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?

Edited December 29, 2023 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Gabriele Graves]

3 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

For some if not many of us, having to switch to the SL viewer would lead to the loss of a great many indispensable features that exist in the TPV's that do not in the SL one. The SL viewer is basically a very basic viewer wherein it is not so surprising it runs faster then the TPV's while at the same time, being useless for a good percentage of the userbase.

For some of us the LL viewer isn't even a viable choice because we use Linux and there is no native LL viewer for Linux anymore. 

Running the Windows version on Linux under Wine is no alternative for any length of time due to performance, crashing and UI issues.

Edited December 29, 2023 by Gabriele Graves

[steeljane42]

16 minutes ago, JUSTUS Palianta said:

It seems SL is such a selfish game people only care about themselves.  If no one cares about the other people who log in SL you may as well be playing Sim On A Stick on a USB Stick all alone.  If a lot of people can't play SL any more it will affect your SL socially, it will affect the communities, it will affect businesses.  You will lose some of the friends you love and some of the places  much faster then we already do.  

That's how it goes with "games and online platforms". Or have you really expected hardware from 2003 (when SL was launched) to run SL these days? So it's not first and very likely not the last bump in the hardware reqs for SL.

We'll see how real was that doom and gloom raised by some on those forums in 1.5 years or so most likely, by the time last versions of non PBR viewers will start to disappear. I predict there won't be any visible changes to online numbers.

That said, like I wrote before, I'm still not happy with how LL does implement new features, PBR included. Rushed and unfinished, and given their small team and limited resources, the fixes come years later, and some "future" features remain abandoned. In case with PBR I would say that it's at least half a year early for the main viewer release.

[Arielle Popstar]

4 minutes 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 -- 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?

It does seem like it is the bourgeoisie who are mostly promoting and insisting on the necessity of the new PBR. I'm guessing they see it as a new potential money maker.

[arton Rotaru]

4 minutes ago, steeljane42 said:

That said, like I wrote before, I'm still not happy with how LL does implement new features, PBR included. Rushed and unfinished, and given their small team and limited resources, the fixes come years later, and some "future" features remain abandoned. In case with PBR I would say that it's at least half a year early for the main viewer release.

Lets not forget, the initial release date of GLTF PBR was this time of the year, but 2022. The viewer is in pretty good shape by now. There are some teething problems indeed. But those are to be expected as well.

[Qie Niangao]

25 minutes ago, JUSTUS Palianta said:

I own a desktop and a laptop.   My reason for owning a computer is not only for "hobbies".  Maybe people like being portable.  Linden better get that mobile ap working faster.

I absolutely agree with this. The new mobile viewer will take up a lot of the slack as less capable laptops become unusable for SL.

At first it seems odd that folks are so surprised this is happening again. I've gone through two generations of now obsolete laptops that were once capable of running SL and then became unsuitable as the platform advanced. They were good laptops for their actual business purposes, I got plenty of value from them, but they didn't have an upgrade path that could keep SL an enjoyable experience as in-world content got ever more demanding. (I upgraded desktop graphics cards a couple times, too.)

The difference I think is that this is a single change that's readily identifiable as having a step-function impact. In retrospect, Mesh resulted in a huge increase in demand, many times greater than PBR, but Mesh content accrued gradually, so the frog had plenty of time to boil, all the while telling itself that an individual Mesh item was so much more efficient than an individual prim or god forbid a sculpty. But Mesh and its many-fold increase in texture size and number eventually made it painful to use the older hardware, with nobody pointing a finger at it.

[Istelathis]

Well, all of this talk of system requirements has gotten my curiosity sparked so I dragged out my old HP Stream laptop, which retailed for around $200 and if I remember correctly could run Firestorm a couple of years ago when all of the settings were lowered.  I managed to get to SL's landing page and download the viewer, but of course the laptop powered down as it has almost no battery power and the power cord is fidgety and a pita.

If this laptop can load LL's viewer, I'm going to have to congratulate the developers, as it stands now it barely could muster getting chrome open and getting to the landing page.  I think my raspberry pi has more oomph than this thing.

Edited December 29, 2023 by Istelathis

[Theresa Tennyson]

Just for a glimpse of deja vu, check out the comments on the blog post when mesh was introduced in 2011...

 

[Extrude Ragu]

Man every time I check these topics people just can't help themselves but to start with the doom-posting. Maybe the forum isn't so good for peoples health

[Scylla Rhiadra]

The flip-side, perhaps, of the "ZOMG IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD" perspective on this, is the complacent "Everything is Fine" view.

One doesn't have to believe that PBR means the End of Second Life or the collapse of Western Civilization to think that it's been poorly and prematurely implemented.

[Extrude Ragu]

The reason I am calm is because I've tested the viewer for myself, contributed towards the bug reports, spent time on the discord talking to the developers.

Also I create and develop my own sim, and experience similar doom posting whenever I start to make big changes. Be it redecorating an island, making a town plan, using mesh, using AI, everything has gotten guess what? doomposting. But what happens? 3-6 months after its had time to bed in and everyone can't live without whatever I made.

Dave and his team are very talented and passionate people who love games and graphics technology. They're working hard and they do good work. There's passionate creators talking on the internal discord every day banging away at each little flaw day in day out.

As for whether it got let out of the gates too early - I work in software, that's just how these things go. You have to eventually get it out into the wild to start to find the real issues that go unnoticed in testing.

All I can suggest is to people is to have a bit of faith and file bug reports when you find things that look like bugs.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 minute ago, Extrude Ragu said:

You have to eventually get it out into the wild to start to find the real issues that go unnoticed in testing.

That, arguably, is part of the point of much of what has been said here.

And yes, I know . . . Lindens don't read the forums.

Perhaps they should? Because I suspect that most of those whose enjoyment of SL is going to be most impacted by this aren't posting on the developer's Discord channel.

[Love Zhaoying]

14 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

Man every time I check these topics people just can't help themselves but to start with the doom-posting. Maybe the forum isn't so good for peoples health

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

[Love Zhaoying]

15 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

The flip-side, perhaps, of the "ZOMG IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD" perspective on this, is the complacent "Everything is Fine" view.

One doesn't have to believe that PBR means the End of Second Life or the collapse of Western Civilization to think that it's been poorly and prematurely implemented.

If people haven't become used to dumpster fires yet, how are they keeping warm?

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

That, arguably, is part of the point of much of what has been said here.

And yes, I know . . . Lindens don't read the forums.

Perhaps they should? Because I suspect that most of those whose enjoyment of SL is going to be most impacted by this aren't posting on the developer's Discord channel.

When issues are brought up, about PBR, Lindens and Moles kindly remind us to please, please file a ticket. Maybe people would rather just complain than file tickets? 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

When issues are brought up, about PBR, Lindens and Moles kindly remind us to please, please file a ticket. Maybe people would rather just complain than file tickets? 

A ticket, or a JIRA?

[Jenna Huntsman]

2 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

A ticket, or a JIRA?

JIRA - support will likely just point you to file a JIRA if you've discovered a bug anyway.

[arton Rotaru]

2 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

A ticket, or a JIRA?

A Jira. Like the one I filed for ya. Remember?
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-234872

has been triaged and being accepted the same day I filed it.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

5 minutes ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

JIRA - support will likely just point you to file a JIRA if you've discovered a bug anyway.

4 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

A Jira. Like the one I filed for ya. Remember?
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-234872

has been triaged and being accepted the same day I filed it.

I do.

My rather clumsy point is that if someone who is as active and generally knowledgeable as Love doesn't know which to use, I rather suspect that most of those residents who are experiencing problems -- possibly quite fixable ones -- with PBR sure aren't going to.

I'm not for a moment suggesting that this isn't an important route to letting LL know about the issues people are experiencing. But I'm willing to bet that they are already aware of most of these. There's a difference between soliciting feedback, and listening to people? LL is pretty good, to be fair, at the former. It has historically rather sucked at the latter.

Edited December 29, 2023 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Gabriele Graves]

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.
 

[arton Rotaru]

8 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

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.

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

8 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

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.

Some do, I don't!
With any new feature, some will leave, some others will join.

Edited December 29, 2023 by arton Rotaru