Who's using mirrors?

[Qie Niangao]

51 minutes ago, ValKalAstra said:

My impression so far is that I'm probably too dumb to figure it out. Are they meant to be in extremely low resolution? I've looked for a setting but it might be tucked away somewhere obscure. I've also tried the Firestorm PBR beta and Alchemy both so it's probably less the viewer and more a setting I am messing up on them.

Neither of those viewers have the mirror code yet, and neither does the standard Linden viewer release (only the "materials featurettes" viewer) and the CoolVL Viewer experimental version.

In those viewers there is a mirror resolution setting. In the Linden featurettes viewer it's in Preferences / Graphics / Advanced where you select the ability to see mirrors, their resolution (the pic above is with the 2048 setting), and update rate (I'm using Every 2nd Frame for now).

[Makay Scribe]

this was my first test.. Personally I find Alchemy Beta viewer the best viewer atm. It just runs so clean in all conditions utilizing Nvidia GPU very very well.

 

Edited May 18 by Makay Scribe

[Makay Scribe]

A quick how to , but I missed some steps that are in the flickr description

 

 

[Rachel1206]

Got it to work with help from Qie Niangao. I contacted Qie, as I simply could not understand, how I got such distortion on my own mirrors and including on a mirror I bought at Fantasy Faire 2024.

If you test with the SL Viewer, it is important to use right version of the SL Viewer that is with Materials Featurettes (current version: Second Life Release 7.1.8.9103842320 (64bit) Materials Featurettes).

Everything now works fine - the mirror from FF 24 to the right, own mirror probe to left, thank you Qie.

 

Edited May 18 by Rachel1206
Spelling

[Makay Scribe]

3 hours ago, Rachel1206 said:

 

Got it to work with help from Qie Niangao. I contacted Qie, as I simply could not understand, how I got such distortion on my own mirrors and including on a mirror I bought at Fantasy Faire 2024.

If you test with the SL Viewer, it is important to use right version of the SL Viewer that is with Materials Featurettes (current version: Second Life Release 7.1.8.9103842320 (64bit) Materials Featurettes).

Everything now works fine - the mirror from FF 24 to the right, own mirror probe to left, thank you Qie.

 

 Alchemy is basically on the same release as SL viewer with the same layout but packed with all the missing features SL viewer does not have, including ones from BD and FS. They release new versions every two weeks approx. Their discord is full of help and attention to detail. Heres the viewer link if you or anyone else is interested.

https://git.alchemyviewer.org/alchemy/viewer/-/packages/975 (edited)

 

 

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Makay Scribe said:

 Alchemy is basically on the same release as SL viewer with the same layout but packed with all the missing features SL viewer does not have, including ones from BD and FS. They release new versions every two weeks approx. Their discord is full of help and attention to detail. Heres the viewer link if you or anyone else is interested.

https://git.alchemyviewer.org/alchemy/viewer/-/packages/975 (edited)

Oh, thank you for that link! I've been using Alchemy's beta as my "daily driver" ever since I discovered they had a PBR-capable beta, but I didn't have the mirror-capable version so I kept having to bounce back to the Linden or CoolVL Viewer to do mirror stuff. Just last week I got a notice to update so I went to the website (alchemyviewer.org), clicked on Downloads, and apparently reinstalled the month-old 7.1.4.2442. This new version (7.1.7.2486) indeed handles mirrors and has just the right features I've come to rely on.

(There's still something weird, incidentally, with multiple places linking to that older version, but I don't understand the project's web presence enough to tell anybody what needs fixing.)

Thanks again!

Edited May 18 by Qie Niangao
"ever" not "every"

[Scylla Rhiadra]

This all makes me so very thankful that I have almost zero interest in mirrors.

Like Nina, I think I'm too dumb to figure this all out.

[Makay Scribe]

11 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Oh, thank you for that link! I've been using Alchemy's beta as my "daily driver" ever since I discovered they had a PBR-capable beta, but I didn't have the mirror-capable version so I kept having to bounce back to the Linden or CoolVL Viewer to do mirror stuff. Just last week I got a notice to update so I went to the website (alchemyviewer.org), clicked on Downloads, and apparently reinstalled the month-old 7.1.4.2442. This new version (7.1.7.2486) indeed handles mirrors and has just the right features I've come to rely on.

(There's still something weird, incidentally, with multiple places linking to that older version, but I don't understand the project's web presence enough to tell anybody what needs fixing.)

Thanks again!

Oh well here is the discord invite https://discord.gg/3xjNttcf  ....   You def want to be there to ask questions and get the latest viewer, its only found there not on the website. Its been my daily driver for over a year and cant do SL without it anymore since the Lightbox stuff for my filming, but i do love coolviewers map lol. The Alchemy website only has the last stable version usually a few months behind. Also the Discord is a goldmine of help from the developers and an amazing community.

Edited May 19 by Makay Scribe

[ValKalAstra]

5 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

This all makes me so very thankful that I have almost zero interest in mirrors.

Like Nina, I think I'm too dumb to figure this all out.

About that 😅

My renewed experiences with mirrors in SL then. This is with the uh, nightly release of Alchemy. The initial setup of the mirrors is technically not all that difficult in as much as it is needlessly convoluted to the point of being a pain. My main mistake was using an older version (well, one-two week old version) of the viewer. However once it is setup properly, I can just toss out a prim linked with a probe from my inventory, adjust the size as needed and roll out.

First impressions then: For photography, 2048x2048 is not enough. Okay that sounds insane but as you can see in the above image, the reflection is blurry and notably low res. It can be useful if it isn't the primary focus and maybe down the road, photography focused viewers will allow higher resolutions since we're just pushing the viewer to the absolute limit of crashing anyways. Maybe they already do with a debug setting or something. Gotta dig into that.

So far I am whelmed. Neither over nor underwhelmed - just whelmed.

Edited May 19 by ValKalAstra

[Istelathis]

I love mirrors in SL, not so much in RL 😋  I have been playing around with reflections for a few months, just having fun with them.  I even made a reflective avatar, which I tormented myself with by placing myself in a mirror maze.

My latest attempt was to try to create a mirror attachment in SL which did not work so well, I would get semi reflections of the environment but could not get mirrored images of my avatar.  So instead I just created a mirror and moved my avatar to appear that I am holding one.

 

Stepping away from the mirror

 

Resizing it broke it, and the image would not update no matter what changes I made in my viewer (Alchemy)

 

I is the frozen, stuck forever in one image.  

Earlier I was playing around with the two mirrors to get the infinity effect, I saw my reflection bounced around a few times.  A while back, before the official mirrors were added, I placed myself in a hollow sphere and had fun with the reflection.

They are a bit weird, I can't get them to work exactly as you would a mirror in real life either, but.. at least in mouse view my head no longer vanishes 🤣 I think LL compensated for this, because previously the reflection would show no head unless I specifically changed my viewer to display it in mouselook.  

Edit:
Heh, my head is vanishing again in mouselook.. weird.

Edited May 19 by Istelathis

[Qie Niangao]

Well, there's a new Linden "materials featurettes" viewer, 7.1.8.9103842320 which sees the mirrors created in Alchemy beta (and, I presume, CoolVL Viewer). I think Henri warned us that the previous Linden featurettes viewer was significantly behind the code, and I noticed that Alchemy wasn't seeing the mirrors I created in that older Linden viewer. Now maybe they're compatible (for now?), although Alchemy needs the probes to be "Dynamic" to see avatars, whereas the Linden viewer needs them to be "Mirrors (Everything)". 

2 hours ago, ValKalAstra said:

For photography, 2048x2048 is not enough. Okay that sounds insane but as you can see in the above image, the reflection is blurry and notably low res.

About that, Henri speculated above: "the reflection turns blurry too soon when your camera gets farther to the mirror, and it's probably because a wrong mip (one with halved resolution) is applied too soon". I don't think I'm seeing a single discrete jump in sharpness though, but rather, as I pull the cam back from the surface of the mirror, the image gradually gets more blurry, which is kind of strange because the area shown in the reflection reduces with distance so one would expect the detail of an individual item in the image to either stay the same or get sharper. It's possible the change isn't as gradual as I think, but that's how it appears to me.

 

[ValKalAstra]

26 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

About that, Henri speculated above: "the reflection turns blurry too soon when your camera gets farther to the mirror, and it's probably because a wrong mip (one with halved resolution) is applied too soon". I don't think I'm seeing a single discrete jump in sharpness though, but rather, as I pull the cam back from the surface of the mirror, the image gradually gets more blurry, which is kind of strange because the area shown in the reflection reduces with distance so one would expect the detail of an individual item in the image to either stay the same or get sharper. It's possible the change isn't as gradual as I think, but that's how it appears to me.

 

Oh, yah I missed that part of their comment somehow. That would kind of make sense although the camera in my above test shot was all but smooshed into the mirror. I've now gone and tried ot reproduce it with another testshot.

Oddly, I see no blurriness anymore. What the heck. And that's the same mirror as I just picked it up and spawned it again.

Oh for... disregard me, I'm an idiot. I figured it out.

The culprit was Field of View in my case (sorry, got a really foggy head today. CTRL+8, CTRL 9 and 0 is what I refer to). Seems that the wider I set my FOV, the sharper my reflection gets and vice versa, leading to the absolutely blurry mess after narrowing it a few times. Sorry if my language sucks at explaining today but - yah.

[shireena1]

Just adding my 2 linden worth here, I have made a reflection probe on a flat surface before with some success, (The earlier ones that are not actually mirrors and reflect blurrily), but I am waiting for a SL University Video to be made, so I can follow it to make these new mirrors. It seems to be sort of similar, so I should be able to make it work.

[Love Zhaoying]

I was disappointed that when I made a "horizontal" (parallel to the ground) mirror a few months ago, it obviously reflected the Sun even though it was indoors, etc.

So, I should try it again with any new settings and see if that changed.

The use-case I was creating was a mirrored "pool" in a cave.

 

[Makay Scribe]

On 5/19/2024 at 8:49 AM, shireena1 said:

Just adding my 2 linden worth here, I have made a reflection probe on a flat surface before with some success, (The earlier ones that are not actually mirrors and reflect blurrily), but I am waiting for a SL University Video to be made, so I can follow it to make these new mirrors. It seems to be sort of similar, so I should be able to make it work.

if you have a V7 viewer like Cool, Alchemy, FS beta or BD then try this. https://gyazo.com/a8112a4692b83d2a64cf29efce3cee3d

[Flea Yatsenko]

I haven't played with mirrors yet but I have some cool ideas for caves and stuff I usually make that will use mirror reflections, if I can get them to work how I think. Accurate reflections aren't just for putting up a body size mirror in your house and looking at yourself in it.