Beq Talks About The Future Of Firestorm And PBR

[Perrie Juran]

Beq Janus sure had a lot to say about the future path for Firestorm.

 

https://www.firestormviewer.org/pbr-where-we-are-where-we-are-going-and-what-you-can-do-to-be-ready/

[Arielle Popstar]

I had expected more about the future as it was my take that it was mostly about the remaining steps involved with the PBR rollout and what to expect as far as the effect on hardware. There was the thing about the voice change over but was left wondering what the implications would be for the Firestorm OS version.

[Polenth Yue]

Surprised that the PBR bug with the moon having artefacts around it wasn't on the list of annoyances, unless LL has already fixed that in the code they sent out. I hope so, because it'll block making new skies for a bit (no way to get a good product picture in a PBR viewer if the sky has a moon). I will be glad of being able to do all my building in one viewer, instead of having to keep switching.

[shireena1]

Ok, thank you for the heads up. Will be looking forward to using the new viewer.

[CaerolleClaudel]

All about PBR and voice. I thought from what they said at the beginning they were going to talk about longer-term future in general.

I think an awful lot of people are using, if not barely capable, then low-end hardware for SL. I know a lot of people who are poor and SL is a some place nice for them to go. I wonder how they will fare; sure, probably SL can still run, but I wonder if "you should be able to find settings that give you a nice balance of visuals and performance" means lower-quality visuals than people on lower-end machines can currently get.

[Alwin Alcott]

think i'll keep my current version for some time, and see/hear what the experiences are.

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

I think they kinda buried the lede, because PBR is the flashy new tech that everybody wants to see.  IMHO, the big thing everybody will be complaining about, when this goes live, is going to be WebRTC.  WebRTC will force everybody to migrate, rather than hang back and see how things go, first.  Once everybody is on WebRTC, it won't be an issue, and people will probably love the increased quality.  The process of getting everybody upgraded, so that they can use WebRTC voice with their friends who migrated away from Vivox?  That will cause some confusion, and complaints, when half the places you hang out are WebRTC, and half are still Vivox.  Then, a decent percentage of users will be taking a big performance hit from the PBR when they upgrade to WebRTC, and that's going to cause a lot of complaints.  I can see the complaints now:  "You mean I have to upgrade to talk to friends on voice, but if I upgrade I get 5 FPS?  I hate this game!"

From the bottom of the blog post:

Quote

 

Finally, of course, when WebRTC goes live, anyone using voice will no longer have that service, as the Vivox service behind SLVoice will be terminated at some point. Even while it remains available, there will be no way to communicate from the older SLVoice to the new webRTC, as they are incompatible with one another.

 

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

As predicted:

"The new viewer is more demanding on hardware, and while there have been a lot of enhancements and optimisations that go a long way to offsetting the increased demands, some of you, especially those who already struggle with performance, are likely to find things more challenging."

This in interesting, though, and may hasten the adoption of a PBR viewer even by those who might want to hold off for performance reasons. I wonder how quickly we'll see PBR terrain adopted?

"Moreover, for terrain, there is no possibility of backwards compatibility. Once a region has updated its terrain to PBR, non-PBR viewers will see nothing but the base colour (probably grey/white)."

I have to admit, although I've been using off-and-on both the FS PBR Beta (as it now is) and the BD PBR viewer, I'm not entirely looking forward to this, especially as I'll be struggling with EEP settings for a while.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 minutes ago, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

I think they kinda buried the lede, because PBR is the flashy new tech that everybody wants to see.  IMHO, the big thing everybody will be complaining about, when this goes live, is going to be WebRTC.

How many people actually use voice? Almost no one in my circles of friends does -- at least, not in communal settings.

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

9 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

How many people actually use voice? Almost no one in my circles of friends does -- at least, not in communal settings.

I don't use it much, either, but I think we are in the minority, now.  Voice is normal for younger users, and users who are used to playing games like CoD.  I hear most gen Z types can't even touch type with all their fingers.  They learned to type with their thumbs, instead.

Also... with WebRTC, you will get better quality voice, which may make you, and/or your friends start using voice more.

Edited May 30 by Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just now, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

They learned to type with their thumbs, instead.

Savages.

Just now, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

I don't use it much, either, but I think we are in the minority, now.  Voice is normal for younger users, and users who are used to playing games like CoD.

This may be more of a consideration for the future then, when (or if) all of this new eye candy attracts newer, younger users.

(I'm not, however, holding my breath.)

[Daniel Voyager]

Firestorm should start developing mobile version of Second Life. It will take time for sure but I think there is demand there for it. 

[Istelathis]

4 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Savages.

Look at the bright side, they make for good volcano fuel Scylla  

[Scylla Rhiadra]

4 minutes ago, Daniel Voyager said:

Firestorm should start developing mobile version of Second Life. It will take time for sure but I think there is demand there for it. 

I am not sure I see the point. People use Firestorm because of the interface and additional tools. The mobile interface is of necessity entirely different, so a FS mobile viewer wouldn't reflect the things that people like about the computer version anyway. And, while I suppose they might integrate a few new tools into it, the capabilities of a mobile viewer are also going to be pretty limited.

AND it would take them forever, and distract them from their main business. FS is already 6 months behind the LL viewer (and a few others) as it is.

[animats]

36 minutes ago, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

Voice is normal for younger users,

There are SL users who don't know voice is possible. I happened to mention voice in SL to a friend who's been in SL for over a year. She had no idea voice was supported. She was very happy to hear about the voice system, and immediately set up her viewer for voice so we could talk.

It's still flaky, though. Having to relog to get voice to come up is all too common.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

1 hour ago, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

I think they kinda buried the lede, because PBR is the flashy new tech that everybody wants to see.  IMHO, the big thing everybody will be complaining about, when this goes live, is going to be WebRTC.  WebRTC will force everybody to migrate, rather than hang back and see how things go, first.  Once everybody is on WebRTC, it won't be an issue, and people will probably love the increased quality.  The process of getting everybody upgraded, so that they can use WebRTC voice with their friends who migrated away from Vivox?  That will cause some confusion, and complaints, when half the places you hang out are WebRTC, and half are still Vivox.  Then, a decent percentage of users will be taking a big performance hit from the PBR when they upgrade to WebRTC, and that's going to cause a lot of complaints.  I can see the complaints now:  "You mean I have to upgrade to talk to friends on voice, but if I upgrade I get 5 FPS?  I hate this game!"

From the bottom of the blog post:

 

Not everyone wants to see PBR, Its just more crap to slow things down. I personally already don't see half the wonderful sh*t LL had imposed on us over the years. PBR should be something to opt out on, leave us with crappy older computer to see SL on our terms

[BilliJo Aldrin]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

As predicted:

"The new viewer is more demanding on hardware, and while there have been a lot of enhancements and optimisations that go a long way to offsetting the increased demands, some of you, especially those who already struggle with performance, are likely to find things more challenging."

This in interesting, though, and may hasten the adoption of a PBR viewer even by those who might want to hold off for performance reasons. I wonder how quickly we'll see PBR terrain adopted?

"Moreover, for terrain, there is no possibility of backwards compatibility. Once a region has updated its terrain to PBR, non-PBR viewers will see nothing but the base colour (probably grey/white)."

I have to admit, although I've been using off-and-on both the FS PBR Beta (as it now is) and the BD PBR viewer, I'm not entirely looking forward to this, especially as I'll be struggling with EEP settings for a while.

Lovely isn't it, just lovely. I personally won't get the firestorm PBR viewer until my version gets hit by the 3 release limit

[Qie Niangao]

22 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Not everyone wants to see PBR, Its just more crap to slow things down. I personally already don't see half the wonderful sh*t LL had imposed on us over the years. PBR should be something to opt out on, leave us with crappy older computer to see SL on our terms

It's not only the viewers, though; the content is going to leave you behind long before that last pre-PBR viewer dies off. Estate owners will switch to 2K terrain very fast because it's just so much better and there's no practical way to keep both versions available to rez in different viewers. And starting with the Birthday regions, creators will be using PBR only on many builds just because it's such a gruesome pain in the ass to populate both sets of texturemaps (not to mention the additional download bandwidth it imposes, which I suspect is why the Lab is telling exhibitors there's no need to provide non-PBR fallback textures at that event).

[BilliJo Aldrin]

46 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

It's not only the viewers, though; the content is going to leave you behind long before that last pre-PBR viewer dies off. Estate owners will switch to 2K terrain very fast because it's just so much better and there's no practical way to keep both versions available to rez in different viewers. And starting with the Birthday regions, creators will be using PBR only on many builds just because it's such a gruesome pain in the ass to populate both sets of texturemaps (not to mention the additional download bandwidth it imposes, which I suspect is why the Lab is telling exhibitors there's no need to provide non-PBR fallback textures at that event).

My places won't have any PBR textures, guess I'll just stay home a lot more.

At least until I upgrade my computer... but it won't be the first time I've fallen so far behind that SL is just barely usable. 😂

Edited May 30 by BilliJo Aldrin
added a line

[BilliJo Aldrin]

1 hour ago, animats said:

There are SL users who don't know voice is possible. I happened to mention voice in SL to a friend who's been in SL for over a year. She had no idea voice was supported. She was very happy to hear about the voice system, and immediately set up her viewer for voice so we could talk.

It's still flaky, though. Having to relog to get voice to come up is all too common.

I used to voice 3 ways with an ex, her bf sounded like he swallowed the damn mic, and was gargling on it.. real turn on... not

[BilliJo Aldrin]

2 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I am not sure I see the point. People use Firestorm because of the interface and additional tools. The mobile interface is of necessity entirely different, so a FS mobile viewer wouldn't reflect the things that people like about the computer version anyway. And, while I suppose they might integrate a few new tools into it, the capabilities of a mobile viewer are also going to be pretty limited.

AND it would take them forever, and distract them from their main business. FS is already 6 months behind the LL viewer (and a few others) as it is.

In the end, SL is really only suitable for a desktop, its just too complex to be FULLY playable on a phone.

[Arielle Popstar]

My last attempt at voice was when a sweet adorable 8 year old girl started voicing with a deep, thick, guttural accented english. Totally ruined the image in my head and I never turned it on again except the occasional Linden meeting.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

3 hours ago, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

WebRTC will force everybody to migrate, rather than hang back and see how things go, first. 

No it won't, only voice spammers will be affected, people who avoid voice spam, don't care as they still won't use it.

 

3 hours ago, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

Also... with WebRTC, you will get better quality voice, which may make you, and/or your friends start using voice more.

It's not the quality of the voice spam reproduction that puts people off, it's the actual voice pam it's self.

Improved audio quality just means you'll hear the voice spammers mouth breathing, their barking dog, their mom telling them to stop playing the kinky prion simulator and do their homework,, in even more nauseating clarity.

 

3 hours ago, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

but I think we are in the minority, now.  Voice is normal for younger users, and users who are used to playing games like

Most SecondLifers are not Gen Z team pvp gamers. This is perhaps one of the most Gen Z Unfriendly platforms about, and long may it remain so.

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 hours ago, animats said:

She had no idea voice was supported. She was very happy to hear about the voice system

That's because a lot of places deliberately disable the use of voice spam.

[Thecla]

I thought it was a very good piece, loaded with good information, and a bit overdue. I've been using the FS Beta since the first alpha came out and I have to say I absolutely adore it. I do have a pretty snappy machine though, seeing frame rates consistently over 80 except at parties and events. For me the overall better tonal value and color saturation is way more important, visually, than the switch from glossiness to shininess.

As far as future features go, I'm sure that the whole crew is pretty well worn out as this was a massive undertaking. In addition, FS depends on LL's viewer roadmap and if that is not well populated at this point, so it goes. There is the voice update and I'm sure more optimization to allow the viewer to use more cores.

EEPs are still a problem. I was at the Key West sim yesterday and the entire ocean was the color of Orangina lol. That said, I've been designing my own EEPs for awhile and have not had a problem, so I'm wondering if the issue is that some EEPs need to be redone to work with PBR vs. PBR needing some "fix".