Beq Talks About The Future Of Firestorm And PBR

[Qie Niangao]

6 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

And this is the other stupid thing that, so far as I know, they've not fixed. Were I cynical, I'd say this was a deliberate move to speed up the adoption of PBR viewers.

You say "most viewers." Is there one that has fixed this?

I think maybe there's a way to do it in CoolVL Viewer. I get lost every time I try to use it for anything, but I get the impression it's the solution to all my troubles if only I could navigate the UI.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

15 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I think maybe there's a way to do it in CoolVL Viewer. I get lost every time I try to use it for anything, but I get the impression it's the solution to all my troubles if only I could navigate the UI.

If this is true, then it is "fixable." And they've just decided not to do it.

Stupid.

[Rick Nightingale]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

The problem is, for most viewers, once a PBR material is applied, there's no way to edit the Blinn Phong maps without actually removing the PBR material

The Firestorm beta handles this well. If you go into edit, you can switch between the PBR and Blinn Phong textures in the edit window and the mesh changes what is shows to match which is currently selected. I'm doing it right now, playing with textures on my new bikini bottoms.

No need to remove PBR. I think in the first Firestorm beta you had to remove PBR to see Blinn Phong, but no more (at least in edit mode of course).

55 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

You say "most viewers." Is there one that has fixed this?

See above

 

Edited May 30 by Rick Nightingale

[Scylla Rhiadra]

18 minutes ago, Rick Nightingale said:

No need to remove PBR. I think in the first Firestorm beta you had to remove PBR to see Blinn Phong, but no more (at least in edit mode of course).

Good news, if that's so. I haven't tried this in the latest version; I'll have to give it a go.

Thanks!

[Rick Nightingale]

Ha - that said, I've just spotted something about that...

The tint from PBR is applied even to the Blinn Phong in edit mode; the tint in the Blinn Phong seems ignored if there's a PBR material on.

If viewed from a non-PBR viewer, the Blinn Phong is all that is seen of course, so no PBR tint.

Might be a bug... or not... going to ask someone.

Edit: Consensus is it's a bug/oversight so far. The fallback texture system is a workaround at the moment.

https://jira.firestormviewer.org/browse/FIRE-33964

 

Edited May 30 by Rick Nightingale

[Anna Salyx]

2 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

That's my main complaint about voice in groups -- those using text tend to be ignored.

2 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Yes exactly and even those following in voice and have trouble hearing, tending to be too shy to ask for a repeat of what was said. Especially with those who talk too fast so it is not only an inability to hear but also inability to absorb the flow of conversation. 

This really.  Through a series of really bad ear infections when I was a kid, my hearing is not the best in the world and the current and using any voice services sometimes is just iffy sometimes.  Heck IRL this one of the reasons I prefer texting over voicing.  My friends know not to call me.... now if I could only convince my mom....  . 

The other reason is that text gives you history.  If I have step away from the computer, with local/group chat in text I can scroll up and get caught up without having to ask someone to sum up for me. Or I can check what was recently said if I get confused. If there are more than just a couple of speakers I quickly get confused about who is talking as the visual cues are all absent it yet another reason.   The only time I really did any voice was when I was dancing in one of the cabarets a few years back, and I hated it even then for all the above reasons and a couple of extras.. /shrugs. 

 

[Jaylinbridges]

13 hours ago, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

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. 

This ^^ for those that use voice for their business.  There will be a painful transition period for voice auctions of Breedables.  No one is this group is involved in them, but as usual this group has limited interests.  Once LL turns Vivox off, no viewer will work on voice unless it has the WEBRTC upgrade.  Many attending auctions have low end computers, and auctions can have 30 avatars all close together.  They have problems now, so when forced to PBR they will either upgrade or be shut out.  There should be TPV developers that will add WEBRTC to their latest versions, and still are less load than FS.  But asking non tech types to change and learn some new TPV won't be popular either.  

What I expect there will be is more all text based real-time auctions.  Auctions use a text-based HUD now, to provide the basic information, in case you cannot hear, but the experience is limited because you can add so much more info with voice.  Normally only the auctioneer uses Voice - since it allows more information in a shorter time than text.

Eventually all will upgrade to something they can use, just like Mesh forced everyone to upgrade.  I remember using the Phoenix V1 viewer before they upgraded to mesh.  Clubs were full of very strange large objects, often just someone's ear, but 1000 times real size and shaped like a hot dog, floating in space.

 

Edited May 30 by Jaylinbridges

[Polenth Yue]

It turns out that if a PBR item has glow, the non-PBR version looks like a pure white glow object. Make that the whole infrastructure of a region and it's not usable if you're prone to migraines or sensory overloads. Even if you aren't, you'll likely get eye strain after a bit. The default texture really needed to be dark grey or black to stop things like this. But it isn't.

So, I really hope Firestorm updates before the birthday. I didn't want to mess with the beta or setting up a whole other viewer, but it's not going to be optional for me. I can't deal with white glow land for more than a few minutes at a time.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

8 hours ago, stlshayne said:

Meanwhile, in about 5 years, mid-late gen Z is going to be the age of the characters on Seinfeld when it started. 

 

8 hours ago, stlshayne said:

Early gen z is approaching their 30s! Need we be waving people off our lawns? 

Depends on the people on our lawns.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Depends on the people on our lawns.

Lawn Gnomes are people? I need to stop mowing over them!

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

7 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

I've often wondered how auto-settings actually works in these viewers, they seem to get it very wrong most of the time. I assume there is some smarts at play when it comes to picking the default graphics settings but it has never been particularly good from my experience.

It's an LL auto default, and I suspect most TPV's just copied THAT code without bothering to fix it, as nobody with a brain uses the auto-default, right?

It's based off some old, old, LL doctrine that somebody once described as "See more, but see it completely crap!".

Bad graphics settings with a draw distance that's probably too high for the settings used.

Stuff like turning depth of field on, so most of SL is blurred, but leaving ALM off, max non-imposters way too high so you lag like hell if there's people about, render volume lod factor sett so low everything is a tangled mess of triangles, etc.

New LL Pretentious Bloody Rubbish fits into this perfectly, bad tone mapping, glitchy rendering, insane buggy mis rendering, utterly crap FPS with default draw distances that will leave you crawling like a slug on the 2k textured ground!

 

"See MORE but see it completely crap!"

[Jaylinbridges]

8 hours ago, Midnoot said:

already use a grand low-mid-range one and it drops 15 fps when going from FS to default viewer,so i'm assuming pbr FS is the end for me >:O!.. I like my fps...

I had a 12 year old graphics card in my 12 yr old MB and 12 yr old CPU, and that's what I saw too.  But it went from 45 fps to 30 fps, so I hardly noticed.  I have now installed a 5 yr old graphics card, and all the PBR viewers runs just fine on my 12 yr old system.  But I didnt start with a Walmart laptop either.  I won't have full mirrors turned on though, since I can rotate my cam and get a much clearer image of myself than any mirror. I can live without mirrors.

[Sammy Huntsman]

12 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Lawn Gnomes are people? I need to stop mowing over them!

 

I love looking for them in Fable. There is literally a quest in Fable 1 or 2 where you have to find all the lawn gnomes. 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

3 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

That's my main complaint about voice in groups -- those using text tend to be ignored.

I refuse to turn on voice even to listen, if you can't be bothered to type, I can't be bothered to listen to you.

Guys love to turn on voice so you can hear them moan when they do it, they can be totally hands free for the "other stuff"

[Jaylinbridges]

4 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Guys love to turn on voice so you can hear them moan when they do it, they can be totally hands free for the "other stuff"

My adult attachments (come) with their own voice.  But I turn it off too, cause that's not me.  Good to know that sex is the only use for Voice in SL.  They better remove Voice from the mobile viewer then.

[Rick Nightingale]

10 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

sex is the only use for Voice in SL

Well, the only time I've ever voiced in SL (using a jury-rigged TomTom microphone) was to...

...play a pirate sailing battle with multiple ships in teams.

Voice did improve the response, and made me understand why I often struggled in such competitions when the other team were voicing and we weren't.

[Rick Nightingale]

I have a couple of lower spec PCs here, 10-ish years old with GPUs from the same era. They all run PBR just about acceptably if not well. They are below minimum spec now though for FS. Only my main rig runs it nicely, and that definitely needs updating now (only good thing is the relatively new GTX 1080 in it).

However... I have a thing for mini PCs, usually HP mini desktop Elite 800 and have them dotted around as various things (like my media centre, and the PC I use most in the living room when doing anything other than SL). My latest, which is the current latest model with a 13700T CPU, 64GB RAM and very fast nVME storage, can hardly handle PBR with the iGPU. It's not reasonably usable IMO, except in the most basic way if I need to log in there and message someone or check something. It can't even display all the textures in a scene, with everything turned down to minimum, without thrashing. That's not even looking around; just standing there.

So Intel iGPUs seem to be out. Maybe in a higher clocked big PC it would work better, but I doubt much.

Personally I would get far more use out of a viewer made for those iGPUs, than a mobile nonsense.

Edited May 30 by Rick Nightingale
typo

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Would this be good enough?

[Ayashe Ninetails]

I would personally never buy an Alienware. Or a 4060 for that matter. Or a 500W. Or liquid cooling.

[Love Zhaoying]

56 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I would personally never buy an Alienware. Or a 4060 for that matter. Or a 500W. Or liquid cooling.

Would you accept one as a gift?

[Coffee Pancake]

Friends don't let friends alienware.

 

[Jaylinbridges]

1 hour ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Would this be good enough?

That should squeek by with no Mirrors in a low avatar count skybox   But really not enough RAM or VRAM for the new features LL is giving us.  And listening to the pow wow speeches at the SL21B?  only with 5 avatars rezzed, out of the 90 on a region.

Here is one that should last for a few more years.   

[Extrude Ragu]

2 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Would this be good enough?

The machine is more than good enough, but I suspect you can get better bang for your buck elsewhere, or a cheaper equivalent. Alienware's price tends to mostly come from brand

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

2 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Would this be good enough?

I'll try to be fair and ignore the Alienware brand, and the pricing (this is way overpriced)...

The processor is decent.  The RAM is maybe a bit light, and the 4060 with 8Gb VRAM is light.  Used to be, if you wanted a future proof system, you would get a top of the line processor.  Processor advances kind of hit a wall, and then they started adding cores, instead of Mhz (because physics).  Software and game devs have been trying to catch up to that change for the last 15+ years, and it will probably take them another decade for them to really start to take advantage of multiple cores.  So there isn't much reason to push the envelope with raw processor power, nowadays.

If you want to get a future proof system, get a bunch of RAM, and get a bunch of VRAM.  36Gb RAM will keep you going for the next decade, I think.  VRAM is important for a lot more than just graphics.  It's used in multi-threaded applications, and AI stuff.  AI is getting embedded in everything, and that takes a lot of VRAM.  You can get a cheap 3060 with 12Gb VRAM, and that's enough to run just about any AI model that you can get your hands on, so it should be sufficient for PBR.

As for liquid cooling?  That's for weirdos.  It's unnecessary, especially since components pull so much less power nowadays.  It's good for overclocking, but overclocking is an archaic hobby now.  Remember what I said about adding Mhz?  That's what overclockers do.  There's not much point to it, for most users, any more.  Plus, I hear the newer video cards are so efficient, the fans on them are more for aesthetics than function.  Liquid cooling is also a disaster waiting to happen, if it leaks.  Best to avoid it completely.

Edited May 31 by Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia

[Extrude Ragu]

Here's some helpful tools for shoppers who want to determine how performant the CPU/GPU they are getting is

Passmark GPU List

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

Order by Passmark G3D score highest to lowest.

You might be surprised to learn for instance that a GeForce 3070 will outperform a 4060.

Passmark CPU List

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

Again order by CPU Mark highest to lowest.