Beq Talks About The Future Of Firestorm And PBR

[Midnoot]

Lol. I wonder less and less about why second life population decreases the more I read the forums . Voice bad.  Controlling my own volume isn't an option apparently . I must do away with all possible nuisances to my ears. But never lift a finger to mute someone who annoys me . 

 

 That aside , I'm not looking forward to the fps drop. I will cri . And then spend my life savings on a real gaming pc 

[Qie Niangao]

50 minutes ago, Thecla said:

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".

That's my impression, too. It's possible to do some pretty crazy things with EEPs without really trying, and it seems those can come back to bite you with a PBR viewer—which can be further aggravated inside a reflection probe with a naughty Ambiance setting.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

1 hour ago, Midnoot said:

Lol. I wonder less and less about why second life population decreases the more I read the forums . Voice bad.  Controlling my own volume isn't an option apparently . I must do away with all possible nuisances to my ears. But never lift a finger to mute someone who annoys me . 

 

 That aside , I'm not looking forward to the fps drop. I will cri . And then spend my life savings on a real gaming pc 

There is a volume control: separate controls for the music stream, gestures, voice, at least on firestorm.

You can get a gaming pc for a grand, not top of the line, but probably way better than you or I have.

Note: do not turn everything up to ultra right off or you might be saying, my SL still sucks 😂

[Flea Yatsenko]

From my experience, PBR viewer runs better if you have a mid range graphics card or higher and you were limited by CPU performance before. If you have integrated you are probably in trouble. I have ran the PBR viewer on some very low end, unreasonable hardware, and it works ok at the bare minimum. But I think there will be a lot of lowering draw distances to 64m or even 32m to make up for not having a good GPU/Graphics card.

The biggest problem I found was that the default settings were too high. I ran PBR viewer on this https://www.productindetail.com/pn/lenovo-thinkpad-x140e-20bl and it worked sort of after I turned the settings down to the absolute lowest. By default settings it was unrunnable, like less than 1fps. I managed to get about 10-15fps. Actually the CPU was too slow and it took forever to rez when TPing, like 10 minutes. But once it was rezzed in it was ok. I really wouldn't do it every day, but lets be real, that's like a 2013 netbook.

If you are worried, the first thing I would do is go into settings and turn down draw distance, by a lot, and turn down some other settings, then increase settings until you don't like the performance any more, then step back a bit.

Also, creators who don't do the bare minimum of putting the base color from the PBR material (yes I know it's not right but it's better than no texture at all) as a fallback texture deserve all the horrible customer service complaints they're going to get. I guarantee at least one TPV will all non-PBR rendering for a long time.

[Midnoot]

9 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

There is a volume control: separate controls for the music stream, gestures, voice, at least on firestorm.

You can get a gaming pc for a grand, not top of the line, but probably way better than you or I have.

Note: do not turn everything up to ultra right off or you might be saying, my SL still sucks 😂

I 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...

[stlshayne]

Often perplexed by the constant crapping on young people I see on this forum. I'm a late millennial myself, grew up with dial-up even, and I have lots of friends on SL who are in their 50s and 60s... but if SL is to still exist in 25 years, it's going to need more people like me, since people don't live forever. 

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

Edited May 30 by stlshayne

[Love Zhaoying]

17 minutes ago, stlshayne said:

Often perplexed by the constant crapping on young people I see on this forum.

I missed it, mostly I see crapping on old people.

[stlshayne]

8 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I missed it, mostly I see crapping on old people.

Not my experience at all, though I do see on occasion some crapping on older people. SL skews older, though, so I just see a lot of reactionary "these kids" takes. You might find them in this very thread. It's mostly a recent thing, I'll admit, but feel free to just search "gen z" on this forum. I won't single any persons out, but I see constantly "these young kids with their phones and their tik toks and their attention spans."

 

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

Edited May 30 by stlshayne

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes 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. 

After reading the above, I can only hear this in Jerry's voice:

6 minutes ago, stlshayne said:

"these young kids with their phones and their tik toks and their attention spans."

But myself being an Oldbie, and having no inclination to use anything but the Official viewer, of course I will feel attacked when expressing my own views. 🙂

 

Edited May 30 by Love Zhaoying

[AmeliaJ08]

1 hour ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

From my experience, PBR viewer runs better if you have a mid range graphics card or higher and you were limited by CPU performance before. If you have integrated you are probably in trouble. I have ran the PBR viewer on some very low end, unreasonable hardware, and it works ok at the bare minimum. But I think there will be a lot of lowering draw distances to 64m or even 32m to make up for not having a good GPU/Graphics card.

The biggest problem I found was that the default settings were too high. I ran PBR viewer on this https://www.productindetail.com/pn/lenovo-thinkpad-x140e-20bl and it worked sort of after I turned the settings down to the absolute lowest. By default settings it was unrunnable, like less than 1fps. I managed to get about 10-15fps. Actually the CPU was too slow and it took forever to rez when TPing, like 10 minutes. But once it was rezzed in it was ok. I really wouldn't do it every day, but lets be real, that's like a 2013 netbook.

If you are worried, the first thing I would do is go into settings and turn down draw distance, by a lot, and turn down some other settings, then increase settings until you don't like the performance any more, then step back a bit.

Also, creators who don't do the bare minimum of putting the base color from the PBR material (yes I know it's not right but it's better than no texture at all) as a fallback texture deserve all the horrible customer service complaints they're going to get. I guarantee at least one TPV will all non-PBR rendering for a long time.

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.

As you say a laptop like that should have the settings cranked down to absolute minimums but expecting the user to do so in all cases is unrealistic, they will just wonder why everything is running at 1fps and get angry.

[Coffee Pancake]

5 hours 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

PBR is the new normal.

Once FS release it's only a matter of time before we will start seeing PBR only content. If your viewer doesn't have PBR, it wont have textures on PBR content as there is no automatic fallback. SL will feature more and more plywood and blank items.

Making fall back textures is possible, however there is no way to create a lot of what PBR can do with the old system, and trying to come up with something that looks right on both systems is difficult.

 

 

 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

3 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

PBR is the new normal.

Once FS release it's only a matter of time before we will start seeing PBR only content. If your viewer doesn't have PBR, it wont have textures on PBR content as there is no automatic fallback. SL will feature more and more plywood and blank items.

Making fall back textures is possible, however there is no way to create a lot of what PBR can do with the old system, and trying to come up with something that looks right on both systems is difficult.

 

 

 

Oh i know, and just like when mesh came out, when i have to use a PBR viewer, then I’ll use it, and see it 😁

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

4 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

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.

LOL, yeah... in my head, everybody has the sexiest voices ever, when I'm reading their text.  When voice is turned on, everybody sounds like Elmer Fudd in comparison to what was in my head.

[Midnoot]

44 minutes ago, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

LOL, yeah... in my head, everybody has the sexiest voices ever, when I'm reading their text.  When voice is turned on, everybody sounds like Elmer Fudd in comparison to what was in my head.

Another reason a lot of you don't use voice. :v... Afraid to get voice shamed.

[Love Zhaoying]

22 minutes ago, Midnoot said:

1 hour ago, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

LOL, yeah... in my head, everybody has the sexiest voices ever, when I'm reading their text.  When voice is turned on, everybody sounds like Elmer Fudd in comparison to what was in my head.

Another reason a lot of you don't use voice. :v... Afraid to get voice shamed.

5 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

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.

That poor little 8 year old girl probably had a 3-pack daily cigarette habit.

[Luna Bliss]

I'm happy to see the improvement for voice capability, as what we have now is way too buggy. Often I go to Discord if voice is needed.

I only use voice in certain situations though...like with a friend. Don't care for it in groups.

[Dafadilia Wayfarer]

1 hour ago, Midnoot said:

Another reason a lot of you don't use voice. :v... Afraid to get voice shamed.

Or you know...some of us are HOH or Deaf.

There is a comforting appeal in sl where everyone is on equal footing when communicating as a deaf person who has been in sl since 2009.

 

[Arielle Popstar]

2 hours ago, Midnoot said:

Another reason a lot of you don't use voice. :v... Afraid to get voice shamed.

My main reason for not using it is that it breaks immersion. Might be ok when dealing with a technical matter but for most of virtual life, one may as well be on a normal phone or some other medium where the visual is secondary. Seen it again and again that those on voice tend not to pay attention to what is going on visually, which is where the majority of action is when playing a virtual life.

[Luna Bliss]

31 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Seen it again and again that those on voice tend not to pay attention to what is going on visually

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

[Arielle Popstar]

9 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

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

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. 

[Luna Bliss]

11 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

26 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

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

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.

Yeah when I returned to SL after an absence I was in a therapy-type group where I felt bullied because I wouldn't use voice. One guy in the group insisted if you didn't use voice you had something to hide. Another messaged me privately and asked why I wouldn't use voice.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

7 hours ago, Thecla said:

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".

6 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

That's my impression, too. It's possible to do some pretty crazy things with EEPs without really trying, and it seems those can come back to bite you with a PBR viewer—which can be further aggravated inside a reflection probe with a naughty Ambiance setting.

Yeah, this remains my main complaint about how PBR has been rolled out. I can take a hit to my FPS and compensate, but in my experience most existing EEPs either don't appear as good in the PBR viewers, or actually look downright awful.

And it's ironic, because this is supposed to be about making SL look better. And it won't, for a very great many users, because they're inexperienced with messing with EEP, there is no guidance on how to tweak them for PBR, and LL itself has done almost nothing to update the library or default EEPs.

It really is a job half well-done.

[Luna Bliss]

7 hours ago, Thecla said:

I was at the Key West sim yesterday and the entire ocean was the color of Orangina lol.

Key West turns fantasy!  I look on the bright side!   j/k

[Qie Niangao]

4 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Making fall back textures is possible, however there is no way to create a lot of what PBR can do with the old system, and trying to come up with something that looks right on both systems is difficult.

Yeah, it's harder than it needs to be, actually. I mean, the fallbacks wouldn't be great, but if you have a PBR base color and normalmap, those will look better than nothing for non-PBR viewers. Not great, but "recognizable." 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, so one really needs a process that applies the fallback first.

If I were selling products, I might go to that trouble, but doing one-off installations: nah. The visitor can update to a PBR viewer or not, for me it takes enough effort to concoct and tweak PBR materials without then needing to save them, remove them, patch up some temporary fallback, and then find and reapply the PBR stuff.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

20 minutes 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, so one really needs a process that applies the fallback first.

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?