I have used PBR in landscaping, and hated it

[Arielle Popstar]

It can be somewhat fixed with turning down the exposure slider  Prefs > Graphics > General - Exposure,

[Modulated]

12 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

It can be somewhat fixed with turning down the exposure slider  Prefs > Graphics > General - Exposure,

Some have suggested placing reflection probes in your skybox or build to mitigate this, whether it works or not I don't know firsthand. Someone with building experience could tell you more .

[Arielle Popstar]

5 minutes ago, Modulated said:

Some have suggested placing reflection probes in your skybox or build to mitigate this, whether it works or not I don't know firsthand. Someone with building experience could tell you more .

Not much good if I am in a place where I don't have build rights. Easier to just turn down the exposure. Maybe FS set the default a bit too high.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

48 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I saw some complaints in the Maitreya Friends group in-world. Mostly brightness issues, some FPS issues, some computer age issues.

I was just in world and read that but had no idea what they were talking about. Someone asked "can someone tell me what the settings should be so that i don't look like a nuclear test target"

I think this is gonna be a mess. 

Edited June 21 by Ingrid Ingersoll

[Ayashe Ninetails]

18 minutes ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

I was just in world and read that but had no idea what they were talking about. Someone asked "can someone tell me what the settings should be so that i don't look like a nuclear test target"

I think this is gonna be a mess. 

Omg. That sounds horrible. Totally agree. 

[Polenth Yue]

On the exposure thing, the Firestorm default (1.0) looks right to me. The skies are a good brightness and my avatar and objects look much as they did. This is without reflection probes. I can get the colours to pop more by adding a probe, but it looks okay without.

So, if you look terrible at the midday setting, it's more likely to be a materials issue than an exposure issue. If you look fine at midday, but terrible with your favourite EEP, it's down to things in the EEP needing changes. The danger of notching exposure right down is that most stuff will end up looking very dark. You'll end up overcompensating when you edit EEPs and objects, so they're like holy balls of white glow to everyone else. You only really want to fiddle with that if everything, not just your own avatar, is the wrong brightness at midday.

3 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

So all those people running around all shiny had no clue that they were shiny?  

A bit back, someone complained their home looked all wrong now. The before picture had advanced lighting off. The after picture had advanced lighting and it turns out the floors were shiny polished wood, which was washed out with overly strong lights. So yes, a lot of people didn't know all their stuff was shiny. However, I've always known I was shiny!

[Scylla Rhiadra]

17 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

So, if you look terrible at the midday setting, it's more likely to be a materials issue than an exposure issue. If you look fine at midday, but terrible with your favourite EEP, it's down to things in the EEP needing changes. The danger of notching exposure right down is that most stuff will end up looking very dark. You'll end up overcompensating when you edit EEPs and objects, so they're like holy balls of white glow to everyone else. You only really want to fiddle with that if everything, not just your own avatar, is the wrong brightness at midday.

Yes, this is what I was going to say. The shininess / brightness issue is really with the EEP and the materials; adjusting exposure in preferences will reduce it for ALL materials and ALL EEPs.

I am trying to figure out why I get reduced "plasticy shine" with some bright EEPs, even ones designed for PBR, but not with others. For instance, the new Midday default is pretty good: bright, but not washed out and not overly shiny. I need to figure out what it does right that the others are not doing.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Anyone on a Mac having special problems with this?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

So, some quick and dirty observations on the new FS PBR-enabled viewer. It hasn't changed a great deal from the alpha and beta versions I've tried, but there are a few differences.

1) The hit to performance was about what I'd expected -- measurable and noticeable, in the 40 FPS range -- but also manageable. What I haven't tried yet is using it in a crowded place.

2) I was getting somewhat more texture thrashing than I'm used to

3) Most EEPs, including a dozen or so supposedly designed for PBR, still suck, and in anything even approaching daylight brightness produce at least some degree of that overly-shiny plastic or vaseline effect. A few, however, do not. I need to find out why not.

4) Mirrors work better than I'd thought, and are not as bad a hit on performance as I'd imagined. That's not really a big deal for me: I don't imagine I'll employ them very often, but they'll have occasional uses. I don't think their quality is sufficiently good for most photographs, however.

5) The high-altitude glitch that impacted reflection probes seems to have been fixed. The adjustments for the ambient lighting of the probes, however, is even less intuitive than I remember, largely because of how the EEP settings affect them. In some EEPs, the impact of the ambient settings was barely discernible. In others, it worked the opposite of what I'd expected: in one or two, raising the ambience above 1 actually darkened the scene. Inevitably, this is going to be trial and error, and it will produce variable results on people's own EEP settings.

6) Water still looks awful. I will not be using the PBR version of Black Dragon (which, however, I do have, and have tested) until LL fixes this, because I use BD for almost all of my pics, and I don't want crappy looking water in those.

As I had predicted, I'm inevitably going to be spending an evening or two producing a new set of EEP settings for this.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

6 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I saw some complaints in the Maitreya Friends group in-world. Mostly brightness issues, some FPS issues, some computer age issues. Not a single peep about probes or anything like that. Just advice to fiddle with the exposure setting. The CSR is doing a great job adding notices about bodies/skins being too shiny due to the forced ALM, at least.

As for me, I shall just not update until I havta. I'd really rather not deal with any of it.

I might just uninstall it and wait for a later release, like when I get the notice my current viewer will be blocked,

[BilliJo Aldrin]

6 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

This is Nam's Optimal Skin 2 in Pre PBR 

 

 

And this in the PBR viewer

And this is an improvement? God help us all. Oh, and rlv is still broken after I logged in again, so buh bye PBR viewer

[Theresa Tennyson]

6 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Not much good if I am in a place where I don't have build rights. Easier to just turn down the exposure.

Or use an environment setting that isn't old enough to have graduated from middle school.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

17 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Or use an environment setting that isn't old enough to have graduated from middle school.

how does mid day sun look? Is that even a thing with the new viewer?

[BilliJo Aldrin]

2 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

 

1) The hit to performance was about what I'd expected -- measurable and noticeable, in the 40 FPS range -- but also manageable. What I haven't tried yet is using it in a crowded place.

 

 

hmmmm, my viewer is throttled at 15 fps, and with the new viewer i'm still hitting it in a quiet place. Can I expect to just lock up if I go to a busy place?

[Arielle Popstar]

43 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

And this is an improvement? God help us all. Oh, and rlv is still broken after I logged in again, so buh bye PBR viewer

I did point out in a follow up post that one can use the Exposure slider in Pref>Graphic>General to minimize the amount of exposure light to fix it somewhat.

33 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Or use an environment setting that isn't old enough to have graduated from middle school.

If you could suggest an alternative that achieves the same effect, I and many others would much appreciate it.

[Beq Janus]

9 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Beq rushing the release

Yeah, a 7 month rush, damn I'm fast.

Most of the complaints are "its too dark" and "its too light" which is ultimately an environmental issue. It doesn't matter how long you wait, that part doesn't change. 

[Beq Janus]

7 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

This is Nam's Optimal Skin 2 in Pre PBR 

Why do people think that an ancient windlight setting is going to work in an entirely new lighting model. It's not hard to understand really, the new lighting model means you'll need to find a new "optimal".

The irony is of course that many of those who can and will create the new "optimal" and related content have been holding back because "Beq is soooo slooooowwwww". With an FS option out there that excuse no longer exists, we should see new stuff appearing.

If it doesn't then PBR was a big expensive white elephant. Time will tell.

[Beq Janus]

7 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Not much good if I am in a place where I don't have build rights. Easier to just turn down the exposure. Maybe FS set the default a bit too high.

Our default is the LL default. As I said in the blog (that nobody reads, of course, I get it)we may well provide more control in the future, but given that most of this issue is that people are using bad environments and expecting them to look good, it is not a viewer problem.

There are PBR-calibrated EEPs (including free ones) on the marketplace 

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/en-US/products/search?utf8=✓&search[category_id]=&search[maturity_level]=GMA&search[keywords]=EEP+PBR

 

Edited June 21 by Beq Janus

[Theresa Tennyson]

7 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

This is Nam's Optimal Skin 2 in Pre PBR 

 

 

And this in the PBR viewer

I just came back from a store that used "Nam's Optimal Skin 2" and the lighting was blown out but not that blown out. What other light sources are you using?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

24 minutes ago, Beq Janus said:

Our default is the LL default. As I said in the blog (that nobody reads, of course, I get it)we may well provide more control in the future, but given that most of this issue is that people are using bad environments and expecting them to look good, it is not a viewer problem.

There are PBR-calibrated EEPs (including free ones) on the marketplace 

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/en-US/products/search?utf8=✓&search[category_id]=&search[maturity_level]=GMA&search[keywords]=EEP+PBR

 

I think people still need to get their head around how this works, and what it entails.

One set of PBR-calibrated EEPs that I picked up included about 4 that completely washed out the avatar in normal exterior light. I couldn't understand the point until I read the notecard: these were designed for interiors, because these are often now darker than they used to be. (Just like in RL! Imagine!)

The idea that you should expect to change your EEP when you step inside is just . . . bizarre.

Eventually, people will realize that this new materials and lighting system will necessitate a change in a few standard assumptions that derive from how things were pre-PBR. Amongst those will be the use of interior lighting (or well-calibrated reflection probes) in interiors. But it's going to take a while.

Edited June 21 by Scylla Rhiadra

[AlbaneClaray]

I installed the latest firestorm supporting PBR a couple of hours ago and will run back to the previous version. This PBR one is a catastrophe, all EPP looks crapy, all items also. That is really not an improvment  

[AmeliaJ08]

12 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Fixed that for you.

Just about EVERY screen shot I've ever posted here, on the my.secondlife.com site or on DeviantArt features ALM, just not the busted ass Pretentious Bloody Rubbish from LL.

I've been using ALM for over 8 years.

 

Ahuh yeah you're right it's the industry that is wrong

[AmeliaJ08]

9 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

So all those people running around all shiny had no clue that they were shiny?  

I've asked a couple and yeah, they had ALM disabled. I stopped asking though, it's such a common issue... it can only ever mean ALM disabled so they can't see or someone very new to the body who has been messing with sliders in the HUD.

[AmeliaJ08]

47 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Eventually, people will realize that this new materials and lighting system will necessitate a change in a few standard assumptions that derive from how things were pre-PBR. Amongst those will be the use of interior lighting (or well-calibrated reflection probes) in interiors. But it's going to take a while.

And a whole lot more silly posts where people post pictures of them using incompatible EEP's and claim the product is broken

It'll sort itself out over time, all the EEP's included with the viewer probably need tweaking although I have found the custom one I was using in my land transferred over just fine, it was basically the default Sunset EEP though.

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

6 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

And a whole lot more silly posts where people post pictures of them using incompatible EEP's and claim the product is broken

It'll sort itself out over time, all the EEP's included with the viewer probably need tweaking although I have found the custom one I was using in my land transferred over just fine, it was basically the default Sunset EEP though.

 

Definitely, although in fairness, I'll repeat what I've said before: if the immediate point of this exercise is to make SL look "better" than it did before, for most people that's not going to be the case. And that's because LL has only done half the job: they changed the materials and lighting system, but left us with a library full of EEPs designed for an older, different one.

Yes, EEPs can be created by individual users, and yes there are people making them for PBR (although I've not been very impressed by those in that category I've seen), but we all know that most users don't really know their way around the EEP settings, and aren't going to do this -- or, as witness comments we've seen here, recognize that they should do it. Most residents are simply going to decide that the new viewers suck without understanding that it's the EEPs that now suck.

LL really needed to replace at least parts of the EEP library. That's not an entirely trivial task, but it's nothing compared to the work that must have gone into the other half of the equation.

Edited June 21 by Scylla Rhiadra
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