Firestorm PBR Release Is Out

[Rick Nightingale]

I'm running a ten year old i7 3770K CPU, 16GB RAM and a GTX 1080 GPU... it runs the latest Firestorm easily, with graphics settings pretty much max'd out and framerate capped at 40fps on a 2560x1440 monitor.  It occasionally dips below 40fps, down to 20's, when TP'ing into a busy place. Then the fans get loud too, until it settles down. Obviously, just-opened shopping events are still the lag-fests they always have been.

Basically it's perfectly fine here, given the age of my hardware.

Blame LL for any PBR issues etc... the Firestorm team have been doing everything they can to make Firestorm cope the best it can with what they were handed by LL.

Edited June 21 by Rick Nightingale

[JeromFranzic]

Anyone else try it on a GTX 1050 or similar GPU yet? I'm watching my aunt on dialysis today, have the SL and OS versions already on my phone to transfer to my SL/OS PC later.

I run FS in Linux and Windows 11. I've got 32 GB of RAM, and 4 GB VRAM. 8th Gen i7 CPU. M.2 SSD.

Edited June 21 by JeromFranzic

[Rick Nightingale]

1 minute ago, JeromFranzic said:

Anyone else try it on a GTX 1050 or similar GPU yet?

See my post just above yours (you might have missed it while writing yours).

With those system specs I see no reason why it can't run OK.

[Katherine Heartsong]

I use two EEps that the lovely @Rowan Amore shared with me, and also a four EEP day/night cycle from Juicy Bomb. I sure hope this PBR thing doesn't mess with either.

[Robin Kiyori]

I like it so far, really makes the metals and plastics of my avatar  pop. Having to scramble to find good eeps again is a bit of a  pain. But I'll make do.

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

Initial impressions:

I logged into my linden home, and got 40 fps.  It bounces down to 25 when I'm changing.  That's low.  I usually get 60+ fps, but whatever.  25-40 is usable.  I am on my high setting, after all.  I wear an avatar with 34k complexity, walk out my front door, and rez my Bandit IF.  Then, I sail it from the pier at Smokey, down to Campwich Lodge.

After a couple of regions, my fps is dropping into the 20s more regularly, so I change my graphics preset to sailing.  It's basically low settings, with a high draw distance, and some LOD tweaks.  I bounce up to 30-40 fps.  When I"m in the middle of Lake Bellisseria, my FPS hits 60+, but then it drops into the 20s when houses are in draw distance.

Coming into campwich, I got FPS in the teens, and dropped textures everywhere.  After I dock, I sit there and type this up.  My FPS is dropping to 8.  After sitting at the dock for 5-10 minutes, the textures finally rez in.  Here are two pictures to illustrate the issue.

Firestorm support chat is blowing up, as expected.  One fix that everybody seems to need immediately is the exposure problem.  In Preferences > Graphics tab, there's a setting for Exposure.  It is set to 1.0.  Most people say this is blinding.  Try setting it to 0.6, or something like that, and things might look better for you.

Now, I'm off to SL21B, to really torture test this viewer, with PBR and big crowds!

Edit:  Here are my hardware specs.

Edited June 21 by Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia
added hardware specs

[Jenn2017]

2 hours ago, Raina Anatra said:

 I downloaded the new version yesterday, and immediately, I noticed that my computer's fan ran constantly and hard. I've got my fps rate at 30, even tried 15, and it was still racing. I tried downloading the newer SL viewer, and the fan did the same. I also noticed that in firestorm, my usual windlights and environmental settings looked terrible and the overall graphics were not an improvement for me. The fan issue is the big one for me. I have a gaming PC, but I can't risk burning it out. I may have to uninstall the beta and go back to the last version, which worked great for me. 

I had the same issue, also have a gaming laptop that is not even a year old and OMG it felt like it was on fire, my FPS took a hard dip and this morning I redownloaded the previous version of FS.

[SylviElle Zaftig]

Yeah, no thanks, just re-installed the last FS.

Too bright, which makes my head hurt (migraine level). I do use NAM's Optimal and when I changed it to Noon (legacy) it was nicer. But, FPS went down considerably. I am running - CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 8-Core Processor   (3900 MHz) / Memory: 65463 MB (Used: 1087 MB) /Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050/PCIe/SSE2 (8G), not the newest by any means but am getting 100+ FPS on my platform with Shadows on. 1TB Fiber up/down, I rarely ever have problems rezzing anything.

Ran new FS and at the most was getting 30FPS and textures were loading really slowly. TPing around made my mesh body/head invisible (Lelutka/reborn) and even spending 20 minutes after tping, the body/head never rezzed (weirdly enough my clothing did).

I hope this isn't something we HAVE to use in the future. I don't think my eyes can take the strain.

[Jenn2017]

Just now, SylviElle Zaftig said:

Yeah, no thanks, just re-installed the last FS.

Too bright, which makes my head hurt (migraine level). I do use NAM's Optimal and when I changed it to Noon (legacy) it was nicer. But, FPS went down considerably. I am running - CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 8-Core Processor   (3900 MHz) / Memory: 65463 MB (Used: 1087 MB) /Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050/PCIe/SSE2 (8G), not the newest by any means but am getting 100+ FPS on my platform with Shadows on. 1TB Fiber up/down, I rarely ever have problems rezzing anything.

Ran new FS and at the most was getting 30FPS and textures were loading really slowly. TPing around made my mesh body/head invisible (Lelutka/reborn) and even spending 20 minutes after tping, the body/head never rezzed (weirdly enough my clothing did).

I hope this isn't something we HAVE to use in the future. I don't think my eyes can take the strain.

I also dont like the fact that you cant turn off ALM anymore and you are right alot of the windlights are considersiderably different, not a fan and went back to previous version

[SylviElle Zaftig]

2 minutes ago, Jenn2017 said:

I also dont like the fact that you cant turn off ALM anymore and you are right alot of the windlights are considersiderably different, not a fan and went back to previous version

Oh lord, I didn't even notice that part! I always have ALM on anyway because I like seeing my materials (Although classes need to be taught to some creators on HOW to use it ugh don't get me started lol). But yeah, more than considerably. This is why i hardly ever play newer games. Their lighting is blinding and just...so eye-straining and makes me physically sick. I was hoping SL never went that way.

I wish LL would just upgrade their infrastructure and physics engine. Yay we have mesh, but we still don't have moving mesh hair? Or clothing? Or hell even mesh collision so we CAN wear whatever jeans and shoes and have the jeans drape over the shoes no matter? But instead we have PBR.

[Jenn2017]

1 minute ago, SylviElle Zaftig said:

Oh lord, I didn't even notice that part! I always have ALM on anyway because I like seeing my materials (Although classes need to be taught to some creators on HOW to use it ugh don't get me started lol). But yeah, more than considerably. This is why i hardly ever play newer games. Their lighting is blinding and just...so eye-straining and makes me physically sick. I was hoping SL never went that way.

I wish LL would just upgrade their infrastructure and physics engine. Yay we have mesh, but we still don't have moving mesh hair? Or clothing? Or hell even mesh collision so we CAN wear whatever jeans and shoes and have the jeans drape over the shoes no matter? But instead we have PBR.

I hear you on that, the lighting change was very hard on my eyes too, couldn't deal with it. I also second the mesh hair physics would be nice to have mesh hair that actually moved instead of the old flexi hair. 

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

Tried it.

In short, a horrible "upgrade". Laggy, flickery/stuttering over-saturated glowing skies, water, terrain colours and textures. Not good.

I initially thought I might accidentally have some weird EEP settings enabled. Or conjunctivitus.  I had neither. Mirrored surfaces are unexciting and nothing new, as non-PBR viewers have already had them for years in their EEP and Windlight settings.

I had the PBR viewer installed for only thirty minutes after discovering "Restore Saved Settings" bugs that their own Dev's had not yet found, meaning that a "Restore Settings" did not fully give me my familiar UI setup saved from my non-PBR viewer. Was promised from one of their senior staff members that fixes related to my issue would be released in a future update, whenever that happens.

Thirty minutes after installing the PBR viewer, I wiped it forever from my PC and replaced it with the regular non-PBR one which worked perfectly again.

Why is PBR being made mandatory? I didn't ask for it. Nobody else I know did either.  I don't need PBR, I don't even need shadows or EEP and don't use them.

In my opinion, all PBR viewers urgently need a big main "PBR ON/OFF" toggle button for those who do not need it, or for those who CANNOT run it without causing damage to their computers. I don't see an issue with that. There should be an easy choice for its availability.

Afterall,  we all have the option to disable shadows, Advanced Lighting Model, or use EEP with "Default" settings. So how about it LL? Make PBR an option, not an "always on" requirement. 

Edited June 22 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[karliekarliekarlie]

Slow render times, much slower than the LInden viewer. FPS is down to around 80 in ultra @ 250m draw when flying vs 130's average with the old 6.17 on new iMac with 10 core GPU. Everything is much darker but so so shiny! EVERYTHING. Trying the Alchemy PBR beta and getting better frame rates than even the old Firestorm. If anyone's a Mac user, I reccomend at least trying the new Alchemy beta vs the new Firestorm. Renders much faster and has way better FPS. The inventory isn't working properly in Alchemy beta tho so if you try it, be aware of that.

[JeromFranzic]

10 minutes ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

Why is PBR being made mandatory? I didn't ask for it. I don't need PBR, I don't even need shadows or EEP and don't use them.

In my opinion, all PBR viewers urgently need a big main ON/OFF toggle button for those who do not need it, or for those who CANNOT run it without causing damage to their computers. I don't see an issue with that. There should be a choice for it made available.

Afterall,  we all have the option to disable shadows or Advanced Lighting Model, or use EEP with "Default" settings. So how about it LL? Make PBR an option, not an "always on" requirement. 

The Cool VL Viewer can be set up to shut off PBR and ALM.

[CaitlinParker]

PBR requires a new engine.  The piecemeal, reverse-engineered engine that's been in place for SL for years is now incompatible to what LL wants to do for SL.

I tried to make a mirror a couple of times and crashed once.  When I successfully created a mirror, I noticed massive lag though my FPS, while in the sky was around 119FPS as opposed to it being in the 20s when I attempted to create one on land.

Overall, my FPS dropped by at least 20FPS while on land due to PBR.

PBR is not optimal for Second Life and will either force people to purchase new PCs or laptops that can handle it, or force people off SL.

[Modulated]

From the link that Cristiano posted when starting the thread:

1. Whitelist it – A new release means new code; you WILL need to add the new version to your antivirus. And yes, we will ask many times for you to check that. The guidelines are on our wiki and we have added a new helper (help menu->whitelist adviser) that gives details of the exact entries you will need.
2. Expect bugs – There will be bugs. We’ve hopefully stomped on the worst, and my thanks to the members of our beta test group who in recent days have seen a deluge of updates, sometimes more than one a day, as we’ve nailed down bugs. But there will be bugs. Get happy about it, report them to us or to Linden Lab, and they will get fixed in due course.
3. Read the documentation – As always, support will refer you to wiki pages, probably more than usual. Also keep in mind that this is new for us too; we won’t have all the answers and we look forward to finding them with you. The release notes may also help; please read them.
4. Help us help you – Support will also direct you to the Linden Lab “Second Life viewer” (aka SLV) to see if an issue is shared. If it is, we will likely request that you go to https://feedback.secondlife.com and report the problem, as it will get fixed faster.
5. Help each other – If we are unable to field a question immediately, feel free to help, but please remain calm and stick to facts, not conjecture.
6. Be concise – Don’t spread your question over many lines; it’ll get lost. Don’t ask “Can I ask a question?”—yes, you can, just do it.
7. Be polite – Every release creates a surge in demand for help. Ask nicely and we’ll be sure to help you. We do reserve the right to ignore and even mute users that cannot be civil.
8. Be kind – Don’t assume that everyone has your knowledge, ability, hardware, homelife, language skills. Treat others even better than you’d like to be treated.
9. Be focused –  Our support teams are very knowledgeable, but please take building and shopping questions to other groups.
10. Think before you scream – Every single person on Firestorm, the developers, our operational team, the gateway helpers, our amazing dedicated support team, and I, are volunteers. Nobody gets paid; this is not our job.

And further down the page...

Hardware needs

We don’t yet have enough real data to have conclusive views on what is a realistic minimum and practical normal level of machine, and as anyone who has spent any time in Second Life will know, it is really going to be dictated by what you do, where you go, etc.

One thing is very clear: RAM (memory) is important. The more memory you have, the less problems you are likely to see. At this moment, I would advise people to have at least 16GB RAM and ideally more if they want to be able to roam Second Life without too many constraints. This does not mean that less RAM will not work (see the tools above for how we can help you reduce the RAM requirements by lowering the texture sizes), but it feels like a good guideline for now.

Additionally, the GPU is more important than it ever was. In the past the viewer was frequently bottle-necked at the CPU (due to that single threading I mentioned). It simply didn’t have enough time to keep the GPU busy. Now the CPU has been freed up to work faster on delivering the frames to the GPU, and in fact a lot more of the work done by the CPU in the past is now left to the GPU. As a result the GPU is doing a lot more work. This results in the extra heat and fan noise some will experience. As the GPU load is highly correlated with the frame rate, the “limit FPS” option is your friend in this scenario.

https://www.firestormviewer.org/firestorm-gets-physical-for-a-happy-21st-sl-birthday/

Edited June 21 by Modulated

[Anna Salyx]

3 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

There have been reports that Bloatstorm Ruined-By-PBR Edition has apparently broken the crap out of it's RLVa along the way, in their rush to do a "Lick the Lindens" SLB release.

 

In what way?  I'll admit my own personal use of RLVa is probably on the lighter side of things, but I've not had any issues at all with RLVa functions through the various betas and now to live.  So we need details of what's broke that can be tested or that's just 'fear mongering', for lack of a better phrase, by some for unknown as yet reasons.  I am not saying that there is nothing broke but "broke the crap out of" is hardly a valid metric to go on.

[Annie Evergreen]

I installed the latest firestorm viewer. As other people have noted previously, mine ran hot. Generally with the previous fs viewer, my temps were regularly in the range of high 30'sC, to mid 40's C. The newest install immediately cranked the temp up to 89C. I lowered the fps, much lower than it was before. Set it for "low" on the graphics scale. Turned off everything I could. Whitelisted everything in security. Left it off until things cooled down into the 30's C. Turned on Firestorm again, immediately shot up to 82C. I'm not happy with this at all. I don't want to burn up my computer just to play shopping in Second Life. This is the only program I'm having a problem with. I'm at the point where I'm mad at myself for paying for a year of Premium Plus and feeling like my choices are to stay and have my computer run hot, or walk away from my account that's paid up through next spring.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

6 minutes ago, Annie Evergreen said:

I installed the latest firestorm viewer. As other people have noted previously, mine ran hot. Generally with the previous fs viewer, my temps were regularly in the range of high 30'sC, to mid 40's C. The newest install immediately cranked the temp up to 89C. I lowered the fps, much lower than it was before. Set it for "low" on the graphics scale. Turned off everything I could. Whitelisted everything in security. Left it off until things cooled down into the 30's C. Turned on Firestorm again, immediately shot up to 82C. I'm not happy with this at all. I don't want to burn up my computer just to play shopping in Second Life. This is the only program I'm having a problem with. I'm at the point where I'm mad at myself for paying for a year of Premium Plus and feeling like my choices are to stay and have my computer run hot, or walk away from my account that's paid up through next spring.

Can you tell me how to check the temp on my pc? I feel the same, I'm not going to sacrifice my pc for second life. 

Also having low framerates as soon as i installed it. I usually am in the 90's at "home" so i guess the best way is to lower the graphics slider to medium or low?

[ValKalAstra]

The support groups are catching a lot of flak over the PBR release, even unrelated ones. I've seen a lot of anger and lashing out going around towards people that don't deserve it.

Kind of makes me realise that my experience with PBR has been a privileged one. I got quickly used to the new lighting and am adjusting them constantly anyway. Performance wise I was laughing mad, the latest Alchemy release gave me a significant performance boost.

Like I've never hit 60 FPS, not even in empty sandboxes and suddenly I'm getting 130+. I dunno what happened or how that's even possible but I ain't complaining.

[Rick Nightingale]

20 minutes ago, Modulated said:

At this moment, I would advise people to have at least 16GB RAM and ideally more if they want to be able to roam Second Life without too many constraints.

Yep, that's one I've been watching with the betas. It's better in the release than it was in the beta (in fact it was better in the last couple of betas too). Still, my 16GB can get eaten away quite quickly, especially if I try to run two logins at once for testing. That had my PC stuttering within a minute as Windows started thrashing the swapfile because the RAM was all used up. With the release, I can do it again as long as I stay away from busy places.

With one instance and the release, I'm seeing no problems with 16GB. I do have an extra 16GB on the way though

 

Edited June 21 by Rick Nightingale

[Annie Evergreen]

3 minutes ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

Can you tell me how to check the temp on my pc? I feel the same, I'm not going to sacrifice my pc for second life. 

Also having low framerates as soon as i installed it. I usually am in the 90's at "home" so i guess the best way is to lower the graphics slider to medium or low?

I have a program installed that came with my computer. If you don't have something like that, there's some info here (supposedly an OK site for info):  https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/how-to-check-gpu-temperature-windows

[Modulated]

3 minutes ago, Rick Nightingale said:

Yep, that's one I've been watching with the betas. It's better in the release than it was in the beta (in fact it was better in the last couple of betas too). Still, my 16GB can get eaten away quite quickly, especially if I try to run two logins at once for testing. That had my PC stuttering within a minute as Windows started thrashing the swapfile because the RAM was all used up. With the release, I can do it again as long as I stay away from busy places.

With one instance and the release, I'm seeing no problems with 16GB. I do have an extra 16GB on the way though

 

I personally balked at having to upgrade for pbr at first, but I did it slowly over the span of a year, memory-went from 16gb to 32gb, cpu then finally a better gpu. My other hardware was marginal with pbr, just barely cutting it, I wanted to run it well and it does.

Edited June 21 by Modulated

[Cristiano Midnight]

3 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

PBR is mostly thrown away development money for a 21+ years old platform IMHO, whether it is on the LL viewer or the overrated TPV.
LL should concentrate more on new functionality features and less on shiny.

I am curious what you have against TPVs - you keep making anti-TPV comments.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

3 hours ago, William Gide said:

Not for Mac users. Or at least, not for me (and I'm running on a high-end Mac Mini, m2-pro, acquired a few weeks ago). For the first time in quite a while, the official SL viewer runs better than FS, which is choking on textures for some reason. I've attached some images of what my experience is like now with the FS PBR viewer. With the official viewer the texture loads are much snappier, which is the only time the official viewer has been faster than FS on texture loads on my home Mac in my entire SL lifetime. We won't even talk about what happens if I want to turn on shadows for a nicer snapshot.

I just deleted the new viewer and went back to the previous version. This is not a pleasant state of affairs for a supposedly supported platform. I realize this is much about decisions Apple has made, but it's still quite frustrating. I gather everyone out there with less snappy PCs are in the same boat. I do wonder how far LL thinks people will keep visiting if the tech costs keep mounting.

oh yes everything looks so realistic, i may never go outside again 😂

 

1 hour ago, Mr Antfarm said:

I'm surprised no one brought this up yet. If you use CalWL, or Nams Optimal Skin 2 be prepared to change windlights after you update. 

yes but wont they look like crap to everyone else?

If you dont look good at high noon, you dont look good.

Edited June 21 by BilliJo Aldrin
left out a word