Firestorm PBR Release Is Out

[KellyMorris]

3 minutes ago, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

Oh yeah, LOL... I meant I haven't tried to see them yet.

I left the opening ceremonies and went to a region with maybe a dozen other users, and my viewer seized up, then my cam started going haywire.  I teleported to a quiet island on the blake, then back to an SL21B region, because I know SL21B is supposed to be full of this PBR stuff.  I was getting crap performance even on a quiet SL21B sim.  15-20FPS.

Also, my lighting looks like garbage.  I'm wearing a flannel over a t-shirt (don't judge me, I grew up in the 90s!).  My flannel is super shiny!  It looks like I can't decide between having a latex fetish or a flannel fetish, so I'm wearing flannel made of latex.

I'm still curious about what happens if I try to see the fancy PBR stuff, so I turn on all the fancy stuff.  My FPS evens out around 12.  My CPU is like 58-60 degrees, my GPU is around 54 degrees.

I'm still wearing latex flannel, though.  That can't be comfortable with everything being this bright.  Gotta lower that stupid 1.0 exposure value before I get sunburn, LOL

So, as far as I can tell, the fancy PBR stuff looks like garbage.  I haven't seen anything that makes it worth the performance loss.  PBR was a dumb idea.

I am still testing this out, but if I had to make a choice right now, I think I'll probably roll back to the last version of firestorm, just because I'd rather see blank textures than lose performance like this.

Nice! but you have shadow on, you can gain a lot more of FPS without them on but your temps will raise too 

[Love Zhaoying]

7 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

27 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

But all that's going to be a quite few years away, if ever,  right.

GLTF scene upload with rigging and animation is functional on beta regions now.

I love when someone has no clue, and a helpful informed person like you provides the answer!

[Zalificent Corvinus]

9 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

GLTF scene upload with rigging and animation is functional on beta regions now.

I meant the other stuff.

The vague promise that GitElf Scenes will enable RipOff Inc to claim all mesh bodies and heads are obsolete, and that long standing customers of major brands should delete their entire wardrobe, and drop 5k on the new Universal Miracle Body, before selling a kidney for spares to finance rebuying all their clothes.

 

[Perrie Juran]

43 minutes ago, Cristiano Midnight said:

To be fair, SL users should not have to delve into debug settings at all. Whatever setting fixed your issue should be front and center in preferences, not buried in debug

I agree with you in  general but at what point is enough enough? Firestorm already exposes many debug settings in their menus and in preferences giving easy access to them. And how many people actually take the time to peruse the menus and preferences to see what is in them? 

There is a bit of durned if you do and durned if you don't that happens here.

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

10 minutes ago, KellyMorris said:

Nice! but you have shadow on, you can gain a lot more of FPS without them on but your temps will raise too 

Shadows actually make stuff look better, though, so they are worth the performance hit.  As far as I can tell, PBR makes things look worse.  I don't think I've seen anything that PBR improved, yet.  Maybe I'm missing something?

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I love when someone has no clue, and a helpful informed person like you provides the answer!

Shame this isn't one of those times.

I already knew that Gitelf Sceness were being worked on.

Another futureness junkie, the Experience Code Abuser, was doing their usual "When blah is launched, OBVIOUSLY everyone will INSTANTLY stop using blah, because it's EoL!"

He was claiming that OBVIOUSLY GitElf Scene upload would put all existing furniture stores in SL "out of business", because "EVERYONE will buy complete furnished houses, where the furniture and its placement are all designed by the Artiste to fit the house perfectly in accordance with their vision!"

 

Then again, he thinks people WANT to be visually griefed with experience code abuse in the name of bad art...

So Meh! Whatever.

 

[Coffee Pancake]

6 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

I meant the other stuff.

The vague promise that GitElf Scenes will enable RipOff Inc to claim all mesh bodies and heads are obsolete, and that long standing customers of major brands should delete their entire wardrobe, and drop 5k on the new Universal Miracle Body, before selling a kidney for spares to finance rebuying all their clothes.

 

Likely to be the first content released for GLTF.

[Perrie Juran]

56 minutes ago, Codex Alpha said:

What debug setting is that, for those of us who choke on textures all day and is a constant bane to the enjoyment of SL

TextureFetchConcurrency

https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/http_fetching_issues

[Codex Alpha]

7 minutes ago, Perrie Juran said:

TextureFetchConcurrency

https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/http_fetching_issues

Some experiments seem to make a difference, I'll pull up Texture Console and such to see diferences. I feels faster for sure

Edited June 21 by Codex Alpha

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Likely to be the first content released for GLTF.

won't that be a good advert for Gitelf, a new mesh body that ends up being worn by about 300 people, because nobody else feels like starting again from scratch every time LL have a "Bad Idea Day".

 

[Chic Aeon]

7 hours 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. 

I only read the beginning of this thread but I did a lot of testing a few months ago and there are OH SO MANY EEPs that do not work at all.  That isn't too surprising as there are a lot that don't work all that well without PBR.    

For those of you who haven't been to the birthday regions -- or for that matter the Welcome area lately -- they are all PBR and look horrid in the older viewers.  So be prepared for that long long road to CHANGE that we have seen so many times before.   

If I feel full of energy someday and not busy I may try out FS knowing I can go BACK to where I am.  The Linden viewer is painful for me to use as there or so many things MISSING that I use dayly so THAT is not a long term option.  My computer should handle things fine but lately when I have tested with the Linden viewer I often liked the NON PBR look better than the new shiny

[Harper Held]

2 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Zali has a bit of a point about some of these people: it's a cult. And they can very nasty very quickly if you seem to be slowing down the express train to The Future.

AI is the future, this just sounds like hot garbage.

I think I'd rather put my time and energy into AI -at least it runs on my computer!

[Cristiano Midnight]

23 minutes ago, Perrie Juran said:

I agree with you in  general but at what point is enough enough? Firestorm already exposes many debug settings in their menus and in preferences giving easy access to them. And how many people actually take the time to peruse the menus and preferences to see what is in them? 

There is a bit of durned if you do and durned if you don't that happens here.

Agreed, but if something is causing severe texture thrashing, that probably should be easier to access.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Zali has a bit of a point about some of these people: it's a cult. And they can very nasty very quickly if you seem to be slowing down the express train to The Future. I suspect LL was listening to more of that than they were to the hesitant voices here.

That's because the hard core Futureness Cultists, are the ones who go to those "Five fools and a Linden" meetings on the beta grid.

 

Remember "Webcam based Trojan Malware Auto Gurning", which we were told SL "desperately needed" because "all avatars look dead without facial expressions".

Whn that was first proposed on this forum by afutureness cultist, I asked 20 people in SL at one of my usual haunts if they wanted such a feature.

95% said "Oh HELL NO!"

5% said "I can see a dozen or so hard core machinima types hoping it works, but personally I wouldn't touch it with the wet end of somebody ELSES 10 ft cesspit stirring stick"

 

But it got repeatedly spammed as "the idea that will save SL" at those "Five foola and a Linden" meetings and LL decided to put it in.

They wasted a crapton of time, effort, and money on it, before eventually admitting it was "too hard" and not worth the effort. and then LL nuked it.

 

And while that fiasco was going on, Futureness Cultists posted in this forum with stuff like 

"I was at the Five Fools & a Linden meeting today and Nonentity Linden totally dominated the meeting with webcam based auto-gurning and digital arm thrash anti technology, while on voicespam, this is the Futureness!"

 

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

After wandering around SL21B for a while, looking at how ugly and laggy everything is with PBR, I just nuked it.  I can not find one single reason why I want PBR, at all.  I uninstalled Firestorm, and rolled back to the old one (6.6.17.70368).  If you do this, remember to re-whitelist everything, and reboot your system!

Now I'm wandering around SL21B with high settings, and getting 70+ FPS in places that were giving me like 12 FPS with the new viewer.  Everything looks great, and my flannel doesn't look like latex.  Textures pop unobtrusively, even though my cache is fresh from a totally fresh uninstall and reinstall.  The SL21B stage looks great now, too!  The new viewer didn't rez the walls at the SL21B stage at all.  Granted, it was more crowded then, but I think after spending over 30 minutes there, the walls should have rezzed.

Anyway... I'll give it a try again, next time they release a new firestorm.  I hope they fix the problems before they release a new version.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

33 minutes ago, Harper Held said:

AI is the future, this just sounds like hot garbage.

Sure.

That's why a load of artists LEFT DA, in protest at having their work stolen to feed AI by default.

So many left that DA changed the policy, so "Can be stolen to feed AI" is now OFF by default.

[Codex Alpha]

10 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Sure.

That's why a load of artists LEFT DA, in protest at having their work stolen to feed AI by default.

So many left that DA changed the policy, so "Can be stolen to feed AI" is now OFF by default.

Or when Adobe Stock picture sites start using AI to provide generative photos... hmmm I wonder how they trained it..

When even TurboSquid starting to sell generated AI models - competing with their own customers.. hmm I wonder where they trained their AI.

DeviantArt and so many others have done this. F AI

Edited June 21 by Codex Alpha

[Harper Held]

11 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Sure.

That's why a load of artists LEFT DA, in protest at having their work stolen to feed AI by default.

So many left that DA changed the policy, so "Can be stolen to feed AI" is now OFF by default.

Exactly! Adobe and Microsoft saw which way the winds are blowing and at the end of the day they'll be the ones who will decide what's " disinformation"/ "genuine content" and what isn't. Best to learn it and get the resources (locally!) so you're not left holding the bag once the legislative/technological moat's dug. 

The ride isn't stopping. You can enjoy the ride, or you can be drug down the street as the ride continues ...but it's not stopping. This genie isn't going back in the bottle.

Of course, this has nothing to do with SL -but then again, SL has almost nothing to do with the future, either; PBR or no.

[Rowan Amore]

2 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

As if the Firestorm Gods fix the Linden Lab problems.

They sort of do.  

We have been working with them to help ensure that bugs and glitches in those early releases were addressed before we passed it on.

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

[RicDelMoro]

What I feel : LindenLab is often trying to satisfy the SL photographers, mainly because those users are an important part of SL's livelihood. Those users are literally "poseurs", they mostly gave up to interact ( and they have their good reasons  ), they just want now likes in Flickr and others platforms. First we had  the EEP ( which has already caused great annoyance ), now  the PBR .It looks like Lindenlab is giving up on gameplay and admitting his failure to make SL a truly interactive game : "Look guys, the SL is bad for parties, but it's great for photos". 
Who defends these complications like EEP and PBR saying that they are more modern is mistaken,because any simulator exists to fool the brain using visual tricks, but without ruining the gameplay.
Firestorm is just trying to adapt to the system, and I bet most of the TPVs people are hating Lindelab for it.
So despite 21 years of life, we'll see if SL can withstand the impact of dubious decisions once again ( Maybe yes, because whoever has stayed in SL to this day is a loyal and stubborn type of user ).  My hope is  the developers of TPVs can overcome Lindelab's mischiefs .

[Anna Salyx]

1 hour ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

If you want to know how it's broken, try asking the Bloatstorm users who have posted on this forum about it failing.

 

No, you're the one who put that assertion on the table with "There have been reports that Bloatstorm Ruined-By-PBR Edition has apparently broken the crap out of it's RLVa along the way..."  When I ask for clarification, it's not my job to go hunting down details to validate your claim. If you raise the issue, it's on you to also support that statement when asked. Otherwise I'll assume it's without much substance. I will not do your labor for you.

Quote

Stuff like changes to the rlv command buffer, that somehow cause it to ignore both commands if it gets two, close together, was one problem mentioned.

Now that is something concrete, and testable. Thought, I'd hardly say it was "breaking the crap" out of RLV though, but again I'll restate my own perspective that I'm a light/casual RLVa user and don't deal with objects that try to do a lot of RLVa related command in a short time frame. So my opinion by it's nature is biased.  I own that.  Now, Since RLVa is a feature set imported largely from the efforts over at the Catznip viewer camp, it might be something that those devs can look into. 

Quote

I'm generously going to assume if you read MY post, then you can READ other peoples posts, specifically the ones reporting THEY were having rlva failures in new bloatstorm.

Again, you are asking, nay telling, me to do your labor when I ask for some clarification. That dog don't hunt. That said, I have not seen any such comments in *this* thread, but I'll go back to look in case overlooked something. If said comments are in other threads in this forum, well I've not been scouring the forum - diving into every thread - nor do I intend to, so I would have missed them.  If a thread does catch my eye I might delve into.  Or I might not, unless pointed specifically to that is.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

Just now, RicDelMoro said:

What I feel : LindenLab is often trying to satisfy the SL photographers, mainly because those users are an important part of SL's livelihood. Those users are literally...

Since the recent update has caused no end of issues for all residents including a lot of very poorly lit environments and "bad looking" content I doubt that most SL photographers are any happier about this than you are, so coming to the forums and berating or belittling any group of residents is completely unnecessary.

I get that you're upset but at least direct your anger at those who are actually responsible rather than blaming those who have no more control over the situation than you or I do. 

[Rick Nightingale]

I've been playing around with PBR environments, which I've not really got around to until now (been too busy making knickers and nipple covers).

First, it's just the same in LL's viewer as in Firestorm (I checked every case). So any complaining that it's Firestorm's fault... it's not, and defecting to the other team in protest over PBR or how your PC handles it is pointless. Rant at LL, not the Firestorm devs.

1. Many of the free PBR environments I've tried are just as unusable as most of the old windlight and EEP environments are.

2. Placing reflection probes in a building is an utter nightmare, with terrible results, unless you only have cuboidal rooms or live in a spherical bubble (then it's child's play - are we allowed to use that phrase given recent ToS issues?). Curves? Non-right-angle corners? Vaulted ceilings? Then get used to silly shadowing that completely ruins your beautiful decorating! I can see a lot of very boring buildings being sold. "Little boxes made of ticky-tacky. Little boxes all the same".

3. Make sure those reflection probes don't coincide with the edge or face of a mesh, because you'll get the weirdest texture flicking issues (nothing to do with VRAM / texture thrashing).

4. It's easy to set up a PBR environment and materials to look good in an isolated setting (which is sort of what I've been doing up to now, without realising that). It's not so easy in the 'real' world.

Maybe I need much more practice, but I feel sorry for the many users who don't even know how to open the edit tool.

Edited June 22 by Rick Nightingale

[Rowan Amore]

9 minutes ago, RicDelMoro said:

What I feel : LindenLab is often trying to satisfy the SL photographers, mainly because those users are an important part of SL's livelihood. Those users are literally "poseurs", they mostly gave up to interact ( and they have their good reasons  ), they just want now likes in Flickr and others platforms. First we had  the EEP ( which has already caused great annoyance ), now  the PBR .It looks like Lindenlab is giving up on gameplay and admitting his failure to make SL a truly interactive game : "Look guys, the SL is bad for parties, but it's great for photos". 
Who defends these complications like EEP and PBR saying that they are more modern is mistaken,because any simulator exists to fool the brain using visual tricks, but without ruining the gameplay.
Firestorm is just trying to adapt to the system, and I bet most of the TPVs people are hating Lindelab for it.
So despite 21 years of life, we'll see if SL can withstand the impact of dubious decisions once again ( Maybe yes, because whoever has stayed in SL to this day is a loyal and stubborn type of user ).  My hope is  the developers of TPVs can overcome Lindelab's mischiefs .

Most photographers in SL are.probably NOT thrilled.with the PBR.  The do a.lot of photo manipulation anyway so it hardly makes a difference.  They will be upset when EEP settings they have used no longer look good.

If anyone is excited about PBR, it's creators of products.  

[RicDelMoro]

3 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Most photographers in SL are.probably NOT thrilled with the PBR. 

I don't despise photographers, I think it's a valid way to play, I just feel that Lindelab has focused its recent decisions on pleasing those who want to have a lot of visual controls. However, the intention to please does not mean that they have been successful.