Firestorm PBR Release Is Out

[Mr Amore]

Main issue I'm having is in a crowded space of around 40 avatars, everyone would be rezzed within two minutes. With this update avatars are not rezzing at all on certain sims.

And CALWL is too bright, I've gone retro and resorted to using Sunset.

[Theresa Tennyson]

20 minutes ago, Mr Amore said:

And CALWL is too bright, I've gone retro and resorted to using Sunset.

That's kind of like saying, "The iceman isn't delivering blocks of ice anymore, so I've gone retro and started salting everything."

[Frionil Fang]

3 hours ago, brodiac90 said:

Sure, here and ty for the help!

Shadows are a major performance killer (still), try toggling those off. Screen size has no bearing for performance, display resolution does like Rick Nightingale said. If you're running 4K on that screen, 20 fps with shadows on sounds about right.

Also try setting reflection detail to static only, or probe coverage to manual+terrain though it's generally less pleasant to look at.

Also re:

2 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

If there's no reflection probes set to mirror interacting with mirror surfaces then it doesn't do anything

Mirrors do hurt performance a lot while in use and not otherwise, but they're currently broken in latest LL viewer/Firestorm and any highly reflective surfaces *without* a mirror probe reflect nothing when you zoom close to them (reflection texture fades to black the closer you are), so they're worth turning off for now unless you specifically want to look at a mirror.

Edited June 22 by Frionil Fang
half finished thought

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

Just wanted to thank the people in this thread and others who have offered advice about how to mitigate some of the issues caused by PBR, whether it's tweaking preferences, adjusting environment settings, limiting FPS and watching gpu temperatures. I always learn a lot in these kinds of threads. 

[Ico Kiyori]

In my case, I've tried out the new version, messing around in some empty places, but also very packed ones such as Lost Unicorn region, and also some places (Gale Crater Cantina) that did had PBR stuff such as mirrors.

Those are my specs, that I do think are fairly decent : Lenovo Legion 5 Pro 16IAH7H
Intel Core i7-12700H (6 Performance-Cores 4.7 GHz Turbo + 8 Efficient-Cores 3.5 GHz Turbo - 20 Threads - Cache 24 Mo)
DDR5 4800 MHz 32 GO
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 8 GO TGP 150W

While I do agree that the PBR update, along with the texture upgrade stuff, does make some places quite beautiful, the update does lack optimization.

In short : It does perform worse. I cannot have stable FPS with mirrors turned on. Even on the lowest settings, I do hit 30 fps max.. While turning it off, it goes back to 60 (capped). Althought, the viewer tends to drop frames randomly, dipping to 40-45 and going back up.

And before, even saying "Oh yeah you're on a laptop, that's why", I can totally run others games, even news ones correctly, capped at 60 fps and never going below. I do not care about ray-tracing, and my goal isn't to run anything around 120+ even tho my monitor can handle 165 Hz.

LL engine isn't optimized well for this kind of stuff. If anything, that is total BS saying in a blog post to "upgrade" your specs, if the engine does stays as it is. It's like getting an old car, changing the stuff inside and making it brand new and shiny from the outside perspective, but the motor inside does still the same. It mights perform well, but will never be as performant as a brand new motor. This is the same for the viewer.

I do think it's quite baffling to see how LL does focus more on "aspect" rather than making the viewer easier to use and less overwhelming. What SecondLife does needs isn't more shiny stuff, but upgrades on the engine, code, but also the tools to create stuff on it & intuitive interface.

Everything isn't bad, but not perfect. I do not see what PBR alone brought, other than frustration.

 

Edit : After reading some comments, gave Alchemy Viewer a go. Does outperform FS.

Stable 70+ fps, even with mirrors turned on. No issues on loading textures eithers.

Any explainations?

Edited June 22 by Ico Kiyori

[droidleader]

so first of all ill say this, the graphics an everything looks way better, i have no bugs or glitches with the new PBR firestorm viewer, in almost every way its 10/10 across the board im impressed with all that, but there are 2 major problems, an though many have pointed out 1, the performance, they havent detailed it out exactly an i will explain it here.

my pc specs are as follows, GPU 2080 TI, CPU 3950x thread ripper, 64 gb of ram running at 3,200 mhz, i use combo of m.2 drives an a single large hard drive, windows 11 pro (for what little that matters) an my monitors is super ultra wide 32:9 at 1080p so it demands twice that of normal size, an then i have an upper normal sized monitor. 

the most demanding pc game to run is Star Citizen (unless something has changed in last 6 months) running that on my super ultrawide at 60fps, max settings, field of view, gpu runs at 80%. its the only game i usually shut down other programs for , like if im playing other games like fallout 4, ark, hell divers 2 an so on, i wont even close out of google,  heck sometimes be watching shows, have firestorm running in background to tab in an out check messages. 

now then the new firestorm pbr update.... it runs at 50% gpu usage, at the lowest an highest setting which is very odd an shouldnt do that, should go down at lower settings an up at higher, but theres 2 more key parts to this,1 thats at lowest draw distance 32, 2 i only run sl at 30 fps cause 60 is not needed like in action games and shooters....., so at 60fps FS pbr viewer is more demanding then the most demanding pc game known to man atm, an thats with draw distance turned down....

so before sl was a chill time i could run 20 different things multitask , have a chill time an my fan not going crazy, now sl by itself nothing els open makes my fan rev up, most ppl in sl are gamers with gaming pc, so this update cuts out like 80% of users and then its not multitasking friendly at all.

theres also 1 other issue an thats the previous version of firestorm, if you minimize it, cpu and gpu usage go to 0%, an ram goes down to like 2gb minimized, the new version does not, the gpu and cpu stay at same usage even when minimized, thats a huuuuuuge problem. atm

an now heres thing yes performance is an issue, lots of patches an work needs to be done to bring it down because its not optimized if it was we would be at 25% so it needs to be aware to the dvs they need to work on that, but it did just come out an there trying to catch up with how LL released pbr so long ago already, so hopefully in time they will fix the performance, an ill be clear on this, the performance is not normal  this is far from optimized an thats really the only issue, that an using resources when minimized. an really as long as the devs of both LL and FS know this and are working to bring optimization an bring down gpu usage, then everything is good just got to wait, but if there not working at that, then rip sl

[CROWESCREAMS]

I find the update to be super heavy, needlessly slow and kinda frustrating to use. 

I will say it gets better after a few relogs, and when the game realises what it's doing with the gpu and cpu it seems to be fine?? 

I have higher performance, but it's running hotter than it was on black dragon and I really hope they optimise it a bit better.

I also have a bug where when i close out it takes it like 2 mins to fully close, which isn't ideal when before it closed immediately. 

 

 

[Vivienne Schell]

This is a performance killer, crashes pretty often and should not have been released prematurely. Frame rates are not stable and overall  lousy (in comparison to the previous release), and the noise the (three) fans on my certainly not underpowered (desktop) RTX 3070 generate now indicates that this baby is doomed to toast any other laptop (if not worse).

Things certainly look more pretty than before, but the price for that is too high.

 

Edited June 22 by Vivienne Schell

[Vivienne Schell]

4 hours ago, Ico Kiyori said:

.Edit : After reading some comments, gave Alchemy Viewer a go. Does outperform FS.

Stable 70+ fps, even with mirrors turned on. No issues on loading textures eithers.

Any explainations?

Even the Linden Viewer outperforms this Firestorm release by lengths. Most likely everything does.

Edited June 22 by Vivienne Schell

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 minutes ago, Vivienne Schell said:

Even the Linden Viewer outperforms this Firestorm release by lengths. Most likely everything does.

That was true pre-PBR as well, though.

I'm actually pretty impressed with how the LL viewer handles this.

[Valen Greymoon]

I have to agree with several posters who are asking for a PBR on / off option. It would be easy enough to have it off as a normal, daily thing, but be able to have it on in a preset for photos and such. My machine runs hot when it's on, but turning off the VRAM (like the team has suggested on the release page), and limiting FPS to around 30 or so, got the temps down, but still pushing it. I do hope they address this in the future.

[Vivienne Schell]

Just now, Valen Greymoon said:

I have to agree with several posters who are asking for a PBR on / off option. It would be easy enough to have it off as a normal, daily thing, but be able to have it on in a preset for photos and such. My machine runs hot when it's on, but turning off the VRAM (like the team has suggested on the release page), and limiting FPS to around 30 or so, got the temps down, but still pushing it. I do hope they address this in the future.

If they do not optimise their code within the upcoming weeks they can shut down. Frankly spoken.

[Love Zhaoying]

12 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

15 minutes ago, Vivienne Schell said:

Even the Linden Viewer outperforms this Firestorm release by lengths. Most likely everything does.

That was true pre-PBR as well, though.

I'm actually pretty impressed with how the LL viewer handles this.

Wasn't it shortly BEFORE the LL viewer was first released with PBR, that an LL viewer was released with "performance improvements"? And then, FS followed with "performance releases" also? I believe they HAD to make those "performance improvements" because of PBR. (People forget those "performance improvements" because they only remember things to complain about.)

 

[Vivienne Schell]

2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Wasn't it shortly BEFORE the LL viewer was first released with PBR, that an LL viewer was released with "performance improvements"? And then, FS followed with "performance releases" also? I believe they HAD to make those "performance improvements" because of PBR. (People forget those "performance improvements" because they only remember things to complain about.)

 

The latest Linden Viewer does not only outperform the latest Firestorm Viewer, it toasts it. Just like this Firestorm reelease will toast any other midrange PC and laptop inavoidably. They apparently messed up with implementing the Linden core engine, obviously,  hopefully not beyond repair.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

4 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Wasn't it shortly BEFORE the LL viewer was first released with PBR, that an LL viewer was released with "performance improvements"? And then, FS followed with "performance releases" also? I believe they HAD to make those "performance improvements" because of PBR. (People forget those "performance improvements" because they only remember things to complain about.)

 

I think that is more or less correct, although as I recall LL also tweaked their PBR viewer after its initial release and improved performance again.

It really is not bad. But i haven't compared it to CoolVL or Alchemy.

[Melissa Starlight]

The log off process on firestorm has changed with the latest upday (7.1.9).  It now the viewer disapers and there is just a small box for a few seconds. It happens on two different computors.

[Arielle Popstar]

12 minutes ago, Vivienne Schell said:

If they do not optimise their code within the upcoming weeks they can shut down. Frankly spoken.

If Firestorm shuts down, SL may as well too because FS is the only viewer where there is easily accessible support inworld. The Lab certainly doesn't give any support for theirs and the others just aren't large or organized enough to be able to.

No Fs and the sky may as well fall.

[Vivienne Schell]

Just now, Arielle Popstar said:

No Fs and the sky may as well fall.

The Lab should send their Navy Seal Moles to The FS team. Quick. Eh.

[Arielle Popstar]

10 minutes ago, Vivienne Schell said:

The Lab should send their Navy Seal Moles to The FS team. Quick. Eh.

To learn how to give good support to residents even if the release is not great?

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

Obviously, this viewer was rushed for SL21B, an event supposedly packed with PBR...

Edited June 22 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Rick Nightingale]

50 minutes ago, Melissa Starlight said:

The log off process on firestorm has changed with the latest upday (7.1.9).  It now the viewer disapers and there is just a small box for a few seconds. It happens on two different computors.

Yes, there were changes to the shutdown code that came from LL (and hence into FS) some time ago that caused quite bad problems for some. Basically, LL really dropped a clanger with it in an attempt to make it look like the viewer was closed, before it had actually stopped running (but with no visible window). *

This is a guess, but I think FS is now showing that little "I'm still here but going" box to mitigate the above, as FS shuts itself down, writes its cache files for the next time you run it, etc. The FS beta has been doing that for a while; I got used to it so forgot it was a 'change' when the release was... released.

*I have to add as a rant: like the tricks Microsoft started with Windows, where it brings up the desktop and looks ready to use, long before the essential background services are actually ready. Like networking! That has caused issues all the way back to XP, through 7 and even 10. Every edition, Microsoft has claimed the issue has been fixed, and it never has because of the cheated startup it does.

Edited June 22 by Rick Nightingale

[Fraser Lisle]

1 hour ago, Vivienne Schell said:

If they do not optimise their code within the upcoming weeks they can shut down. Frankly spoken.

Lol this release has been tested to death for months, it runs absolutely fine.

[Ina Fairport]

On 6/21/2024 at 1:00 PM, Sabrina Nebula said:

I tried the Beta and wasn't really a fan. The final release still does not work as good as the LL viewer. As soon as I turn my camera around my screen starts flickering like an old tv 😭

Same here, I found settings that look reasonable...but have the same flickering while sailing and flying 😡

[Modulated]

1 hour ago, Vivienne Schell said:

If they do not optimise their code within the upcoming weeks they can shut down. Frankly spoken.

So you're one of those ' if I can't run it then no one else should be allowed either'...go open a window. 

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Why can’t a TPV release two versions of their viewer, one with PBR, and one without. My computer would actually run better if there was no textures to render. My own club would still look the same, and maybe I could promote it as a place to hang out for the anti-PBR crowd.

But no system avis allowed, we can’t be too retro 😂