Firestorm PBR Release Is Out

[Henri Beauchamp]

10 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I keep forgetting that you refuse to use the ”P” in EEP

The ”P” was for project... After release, it is not a project any more. 😜

I'm very logical-minded...

[Flea Yatsenko]

21 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

I happened to be chatting to a friend inworld and the talk came around to PBR and the build at Fameshed as well as a club she frequents http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Noir Wen/14/84/25 which has a mirrorred wall. She was mentioning how her new i9 14900k with an rtx 4090 is being challenged with PBR as she is only getting 15-20 FPS at either place in contrast to me getting roughly the same with my i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20GHz with GTX 1070 8GB. I suspect she has some issue as that seems low for such a high end machine but would be nice to hear what others are seeing at those places because at this point I am not seeing justifications for an upgrade if the performance is not going to be significantly better after doing so.

Mirrors should not be enabled by default on any graphical setting, there isn't a card that can run it in most conditions in SL. More insane default graphics options from LL leading to people going to demanding places and having their frame rates become laughable.

[AmeliaJ08]

There's a lady over in the Second Life Server forum posting this error, it's the wrong place so trying to get some visibility for it here:

The crash she posted looks to me like it might be related to video memory but I'm not sure, never seen a crash like that.

[Rowan Amore]

17 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

There's a lady over in the Second Life Server forum posting this error, it's the wrong place so trying to get some visibility for it here:

The crash she posted looks to me like it might be related to video memory but I'm not sure, never seen a crash like that.

They also mentioned having an integrated card so...yeah.

[AmeliaJ08]

2 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

They also mentioned having an integrated card so...yeah.

Ah, I must have missed that.

I think maybe the viewer isn't correctly detecting the available VRAM (even fake VRAM) if it is crashing like that though.

[MsShy]

On 7/11/2024 at 7:29 AM, Rowan Amore said:

It's so important now to whitelist FS, that they've included a Whitelist Adviser in the Help Menu...

I don't see 'Whitelist Adviser' in my help menu (version 7.1.9.74745), but not currently logged into SL. Does it only show if logged into SL?

[Arwyn Quandry]

I've heard from some folks that there's supposed to be a beta release that fixes some of the issues that the current release has, but I've had no luck finding it. Anyone know where they put the beta downloads?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

6 minutes ago, Arwyn Quandry said:

I've heard from some folks that there's supposed to be a beta release that fixes some of the issues that the current release has, but I've had no luck finding it. Anyone know where they put the beta downloads?

Do you mean the LL viewer, or the Beta FS one?

To get the Firestorm Beta, you have to join the Preview Testing group; the latest download is generally available in their group announcements. We're not permitted to simply post the link to it.

For the LL one:

Quote

OFFICIAL SECOND LIFE VIEWER: UPDATE NOW FOR IMPROVED PERFORMANCE

If you are having issues with the Official Second Life Viewer, you can immediately download an update here that addresses many of the issues affecting performance, particularly among those who may be using older or less powerful computers. We are continuing to work on additional fixes that will further address texture loading issues and low framerates. If you don’t update proactively now, you’ll soon see a prompt when you go to login to Second Life in the coming days encouraging you to update.

 

[AmeliaJ08]

4 hours ago, Arwyn Quandry said:

I've heard from some folks that there's supposed to be a beta release that fixes some of the issues that the current release has, but I've had no luck finding it. Anyone know where they put the beta downloads?

There is, my own experience with it is not good though. Definitely try it out though, seems some people are getting along with it.

Join "Phoenix-Firestorm Preview" group and look in notices, the links to the latest alphas and betas are posted there.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Anyone hear an echo in here? 😏

[Crim Mip]

The beta Firestorm release has a fair number of performance increases. You might also want to try out the Delta FPS release candidate LL viewer which has even more. Even if you dislike the LL viewer, it will show where things are headed and will hopefully work for more people.

[Jaylinbridges]

This is the Firestorm change log for their latest Beta.  It also includes most of the bugs and issues from prior PBR versions after the FS PBR Release last December.  The smiley changes apply to the latest Beta.  Note they finally fixed the Mirror On by defalut bug.  See the web page for all of the Improvements after the bug fix list.

https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/changelog:firestorm_beta

Highlighted bug fixes:

•  Disabled mirrors by default for all graphics quality levels to improve performance.
  You can choose to enable mirrors manually in Preferences → Graphics → General → Mirrors
• Improved general performance with PBR - Issue 1769
• Fixed performance regression since Materials Featurettes viewer - Issue 1831
• Fixed viewer failing to detect more than 4Gb of video memory on Windows - Issue 1583
• Improved texture memory calculation - Issue 799
• Fixed mesh objects not displaying until you walk directly over them - Issue 1771
• Fixed the alpha mode on blinn-phong materials getting flipped to None - Canny bug, Issue 1641, Issue 16303, Issue 7936, Issue 11691
•  Fixed certain EEP changes causing bright colour blocks - Issue 2397

• Various performance improvements for Mac
  • Improved PBR viewer performance on Apple Silicon - Issue 1527
  • Fixed setting a map beacon causing extreme lag on Mac - Issue 999
  • Fixed severe stall and stutter in PBR viewers on Mac when editing objects - Issue 1203

 

[AmeliaJ08]

11 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

This is the Firestorm change log for their latest Beta.  It also includes most of the bugs and issues from prior PBR versions after the FS PBR Release last December.  The smiley changes apply to the latest Beta.  Note they finally fixed the Mirror On by defalut bug.  See the web page for all of the Improvements after the bug fix list.

https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/changelog:firestorm_beta

Highlighted bug fixes:

•  Disabled mirrors by default for all graphics quality levels to improve performance.
  You can choose to enable mirrors manually in Preferences → Graphics → General → Mirrors
• Improved general performance with PBR - Issue 1769
• Fixed performance regression since Materials Featurettes viewer - Issue 1831
• Fixed viewer failing to detect more than 4Gb of video memory on Windows - Issue 1583
• Improved texture memory calculation - Issue 799
• Fixed mesh objects not displaying until you walk directly over them - Issue 1771
• Fixed the alpha mode on blinn-phong materials getting flipped to None - Canny bug, Issue 1641, Issue 16303, Issue 7936, Issue 11691
•  Fixed certain EEP changes causing bright colour blocks - Issue 2397

• Various performance improvements for Mac
  • Improved PBR viewer performance on Apple Silicon - Issue 1527
  • Fixed setting a map beacon causing extreme lag on Mac - Issue 999
  • Fixed severe stall and stutter in PBR viewers on Mac when editing objects - Issue 1203

 

How's your performance?

That's the one that stutters like crazy for me, the first Alpha after release didn't but subsequent versions and that beta do. Couldn't really work out what was going on, ended up having to go back to using release.

[Jaylinbridges]

2 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

How's your performance?

I am not testing performance with the PBR features, and basically run my PBR viewer to see BP textures.  So with the shiny features all turned off, and only shadows on - I don't see much difference in the latest FS beta, and the previous FS alpha.

The last alpha :  Firestorm 7.1.9 (75794) Aug 18 2024 16:44:33 (64bit / SSE2) (Firestorm-Alphax64) with Havok support

The new beta:  Firestorm 7.1.10 (75843) Sep  1 2024 13:54:07 (64bit / SSE2) (Firestorm-Betax64) with Havok support

No stuttering after all textures are loaded.  No stuttering when swinging my cam 360 degrees, although fps drops during rapid cam rotation, but recovers fps in a few seconds.  No long texture loading times but that depends on the region build.  Some clubs are really terrible.  The full region is owned by the club owner and they fill it up with script and texture heavy landscape and toys. 

On the latest Beta I have  RenderGLMultiThreadedTextures set to the default of FALSE.  

When I set it to TRUE textures would load slightly faster on a new region, but I noticed some stuttering on cam rotation.  This setting works more for Mac users.

I have a 10 yr old CPU and motherboard, with a more modern GPU, all on a supercooled tower system.  I throttle fps to 40, but if I turn off limiting, I run around 80 fps at my heavily landscaped and texture heavy home.  

Best feature for the new beta was default of turning off mirrors, since every time I would load up the older FS PBR, I had to wait about 30 seconds for mirrors to turn off after using my graphic presets, and the viewer would freeze while it turns off mirrors the first time.  As long as the newer versions keep things the same or moving forward, I don't see any reason to keep testing performance.  I am happy with what I am getting now.  I usually run two instances of FS also, as my alt is busy doing business things.   Those that want to run everything on Ultra settings and get 200 fps everywhere with PBR full on, can spend 10K on a system that might do that.  I am not impressed with shiny objects myself.

CPU: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 965 Processor (3400.06 MHz)
Memory: 16384 MB (Used: 2089 MB)
Concurrency: 4
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 19045.4780)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 5980 MB
Graphics Card Memory (Detected): 5980 MB
Graphics Card Memory (Budget): UnlimitedWindows Graphics Driver Version: 31.0.15.3623
OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 536.23

Settings mode: Phoenix
Viewer Skin: StarLight (Original Teal)
Window size: 1920x1017 px
Font Used: Ubuntu Font Family (96 dpi)
Font Size Adjustment: 0 pt
UI Scaling: 1.15
Draw distance: 128 m
Bandwidth: 2000 kbit/s
LOD factor: 3.5
Render quality: High-Ultra (6/7)
Disk cache: Max size 19968.0 MB (36.2% used)
Built with MSVC version 1941
Packets Lost: 198/1,154,082 (0.0%)
September 10 2024 05:25:23 SLT

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To stay on topic - I also have tried the latest SL viewer beta: Second Life Release 7.1.10.10708851543 (64bit) with supposed better performance than FS.  I noticed a slight increase in fps, about 5 fps increase, from 75 to 80 fps.  Also 5% more GPU utilization, and about 10% less CPU utilization, with less CPU spiking to 100% .  As far as it feeling any different, nothing at all.  

I also have some sculptie rocks on my home build, a stream bed border, that FS refuses to rezz until I click where they are.  On the SL Viewer the rocks always rezz right in like everything else. So there's that.   

 

 

 

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 12:54 PM by Jaylinbridges
old CPU, not GPU

[AmeliaJ08]

1 minute ago, Jaylinbridges said:

I am not testing performance with the PBR features, and basically run my PBR viewer to see BP textures.  So with the shiny features all turned off, and only shadows on - I don't see much difference in the latest FS beta, and the previous FS alpha.

The last alpha :  Firestorm 7.1.9 (75794) Aug 18 2024 16:44:33 (64bit / SSE2) (Firestorm-Alphax64) with Havok support

The new beta:  Firestorm 7.1.10 (75843) Sep  1 2024 13:54:07 (64bit / SSE2) (Firestorm-Betax64) with Havok support

No stuttering after all textures are loaded.  No stuttering when swinging my cam 360 degrees, although fps drops during rapid cam rotation, but recovers fps in a few seconds.  No long texture loading times but that depends on the region build.  Some clubs are really terrible.  The full region is owned by the club owner and they fill it up with script and texture heavy landscape and toys. 

On the latest Beta I have  RenderGLMultiThreadedTextures set to the default of FALSE.  

When I set it to TRUE textures would load slightly faster on a new region, but I noticed some stuttering on cam rotation.  This setting works more for Mac users.

I have a 10 yr old GPU and motherboard, with a more modern GPU, all on a supercooled tower system.  I throttle fps to 40, but if I turn off limiting, I run around 80 fps at my heavily landscaped and texture heavy home.  

Best feature for the new beta was default of turning off mirrors, since every time I would load up the older FS PBR, I had to wait about 30 seconds for mirrors to turn off after using my graphic presets, and the viewer would freeze while it turns off mirrors the first time.  As long as the newer versions keep things the same or moving forward, I don't see any reason to keep testing performance.  I am happy with what I am getting now.  I usually run two instances of FS also, as my alt is busy doing business things.   Those that want to run everything on Ultra settings and get 200 fps everywhere with PBR full on, can spend 10K on a system that might do that.  I am not impressed with shiny objects myself.

CPU: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 965 Processor (3400.06 MHz)
Memory: 16384 MB (Used: 2089 MB)
Concurrency: 4
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 19045.4780)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 5980 MB
Graphics Card Memory (Detected): 5980 MB
Graphics Card Memory (Budget): UnlimitedWindows Graphics Driver Version: 31.0.15.3623
OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 536.23

Settings mode: Phoenix
Viewer Skin: StarLight (Original Teal)
Window size: 1920x1017 px
Font Used: Ubuntu Font Family (96 dpi)
Font Size Adjustment: 0 pt
UI Scaling: 1.15
Draw distance: 128 m
Bandwidth: 2000 kbit/s
LOD factor: 3.5
Render quality: High-Ultra (6/7)
Disk cache: Max size 19968.0 MB (36.2% used)
Built with MSVC version 1941
Packets Lost: 198/1,154,082 (0.0%)
September 10 2024 05:25:23 SLT

 

 

 

 

 

My performance is great with 7.1.9.74345 and 7.1.9.75657 (for as long as it worked, blocked now) but every subsequent alpha and beta have just choked as soon as any other avatars are present. I saw in JIRA there's some similar reports, I tried to narrow down what was going on with fresh drivers, clear cache, clear shader cache etc but couldn't resolve it. Just extreme stuttering, intermittent frame drops below 2fps with UI lag, object and texture reloading... and then it would be fine for a few minutes before starting again.

I was quite enjoying the alphas and some of the bugs in the release are really hard to live with (it's a seriously buggy 'release') but for the moment I'm not able to use the beta, I hope whatever it is can be resolved.

 

[NiranV Dean]

On 8/3/2024 at 10:21 PM, Henri Beauchamp said:

The Sun and Moon shadows are there in ALM mode, but the local light shadows went missing, yeaaaars ago, and no one so far noticed... Thus why I don't want to spend time chasing a bug that is not impacting the least the viewer stability or usability, and that pretty much no one ever cared (or will ever care) about...

That's weird. If by local lights you mean projectors (local lights that have been explicitely turned into directional shadow casting lights) they should cast shadows unless said shadows fall on an alpha blended surface (but we all know alpha blending is really broken anyway), if by local lights you simply mean standard omni-directional sphere lights, they don't cast shadows, never did (been using shadows ever since it was still in shadow draft code long long before it became official) and the only way to get lights to cast shadows was setting them to projectors.

If i was using your Viewer i'd be very quick to tell you if that was a bug. But then again people who use your Viewer primarily use the Viewer for the compatibility and older hardware, i wouldn't expect many people with that mindset to have Deferred and Shadows enabled so something like that might go unnoticed.

[Yorkie Bardeen]

The beta no longer requires membership in the in-world group and is available on the firestorm website.

https://www.firestormviewer.org/early-access-beta-downloads/