Is Lindenlab choosing a doomed path for SL ? Tell us if the EEP and PBR introduction changed the way you play SL

[WereBeast Alpha]

My Gaming PC has really good hardware and is from 2022 I get about 60-70 frame rate even though my monitor can have 200 fps rate. I haven't noticed any overheating issues with my computers temperature. PBR does have more of an effect for frame rates depending on where I am at in world. On my sim its not bad other places depend on how full it is with people. I have a 1660 Super Video Card and AMD Ryzen 5 processor with six cores. 

[BriannaLovey]

11 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Or allowed the download of older pre PBR releases.

That is a non-issue really. The code for blocking old versions of firestorm is entirely client-side. It can easily be removed if the viewer were to be forked.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

10 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

Not modernizing is what has kept myself and others from being more invested. The more they modernize, the more customers they gain.

And your evidence for that outrageous claim is what exactly?

Oh that's right, you don't have any.

 

10 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

Losing a few that are on computers that are apparently astronomically beyond end of life by every conceivable metric isn't a big deal.

And your back to your neve-changing "Delete 99% of the content and any users who have PC's older and cheaper than mine" elitist rant.

The one you keep claiming you never make., usually just before you make it.

 

[Irina Forwzy]

On 6/22/2024 at 8:46 AM, Jackson Redstar said:

My main concern now is this new PBR FS just looks awful - the colors over saturated, everything is too bright - this is in just regular sims regular old lighting - what most of use will be seeing still for a while to come. I installed the new version in another folder so I can run the old and the new.. and this is also turning off the screen reflections and mirrors to try to calm things down. Skin tones in particular for the most part just look really bad. I have seen full PBR builds and they are pretty cool, but just seems the cart is going before the horse here

For you it's too bright, for me everything looks super dark. What i have that's PBR looks immensely dark and it doesn't matter what windlight I change to, it's like the PBR pieces are living in the film Dark City or I'm in Gotham.

Edited June 25 by Irina Forwzy

[Persephone Emerald]

4 hours ago, Istelathis said:

If there is a hell, I think it would entail some form of retail work.

I agree. I don't want to work with the public, except maybe as a volunteer in a library.

AHS - Retail Hell:

[Scylla Rhiadra]

12 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

The more they modernize, the more customers they gain.

Yeah. Receipts for this please. I have never met anyone who came here for the graphics.

12 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

Losing a few that are on computers that are apparently astronomically beyond end of life by every conceivable metric isn't a big deal.

And THIS is exactly what I was criticizing. Congrats for making everyone on an older computer that is struggling feel completely unwanted or valueless here.

These are people, Paul, who possibly care as much about this platform as you or I. They aren't just usage stats.

I joked earlier I hadn't yelled at you recently. Consider that rectified.

WTF? Work on your bedside manner please. You just sound like a bit of a jerk here.

[Luna Bliss]

11 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

And THIS is exactly what I was criticizing. Congrats for making everyone on an older computer that is struggling feel completely unwanted or valueless here.

These are people, Paul, who possibly care as much about this platform as you or I. They aren't just usage stats.

I joked earlier I hadn't yelled at you recently. Consider that rectified.

WTF? Work on your bedside manner please. You just sound like a bit of a jerk here.

Zali is agreeing with you about being positive and kind.  I better leave this place and get back inworld asap!!!

[Irina Forwzy]

Here's the facts:  last time SL decided to update to expand LL''s enterprise and push people to a more modernized platform without any consideration to inventory and specs it resulted in a massive failure that had to be sold off: Sansar.

The introduction of mesh was a success, yes but partially because it took a longer time to evolve and it wasn't a complete change in the viewer.  Therefore in order for LL to make this a success they have to slow down the older viewer login blocks.  Instead of 2 years for a viewer to be phased out make it 3 years.

Do incremental changes to PBR to improve performance and visual stability.  They also need to have more training toward the end users. This isn't something where you can just choose to buy an old item or one made out of mesh with advanced lightning model. This is you having to adapt to a complete change to the texturing process and how everything looks.

If you want the game to survive, you don't want to push out everyone that has older pcs. Many of those are contributing FINANCIALLY to the game on a monthly basis.  While the newer one that may have splurged 5K in a gaming computer may not be able to afford or even want to put that much money into the game.   You want to be able to retain and add, not add to then throw out the old retainment.

When LL tried to do that with Sansar and indicated that we couldn't pull our older inventory over what happened?  The only ones that were for it were the vendors because that meant they were going to get revenue from the extra purchases. The regular people did not jump into the idea and it was a failure. The new customers weren't enough.

This isn't just about morality, ethics, etc. This is about knowing your financial model and understanding that you can't go and overall it completely and risk a user base that's already paying into the platform from altogether leaving.  Mesh by the way was a success, but it's debatable as well considering there were more people in SL pre-mesh and more vendors.

[Irina Forwzy]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Yeah. Receipts for this please. I have never met anyone who came here for the graphics.

And THIS is exactly what I was criticizing. Congrats for making everyone on an older computer that is struggling feel completely unwanted or valueless here.

These are people, Paul, who possibly care as much about this platform as you or I. They aren't just usage stats.

I joked earlier I hadn't yelled at you recently. Consider that rectified.

WTF? Work on your bedside manner please. You just sound like a bit of a jerk here.

Beyond valueless. If they are paying into LL or subscribing to it, why should they? When fellow slrs view their lindens as nothing.  And prefer the unknown that may or may not come.

Companies that push away customers for new ones, often times end up with financial issues in the future. From fashion to travel.  You include, you don't exclude.

Not everyone is single, has unlimited income and doesn't mind spending 1k-4k for a computer. Some people value using that money in experiences if their PC works with every other game except SL.  And yeah they may spend 100-300 a year in SL but they don't want to buy a PC only for SL. They think the money is better used doing something else.  Especially if based on the game's specs, it's a system that has the minimal requirements.   And I can say this as someone that has splurged almost 4k in a computer.

Edited June 25 by Irina Forwzy
Added detail

[Devilgrey]

just wanted to share my experience so far with Firestorm PBR viewer and Alchemy Viewer.

my laptop i think is a 2012 model. got it several years ago from my dad's office that was going to toss it. it's has a i7-2860QM, nvidia quadro 4000, & 32 gb ram. i've managed to play games like yakuza 0, slime rancher, and ESO on medium settings fine. sl always lagged more than any video game has on my laptop. my SL settings were usually always medium, alm off, shadows reduced, & low draw distance. Occasionally used high settings for photos. It's an old laptop, so i was expecting issues with pbr but it went more smoothly than expected tbh. I do like that my gpu is now getting utilized too with pbr, so it’s not as problematic to have more than just sl and maybe a browser running at once. my poor cpu before :,(

trying pbr, I really don’t know if much of a difference in rezz time for me. Though Firestorm pbr veiwer was slower than the non-pbr viewer, so i tried alchemy. alchemy has been better and i've been running it on medium-low settings. honestly i think whitelisting both alchemy and FS on my antivirus/firewall did more for speed than just relying on settings alone. 

I plan on eventually upgrading my pc when I start making more money. Still don’t know what to upgrade too yet. I don’t want to spend over $1000 if I don’t have too. i want to switch back to a desktop over a laptop. i'm not very hardware savvy

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Yeah. Receipts for this please. I have never met anyone who came here for the graphics.

No one came here for the graphics, but plenty didn't stick around because of them, plenty more left because of how it ran.

Fixing the look and the rendering is a lot of change and were going to have to deal with that as a sequence of changes.

PBR now. GLTF tomorrow and Vulkan after that.

 

The bad news is the look were used to changes, content creation in SL finally comes off life support and we admit its been dead since mesh, our computers will be utilized more and it wont run on ewaste.

 

People ask for an SL 2.0 where we get to keep all our inventory and friends. This is how we get that, and yeah .. the transition is gonna suck and it will turn out all the crap we're hording is likely nostalgic junk. So lets at least look after the friends we have and help them through this change.

Edited June 25 by Coffee Pancake

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just now, Coffee Pancake said:

No one came here for the graphics

Right.

1 minute ago, Coffee Pancake said:

plenty didn't stick around because of them

I'm sure that's so, although I'd be interested to know how many.

1 minute ago, Coffee Pancake said:

plenty more left because of how it ran

YES. And that's precisely the issue: PBR does impact how it runs, negatively for many people. (Yes, people with good rigs will find it maybe runs better now, but that's not most people.)

2 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Fixing the look and the rendering is a lot of change and were going to have to deal with that as a sequence of changes.

PBR now. GLTF tomorrow and Vulkan after that.

Yeah, and I can accept the need for this.

3 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

People ask for an SL 2.0 where we get to keep all our inventory and friends. This is how we get that, and yeah .. the transition is gonna suck and it will turn out all the crap we're hording is likely nostalgic junk. So lets at least look after the friends we have and help them through this change.

Agreed, absolutely.

[Coffee Pancake]

2 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

YES. And that's precisely the issue: PBR does impact how it runs, negatively for many people. (Yes, people with good rigs will find it maybe runs better now, but that's not most people.)

We're in a difficult spot and those of us who have been trying to alert people to the need to start thinking about computer upgrades haven't been able to get much traction.

The entire grid has been sat back waiting for Firestorm to "fix" the Linden mess. Plenty are holding back expecting this to still happen,, and that's not how this works.

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

55 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

We're in a difficult spot and those of us who have been trying to alert people to the need to start thinking about computer upgrades haven't been able to get much traction.

The entire grid has been sat back waiting for Firestorm to "fix" the Linden mess. Plenty are holding back expecting this to still happen,, and that's not how this works.

 

I suspect people who are on aging computers that managed at best 20 or 30 FPS pre-PBR -- and I know a few -- are well aware, and have been aware for some time, that their experience of SL has been badly degraded by the hardware they're on. If they could upgrade, many probably would have already. Although I'm sure, too, that there are some for whom this will represent the nudge they needed to finally do it. I'm concerned about those not in a position to respond in that way, however.

Again, this is manageable in most cases even with crappy computers. Reducing one's graphic settings is one obvious way, but there's a cost there, obviously. FS's pre-PBR viewer will be around for a while at least, although maybe not as long as some people think or hope. And there alternatives, such CoolVL, Alchemy, etc., that seem to reduce the performance loss. For that matter, my experience with the LL viewer has been pretty positive (although I absolutely hate it). And I'm sure that, as some have suggested, messing about with your GPU configurations or whatever might help as well in some cases (although most people aren't going to be able to do that.)

What annoys me, really, are two things. The first is the sense of smug entitlement exhibited by a few posters here -- a sort of "Sucks to be you, eh? Deal with it" approach that is beyond tone deaf. But I've addressed that already, so enough said on that score.

Secondly, and much more importantly, is the undeniable fact that so much of this angst is unnecessary, because there are solutions.

This should not be catching people by surprise. And there should be well-publicized, intelligently written guidance for people, providing exactly the kind of advice many of us have been giving here, written in simple layperson's language.

And the onus for THAT lies with LL. At this point, watching this unfold here and in-world, I am increasingly pissed off at LL that they have made absolutely minimal efforts to communicate or inform or guide people. In essence, 90% of what we're seeing here is about information, not about computer specs, and the provision of that information would have avoided what has essentially become a kind of PR disaster. LL should have seen this coming, and either didn't, or decided that we, the users, could bear the brunt.

Either way, I'm beyond annoyed at them. They should have foreseen this, could have prevented much of it, and apparently just couldn't be arsed.

Edited June 25 by Scylla Rhiadra
Typo and clarification

[Devilgrey]

1 hour ago, Devilgrey said:

just wanted to share my experience so far with Firestorm PBR viewer and Alchemy Viewer.

my laptop i think is a 2012 model. got it several years ago from my dad's office that was going to toss it. it's has a i7-2860QM, nvidia quadro 4000, & 32 gb ram.

fyi i don't think my computer ever got past 30 fps, i think i was always closer or under 20 fps. i never measured it often enough to be certain of what it was sim to sim. going in busy sims already could cause issues for me pre-pbr. i hardly am at busy places and i would use "show friends only" as needed. sad alchemy doesn't have that feature tho, so i guess i'll find out what will happen once i visit a busy sim with pbr.

 

Edited June 25 by Devilgrey

[Love Zhaoying]

3 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

WTF? Work on your bedside manner please. You just sound like a bit of a jerk here.

Paul must not like potatoes!

[DevlinMcDermott]

I have a four-month-old custom-built Dell and two six-year-old Dell's. Which I use for Podcast and vlogs, as well as 3d modeling in Blender.

 

The past forty-eight hours, I've been struggling to get the up-to-date SL's Official Viewer or Firestorm to work properly. Tinkering with setting. You know nothing worked. My avatar is gray, light is completely screwy, and it takes fifteen to twenty minutes to render even the most basic and bare scene.

 

I don't know about you guys, but some of us don't have 2k super gaming systems that are capable of warp drive.

 

We have to make do with what we have.

 

Up to two hours ago. I was seriously considering having to leave SL for good with this upgrade. Pity since I've been an avid member since 2008 on and off.

 

I was considering it until I downloaded Catzip. Which actually works much better than Firestorm or SL viewers ever did. Though, I don't know if they are running EEP PBR

 

If SL continues to shove EEP PBR or else. I can tell you for a fact they'll be losing this loyal customer as well as many others.

 

A pity, really. Because I have enjoyed SL for decades and spent a good two thousand dollars in the marketplace buying Linden dollars;. I'll really miss Second Life.

 

But as I said, some of us don't have super-light fast gaming systems; we have to make do with what we have.

[BriannaLovey]

 

6 minutes ago, DevlinMcDermott said:

I have a four-month-old custom-built Dell and two six-year-old Dell's. Which I use for Podcast and vlogs, as well as 3d modeling in Blender.

 

The past forty-eight hours, I've been struggling to get the up-to-date SL's Official Viewer or Firestorm to work properly. Tinkering with setting. You know nothing worked. My avatar is gray, light is completely screwy, and it takes fifteen to twenty minutes to render even the most basic and bare scene.

 

I don't know about you guys, but some of us don't have 2k super gaming systems that are capable of warp drive.

 

We have to make do with what we have.

 

Up to two hours ago. I was seriously considering having to leave SL for good with this upgrade. Pity since I've been an avid member since 2008 on and off.

 

I was considering it until I downloaded Catzip. Which actually works much better than Firestorm or SL viewers ever did. Though, I don't know if they are running EEP PBR

 

If SL continues to shove EEP PBR or else. I can tell you for a fact they'll be losing this loyal customer as well as many others.

 

A pity, really. Because I have enjoyed SL for decades and spent a good two thousand dollars in the marketplace buying Linden dollars;. I'll really miss Second Life.

 

But as I said, some of us don't have super-light fast gaming systems; we have to make do with what we have.

Catznip is planned to have PBR in the next release. It does not have it in the one you are using. So your only future option is going to be using the [viewer who shall not be named].

Edited June 25 by BriannaLovey

[Love Zhaoying]

Sorry @Scylla Rhiadra, quotes broke mid-post! "The first is the sense of smug entitlement exhibited by a few posters here -- a sort of "Sucks to be you, eh? Deal with it" approach that is beyond tone deaf."

Entitlement! Not a fan either.

52 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Secondly, and much more importantly, is the undeniable fact that so much of this angst is unnecessary, because there are solutions.

Of course there are. Unfortunately, the usual suspects (and some new ones) see this and most issues and changes as an opportunity to cry murder most fowl, complain bitterly, play the blame game, sow discord, express distrust in LL and TPV's, threaten to leave..

" In essence, 90% of what we're seeing here is about information, not about computer specs, and the provision of that information would have avoided what has essentially become a kind of PR disaster. LL should have seen this coming, and either didn't, or decided that we, the users, could bear the brunt."

As you and a few others brought up, many things could be addressed with a comprehensive "survival guide" covering ALL the changes a user may expect, and settings / actions to address them. Not just "materials and mirrors": everything from too shiny, too dark, EEP changes needed, local lights / reflection probes needed, to "potential performance impacts and ways to mitigate / deal with it". It's as if, "oops, list got too long" and nobody kept track. 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

7 minutes ago, DevlinMcDermott said:

I was considering it until I downloaded Catzip. Which actually works much better than Firestorm or SL viewers ever did. Though, I don't know if they are running EEP PBR

I don't think Catznip does yet, but Coffee can confirm.

There are other options too: CoolVL lets you toggle between PBR and non-PBR, and Alchemy apparently runs it reasonably well.

OR you can go back one version in Firestorm. It won't be deprecated for a while yet.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Unfortunately, the usual suspects (and some new ones) see this and most issues and changes as an opportunity to cry murder most fowl, complain bitterly, play the blame game, sow discord, express distrust in LL and TPV's, threaten to leave.

Yeah, I don't care about them much: they know what they're doing. It's those who are new or newish here that I am concerned about.

(And what do chickens have to do with any of this? 😉)

[Istelathis]

@DevlinMcDermott for firestorm, try whitelisting a few things.  

https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/antivirus_whitelisting

Considering your computer is new and probably running windows 11, click start and type Virus, open the "Virus and threat protection.

From there

Click on Manage settings under Virus & threat protections settings.

Then.. 

Add the files and folders on that website I linked earlier to your exclusions.

 

Edit: This is assuming you are using windows defender, I'm not sure about other virus protection software.

Edited June 25 by Istelathis

[Cristiano Midnight]

Whitelisting really does have an impact on my system. I never realized how important it was.

[Love Zhaoying]

11 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

(And what do chickens have to do with any of this? 😉)

/me clucks disapprovingly 

[BriannaLovey]

2 minutes ago, Cristiano Midnight said:

Whitelisting really does have an impact on my system. I never realized how important it was.

 

7 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

@DevlinMcDermott for firestorm, try whitelisting a few things.  

https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/antivirus_whitelisting

Considering your computer is new and probably running windows 11, click start and type Virus, open the "Virus and threat protection.

From there

Click on Manage settings under Virus & threat protections settings.

Then.. 

Add the files and folders on that website I linked earlier to your exclusions.

 

Edit: This is assuming you are using windows defender, I'm not sure about other virus protection software.

Antiviruses, while providing some (possibly false) sense of security towards their users, act as a protection racket against developers. It is explained here a little: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393698

The firestorm team doesn't pay the protection fee, so no nobody can run their viewer correctly without clicking arcane (to them) settings in their computer.

If you are a Firestorm (or other viewer like this) user and you never want to deal with this ever again, your only options are to switch to a viewer with signed executables, disable your antivirus completely, or install Linux.