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

[Anna Salyx]

17 hours ago, RicDelMoro said:

If you're the type of guy who goes out to buy a new computer every time Lindelab's mood changes, congratulations, but not me, I'm a normal person
 

let's see. I"m probably as normal as they come.. and my computer is just over 7 years old. The only updates have been storage (when SSDs started becoming affordable) and a new graphics card (not for SL mind you but SL does benefit just the same).  I don't expect to do any other serious updates for another 3 or 4 years.  I can still play the new release titles on Steam that grab my interest. And I have no noticeable problems with the recent changes.  I know, I know, that's all anecdotal, but it's a data point.  the main point is that I don't go updating my system on whims all willy-nilly like, and my system isn't shiny, but it does the job.  If your system is able to handle the change in most ways except for the heat issue, as others have mentioned maybe do some internal cleaning to remove dust built up, and/or if it's a laptop, (and you don't have one already) check into a cooling pad.  That's all I'll say on that note. it's your system, you know it better after all.

13 hours ago, 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 -

I've not seen it mentioned in this thread, but check the "exposure" setting in preferences (at least on the Firestorm side, but I'm sure it's probably there on the LL viewer too) and dial it down some.  it was a big help on the brightness and over-saturation on my side.  I also had an environment that I got from I don't remember where what was blasting things extra bright, but that wasn't really apparent until the recent change.  I think  it was for demoing skins and I just left it in place without really thinking.  I changed that out and that calmed things down.

7 hours ago, animats said:

The basic situation now is pretty simple. Now you need a reasonably good GPU.

What to get now? The cheapest NVidia GPU of a current generation is the GeForce RTX 3050 8GB, for about US$200.

I recently got a RTX 3060 with 12GB for a skosh over 250 USD. Not for SL, but for some recent other titles, and the writing is on the wall that it's just going to be more so in the next few years.   I updated from GTX 960 that just barely holding its own. it'd be the one I'd recommend if you have a few extra dollars to spare. 

[BriannaLovey]

1 minute ago, Anna Salyx said:

let's see. I"m probably as normal as they come.. and my computer is just over 7 years old. The only updates have been storage (when SSDs started becoming affordable) and a new graphics card (not for SL mind you but SL does benefit just the same).  I don't expect to do any other serious updates for another 3 or 4 years.  I can still play the new release titles on Steam that grab my interest. And I have no noticeable problems with the recent changes.  I know, I know, that's all anecdotal, but it's a data point.  the main point is that I don't go updating my system on whims all willy-nilly like, and my system isn't shiny, but it does the job.  If your system is able to handle the change in most ways except for the heat issue, as others have mentioned maybe do some internal cleaning to remove dust built up, and/or if it's a laptop, (and you don't have one already) check into a cooling pad.  That's all I'll say on that note. it's your system, you know it better after all.

I've not seen it mentioned in this thread, but check the "exposure" setting in preferences (at least on the Firestorm side, but I'm sure it's probably there on the LL viewer too) and dial it down some.  it was a big help on the brightness and over-saturation on my side.  I also had an environment that I got from I don't remember where what was blasting things extra bright, but that wasn't really apparent until the recent change.  I think  it was for demoing skins and I just left it in place without really thinking.  I changed that out and that calmed things down.

I recently got a RTX 3060 with 12GB for a skosh over 250 USD. Not for SL, but for some recent other titles, and the writing is on the wall that it's just going to be more so in the next few years.   I updated from GTX 960 that just barely holding its own. it'd be the one I'd recommend if you have a few extra dollars to spare. 

PBR mostly impacts people without any dedicated GPU, since it pushes your GPU harder. There are a lot of people who use laptops, none of which have motherboards conforming to any of the ATX standards. This of course means they don't have the option of installing a GPU in their system. Of course some will support external GPUs via thunderbolt, oculink, etc. but most laptops don't support this.

[Coffee Pancake]

40 minutes ago, Cristiano Midnight said:

There is a certain masochism to what we put up with in terms of complexity in SL, but I feel ultimately the experience is worth it.

I hate to say it but .. I think you might be doing masochism wrong.

[Love Zhaoying]

53 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Regarding comparing acceptance issues with EEP vs. PBR:

I remember when Windlight was new, and my partner at the time complained that every time he took a picture with Windlight, his Second Life would crash (on a Mac if I recall correctly).

So, it's always the "new thing" that people hate, doesn't work, don't know how to use, stresses out the computer, makes SL crash, etc.

Windlight: People complained. (Don't know how to use it, makes my Second Life crash, etc.)  People eventually accepted Windlight.

EEP: People complained. (Doesn't look like Windlight, don't know how to use it, etc.)  People mostly eventually accepted EEP.

PBR: People are complaining now.  (Looks terrible, don't know how to use it, etc.) People will mostly eventually accept PBR.

 

ETA: I left out ALM, same thing happened with it!

 

Edited June 23 by Love Zhaoying

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, BriannaLovey said:

Making regular textures disappear would mean altering many terabytes of legacy content stored on LL's servers. It is cheaper to keep the option than to take it away.

NO I meant making it impossible to make NEW "legacy" items, not delete ones that were already on the grid. 

 

[Love Zhaoying]

14 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

6 hours ago, Cristiano Midnight said:

There is a certain masochism to what we put up with in terms of complexity in SL, but I feel ultimately the experience is worth it.

I hate to say it but .. I think you might be doing masochism wrong.

I never thought I'd see the day, when I'd give you a hard time for kink-shaming!

[RicDelMoro]

"Everyone complains but ends up getting used to it". In some way it's true, but  I feel  Lindenlab is implementing these changes in a very crude and poorly finished way. I'm not a technician, but I think if  PBR were being implemented correctly, we wouldn't see  blinding lights and the water in a ridiculous tone. But if you complain some people will  accuse you of being stupid : "Adjust your visual settings, your dumbass, and buy a new PC too, it's your fault ..."

[BriannaLovey]

5 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

NO I meant making it impossible to make NEW "legacy" items, not delete ones that were already on the grid. 

 

Ahh. Hypothetically it would be very easy to create a feature that converts regular textures into PBR materials anyways (by creating a material with only the base color texture and nothing else,) so it wouldn't be that big of an issue.

[Coffee Pancake]

1 minute ago, RicDelMoro said:

"Everyone complains but ends up getting used to it". In some way it's true, but  I feel  Lindenlab is implementing these changes in a very crude and poorly finished way. I'm not a technician, but I think if  PBR were being implemented correctly, we wouldn't see  blinding lights and the water in a ridiculous tone. But if you complain some people will  accuse you of being stupid : "Adjust your visual settings, your dumbass, and buy a new PC too, it's your fault ..."

We have a decades content made for the old lighting model, which was objectively bad .. now we have a better lighting model the evolved art style we all adopted to make the best of a bad job has aged like milk.

PBR is a better standard lighting model. It will make creating content for SL better and more predictable, and hopefully able to withstand future changes and platform advancements.

But we are basically starting over.

Maybe think about PBR as a whole new SL  .. we got to keep all our friends and all our old crap, for what it's worth.

[Love Zhaoying]

48 minutes ago, Anna Salyx said:

let's see. I"m probably as normal as they come.. and my computer is just over 7 years old.

I made my last 2 computers used for Second Life last about 10 years each. With no parts upgrades or failures in all that time.

I'm 17.5 years into Second Life, and only on my third computer in all that time. 

And Second Life always ran acceptably for me, until I finally decided to upgrade each time.

So for EVERYONE, "YMMV"!

Edited June 23 by Love Zhaoying

[BriannaLovey]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I made my last 2 computers used for Second Life last about 10 years each. With no parts upgrades or failures in all that time.

I'm 17.5 years into Second Life, and only on my third computer in all that time. 

And Second Life always ran acceptably for me, until I finally decided to upgrade each time.

So for EVERYONE, "YMMV"!

I just explained this:

46 minutes ago, BriannaLovey said:

PBR mostly impacts people without any dedicated GPU, since it pushes your GPU harder. There are a lot of people who use laptops, none of which have motherboards conforming to any of the ATX standards. This of course means they don't have the option of installing a GPU in their system. Of course some will support external GPUs via thunderbolt, oculink, etc. but most laptops don't support this.

Yes, even a tiny GT 730 will probably render PBR just fine at the lowest settings, but not everyone has an 8x or 16x PCIe slot in their computer.

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

1 hour ago, BriannaLovey said:

Implement age verification and real life identity verification in order to access any adult content, and change criteria of child avatars to include those who dress young or act in childish ways. Of course that would cause a ton of collateral damage, but it would accomplish what you ask. Otherwise I have no idea really.

That's how vulture capitalism works.  You ever see the producers?  "You can make more with a flop than with a hit." 

Assume that you are a dishonest person.  You buy a company, by using the company you are buying as collateral, just like how you put up the house you buy as collateral when you borrow to pay for it.  Then, you have to pay the mortgage on that house, or company, right?  Not if you go bankrupt!  So you drive the value of the house, or company into the ground, pay yourself massive bonuses, instead of investing in the business, or producing a competitive product.  Then, you declare bankruptcy, and walk away with all the monies.  That's what happened to companies like Sears.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, BriannaLovey said:

I just explained this:

48 minutes ago, BriannaLovey said:

PBR mostly impacts people without any dedicated GPU, since it pushes your GPU harder. There are a lot of people who use laptops, none of which have motherboards conforming to any of the ATX standards. This of course means they don't have the option of installing a GPU in their system. Of course some will support external GPUs via thunderbolt, oculink, etc. but most laptops don't support this.

Yes, even a tiny GT 730 will probably render PBR just fine at the lowest settings, but not everyone has an 8x or 16x PCIe slot in their computer.

My last PC's dedicated GPU was so old, it's mounting failed and one day it started making horrible noises as the fan rattled against the case.  I rigged it to the case with zipties and decided "it may be getting close to time"..

My new Notebook PC has "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop GPU/PCIe/SSE2". It's in a Notebook, but "is a dedicated GPU".

 

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

That's how vulture capitalism works.  You ever see the producers?  "You can make more with a flop than with a hit." 

Assume that you are a dishonest person.  You buy a company, by using the company you are buying as collateral, just like how you put up the house you buy as collateral when you borrow to pay for it.  Then, you have to pay the mortgage on that house, or company, right?  Not if you go bankrupt!  So you drive the value of the house, or company into the ground, pay yourself massive bonuses, instead of investing in the business, or producing a competitive product.  Then, you declare bankruptcy, and walk away with all the monies.  That's what happened to companies like Sears.

 

This is quite silly. You should post more often!

[Eirynne Sieyes]

I'm glad PBR came out now - before the July 4th / Labor Day sales. For sure now I will look for a laptop with a GPU, unlike the laptops I've been using forever in SL. Soon I'll be able to complain about overheating too. 🥵

@Love ZhaoyingWould you IM me what you got and how it is working?

[BriannaLovey]

15 minutes ago, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

That's how vulture capitalism works.  You ever see the producers?  "You can make more with a flop than with a hit." 

Assume that you are a dishonest person.  You buy a company, by using the company you are buying as collateral, just like how you put up the house you buy as collateral when you borrow to pay for it.  Then, you have to pay the mortgage on that house, or company, right?  Not if you go bankrupt!  So you drive the value of the house, or company into the ground, pay yourself massive bonuses, instead of investing in the business, or producing a competitive product.  Then, you declare bankruptcy, and walk away with all the monies.  That's what happened to companies like Sears.

 

Obviously if the clients/users know you are doing this outright, they will throw a fit. Thankfully for you, the dishonest person, you can use allegations of simulated pedophilia to turn all the clients/users into useful idiots who agree to absolutely anything as long as it gets rid of the accused. Funny how that works out.

Makes me wonder, who did Robert Bartos/dantesedmond1844 work for?

[Paul Hexem]

4 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Before you link a page and selectively quote an irrelevant bit, maybe you should READ the damn page.

 

""Physically Based Shading" was introduced by Yoshiharu Gotanda during the course Physically-Based Shading Models in Film and Game Production at the SIGGRAPH 2010.  And followed by the course Physically Based Shading in Theory and Practice organised by Stephen Hill and Stephen McAuley between 2012 and 2020"

 

Siggraph 2010, if you search, you'll find I've stated THAT date before with regard to PBR, as THAT wass the graphics industry trade show when they launched it.

It becomes a usable thing when its available to use, not when an academic writes a paper suggesting the idea might be possible.

 

"The first successful, yet partial implementation of physically-based rendering in a video game can be found in the 2013 title Remember Me"

 

Another EPIC Comprehension fail on your part there.

2024 - 2010 = 14

Decade: a period of 10 years

Decade Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster

3 hours ago, BillFletcher said:

Yes I maintain my car and I maintain my computer. What I don't have to do with my car is adjust it because it no longer performs like it did because the fuel, oil, tires, or brakes have been upgraded.

Are you suggesting that replacing parts requires no adjustment of your car? All kinds of things have to be dialed in after you change the brake pads, for example. Just because you can't be bothered to know how doesn't mean it doesn't need to be done.

Computers are exactly the same. As time goes on you have to replace and adjust.

[Anna Salyx]

51 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I made my last 2 computers used for Second Life last about 10 years each. With no parts upgrades or failures in all that time.

I'm 17.5 years into Second Life, and only on my third computer in all that time. 

And Second Life always ran acceptably for me, until I finally decided to upgrade each time.

So for EVERYONE, "YMMV"!

My upgrade cycle has always been about every 10 ish years. I have a desktop (that I save up for that 10 years) for entertainment and an in expensive basic laptop for work and for projects that I don't want distractions on.  I'm not a gamer by any real definition of the term though. My preferred genre is (other than SL) story driven "walking simulators".  But even the walking simulators are needing a fairly modern ish gpu anymore which is why I'll sometimes update on that part mid cycle. I'm just glad that PCI Express is backward compatible: I've got a V4.0 card in a V3.0 slot. But it works and gets the job done.

[MissSweetViolet]

I updated today, and after adjusting the frame rate a bit, and the texture size slightly, everything is running as well as it did before I updated. I've yet to run into any major issues.

[Prokofy Neva]

9 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

I would agree with you up to the point of your reasonings on the Mobile viewer. That was initiated by a bunch of us who were using Lumiya regularly when SL/Oz switched over from fetching assets through HTTP instead of UDP which broke the viewer in some ways and that for some was the only option they had. It was at that point that a group of us from the Lumiya group massed together at one of the Linden meetings and voiced our concern and that if SL intended to continue on breaking Lumiya with the inventory fetching changed, they would need to come up with their own mobile viewer since Lumiya was no longer being maintained.

It was most definitely not "keeping up with kids" as Lumiya had been active by then for 7 odd years and over a half million residents had gone so far as to buy a license for it and now the Lindens where breaking it with their protocol changes.

Not that I have much hope if and when they finally roll out their version that it will be as functional as Lumiya was, but at very least you and quite a few others wouldn't be sitting in the dark while you wait for repairs or upgrades to your desktop.

I use Speedlight and hope they don't break that.

You *do* realize that everything you are describing is Dysfunction Junction, right? 

[Cristiano Midnight]

If you haven't read the entry on the release on Firestorm's site, it is worth it:

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

Specifically, this part:

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.

-

I get that some people are unhappy with the change, but some people are being outright abusive in Firestorm support. It is ridiculous.

[Cristiano Midnight]

10 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

I would agree with you up to the point of your reasonings on the Mobile viewer. That was initiated by a bunch of us who were using Lumiya regularly when SL/Oz switched over from fetching assets through HTTP instead of UDP which broke the viewer in some ways and that for some was the only option they had. It was at that point that a group of us from the Lumiya group massed together at one of the Linden meetings and voiced our concern and that if SL intended to continue on breaking Lumiya with the inventory fetching changed, they would need to come up with their own mobile viewer since Lumiya was no longer being maintained.

It was most definitely not "keeping up with kids" as Lumiya had been active by then for 7 odd years and over a half million residents had gone so far as to buy a license for it and now the Lindens where breaking it with their protocol changes.

Not that I have much hope if and when they finally roll out their version that it will be as functional as Lumiya was, but at very least you and quite a few others wouldn't be sitting in the dark while you wait for repairs or upgrades to your desktop.

So LL should hold back improvements because of a third party mobile viewer that was abandoned? Also I somehow doubt they sold 500k licenses to it. If they did, why abandon it?

[Arielle Popstar]

50 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I use Speedlight and hope they don't break that.

You *do* realize that everything you are describing is Dysfunction Junction, right? 

Yes it is SL and starting to realize it is the norm, not the exception.

[Cristiano Midnight]

1 minute ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Yes it is SL and starting to realize it is the norm, not the exception.

It is the norm because it is LL's platform - it is how software development works. Third party viewers -are allowed but they do have to be maintained to stay relevant and usable. They are not and should not be their priority from a technical standpoint.

When you start adding in a bunch of workarounds to keep everything backward compatible, you end up with an unstable system that is difficult to upgrade. The Speedlight developers have seemed pretty adept at keeping up with changes,

[Arielle Popstar]

1 minute ago, Cristiano Midnight said:

So LL should hold back improvements because of a third party mobile viewer that was abandoned?

They weren't improvements as they had no positive effect for the better in the end. Other grids did not change the inventory fetching protocol and it still works acceptably there. 

Quote

Also I somehow doubt they sold 500k licenses to it.

That's what Google Play Store reported so unless it was lying, it is likely correct and in fact they just reported over 500,000 copies downloaded, so the half million is a conservative number.

Quote

If they did, why abandon it?

You'd have to look up the history to understand as it is too long to get in here. Both the Modern world and NWN blogs get into it a bit what happened over the years.