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

[Jackson Redstar]

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

[Conifer Dada]

When EEP was introduced, my settings all needed adjusting as the lighting was much brighter than before. However, after adjustment my settings looked fine.

When PBR was introduced the main problem was that the LL viewer, which I'd used happily for most of my time in SL, became very slow.  The problem was painfully slow loading of textures and avatars, such that at a club with a few people in, some textures and avatars wouldn't load at all, even after 10 minutes.  The problem persisted through several viewer updates, and was not even cured by setting my graphics to minimum. From what I saw of PBR textures, they looked good, the problem is the slow rezzing in the new LL viewer.

I switched to the Alchemy viewer in desperation and it works quite well - certainly much quicker than the LL viewer (and I guess Firestorm too since its PBR update). 

Edited June 22 by Conifer Dada

[BillFletcher]

4 hours ago, RicDelMoro said:

I avoid places with more people and very complex landscapes,

I am here already without even updating to the new PBR version, I do wish they would offer a simple viewer for those of us who have old crappy computers and just want to connect with friends.

[AmeliaJ08]

1 minute ago, BillFletcher said:

I am here already without even updating to the new PBR version, I do wish they would offer a simple viewer for those of us who have old crappy computers and just want to connect with friends.

CoolVL. You can drop right back to the 'forward' renderer (ALM disabled) if you want, @Henri Beauchamp has committed to keeping it around if that is what you desire.

 

[Arielle Popstar]

33 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

CoolVL. You can drop right back to the 'forward' renderer (ALM disabled) if you want, @Henri Beauchamp has committed to keeping it around if that is what you desire.

CoolVL seems to run hot (82C) in either mode though. Pre PBR FS runs the card at around 62C and new release around 80C.

[Sid Nagy]

6 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

I was very impressed by the PBR Winter Wonderland build last year, it looked great! not seen the SL21B builds yet, I always take forever to visit these things.

 

Yes Winter Wonderland was cool. But somehow it feels over the top the way it is used in the LL builds I've seen so far at SLB21.
When one uses midday setting it is all doable.
But I was on region setting this morning.

Edited June 22 by Sid Nagy

[Qie Niangao]

Just now, Arielle Popstar said:

CoolVL seems to run hot (82C) in either mode though. Pre PBR FS runs the card at around 62C and new release around 80C.

That's very interesting. I understand from @AmeliaJ08's post above that to get more acceptable performance for PBR, a bunch of processing shifted from CPU to GPU. I wonder if Henri was able to take advantage of that improvement even with the old forward rendering, which would make the card run hotter. (Or it could be any of a million other less interesting things, even subtle differences in preferences.)

[Arielle Popstar]

4 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

That's very interesting. I understand from @AmeliaJ08's post above that to get more acceptable performance for PBR, a bunch of processing shifted from CPU to GPU. I wonder if Henri was able to take advantage of that improvement even with the old forward rendering, which would make the card run hotter. (Or it could be any of a million other less interesting things, even subtle differences in preferences.)

The difference in GPU cycles with shadows off is around 65-70 without PBR and 95-100 with it on but there doesn't seem to be a change to the temp which I thought a bit unusual.

[Qie Niangao]

2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

But how much of SL21B is actually "LL Builds", not "built by users for SL21B"?

I was assuming that regardless of who actually bent the prims, it referred to all the builds such as full-region auditoriums and the paths between builds that are not individual exhibitor builds, so my theory wouldn't apply that stuff looked weird lit by the region EEP instead of the exhibit builder, when for those "LL builds" the same people presumably control the EEP.

[EDIT: Sorry, that was sloppy of me. The individual exhibitors can control the EEP on their parcels, too. I meant that they didn't necessarily control the EEP on the parcel of the observer, if the observer was using region EEP and camming in from the pathway between exhibits for example.]

Edited June 22 by Qie Niangao

[SarahThe Wanderer]

You can't please everyone, but I'm one of those who likes the new PBR, it's a positive for me, that's all what I will say! 

[Mr Amore]

Whether introducing sculpts, mesh, or bento, every advancement had its victims.

PBR will bring amazing visuals for backdrops and roleplay scenes, along with a tide of trashy content.

Some of the concepts I've been seeing on sandboxes will take sci-fi and futuristic builds to a whole new level.

[Henri Beauchamp]

50 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

CoolVL seems to run hot (82C) in either mode though. Pre PBR FS runs the card at around 62C and new release around 80C.

If you do not limit the frame rate, it will run at full gear and will deliver more fps than most (if not all) other viewers, but will also squeeze the last bit of power from your CPU, and throw has many draw calls as it can at your GPU, making your fans roar.

To prevent ludicrous frame rates (I can get up to 1500fps in my sky box with two alts around and in forward rendering mode, which of course does not make much sense at all), get your PC to run cool and quiet, and get things to rez even faster (the ”free” CPU time between frames being used to load objects and textures faster), do use its smart frame rate limiter (”Preferences” floater, ”Cool features” tab, ”Misc.” sub-tab, ”Frame rate limit” spinner) !

Edited June 22 by Henri Beauchamp

[Paul Hexem]

Let's be honest. If you can't be bothered to change your settings because LL finally adoped a decades old industry standard and this kills SL for you, it's 100% a you problem.

[StarlanderGoods]

No, improving the game is not a path to suicide.

[Jackson Redstar]

18 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Let's be honest. If you can't be bothered to change your settings because LL finally adoped a decades old industry standard and this kills SL for you, it's 100% a you problem.

more like if you are still running on decades old PC hardware it's a 100% you problem! LOL

[Paul Hexem]

2 minutes ago, Jackson Redstar said:

more like if you are still running on decades old PC hardware it's a 100% you problem! LOL

Even that's not necessarily true. All the hardware in my computer is several generations old. I tweaked some of the graphics settings and I can get 70+ FPS on mainland with a decent draw distance.

People on older hardware will have to tweak a little more, but it'll work fine if they take the time to do it.

[Rufferta]

I had used the official viewer so that I could learn to make mirrors. Now that Firestorm has updated I'm back to using that for the most part. 

On the negative side, when I was roaming SL21B yesterday there were a few builds where I was thinking "Oh, it's nice that they are using some of Aley's sculpty builds..." and then realized it was just a PBR quirk.  I'm sure it can be fixed. 

On the positive side, after tweaking a few settings on my viewer,  I think everything does look better. 

[Ceka Cianci]

I may install the new fs on my external ssd stick to try it out. I may actually try a couple of different viewers to see which is going to work best for me.

Does Catznip have a PBR version out?

Edited June 22 by Ceka Cianci

[Jackson Redstar]

27 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Even that's not necessarily true. All the hardware in my computer is several generations old. I tweaked some of the graphics settings and I can get 70+ FPS on mainland with a decent draw distance.

People on older hardware will have to tweak a little more, but it'll work fine if they take the time to do it.

most of the 'tweak' guidelines published are pretty worthless and do nothing really

[Love Zhaoying]

12 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I was assuming that regardless of who actually bent the prims, it referred to all the builds such as full-region auditoriums and the paths between builds that are not individual exhibitor builds, so my theory wouldn't apply that stuff looked weird lit by the region EEP instead of the exhibit builder, when for those "LL builds" the same people presumably control the EEP.

[EDIT: Sorry, that was sloppy of me. The individual exhibitors can control the EEP on their parcels, too. I meant that they didn't necessarily control the EEP on the parcel of the observer, if the observer was using region EEP and camming in from the pathway between exhibits for example.]

Right, but I was referring to Sid's use of "LL builds" (sorry if you used it first and I missed it). I wonder if some assume LL has a hand in everything you see? I think you called it right though, paraphrasing: if no exhibitor is listed, we could assume LL gets the blame and/or credit for the build (whether built by Moles), etc.

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

54 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Let's be honest. If you can't be bothered to change your settings because LL finally adoped a decades old industry standard and this kills SL for you, it's 100% a you problem.

1. It's not "decades old".

2. It didn't become an "industry standard" until some years after its launch.

3. It's only an "industry standard" for SOME types of software, types that are very little like SL.

So...

4. what you just posted is as relevant as claiming SL should adopt the standards in Sage Business Accountancy software.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

40 minutes ago, StarlanderGoods said:

No, improving the game is not a path to suicide.

But this isn't an improvement. It's badly broken, and half finished. Basically useless.

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

4 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

Does Catznip have a PBR version out?

I'm glad to say the last official release, R 13.2 is 100% PBR free!

[Codex Alpha]

4 hours ago, Jackson Redstar said:

if SL creators follow the usual course with PBR now, soon every other texture we will see will either be shiny or a mirror surface! lol Shiny sand at the beach, mirror finish on the asphalt roads, brick building gleaming in the sunlight,,,,,

The main reason for that (and also depending on the environment) relatively rough surfaces like brick and wood won't even activate the normals as much, that's where displacement would come in handy. People 'perceive' that nothing is going on, so they add shininess and the the normals pop. It's okay to add some gloss, but not enough to be distracting, but without it - could just use a baked texture and nothing else. It's also fine to add some 'wet' or moist parts to wood or stone, as long as it's subtle - and just in case it catches the light.

[Alwin Alcott]

1 hour ago, Paul Hexem said:

People on older hardware will have to tweak a little more, but it'll work fine if they take the time to do it.

IF they want to spend the time ... 
i'm not so sure, i downloaded the previous FS this afternoon. It wasn't a good experience at all to try the pbr release.