Linden Lab your PBR is giving me a headache

[Solar Legion]

34 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Games generally are set up so that there is a level of content and behavior that won't be exceeded and can't be reduced.

In Second Life it's entirely possible for someone to spend time in an empty skybox or island and do low-graphical activities like building, scripting or text chat; it's also entirely possible for them to be in a multi-region built-up area full of sixty avatars that are all more graphically intensive than the main character of the typical game.

This.

People need to stop trying to compare Second Life to AAA (and Indie) games - it simply is not comparable. At all. No, not even ones that allow/have mods.

Unreasonable expectations performance wise aside, such comparisons are how we ended up here, now.

If you're running with hardware developed and manufactured in the last five or so years and seeing performance hits greater than what is being seen/reported by those using older hardware (many do actually need to upgrade for varied reasons - myself included) then congratulations, you've got a misconfiguration somewhere or you chose a hardware combination that really does not work well together/has quirks you were either unaware of or willfully ignored.

Blame the right people for the right things, folks.

Edited June 25 by Solar Legion
Formatting/Spelling Correction

[Extrude Ragu]

For what it's worth I've just seen on the SL discord that davep said he will be spending this week doing a performance/fixes pass of the pbr viewer, particularly targetting low vram/shared vram laptops and other common complaints based on feedback from people recently adopting latest firestorm viewer.

[Drayke Newall]

5 minutes ago, Thecla said:

If your complaint is simply that LL has not updated their stated minimum requirements, that's fair. If your complaint is that they never should have changed the performance requirements because they don't fit the stated requirements, well, that's pretty much a luddite attitude. I hope it's the former. And that is easily fixed.

(the former) My issue is that LL have had over a year if not more of working on PBR and have done diddly squat to inform users that they will need to upgrade their comp. LL have consistently refused to not listen to PBR feedback and that it isn't ready in its current form to be used (i.e. it is still alpha/early beta stage). LL released it in November 2023 and it took 7 months of feedback from firestorm and other TPV's to half fix the garbage LL released.

The only reason why Firestorm seems to have pushed out their buggy release is due to pressure from LL to have it ready for SLB.

I have no issue with Linden Lab upgrading their graphics system as that is a given considering SL has to adapt to times. That said, there is clearly varying issues with overheating comps on even high end systems (not that some believe it) not to mention the complete alienation and ignoring of a quite substantial part of the userbase on low end systems.

Should they have updated their pc's? Yes, they should have. That said however, other than regular forumites or blog readers (a tiney subsect of the SL userbase) there was no hint to the majority of users that they would need to update their pc's.

The min specs should have been updated at least 10 months ago to ensure that any new person or (if told) existing user is aware of what min requirements there are for the new viewer to be released. People rely on those specifically to gauge what system they need. Just look at the numerous people in the Tech forums asking 'what pc do I need'. Wouldn't it be nice if we had proper system requirements on the SL website where we can say go there and buy recommended.

Would it have been hard for LL to send an email stating, "we have updated our min specs for a new graphics system, please ensure that you check you meet the min specs" or had a update link on the login page stating as such?

Firestorm is also partly to blame as the largest TPV. They relied on posting on their blog stating that an update to specs would be needed (only about 1 month ago mid you) to the tiny fraction of people that read it. Instead they should have had a big banner like their update banner when a person starts the viewer highlighting the change. To their credit though at least their min specs are reasonable, if a person can find them hidden in their wiki.

5 minutes ago, Thecla said:

In general, I think we're in muddy territory here. First, there is the whole "SL is not a game, it's a platform" debate. It faces unique challenges since all the content is user generated and user owned. and there are very few if any ubiquitous assets that are common to all sims short of some terrain textures. The quality of content spans the gamut from exceptional to absurdly bad, with the latter potentially even causing viewers to crash. I've seen a hair pin the size of a chopstick with 12 1024x1024 textures on it.

It's possible that you can log into SL into an empty sim with the default avatar with minimum requirements just fulfilled. It's also true that there are some spectacularly detailed and complex sims where even the baddest game rigs on the planet sit up and clear their throats.

No one is arguing that, what people are arguing is that PBR was released to early, is still very buggy, is WAY to bright and glowy with existing content and EEP settings, has effected people completely unaware of the need to upgrade until the **** hit the fan and is overheating certain pc's.

All of this was preventable and easily handled with a little PR work from LL. Instead nothing of the sort. What were they expecting was going to happen?

[Drayke Newall]

34 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

This.

People need to stop trying to compare Second Life to AAA (and Indie) games - it simply is not comparable. At all. No, not even ones that allow/have mods.

No one is comparing Second Life to AAA games. I was simply showing how they (and everyone else) show min/rec requirements listing hardware names and not 'CPU to support SSE2 and 2 cores'.

All that has been said (at least in reference to my posts) is that LL needs to rewrite the min requirements on the SL page to something where there is no ambiguity and a reasonable gauge as to what would achieve reasonable (ie 30fps) performance in a say region of 5 people on a well built region (even clause it saying may vary based on quality of user made content and avatar number).

Edited June 25 by Drayke Newall

[Theresa Tennyson]

Just now, Drayke Newall said:

No one is comparing Second Life to AAA games. I was simply showing how they show min/rec requirements listing hardware names and not 'CPU to support SSE2 and 2 cores'.

In other words, you were comparing Second Life to AAA games.

[Aya Sweetheart]

I don't get it... with the right settings I got it looking identical (besides water) to the old viewer... took maybe 5 minutes, runs great... on my 3.5 year old laptop.

[Solar Legion]

I am going to be very, brutally frank here: Linden Lab cannot know what the hardware requirements would be to run Second Life at an average of 30 (or any other arbitrary number)FPS because all of the content within Second Life is created by its users.

That is simply the start of the 'problem'.

So yes, if you're trying to say they can do such you most certainly are making a comparison to AAA/Indie games wherein the majority of the content is made by the company that created it.

The requirements for Second Life need only state what general feature set is needed/a particular generation of said hardware. Names/Brands and specific model numbers need not be listed.

[Drayke Newall]

8 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

I am going to be very, brutally frank here: Linden Lab cannot know what the hardware requirements would be to run Second Life at an average of 30 (or any other arbitrary number)FPS because all of the content within Second Life is created by its users.

That is simply the start of the 'problem'.

So yes, if you're trying to say they can do such you most certainly are making a comparison to AAA/Indie games wherein the majority of the content is made by the company that created it.

The requirements for Second Life need only state what general feature set is needed/a particular generation of said hardware. Names/Brands and specific model numbers need not be listed.

Then dont jump up and down when people running 17 year old pc's complain they cant run it now or dont say to people to upgrade their pc's to run it when they meet the min specs.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Drayke Newall said:

Then dont jump up and down when people running 17 year old pc's complain they cant run it now or dont say to people to upgrade their pc's to run it when they meet the min specs.

Why? If it won't run with those specs, then they have no choice.  LL won't be waving a magic wand to fix the root issue, whether it is poorly created user content, or something else.

Not sure what I'm missing here.

 

[Drayke Newall]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Not sure what I'm missing here.

Min requirements for PC's shown on a game/platform/software or whatever have a specific meaning. That it runs to a certain performance. Apparently, according to some in this thread that doesn't apply to SL because 'it's different' so as I said according to them SL's min requirements of a 17 year old computer are perfectly fine to have shown because anyone with that 17 your old PC can rez in a empty sim at 4000m in the air with no one around and 'use' SL.

Move however, and lag/crash, that's their fault as despite meeting the min computer requirements, they should have known better in some magical way that their computer isn't powerful enough.

There are two ways LL could easily show min specs at 30fps. Use welcome island or a full beli region as the benchmark and state that as the benchmark to reach 30fps on min settings, or, go to the most demanding region of poorly made user content with 70 avies and use that as a benchmark and state as such on the min requirements section.

That apparently to some users here isn't possible 'for reasons'.

For example:

CPU: xyz
RAM: xyz
Graphics: xyz

Above min system requirements based on Linden Made content such as beli or welcome island with min settings and 5 avatars rendered.

 

[Thecla]

I do have to say I'm a bit puzzled by all the visual problems that people are having that are not speed/performance related. I started using the Firestorm PBR alpha back last year, I forget when, and never for a moment even considered going back to the standard release. I was in the middle of building out my sim and the only legacy non-PBR objects that I had issues with were ones that were REALLY poorly made. Like the ones where the creator just chose from the default "no shine/medium shine/full shine" radio buttons, which have NEVER worked well. Now, you can take 3 seconds to put a blank texture in the specular texture box, in Blinn-Phong and adjust both the glossiness and environment. So occasionally I would buy some POS product that looked like crap. I didn't blame LL, I blamed creators.

The one issue, early on, was that the influence of EEP on the specular reflections was overwhelming. If you saw someone in latex, they literally looked like they were wrapped in a blue tinted mirror, if the sim had a blue sky. Each successive beta chipped away at that problem to the point where it is mostly under control...until you go back to those old objects with the full shine button stabbed.

I created all my EEPs, about 10 of them for the whole sim, because I wanted ones that were unique and specific. Also, and this is important, I was adjusting the general, ambient light through EEP and using local area and projector lights for spot lighting and highlights. So I was basically making EEPs that balanced the lighting based on what looked appropriate IN the PBR Beta. I recall I had to go back and tweak some existing ones that I created before I started using the beta viewer, but the adjustments were minor. If people think the viewer is too contrasty, or too bright, or too dark...that's an EEP issue, not a PBR issue. And it in fact explains why those complaints are all over the map. Sim owners and builders need to adjust their EEPs to accommodate PBR at this point, not the other way around. The price of progress. And in a user-generated world, that's going to be a haphazard process.

TL;DR: Most of the highly noticeable visual problems are issues with EEP compatibility and adjustment, and it makes no sense to me require the viewer to render these exactly as they did before...because it's not possible. EEPs and PBR are now much more interwoven in their influences.

EEPs are incredibly easy to make. Literally takes a few minutes. Make your own and use it as your default if you're really put off by un-adjusted EEPs in various sims. Hopefully sim owners will fix this stuff.

 

 

Edited June 25 by Thecla
typo

[Love Zhaoying]

13 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

Apparently, according to some in this thread that doesn't apply to SL because 'it's different' so as I said according to them SL's min requirements of a 17 year old computer are perfectly fine to have shown because anyone with that 17 your old PC can rez in a empty sim at 4000m in the air with no one around and 'use' SL.

Yeah, the minimum requirements are vague and due for a major overhaul.

[Cristiano Midnight]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Yeah, the minimum requirements are vague and due for a major overhaul.

Also, the badly optimized content and everyone running around in mesh avis can make even very high end systems weep sometimes.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Cristiano Midnight said:

4 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Yeah, the minimum requirements are vague and due for a major overhaul.

Also, the badly optimized content and everyone running around in mesh avis can make even very high end systems weep sometimes.

Yep. So, in some cases we don't know if someone who is "weeping" is in a busy place / a place with a lot of bad content, or an place empty of avatars / with only good content.  

Sometimes, there are threads where users (or even LL if discussing testing on the Test / Beta grid) suggest doing tests in specific Regions so that we are comparing "apples to apples", and not "apples to clubs with 50 avatars".

 

[Solar Legion]

That's nice dearie.

I said no such thing nor alluded to such a thing.

What I said is right there in text - no hidden meaning, no alternative meanings. read the words.

[Arielle Popstar]

3 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

That's nice dearie.

I said no such thing nor alluded to such a thing.

What I said is right there in text - no hidden meaning, no alternative meanings. read the words.

Wrong thread or am I not seeing the post you're referring to?

[Solar Legion]

3 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Wrong thread or am I not seeing the post you're referring to?

I do not often quote the person I am responding to. Purposely.

Often it is because I personally have their posts hidden and thus only see them through others quoting them.

Very rare exceptions to this are made.

[Arielle Popstar]

Just now, Solar Legion said:

I do not often quote the person I am responding to. Purposely.

Often it is because I personally have their posts hidden and thus only see them through others quoting them.

Very rare exceptions to this are made.

Yes, I've noticed that in past but it is usually a fairly simple endeavour to look back who it is your post was directed at, though not in this case. Hence the query.

[Count Burks]

I made another attempt to log in using the PBR Linden Lab viewer. I also made pictures to compare. Here are some pictures to start. This is after tweaking all kinds of settings trying to get some good visuals. 

Above using PBR, aggressive lighting contrast, I had to increase exposure on it.

 

[Count Burks]

next image with regular Firestorm viewer. Softer color tones, much easier on the eyes. Enlarge images to  for better comparission.

Edited June 25 by Count Burks

[Count Burks]

Next example, hardness of light using PBR.

[Count Burks]

same image using Firestorm viewer before update.

[Count Burks]

Some subtle sunlight beams turn into a laser beam using PBR viewer.

[Count Burks]

same image Firestorm non PBR

[Count Burks]

Lagoon turning into a blue glow you can hardly watch using PBR viewer