Linden Lab your PBR is giving me a headache

[stlshayne]

9 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

From my perspective I'd put it at approximately 8-10 years. It just becomes very expensive to support old hardware in terms of man-hours beyond that in my experience.

And I agree.  We shouldn't have to be held back by pre 2016 PCs. 

 

Coincidentally,  Windows ends support for Windows 10 next year. 

Edited Wednesday at 11:58 PM by stlshayne

[Zalificent Corvinus]

1 minute ago, Extrude Ragu said:

Why bother discussing things with you, if you will just make up some new meaning for any of my words?

Well, somebody has to make up a meaning for most of your words, since you generally leave any ACTUAL carefully thought out meaning out of your posts.

 

Remember your "brilliant plan"" to allow vehicle vagrants to ignore parcel auto-return if they stood NEAR their prim litter, and how you didn't think that the main use for that feature would be disposable griefer alts standing near their self replicating griefer weapon prims so they didn't get auto-returned before they crashed the region.

 

So now you are asking LL, to teach content creation to "older left-behind" SL users,. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Oh yeah.

1. LL have always sucked donkey butt at content creation.

2. Many of those left-behind users have problems understanding how to USE content, never mind MAKE it. You really think trying to teach Blender to somebody who has difficulty with "add the body as an attachment"?

3. Those older left-behind users will have older PC's that can't cope with just logging in to 2k PBR, so there's no point in trying to teach them Blender.

 

It's another Extrude Classic.

Devote FIVE WHOLE SECONDS to thinking an bad idea through, and FIVE WHOLE HOURS to trying to defend it when it's shot down in flames.

[Clem Marques]

7 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

3. Those older left-behind users will have older PC's that can't cope with just logging in to 2k PBR, so there's no point in trying to teach them Blender.

Some of those older PCs can't even RUN Blender without instantly crashing.

(Been there, done that...)

[Arielle Popstar]

4 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

True. Computers were evolving a lot faster back then.

Today the computers don't evolve so fast but the planned obsolescence does through changing Cpu sockets, ram etc. Can't update a computer for 8-10 years nowadays unless we're just talking the case.

[Cube Republic]

2 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Today the computers don't evolve so fast but the planned obsolescence does through changing Cpu sockets, ram etc. Can't update a computer for 8-10 years nowadays unless we're just talking the case.

Depends, AMD sockets are supported for a few years.

[Extrude Ragu]

14 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

So now you are asking LL, to teach content creation to "older left-behind" SL users,. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Again, that's not what I said, nor what I want.

[JUSTUS Palianta]

I got lindens PBR Viewer to run on my old desktop computer but it sounds really angry. As soon as I turned SL off the computer sounds happy again.  Probably I need to shove more RAM chips in it. That was without going near another avatar.  It was nice to check my store because I was worried no one will be able to see inside anymore.  I will use it to check some clothes too, because I want to see if they are still look decent. 

I can't even remember how old my desktop is.

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7500 CPU @ 3.40GHz (3407.99 MHz)
Memory: 8151 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 19045.4046)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB/PCIe/SSE2

 

[Extrude Ragu]

15 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Remember your "brilliant plan""

If we're going that route, remember that time you thought the best solution to helping all residents was to inject them with a drug that doesn't exist, that you don't know how to invent?

[Codex Alpha]

23 hours ago, Cube Republic said:

The 1060 is almost a decade old, it will have a hard time with SL

Yet I'm fine everywhere else, with multiple programs like Blender, Substance, MD, Firefox open at the same time.. soooooooooooo. Yes it's getting old but 2020.... so upgrading was delayed.

 

1 hour ago, Cube Republic said:

What we commonly refer to as 'textures'  contain lighting information and often baked shadows now. While the color channel on PBR is pretty flat.

She's referring to those who bake the light information, metal reflections in, etc

 

59 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Maybe it is just reaching a point where from the Linden developers view as well as some Creators, it is going to be too much of a headache supporting older residents too. Meaning those who are balking at content becoming increasingly difficult to create and keep up to date with for those just looking to do some light creating or modifying both in terms of knowledge and tools to do it with. Just really moving more and more to where we have professional creators and consumer residents. 

Empty sandboxes, little local chat where people discuss how to make their virtual world better because it is all in the hands of professionals in ivory towers.

This is why many potential users are on platforms like Roblox, where they can easily create their own worlds, have easy access to LUA that has tons of support, tutorials, documentation and is a transferable skill, all while not having to operate at AAA standards for the millions of other players who enter their world.
When you pit VRChat up against Sansar on a similar manner, it was the same. As nice as Sansar appeared to be, it's pipeline to get good results, especially with scripting and such, was out of reach for most - while in VRChat they could do it all in Unity, transfer their worlds between platforms because of it and again, did not have to abide to AAA standards to have a fun world, to make stuff and to share with their friends and visitors. A lot was lost, and a lot of the consumer class (and even advanced users) since mesh was introduced.. the skill level to 'create' and the cost of having land gap has ever increased. This is just another widening.. regardless if PBR is called for or not. It's just a catalyst that will widen that existing gap more.

20 minutes ago, BriannaLovey said:

The only way to realistically force people to do that is to outlaw third-party viewers entirely. If that happens...oh gosh.

The easiest way for stuff you create to be seen correctly is to put a diffuse texture on it and nothing else. PBR isn't going to solve anything unless LL bans third-party viewers.

Yes, when you mean Diffuse(SPC), or PBR(Albedo), you're not just talking about a flat color texture (as Cube thinks), you are referring to the technique of baking lighting and ao into the texture itself. Of course it won't be accurate for reflections and such, but it will pass for anyone with ALM turned off (or PBR turned off ). Like we said before, most TOP creators aren't even using it. They're baking it all in on the color texture, and many without normals or anyting else too. I know. I spent hours inworld looking at people's stuff.. and realized I was working way too hard... How much it sucked to finally figure out the Spc/Gls only to get complaints on the stuff I worked hard on.... "This doesn't look right inworld! It's just flat color!" 1-star! I want a refund!
Seriously, it seems l like you can't win on this platform sometimes.
So if a new standard happens, accepted or not, that is more welcome than having chaos happen, and nothing looks as you expect

Edited Thursday at 12:14 AM by Codex Alpha

[Arielle Popstar]

1 minute ago, Cube Republic said:

Depends, AMD sockets are supported for a few years.

Even they were switching sockets willy nilly a few years ago to where it wasn't possible or feasible for me to update a couple of computers I was using back some years ago. Intel was the more stable one and so I bought one of their i7-7700 and then they changed! I have a great aptitude for unknowingly picking the end of line hardware.

[BriannaLovey]

4 minutes ago, Codex Alpha said:

Yet I'm fine everywhere else, with multiple programs like Blender, Substance, MD, Firefox open at the same time.. soooooooooooo. Yes it's getting old but 2020.... so upgrading was delayed.

 

She's referring to those who bake the light information, metal reflections in, etc

 

This is why many potential users are on platforms like Roblox, where they can easily create their own worlds, have easy access to LUA that has tons of support, tutorials, documentation and is a transferable skill, all while not having to operate at AAA standards for the millions of other players who enter their world.
When you pit VRChat up against Sansar on a similar manner, it was the same. As nice as Sansar appeared to be, it's pipeline to get good results, especially with scripting and such, was out of reach for most - while in VRChat they could do it all in Unity, transfer their worlds between platforms because of it and again, did not have to abide to AAA standards to have a fun world, to make stuff and to share with their friends and visitors. A lot was lost, and a lot of the consumer class (and even advanced users) since mesh was introduced.. the skill level to 'create' and the cost of having land gap has ever increased. This is just another widening.. regardless if PBR is called for or not. It's just a catalyst that will widen that existing gap more.

Yes, when you mean Diffuse(SPC), or PBR(Albedo), you're not just talking about a flat color texture (as Cube thinks), you are referring to the technique of baking lighting and ao into the texture itself. Of course it won't be accurate for reflections and such, but it will pass for anyone with ALM turned off (or PBR turned off ). Like we said before, most TOP creators aren't even using it. They're baking it all in on the color texture, and many without normals or anyting else too. I know. I spent hours inworld looking at people's stuff.. and realized I was working way too hard... How much it sucked to finally figure out the Spc/Gls only to get complaints on the stuff I worked hard on.... "This doesn't look right inworld! It's just flat color!" 1-star! I want a refund!
Seriously, it seems l like you can't win on this platform sometimes.
So if a new standard happens, accepted or not, that is more welcome than having chaos happen, and nothing looks as you expect

No different than...

[Cube Republic]

11 minutes ago, Codex Alpha said:

On 6/25/2024 at 9:18 PM, Cube Republic said:

The 1060 is almost a decade old, it will have a hard time with SL

Yet I'm fine everywhere else, with multiple programs like Blender, Substance, MD, Firefox open at the same time.. soooooooooooo. Yes it's getting old but 2020.... so upgrading was delayed.

I just retired one after using it for 8 years, it was really showing it's age in sl with low FPS at busy regions

[Arielle Popstar]

15 minutes ago, JUSTUS Palianta said:

I got lindens PBR Viewer to run on my old desktop computer but it sounds really angry. As soon as I turned SL off the computer sounds happy again.  Probably I need to shove more RAM chips in it. That was without going near another avatar.  It was nice to check my store because I was worried no one will be able to see inside anymore.  I will use it to check some clothes too, because I want to see if they are still look decent. 

I can't even remember how old my desktop is.

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7500 CPU @ 3.40GHz (3407.99 MHz)
Memory: 8151 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 19045.4046)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB/PCIe/SSE2

 

I have a laptop with those sort of specs except 16GB of ram but only a 6GB nvidia 1050 mobile. I tested it the other day with the updates and had some troubles but after updating Visual C++ Redistributable and a reboot, got it running SL. ok.

Edited Thursday at 12:25 AM by Arielle Popstar

[NaomiLocket]

2 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

His assessment is correct, though.  If someone can't afford an upgrade, they're not going to spend the money they do have on content they can't see correctly.

Actually their assessment amounted to people that already afforded a PC would have to spend their budget they could spend on the plants on another PC instead and ignore the plants. It's just really badly worded. No creator should be telling people they need to upgrade their PC first to buy at their store. It's an instant detractor or barrier from buying at the store.

Edited Thursday at 12:28 AM by NaomiLocket

[Dorientje Woller]

17 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Even they were switching sockets willy nilly a few years ago to where it wasn't possible or feasible for me to update a couple of computers I was using back some years ago. Intel was the more stable one and so I bought one of their i7-7700 and then they changed! I have a great aptitude for unknowingly picking the end of line hardware.

Current state of AMD ... they are still launching new Ryzen 5000 series CPU's for the AM4 (previous platform/socket) while they are now on the AM5 platform/socket. So, you can build a reasonable system for a reasonable price.

Edited Thursday at 12:32 AM by Dorientje Woller

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

21 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

If we're going that route, remember that time you thought the best solution to helping all residents was to inject them with a drug that doesn't exist, that you don't know how to invent?

Have you ever watched a movie and gotten half way through only to realise there was a prequel which may well have included scenes that probably explains some crucial elements of a characters development?  That's definitely the feeling I'm experiencing having read the above post!

[Codex Alpha]

16 minutes ago, Cube Republic said:

I just retired one after using it for 8 years, it was really showing it's age in sl with low FPS at busy regions

I may not be alone in a great segment of SL'ers who lost livelihood, jobs and opportunities due to aftermath effects of 2020, and we haven't caught up yet. For myself, I do need an upgrade, but I won't be upgrading JUST for SL, as it does everything I want it to do in Unreal, Unity and other software (though I could use a few more million tris for sculpting in Blender, that's where I see limitation right now)

Edited Thursday at 12:39 AM by Codex Alpha

[NaomiLocket]

38 minutes ago, Codex Alpha said:

A lot was lost, and a lot of the consumer class (and even advanced users) since mesh was introduced.. the skill level to 'create' and the cost of having land gap has ever increased. This is just another widening.. regardless if PBR is called for or not. It's just a catalyst that will widen that existing gap more.

I think it is less about mesh being introduced and more about how it was. As well as that it needed external tools. The whole point of in-world prim-mesh generators happening was because people wanted native in world support for it. A process to interact with it directly instead of produce and translate it. In that way they don't have to guess about scales and can directly see how it fits in with all other assets whether they made those too or not. Prims being generated mesh anyway with an extremely limited interface isn't a terribly huge skill to develop from. The toolset and working pipeline however, that was the big bridge. And the more awkward and less productive the working environment is the more bothersome and less interesting it becomes.

Fortunately live *^local mesh preview was dumped into firestorm a while back and I wrote a small tool to symbolic link the highest lod so I can during prototyping work out if I can be bothered with it. It's still a clunky process but less clunky by a margin while working on fitment.

Edited Thursday at 12:49 AM by NaomiLocket

[Cube Republic]

2 minutes ago, Codex Alpha said:

I may not be alone in a great segment of SL'ers who lost livelihood, jobs and opportunities due to aftermath effects of 2020, and we haven't caught up yet. For myself, I do need an upgrade, but I won't be upgrading JUST for SL, as it does everything I want it to do in Unreal, Unity and other software (though I could use a few more million tris for sculpting in Blender, that's where I see limitation right now)

For me it was a conundrum because I've done SL for a living for many years and my pc broke. I didn't want to spend on old hardware and I need to support the next thing in SL because it's my job. A first gen ryzen was really lagging on large graphs in substance designer and working at 2k resolution. It was considrable expense, I don't make a fortune from SL, and I'm disabled RL.

I got the same equivelent parts again because they lasted so long in the tropical heat, the old card was even rusting lol. 

[DevlinMcDermott]

Creators create.

 

But who is going to buy your wares. When users of SL need a bloody $2000 gaming system just to log on and enjoy the SL world?

 

Just journey around the worlds of SL for a day and count up how many are devoid of any avatars. Wasn’t always like that. It used to be packed. And that’s not because of a of a lack of interest!

 

The average person keeps a computer for the lifetime of OS. Then think about upgrading. That’s five-six years. Because new computers are still expensive to buy. They don’t have the money to run out there and get one because of a new gaming graphics card or CPU. Like you computer nerds do.

 

So go create in PBR or whatever new graphics protocol they do. There won’t be many people around to see it. And that’s a pity to many of you do fantastic art and design.

 

And you know there was also a time in SL people went there to make lifelong real life friendships and live out lives they couldn’t in the real world.

 

It wasn’t about the stores and wares.

 

But I guess reading the forum over the past few days. That’s all SL means to some of you people. Making bits of shiny virtual trinkets and seeing who can outdo each other.

[Vivienne Schell]

1 hour ago, stlshayne said:

And I agree.  We shouldn't have to be held back by pre 2016 PCs.

Go and get a 2024 low end PC for 500 dollars, log in, try your luck, log out, come back and say that again.

[Rowan Amore]

58 minutes ago, NaomiLocket said:

Actually their assessment amounted to people that already afforded a PC would have to spend their budget they could spend on the plants on another PC instead and ignore the plants. It's just really badly worded. No creator should be telling people they need to upgrade their PC first to buy at their store. It's an instant detractor or barrier from buying at the store.

If they can't run PBR on their machine and want to buy PBR content, what other choice do they have?  He sells non-PBR items.  There are millions of other non-PBR items to buy.  Telling a creator they HAVE to do something (sort of like telling them they HAVE to make things modify) is basically the same thing.  Both have a choice.

[stlshayne]

32 minutes ago, Vivienne Schell said:

Go and get a 2024 low end PC for 500 dollars, log in, try your luck, log out, come back and say that again.

I'm running things on a mid-range 2020 laptop just fine. 

Edited Thursday at 01:35 AM by stlshayne

[Vivienne Schell]

6 minutes ago, stlshayne said:

I'm running things on a mid-range 2018 laptop just fine. 

You wanna tell me that a 2018 500 dollar laptop outperforms a 2016 High End Desktop?

[Love Zhaoying]

59 minutes ago, Vivienne Schell said:

Go and get a 2024 low end PC for 500 dollars, log in, try your luck, log out, come back and say that again.

Terrible idea. But my 2022-2023 model is now only $779 and works great so, there's probably some 2024 models close to $500 that work ok.