PBR - What's Next?

[Cristiano Midnight]

Now that Firestorm's PBR support is out (for better or worse, depending on your perspective), what is coming next for SL?  Coffee Pancake mentioned the PBR scenes support in another thread  that is now in a project viewer and on the beta grid. That sounds interesting, especially the shape key support that could really change the nightmare of having to rig for a billion bodies.   Obviously much more work has to be done on optimization of the new PBR engine, but beyond that, what is on the horizon for SL 21 years in? LUA support for client side plugins is coming at some point, but what else?

[Zalificent Corvinus]

44 minutes ago, Cristiano Midnight said:

LUA support for client side plugins is coming at some point

And I can only assume that's a feature based on "other games use it, so we should to" from people who have NEVER had to edit a damned Lua script.

Games modders often have to deal with bloody Lua.

On the bight side, at least it's not Sims Edith/BHav.

/me shudders

 

Edited June 25 by Zalificent Corvinus

[Cristiano Midnight]

1 minute ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

And I can only assume that's a feature based on "other games use it, so we should to" from people who have NEVER had to edit a damned Lua script.

Games modders often have to deal with bloody Lua.

On the bight side, at least it's not Sims Edith/BHav.

/me shudders

 

I have anecdotally heard it may be part of trying to move away from TPVs, but I have no idea if that is true. 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

5 minutes ago, Cristiano Midnight said:

I have anecdotally heard it may be part of trying to move away from TPVs, but I have no idea if that is true. 

Sounds plausible.

Imbecile at a "Five fools & A Linden" meeting calls for Lua, explains that its "used in a lot of games" and explains "client side scripts can do all that rlv type stuff without YOU having to support rlv, and eliminates the need for TPV's", while completely ignoring that most TPV users don't RLV and want the QoL features, that the Fail-viewer will never have.

 

So, another classic "LL don't listen to the userbase and actively ty to fubar the platform again" feature.

Joy.

[Cristiano Midnight]

8 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Sounds plausible.

Imbecile at a "Five fools & A Linden" meeting calls for Lua, explains that its "used in a lot of games" and explains "client side scripts can do all that rlv type stuff without YOU having to support rlv, and eliminates the need for TPV's", while completely ignoring that most TPV users don't RLV and want the QoL features, that the Fail-viewer will never have.

 

So, another classic "LL don't listen to the userbase and actively ty to fubar the platform again" feature.

Joy.

I suppose it also comes down to how much functionality is exposed to be able to be scripted, as some of those same QoL features would be possible in some scenarios. A tremendous amount of functionality is added in World of Warcraft and Elder Scrolls Online through addons, not just trivial stuff.  A similar architecture in SL would not be a bad thing necessarily.

I don't think they would move away from TPVs, but they also can't be happy that the rollout of major features relies on the work of others outside of their organization. I don't understand why LL has not done more to integrate some of the QoL stuff back into their viewer.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

30 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

On the bight side, at least it's not Sims Edith/Bhave 

What is this Zal? Sounds like something I'd be into. 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

36 minutes ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

What is this Zal? Sounds like something I'd be into. 

Ever play sims 2?

Ever DL custom content for it?

BHAV is the Sims scripting language, and it's a bloody nightmare. I tinkered a lot with my sims  game back when, II did a version of the driveway, that could be used to SELL cars rather than park them, so I could build a "classic HotRod Dealership" lot. I published a mod called "roaches for Toddlers" because they didn't have an interaction with the bugs like every other age group, so I added "Taste".

 

All these use BHAV, if you really feel like inflicting pain on your self, search for "sims package editors", the one for Sims 2 was called SimPE.

 

EDIT:

Sims 4 Modding Topics

 

Edited June 25 by Zalificent Corvinus

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

1 hour ago, Cristiano Midnight said:

Now that Firestorm's PBR support is out (for better or worse, depending on your perspective), what is coming next for SL?  Coffee Pancake mentioned the PBR scenes support in another thread  that is now in a project viewer and on the beta grid. That sounds interesting, especially the shape key support that could really change the nightmare of having to rig for a billion bodies.   Obviously much more work has to be done on optimization of the new PBR engine, but beyond that, what is on the horizon for SL 21 years in? LUA support for client side plugins is coming at some point, but what else?

WebRTC voice is the next feature that people will lose their minds over.  WebRTC will be awesome, once it's implemented and working.  Higher bitrate, higher security, more tweakable settings, and filters.  It's completely incompatible with vivox, though.  Both viewers and sims have to be set up for WebRTC.  If you have a WebRTC viewer on a vivox sim, you can't talk, and vice versa.  If you have a WebRTC viewer on a WebRTC sim, but your buddy hasn't upgraded from vivox yet, your buddy can't talk to you, unless you roll back to vivox, and go to a vivox sim.

So I'm guessing they will roll out WebRTC on all the sims immediately when the first WebRTC viewer drops.  That viewer will almost certainly be the official LL viewer.  That will break Firestorm until they drop a new viewer, so we can expect Firestorm, and the official LL viewer to try to drop simultaneously.  3rd party viewers will probably try to also drop at the same time.

On the resident end, this will be crazy.  People will be mad when voice breaks.  This change will force people to upgrade to a PBR viewer, even if PBR runs like garbage on their system.  I know I don't want the PBR upgrade, because it looks bad (sorry, I don't care enough to play with EEP to make other people's builds look good).  I'll upgrade to ugly SL for voice, though, even though I don't really use voice much.  I think it's important to be able to put my ears on and hear what people are saying sometimes.  Others may disagree.  That means you have less people using voice.  Communities where they use voice a lot are going to be angry.

Edited June 25 by Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

1 minute ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Ever play sims 2?

Ever DL custom content for it?

Yeah I had the mod where you could BBQ babies. Fun times. 

[Cristiano Midnight]

4 hours ago, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

WebRTC voice is the next feature that people will lose their minds over.  WebRTC will be awesome, once it's implemented and working.  Higher bitrate, higher security, more tweakable settings, and filters.  It's completely incompatible with vivox, though.  Both viewers and sims have to be set up for WebRTC.  If you have a WebRTC viewer on a vivox sim, you can't talk, and vice versa.  If you have a WebRTC viewer on a WebRTC sim, but your buddy hasn't upgraded from vivox yet, your buddy can't talk to you, unless you roll back to vivox, and go to a vivox sim.

So I'm guessing they will roll out WebRTC on all the sims immediately when the first WebRTC viewer drops.  That viewer will almost certainly be the official LL viewer.  That will break Firestorm until they drop a new viewer, so we can expect Firestorm, and the official LL viewer to try to drop simultaneously.  3rd party viewers will probably try to also drop at the same time.

On the resident end, this will be crazy.  People will be mad when voice breaks.  This change will force people to upgrade to a PBR viewer, even if PBR runs like garbage on their system.  I know I don't want the PBR upgrade, because it looks bad (sorry, I don't care enough to play with EEP to make other people's builds look good).  I'll upgrade to ugly SL for voice, though, even though I don't really use voice much.  I think it's important to be able to put my ears on and hear what people are saying sometimes.  Others may disagree.  That means you have less people using voice.  Communities where they use voice a lot are going to be angry.

WebRTC is in release candidate status, but yeah, it is going to be a rough transition. I rarely use SL voice, I much prefer Discord, but for those that do, it will be disruptive for a bit.

[Cristiano Midnight]

4 hours ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

Yeah I had the mod where you could BBQ babies. Fun times. 

This right here is why I adore the hell out of you 🥰

[Jase Devin]

Vulkan

[Conifer Dada]

7 hours ago, Cristiano Midnight said:

I have anecdotally heard it may be part of trying to move away from TPVs, but I have no idea if that is true. 

I'd be only too happy to move back to using the LL viewer if and when it can be made to work properly. 

[Sid Nagy]

8 hours ago, Cristiano Midnight said:

I have anecdotally heard it may be part of trying to move away from TPVs, but I have no idea if that is true. 

Moving away from TPV's can be done in 2 minutes.
But if that would help SL? 
I doubt it. Too many customers are almost religiously attached to their TPV of choice.

[AmeliaJ08]

Vulkan seems the obvious one but potentially a real ARM port as well? Mac really needs it, PC market showing signs of potentially needing it.

Moving to a graphics API with a life ahead of it would definitely seem like an important priority though. Not very exciting for the users though...

 

 

[Nagachief Darkstone]

WebRTC and glTF mesh are the next things. glTF mesh will support arbitrary nodes/bones, embedded animations, unlimited material slots, relaxing of scale limitations (possibly the entire removal of them, still too early to tell), extra UVs, vertex colors and other vertex info, probably shapekeys/blendshapes, custom origins, and proper node hierarchies (ie, you transform one node and all children nodes of that node will transform along with it). glTF mesh rendering will also be faster than collada mesh and skinning transformations should be faster as bone transforms are streamed much more efficiently to the GPU.

[Arielle Popstar]

10 hours ago, Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia said:

WebRTC voice is the next feature that people will lose their minds over.  WebRTC will be awesome, once it's implemented and working.  Higher bitrate, higher security, more tweakable settings, and filters.  It's completely incompatible with vivox, though.  Both viewers and sims have to be set up for WebRTC.  If you have a WebRTC viewer on a vivox sim, you can't talk, and vice versa.  If you have a WebRTC viewer on a WebRTC sim, but your buddy hasn't upgraded from vivox yet, your buddy can't talk to you, unless you roll back to vivox, and go to a vivox sim.

So I'm guessing they will roll out WebRTC on all the sims immediately when the first WebRTC viewer drops.  That viewer will almost certainly be the official LL viewer.  That will break Firestorm until they drop a new viewer, so we can expect Firestorm, and the official LL viewer to try to drop simultaneously.  3rd party viewers will probably try to also drop at the same time.

On the resident end, this will be crazy.  People will be mad when voice breaks.  This change will force people to upgrade to a PBR viewer, even if PBR runs like garbage on their system.  I know I don't want the PBR upgrade, because it looks bad (sorry, I don't care enough to play with EEP to make other people's builds look good).  I'll upgrade to ugly SL for voice, though, even though I don't really use voice much.  I think it's important to be able to put my ears on and hear what people are saying sometimes.  Others may disagree.  That means you have less people using voice.  Communities where they use voice a lot are going to be angry.

There is the hope that an enterprising developer backports WebRTC to a pre PBR version of FS. I could see that happening, especially in Opensim.

[Innula Zenovka]

12 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

And I can only assume that's a feature based on "other games use it, so we should to" from people who have NEVER had to edit a damned Lua script.

Games modders often have to deal with bloody Lua.

On the bight side, at least it's not Sims Edith/BHav.

/me shudders

 

I am told by someone who generally knows what he's talking about when he discusses such matters that if you're looking for something that, like LSL, will both

• allow anyone to compile scripts on the region in real time and have everyone see the results and
• maintain all the script's active states and settings when it's transferred from one simulator to another, when worn in an attachment,

you don't have a great deal of choice other than LUA.

Edited June 25 by Innula Zenovka

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

I am told by someone who generally knows what he's talking about when he discusses such matters that if you're looking for something that, like LSL, will both

• allow anyone to compile scripts on the region in real time and have everyone see the results and
• maintain all the script's active states and settings when it's transferred from one simulator to another, when worn in an attachment,

you don't have a great deal of choice other than LUA.

That's a non-logic answer.

 

"We need to use something bloody awful because its the thing most lie the thing we already have that makes the bloody awful thing redundant before it's even crowbared in."

 

[Innula Zenovka]

10 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

That's a non-logic answer.

 

"We need to use something bloody awful because its the thing most lie the thing we already have that makes the bloody awful thing redundant before it's even crowbared in."

 

I was just explaining why, if you want to changing the LSL scripting engine and maintain both backwards compatibility and  current behaviour, apparently there isn't a great deal of choice.

As to the arguments for making the switch, as I understand it, apart from giving scripters access to arrays, it'll also make it easier to adapt LSL to use stuff like linkset hierarchies, which should certainly make it to script things with sets of linked components that are supposed to move together.   

However, I don't think we're going to be able to, let alone need to, use Lua or Luau to do stuff for quite some time yet.  And I'm told that we'll be  carry on using LSL as if Lua didn't exist, unless it's to do something that LSL can't, so I'm not unduly worried about the development.

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

14 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

And I can only assume that's a feature based on "other games use it, so we should to" from people who have NEVER had to edit a damned Lua script.

Games modders often have to deal with bloody Lua.

On the bight side, at least it's not Sims Edith/BHav.

/me shudders

Lua sucks, but at the same time... I wouldn't mind this.  It would be nice to be able to script on the viewer in Lua, and keep LSL for server side stuff.  LSL is already hacked up and extended in ways we never imagined back in 2006, so starting with a fresh language implementation might be nice, if it's done well.  The devil is in the details, though.

[Qie Niangao]

12 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

Lua or Luau

Perhaps a mobile viewer thing, huh?

5 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

potentially a real ARM port as well? Mac really needs it, PC market showing signs of potentially needing it.

I think we have a little while before Windows on Snapdragon is gaming-ready, but yeah, it seems inevitable now.

[Porky Gorky]

3 hours ago, Nagachief Darkstone said:

vertex colors and other vertex info

 Does this mean we'll be able to blend materials with vertex painting?

Edited June 25 by Porky Gorky

[diamond Marchant]

16 hours ago, Cristiano Midnight said:

Now that Firestorm's PBR support is out (for better or worse, depending on your perspective), what is coming next for SL?

I suppose the SL21B event today will give us a hint...  Tuesday, June 25th at 1:30pm PT -  Product and Engineering Teams with Grumpity Linden, Kali Linden, Signal Linden, Sntax Linden, and Kyle Linden.

Obviously the next big thing is Mobile. They are working on a method for letting residents try Mobile beyond the current Premium Plus program.

Personally, I wish they would

1) improve rez performance and reduce derezzing of stuff that previously rezzed (like my avatar)

2) give us a large collection of EEPs in the library that work with PBR... I am pretty much restricted to "Neutral" atm

Edited June 25 by diamond Marchant

[Cristiano Midnight]

1 minute ago, diamond Marchant said:

I suppose the SL21B event today will give us a hint...  Tuesday, June 25th at 1:30pm PT -  Product and Engineering Teams with Grumpity Linden, Kali Linden, Signal Linden, Sntax Linden, and Kyle Linden.

Obviously the next big thing is Mobile. They are working on a method for letting residents try Mobile beyond the current Premium Plus program.

Personally, I wish they would

1) improve rez performance and reduce derezzing of stuff that previously rezzed (like my avatar)

2) give us a large collection of EEPs in the library that work with PBR... I am pretty much restricted to "Neutral" atm

Mobile is such a wasted effort IMO. I wish they would focus on the core issues with SL, not chase after mobile users who are not going to stick around.