Pros/Cons PBR Viewer whats your take

[Henri Beauchamp]

4 hours ago, Nagachief Darkstone said:

You may have probes disabled or autoprobes didn't generate at all. Make sure your Probe Coverage is set to Manual + Terrain

These won't work for sky boxes, and many places are setup in sky boxes... 😵‍💫

Also, automatic Terrain probes only work when you are using the ”Manual & Terrain” or ”Full scene” probes coverage setting in the renderer settings, which excludes people with a ”weak” hardware and consequently using ”Manual only” or ”None” for the coverage to avoid too low a FPS rate.

Plus, automatic Terrain probes are pretty lame, because they are not setup depending on what reflective materials you have around, most often causing wrong reflections (such as reflecting an object which is behind the reflective material).

4 hours ago, Nagachief Darkstone said:

and place down some reflection probes

Yes, this will work. But this is currently highly user-unfriendly and results in a lot of frustration from unsuspecting users.

This could be improved, however, if only LL did take some suggestions into account, such as this suggestion of mine, for per-object automatic probes; it would work like this: got an issue with a legacy build shinies ?... ”Edit” the object and set the new ”Automatic probe” flag on the root primitive, and voilà !  No probe prim to setup/rez, and would work anywhere you rez the object (on ground or in sky boxes).

These should be accounted as ”Manual” probes for the renderer setting too, so that you can shut off the automatic (and lame) automatic ”Terrain” probes without loosing the benefit of this new per-object probe feature.

Edited Sunday at 09:55 AM by Henri Beauchamp

[Starberry Passion]

New users are already well equated and well adapted to PBR, so Idk if that is a con.

Most of the games that we play have PBR, for example, one of the biggest and best games have PBR: Elden Ring.

If Someone, who is new, plays any kind of game then they already know what PBR is.

FFXIV, Black Desert Online, FF 16, Overwatch 2, Warframe etc. and it's almost guaranteed that that a higher majority will be gamers, or playing some sort of game.

Basically Second Life is just now catching up to other things, such as VRChat, which also most likely have PBR.

[Starberry Passion]

On 6/25/2024 at 9:16 PM, Ocean Starchild said:

Nice! However in the video that I posted, my hair and glasses clearly disconnect from my head but only in the reflection. As well, I'd be curious is anyone knows how and why it happens

That's not a PBR problem, that's how the hair was made, some create the hair like floating caps, which they do by making a duplicate of the top of the scalp and moving it away from the head and separating it from said head.

[Rowan Amore]

On 6/25/2024 at 9:16 PM, Ocean Starchild said:

Nice! However in the video that I posted, my hair and glasses clearly disconnect from my head but only in the reflection. As well, I'd be curious is anyone knows how and why it happens

I'm may have something to do with mirror update rate.  I haven't played around with those settings yet.

Edited Sunday at 06:44 PM by Rowan Amore

[Ceka Cianci]

1 hour ago, Starberry Passion said:

That's not a PBR problem, that's how the hair was made, some create the hair like floating caps, which they do by making a duplicate of the top of the scalp and moving it away from the head and separating it from said head.

It is more than likely the rendering rate with the mirror with those items, since it's not happening outside of the mirror reflection.

The glasses are doing it as well and seem to be trailing behind the rest of what's in the mirror..

Something is slowing those two items down from keeping up with the avatar and everything else..

I'm gonna throw a bunch of stuff on and see if maybe  it's like allowance of memory or something where things start to trail behind in the reflection.. this is kind of interesting..

But I would say since it is only happening in the reflection in the mirror and not on the actual avatar outside the mirror, that it has something to do with PBR..

I want to make this  happen in my mirror now!! \o/  hehehe

 

[Blush Bravin]

I found a couple really helpful sources for making and playing with PBR texture creation this weekend. I'm having a blast learning and growing. Thought I'd share the sources with y'all.

First a really good tutorial on getting started:

She links really good sources for materials that are free as long as used appropriately. Also, she sources a tool to pack the materials into a GLTF file to import in SL. Also really helpful.

And lastly, I uploaded Materialize , a free program that lets you create PBR mats from your own textures and/or photos. I've really been enjoying playing around with all the sliders. It's a nice addition to my other favorite free tools, Gimp and Blender.

 

[Ceka Cianci]

On 6/25/2024 at 6:11 PM, Ocean Starchild said:

Really? My hair and glasses fall off of my avatars head in pbr reflective mirrors. 
https://gyazo.com/64471470d6633b98ddb4757ec37f53b3

What Hair and Glasses are those? I'd like to see if I can recreate what's going on..

I want to try and eliminate the possibilities of it being those items or maybe see if similar things with those items, cause this in the reflection..

Mainly just to have something on site to work with and try different things.. I can't get it to happen for me yet..

 

Edited Sunday at 07:54 PM by Ceka Cianci

[Bubblesort Triskaidekaphobia]

Every time I see PBR, I still have to remind myself that PBR doesn't mean Pabst Blue Ribbon.

[Ocean Starchild]

5 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

What Hair and Glasses are those? I'd like to see if I can recreate what's going on..

I want to try and eliminate the possibilities of it being those items or maybe see if similar things with those items, cause this in the reflection..

Mainly just to have something on site to work with and try different things.. I can't get it to happen for me yet..

 

I use Azren shaved hair from Raven Bell with the pixie hairbase from TVS Beauty - hairbase doesn't seem to have any issues.
While replying I tried some other hairs in my inventory. My hairs from Moon don't seem to have any issues, but Raven Bell, Action Incubator Jaxon, and Amber's Apples all replicate the problem. There's likely a lot more, but I wasn't feeling like testing hairs that I don't regularly use atm.

Glasses I've replicated the issue with Nerd Glasses By Milo and the B2L Cute Glasses

Graphics running between High - Ultra, mirror res 2048 with mirror updating with every frame. Out of curiosity I ran it again on low settings and get the same issue. https://gyazo.com/0398f54e51ed1e26c47a38a2fddc5681

 

"Mainly just to have something on site to work with and try different things.. I can't get it to happen for me yet.."

It seems to me that is only happens if you zoom into the mirror a certain amount depending on where your avatar is in relation to the pbr texture.

https://gyazo.com/33a1bbd213f3edb10a86233679c74792

 

edit to include sys info:

CPU: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700F (2112 MHz)
Memory: 16198 MB (Used: 1658 MB)
Concurrency: 20
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 11 64-bit (Build 22631.3737)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 12115 MB
Graphics Card Memory (Detected): 12115 MB
Graphics Card Memory (Budget): Unlimited

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 31.0.15.5132
OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 551.32

RestrainedLove API: RLV v3.4.3 / RLVa v2.4.2.74745
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.54.1 OpenSSL/1.1.1q zlib/1.2.11.zlib-ng nghttp2/1.40.0
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v8.4.1
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Studio 2.02.20
Dullahan: 1.14.0.202310131404
  CEF: 118.4.1+g3dd6078+chromium-118.0.5993.54
  Chromium: 118.0.5993.54
LibVLC Version: 3.0.16
Voice Server Version: Not Connected

Edited Monday at 01:17 AM by Ocean Starchild

[Rowan Amore]

Are the hairs that move rigged or unrigged?  Glasses are generally unrigged.  

Going to have to do some moving in the mirror tomorrow.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

7 hours ago, Starberry Passion said:

New users are already well equated and well adapted to PBR, so Idk if that is a con.

Most of the games that we play have PBR, for example, one of the biggest and best games have PBR: Elden Ring.

If Someone, who is new, plays any kind of game then they already know what PBR is.

FFXIV, Black Desert Online, FF 16, Overwatch 2, Warframe etc. and it's almost guaranteed that that a higher majority will be gamers, or playing some sort of game.

Basically Second Life is just now catching up to other things, such as VRChat, which also most likely have PBR.

Why would you think that computer game players would know PBR, just because they're on games that use it? People who are producing mods and stuff, yeah, sure. But the vast majority of gamers are not techies, and they have no idea how games work.

Which is why SL has such a problem: to at least some degree, residents have to become conversant with the technology -- mesh vs. prim, BoM vs. appliers, EEP, etc.

Most game players are just consumers in a fixed environment that they can only change within the parameters permitted by a restrictive interface. The freedom we have to create, and the fact that everything has been produced by us, is both the power and the problem here.

[Ocean Starchild]

7 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Are the hairs that move rigged or unrigged?  Glasses are generally unrigged.  

Going to have to do some moving in the mirror tomorrow.

Honestly, I couldn't tell you, so I'm willing to assume that the problem hairs are unrigged since they're experiencing the same fault as the glasses

[Love Zhaoying]

14 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Why would you think that computer game players would know PBR, just because they're on games that use it? People who are producing mods and stuff, yeah, sure. But the vast majority of gamers are not techies, and they have no idea how games work.

Which is why SL has such a problem: to at least some degree, residents have to become conversant with the technology -- mesh vs. prim, BoM vs. appliers, EEP, etc.

Most game players are just consumers in a fixed environment that they can only change within the parameters permitted by a restrictive interface. The freedom we have to create, and the fact that everything has been produced by us, is both the power and the problem here.

I have no idea what Starberry means, except perhaps "new users" will possibly be familiar with what PBR in other games looks like. Not sure what that has to do with anything.  But I agree with you 100%.

[Rowan Amore]

7 minutes ago, Ocean Starchild said:

Honestly, I couldn't tell you, so I'm willing to assume that the problem hairs are unrigged since they're experiencing the same fault as the glasses

That makes sense.  I know Raven Bell hair is mostly unrigged.  It can be moved, resized and such which would mean it's not "attached" like clothing rigged for your body.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

24 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Most game players are just consumers in a fixed environment that they can only change within the parameters permitted by a restrictive interface.

Yep. There are some techies in the space who could yap on for days and days about DLSS and raytracing and I've quite literally seen competitive esports gamers (who play tournaments for $$$) spend way too much time tweaking their PCs and games and pack up and move halfway across the country, usually to Texas or somewhere, to achieve 0 ping (large streamer/gamer homes used to be a thing. Not sure if they still are, though - I haven't watched esports in a bit), but the vast majority of gamers just game with what we're given. 

None of those games require us to know what PBR is (I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who even knew what that meant outside of SL and perhaps modding communities) or how to manually add probes or adjust lighting. At most, we hit up Settings to adjust our brightness, turn off motion blur (omg can we please get this set to OFF by default, devs???), tweak some quality and accessibility settings, and maybe adjust things like FOV and bloom. 

I'm still not thrilled I have to know what PBR stands for and I'm irritated that I now know what a reflection probe is. I'm not a fan of tinkering with my stuff at that level.

Edited Monday at 01:49 AM by Ayashe Ninetails
Added stuffs

[Ocean Starchild]

1 minute ago, Rowan Amore said:

That makes sense.  I know Raven Bell hair is mostly unrigged.  It can be moved, resized and such which would mean it's not "attached" like clothing rigged for your body.

Ah, then yes, it is unrigged hair. This being a problem specific to unrigged items just seems so strange to me. If an avatar is somehow wearing all unrigged clothing, I guess they'll all fall off in the mirror? lol

[Rowan Amore]

9 minutes ago, Ocean Starchild said:

Ah, then yes, it is unrigged hair. This being a problem specific to unrigged items just seems so strange to me. If an avatar is somehow wearing all unrigged clothing, I guess they'll all fall off in the mirror? lol

I think I still have some.older mesh clothing in the s, m, l sizes before it was rigged for.specific mesh bodies.  Might see how that goes!

[Starberry Passion]

2 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Why would you think that computer game players would know PBR, just because they're on games that use it? People who are producing mods and stuff, yeah, sure. But the vast majority of gamers are not techies, and they have no idea how games work.

Which is why SL has such a problem: to at least some degree, residents have to become conversant with the technology -- mesh vs. prim, BoM vs. appliers, EEP, etc.

Most game players are just consumers in a fixed environment that they can only change within the parameters permitted by a restrictive interface. The freedom we have to create, and the fact that everything has been produced by us, is both the power and the problem here.

I follow gaming news a lot, I am one of the computer gamers. I get the same information about the games I play that others do. We look it up, so do the people we watch. For example, Asmongold is popular, so is Penguinz 0, so is Markiplier, so is Jacksepticeye, CoreyXKenshin. They will tell you about what in videogames. Then you have some of those games where Devs do stream their game and when they do, it's usually a Q & A, so people ask them about the game.

The public often times comment about lighting and shading, this is of the biggest things people like. The Combat, the game being good, the lighting and shading. Graphics are 50/50. Some don't care if the graphics are that good, some want really great graphics. I see this all the time, you follow game devs on twitter, indie developers, Triple A gaming, they'll answer a few of your questions.

It is true, that a lot of gamers are not techies, but it is also true a lot of gamers, especially P.C. gamers, are techies. 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

20 minutes ago, Starberry Passion said:

it is also true a lot of gamers, especially P.C. gamers, are techies

This is undeniably true. Many of them are here on this forum.

But sorry, I just don't believe that more than 10% of gamers would know a normal map if they tripped over one, or have the foggiest idea of why deferred rendering is preferable to forward rendering.

In other words, they don't have the skills to do more than any other resident in SL, however "used" they may be to experience PBR in video games.

I use a computer all the time. Using it has not made me an expert on either the hardware or software that it employs.

[NaomiLocket]

4 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I have no idea what Starberry means, except perhaps "new users" will possibly be familiar with what PBR in other games looks like. Not sure what that has to do with anything.  But I agree with you 100%.

Sometimes it looks like any other game. In the case of VRChat there are mods that have supplied it and people have posted their basically toon shade flat skin in PBR light. Bad lighting can ruin a good model, but good lighting can't make a bad model good. An example would be here, in which they mention they even added a normal map. But you'd only really tell it was on the piano keys. Not to say that normal maps are explicitly used for bump relief, they are not. And not particularly knocking the persons efforts it's not exactly a bad model. Just pointing out a lot of excessive hype can be put on PBR without PBR providing substantial effect over other rendering. The strength of it is reflected in the strength of the materials just like any system.

When it comes to games like Warframe adding in PBR you'd have to scour the patch notes and find it took them quite some time to update things to PBR. And make a particular note about re-working PBR materials they had done to improve frame rates for slower PCs. Unlike some of the hostile attitudes to slower PC from certain demographics here. Additionally despite having PBR not everything was PBR in one hit. Much like SL having to adopt a legacy material support in the PBR renderer. It only makes sense to use the maps and sizes you need to use for the material's design. But when it comes to games updating their graphics Warframe was the most pronounced of upgrades and benefited from it immensely. Though their work extended far beyond PBR it was just one piece of the giant puzzle.

In the grand scheme of things. Young gamers that follow a select small band of large budget games will be used to PBR as a marketing buzzword and a lighting atmosphere. It does not mean all of them play at Ultra settings to enjoy it in its proper glory. Especially if they are competitive, unless they are forced to as a minimum for specific reflections. Of the selection of videos I have watched of some of the same youtubers Starberry mentions, I have often seen them showcase games that have no apparent use of PBR and no real talk about it. It remains in just a specific subset of the market and generally they will just tell you if something looks amazing or not. Rendering updates are just a one time phase to talk about. Map changes and game balances are a reoccurring theme.

ETA: But to make sure not to leave a wrong or heavy impression. It's just a lighting system. Implementations vary. Starwars enjoyed it first in 2008-ish. Warframe wasn't until 2014-2022. (That's right, it took them almost 10 years.)

Edited Monday at 06:35 AM by NaomiLocket

[CaerolleClaudel]

I have been following the PBR threads, and that combined with something else (an interesting viewer than has been constantly mentioned in the context of PBR) I finally got curious enough to actually install viewers and go back into SL. Here are my observations:

tl; dr: Using PBR made things look far better, with richer colors and more contrast, but slowed the frame rates various amounts based on the viewer used, and increased GPU usage and temps.

First, I read all this and wonder how the ***** new users who are NOT techies can deal with getting PBR optimized. OMG sooo many threads and so many pages in each! So my first thought was whether they actually *needed* to, of if the LL viewer 'just worked.'

I installed it, and wow, still my absolute least fave viewer. Of course no way to turn PBR off, but I also did not really see much in the way of graphic controls, including for Exposure, which a lot of people seem to regard as the magic wand for making the lighting not look horrid. That said, Local Environment gave somewhat acceptable results. So I guess the answer is, new users living in immediate bliss will not have to bother with any settings wrt to PBR, but also don't seem to really have any control over how it works. Also, seems that Daylight (PBR) is the only installed lighting that takes into account the differences with PBR? As others have mentioned earlier, too bad LL did not bother to set up some cool new Environments for PBR. Or perhaps I am missing something. I think I did see that you can buy some Environments on the MP, but my imagination of what I would see if I tried finding anything there just made me go, yeah, no.

Frame rate was pretty bad on the test sim I used, IIRC 15 fps, and lag was horrid. Did see a lot heavier load on my GPU than usual, but still only like 35%. I also saw some heating, but got no higher than the mid-60s. Fine.

I tried the new version of Firestorm, with PBR. Until I left SL several week ago, I was using the non-PBR one. I evaluated several viewers back at that time, and got about 90 fps in my skybox. I had uninstalled FS, so I installed the latest version, which is of course PBR. The environment I had been using looked horrid, so went to Midday (PRB) and that actually looked quite good! With Transparent Water and Ambient Occlusion ON, Mirrors Off, and Shadows set to Sun Moon and Projectors, FPS was 58; with Shadows None things looked a lot worse but FPS was 70. GPU usage and temps about the same as the LL Viewer. On the test sim, lag was bad and the frame rate was about 24 fps.

Finally, the Viewer Whose Name Shalt Not Be Spoken lol. Took some getting used to and missing some things I used a lot in FS, but has a lot of charms! Currently my fave, and I might even leave it installed. Can actually turn PBR on and off!!! So, I was able to directly compare the effects of PBR.

First, at my skybow with PBR off, the frame rate was a bit over 200. The settings are different from those in FS, so I don't know that my comparisons were right. However, with PBR on and with All Shadows enabled, with Transparent Water and Reflections enabled, and with Reflections set to Disabled (choices were Disabled, Static Only, Static and Dynamic, and Realtime), the frame rate dropped to 80 fps. I did not find a Mirrors setting. With No Shadows, the frame rate jumped to 115 fps, but things looked right crap.

I tried with and without PBR on the test sim. With PBR on I used the 'good' settings from above. Frame rate was 40 and the lag was not very bad. With PBR off, the frame rate was 124. However, PBR really turned the color and contrast up to 11! See photos. With PBR off, GPU usage was ~15%, with PBR on, GPU usage was ~35%.

So, PBR definitely caused performance issues in the browsers I used, causing unusable to acceptable performance. Visuals were clearly better. I wonder how other feel about the performance of the LL Viewer? IIRC a lot of people have said it was fine, but if I started with that as new user I think I would never stay. Firestorm did much better, but I wonder how many new users even know about TPVs? For sure things look better with PBR, but only with the right lighting. Would new users know about Environments or modifying lighting? I have been around 17 years and honestly am totally confused by SL lighting. I have always just found some Environment that looked good and moved on.

I am torn as to whether or not I would use PBR, given the choice. I think most of the time I would choose higher frame rate and lower lag over better visuals, esp at busy places where both would be at unacceptable levels for me. Sadly I think only one viewer gives people a choice, and perhaps everyone else would choose better visuals anyhow. Hopefully at some point LL will optimize things so that the performance hit is not so bad. OTOH, seems that a lot of people feel that the performance issues are all down to people not optimizing a lot of arcane and obscure settings in their viewers. Hopefully at least LL will optimized the baked-in settings in the LL Viewer.

Just my random, unedited thoughts lol. FWIW

 

[NaomiLocket]

@CaerolleClaudel Your experience is about what I would expect. Despite what early posters were hype training about using more of the GPU, all the modern games have a lot of fidelity in the graphics settings in most cases. With each detailed feature increasing expense and performance loss - and explicitly in many cases telling people to reduce settings or disable features.

The most hostile of them were just never going to admit that.

Lovely write up

[AmeliaJ08]

I get higher performance from the PBR viewers

[CaerolleClaudel]

16 minutes ago, NaomiLocket said:

@CaerolleClaudel Your experience is about what I would expect. Despite what early posters were hype training about using more of the GPU, all the modern games have a lot of fidelity in the graphics settings in most cases. With each detailed feature increasing expense and performance loss - and explicitly in many cases telling people to reduce settings or disable features.

The most hostile of them were just never going to admit that.

Lovely write up

Thx!

[CaerolleClaudel]

23 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

I get higher performance from the PBR viewers

It is entirely possible I am doing something wrong. Wrt the LL Viewer, though, there doesn't seem to be much that can actually be set? What I worry about the most is new users. Although many people scoff at this, I feel one of the biggest issues with getting new people to join SL and to stay there is the (IMO) extremely steep learning curve and the severe lack of ways to find simple, clear, and complete instructions.

Btw here are my system specs:

Processor    13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-13700F   2.10 GHz
Installed RAM    32.0 GB (31.7 GB usable)
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeoForce RTX 3060 12GB dedicated memory

Looking at the specs, wow, my processor seems really slow. 🤷🏻‍♀️

ETA: My internet download speed is consistently >900 Mbps down and ~28 up.

Edited Monday at 09:58 AM by CaerolleClaudel
add internet speeds