Pros/Cons PBR Viewer whats your take

[elleevelyn]

3 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

simple, clear, and complete instructions.

when we don't really know what we doing then this is achieved in the Linden Viewer by sticking to the Recommended Settings until we do know

menu World \ Improve graphics speed \ Reset to recommended settings

sure when we do know then we can tweak the settings to get some tiny improvements for our particular computer setup, but people who don't know anything then Recommended Settings is for the best

[AmeliaJ08]

11 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

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.

Yes, I would be curious to see what kind of settings the viewer is auto selecting based on GPU detected... it better be doing something but it is quite possibly setting things too high by default.

That said I think LL, Firestorm and everyone needs to make one thing very clear: SL is not suitable for integrated GPUs, it just won't run well enough on any of them. They could maybe give some direction to a viewer that may be more suitable where ALM, PBR etc can still be disabled though.

I do agree SL has a terrible learning curve, I can't really blame PBR for that though but it is something extra on top. The bulk of users have no interaction with building anything so likely don't care so long as it just works and it does just work given sufficient hardware, LL's own minimum requirements page is extremely misleading though...

Also Firestorm just reports your CPU's nominal frequency, don't stress it. It's likely boosting much higher (and lower, occasionally).

 

[CaerolleClaudel]

1 minute ago, elleevelyn said:

when we don't really know what we doing then this is achieved in the Linden Viewer by sticking to the Recommended Settings until we do know

menu World \ Improve graphics speed \ Reset to recommended settings

sure when we do know then we can tweak the settings to get some tiny improvements for our particular computer setup, but people who don't know anything then Recommended Settings is for the best

I agree wrt the LL Viewer, that is the place to start. My concern is whether the performance of that is good enough. Perhaps my experience was unusual or I did something wrong, but it was awful. Or maybe my expectations are too high.

My comment about finding info was more general, though. Sorry for the confusion. To me, dealing with PBR is just one part of the problem, though one that new users are going to face as soon as they log in. I was referring to learning SL in general. Sure, just like the viewer, people can start with the free avatars, but they may quickly want something better. How can they find out how to build the kind of avatars most people use these days? Or, at least the people I know. I wish there was some better intro to SL, with some link or something provided to new users. I have tried the Knowledge Base pages, and not so useful. I mostly have learned from internet searches and finding people who could either walk me through how to do things or at least give me some links to places that explain at least part of what I need. All the resources for learning seem to me to be very fragmented.

I realize this is OT, but PBR is one of the things I wonder about wrt to the learning curve.

[CaerolleClaudel]

5 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Yes, I would be curious to see what kind of settings the viewer is auto selecting based on GPU detected... it better be doing something but it is quite possibly setting things too high by default.

That said I think LL, Firestorm and everyone needs to make one thing very clear: SL is not suitable for integrated GPUs, it just won't run well enough on any of them. They could maybe give some direction to a viewer that may be more suitable where ALM, PBR etc can still be disabled though.

I do agree SL has a terrible learning curve, I can't really blame PBR for that though but it is something extra on top. The bulk of users have no interaction with building anything so likely don't care so long as it just works and it does just work given sufficient hardware, LL's own minimum requirements page is extremely misleading though...

Also Firestorm just reports your CPU's nominal frequency, don't stress it. It's likely boosting much higher (and lower, occasionally).

 

Those settings did not come from FS, I got them from my computer.

I need to download the LL Viewer again (I played with it a bit and deemed it horrid and deleted it lol). IIRC it does have the typical graphics quality settings. I always use the setting between High and Ultra-High, and didn't think of setting that lower, but that is a great point. I think most of the viewers, I assume the LL one also, have a button you can click for the Recommended setting. Setting that lower defs would give higher performance, and perhaps using the recommended setting gets the frame rate and lag to an acceptable place. Now I do recall people discussing that, having to balance quality with performance. I guess my perspective is how does any change to SL affect my ability to get the quality of experience I want. That may be the wrong way to look at it; I should re-install the LL Viewer and play with that.

The info on whether a viewer can disable ALM and PBR is not currently on the TPV page, I think. The descriptions are pretty high level. Perhaps viewers that offer a choice could make that clear? Of course, people would have to know TPVs exist, and where to find them though...

I think I did not choose what I said very well; I do not see PBR as the only obstacle, or even necessarily the biggest one, it is just the latest example of yet something else that has to be taken into account and perhaps learned how to optimize for. As I said before, hopefully the LL Viewer is set to give good results for new users, at least those who do not go in and set the graphics quality really high like I did lol.

I have never even looked at the minimum specs for SL. Based on my experience with other software, including OSes, I feel they are generally so low as to be meaningless. I wonder if *anyone* looks at those? Sort of like TOS when you are installing something lol. I almost wonder if what is needed is to have the viewer scan your system when you launch it and warn you if your specs might lead to poor performance? Perhaps that could be like the Welcome page of apps, when you open the app the first time you can turn that off so it does not load every time.

[elleevelyn]

30 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

balance quality with performance.

i had a 105OTi on my 10yr old computer.  It went ok-ish 16-40 FPS overall range. I was pretty happy to get that as before that I had a 230, a whole about 4-12 FPS which I was ok with also because thats all there was

with my 1050Ti computer it wouldn't let me upgrade from Windows 10 to 11. Which is not good for me for non-SL reasons. So I saved up and recently got a whole new computer with a 4070Ti.  Sure I can set up my environment to get over 300 FPS up in the sky with nothing but me.  I can also go to a spot in Bellisseria and tank it to about 14 FPS just by standing there. But neither of these are normal usage.  With recommended settings at the normal places I go then 40-60 FPS  pretty much all the time with the odd spikes up and down

what I did learn tho was not to mess with my NVidia Control Panel settings. I went in there and set Power management mode to Prefer maximum performance. And   Using my preference emphasizng: Performance. Because why not! Big mistake. After about 4 hours of SL my whole computer got super hot - temperature was nearly 90C. So I changed Power management back to Normal. And Preference back to Quality and now the temperature is about 78C

what I do know also is that with this viewer, my 4070Ti is at 100% capacity all the time. Is running a lot cooler tho under the red line

my take on on this is that all our computers (no matter old or new) now have to work a lot harder in SL. Which means dialing it all down is better if we don't want to cook our computer

 

[Starberry Passion]

1 hour ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

I get higher performance from the PBR viewers

I do too, I have a better time in PBR viewers.

[Sid Nagy]

On 6/25/2024 at 11:30 PM, Paul Hexem said:

Oh look. Another PBR thread.

But we still don't have a SL teen thread about PBR, so there is still room for these subjects.

[Love Zhaoying]

20 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

But we still don't have a SL teen thread about PBR, so there is still room for these subjects.

But we have a Spicy thread about a potential new continent that may segregate teens, can you help make it about PBR?

*Idea*: Maybe we can suggest a spicy non-PBR continent that excludes teens?

Edited July 1 by Love Zhaoying

[stlshayne]

31 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

But we still don't have a SL teen thread about PBR, so there is still room for these subjects.

Just wait.

"Will the new PBR lighting make me look underage?"

Edited July 1 by stlshayne

[Henri Beauchamp]

4 hours ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

Finally, the Viewer Whose Name Shalt Not Be Spoken lol.

LOL !

You can name it, but just avoid bombarding a forum thread with repeated, identical posts in the vein of ”Do use this viewer”, like it did happen, and lead me to ask to tone it down... 😜

I am very glad people are enthusiastic, but let's avoid turning enthusiasm into fanaticism.

Edited July 1 by Henri Beauchamp

[Flea Yatsenko]

Just now, AmeliaJ08 said:

Yes, I would be curious to see what kind of settings the viewer is auto selecting based on GPU detected... it better be doing something but it is quite possibly setting things too high by default.

That said I think LL, Firestorm and everyone needs to make one thing very clear: SL is not suitable for integrated GPUs, it just won't run well enough on any of them. They could maybe give some direction to a viewer that may be more suitable where ALM, PBR etc can still be disabled though.

I do agree SL has a terrible learning curve, I can't really blame PBR for that though but it is something extra on top. The bulk of users have no interaction with building anything so likely don't care so long as it just works and it does just work given sufficient hardware, LL's own minimum requirements page is extremely misleading though...

Also Firestorm just reports your CPU's nominal frequency, don't stress it. It's likely boosting much higher (and lower, occasionally).

 

Default settings can be way too high. I, for laughs, tried to run PBR on a horribly outdated AMD netbook from 2013. Default wasn't even getting 1fps. After turning everything down, I managed to almost break 10fps on a build platform. Considering the specs that's pretty good even if it's unusable.

[Zrina Nebula]

On 6/26/2024 at 12:41 AM, Jase Devin said:

Yeah I'm a novice just throwing out numbers...

You know what I've done since FS7 came out. Helped friends fix their nightmares and I watch the poor Firestorm Support group and help too.

I go to clubs too and regular friends, I was being conservative with my numbers.

My friends that I see everyday for a year or more 4 out of 5 , it totally wasted their experience.

Were getting 30-40 fps now in the single digits, every last one of them.

Only the high end users are surviving, but even then they were at 60-100 fps in the club, now at 30 and crashing a lot and their tower is a raging heat pump now.

See, I don’t have a high end machine. A good one, but not on the top.

My performance with the PBR LL viewer is way better than with the  non-PBR Firestorm AND the PBR Firestorm.

Only because that happens to me I can’t say “almost everyone I know is xyz “.

And it’s up to the Lindens what they do or not. If we don’t like it, like every other software, we can stop using it.

If it’s really that many who aren’t able to use SL the Lindens will notice.

Edited July 1 by Sabrina Nebula
I love typos

[Zrina Nebula]

On 6/25/2024 at 11:30 PM, Paul Hexem said:

Oh look. Another PBR thread.

Yay! 

[Zrina Nebula]

2 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

But we still don't have a SL teen thread about PBR, so there is still room for these subjects.

Please, for the love of God, don’t start one. I eat way too much popcorn since joining this Forum 😭🙏

[JeromFranzic]

3 minutes ago, Sabrina Nebula said:

See, I don’t have a high end machine. A good one, but not on the top.

My performance with the PBR LL viewer is way better than with the  non-PBR Firestorm AND the PBR Firestorm.

Only because that happens to me I can’t say “almost everyone I know is xyz “.

And it’s up to the Lindens what they do or not. If we don’t like it, like every other software, we can stop using it.

If it’s really that many who aren’t able to use SL the Lindens will notice.

Basically, it's really going to vary depending on the PC. Certainly anything that's 10 years or older as of now shouldn't even touch PBR. Anything that's 5-7 years or newer can tackle PBR to varying degrees. I would say the hardware comes first, followed by the software GPU drivers and then the operating system overhead.

The last detail for me is why I generally prefer to run on Linux vs Win11. I find it easier to lighten the load in Linux.

With my 6yo PC, I can get decent frame rates with PBR, usually in the 40 fps range max, so i cap my frame rate there under PBR. I definitely would fare better with more VRAM (4GB is barely cutting it) but keeping some options like SSR off, using texture compression, and not going crazy with the draw distance helps a bit.

Not to be a fangirl... but I seem to get the best uptime overall in *surprise* Cool VL Viewer. 😎🤓

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, JeromFranzic said:

Not to be a fangirl...

My eyes scan faster than my brain this morning, and I initially read this as, "Not to be a ferengi.."

 

[Arielle Popstar]

45 minutes ago, Sabrina Nebula said:

My performance with the PBR LL viewer is way better than with the  non-PBR Firestorm AND the PBR Firestorm.

I was noticing the same this morning with the newest LL PBR viewer to the degree I wondered if the FPS meter in the LL viewer was lying. It clocks 20-30% FPS higher then the FS viewers. I find that suspect. I did note the newest version of the LL viewer had downgraded the default setting from the previous install. Putting it back to where it was still put the FPS higher then either version of FS. 

I find that suspicious.

[Zrina Nebula]

1 hour ago, JeromFranzic said:

ot to be a fangirl... but I seem to get the best uptime overall in *surprise* Cool VL Viewer.

I don't know this Viewer yet, time to check 👀

[Zrina Nebula]

54 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

My eyes scan faster than my brain this morning, and I initially read this as, "Not to be a ferengi.."

 

You have nice ears sir 😉

[Annie Nova]

On 6/26/2024 at 9:04 PM, DevlinMcDermott said:

I would suggest you ditch it and switch to Genesis for the time being. It's pre-PBR. But ultra-fast and absolutely no wait time for anything to render.  It literally beats any viewer out there, including Firestorm and Second Life.  I tried it the other day, and I was stunned.  As I said, I wish this had been around years ago!  So give it a try. 

I tried the Genesis viewer, liked it a lot but cannot for the life of me figure how to raise myself out of the ground/floor. I don't want to go around with my feet stuck there like some noob. Is there something I'm missing? Please help! LOL. Cause I'm really not impressed with the new FS release.

[Henri Beauchamp]

3 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

My eyes scan faster than my brain this morning, and I initially read this as, ”Not to be a ferengi..”

That's because your mind got warped (factor 9) !

Edited July 1 by Henri Beauchamp

[Codex Alpha]

Gees, I can follow all the tech-babble in this topic and even to me it's boring as f.

No average user cares about this, an advanced gamer won't know or care about this, and most don't want to learn about this - because it's boring.

They want to socialize, dress up as a wizard and throw fireballs at rainbow unicorns, and have it all work seamlessly, with good FPS and no lag or stutter - from any cause

If LL does this, it's going to have to work, and work seamlessly, without any tweaks, without lengthy tutorials 'to get it working'.

Linden Labs, noone cares and they are not going to change their entire lives, workflows, computer setups to come to, or stay in Second Life. It's YOUR job to make sure that whatever tech decisions you make work on a variety of computers, both old and new - or suffer the consequences.. (not like you care about those either)

If the platform lags, loads textures slowly, rubber-bands and whatever else - they're just going to leave, and they wont care what caused it. Good luck!

Gameplay/Experience > Graphics.

[CaerolleClaudel]

6 hours ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

LOL !

You can name it, but just avoid bombarding a forum thread with repeated, identical posts in the vein of ”Do use this viewer”, like it did happen, and lead me to ask to tone it down... 😜

I am very glad people are enthusiastic, but let's avoid turning enthusiasm into fanaticism.

The name is...

(drum roll)...

Cool VL Viewer!!! (http://sldev.free.fr/)

Here is the link to the TPV page, for anyone who is interested (I am guessing everyone on the Forum might already know about this?):

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Third_Party_Viewer_Directory

I opened the pages for some individual TPVs, and some do list a lot of the features and for Cool Viewer, even emphasizes the stuff about PBR and ALM. So, I would recommend going to all the dedicated TPV pages (not sites) to get a fuller understanding of the capabilities and features. I had sort of forgotten this, but then I don't usually read all those details anyhow lol. 😳

[Fauve Aeon]

1 hour ago, Codex Alpha said:

Gees, I can follow all the tech-babble in this topic and even to me it's boring as f.

No average user cares about this, an advanced gamer won't know or care about this, and most don't want to learn about this - because it's boring.

They want to socialize, dress up as a wizard and throw fireballs at rainbow unicorns, and have it all work seamlessly, with good FPS and no lag or stutter - from any cause

If LL does this, it's going to have to work, and work seamlessly, without any tweaks, without lengthy tutorials 'to get it working'.

Linden Labs, noone cares and they are not going to change their entire lives, workflows, computer setups to come to, or stay in Second Life. It's YOUR job to make sure that whatever tech decisions you make work on a variety of computers, both old and new - or suffer the consequences.. (not like you care about those either)

If the platform lags, loads textures slowly, rubber-bands and whatever else - they're just going to leave, and they wont care what caused it. Good luck!

Gameplay/Experience > Graphics.

Well…I did a clean install of the official viewer on my laptop and let it run without tweaking any of the settings as I toodled about and shopped, and I didn’t have any issues except when I tried to run over a corner sim crossing? I think it’s reasonable for someone new who is on an average laptop to learn to turn down a couple of settings and to tweak a couple more - just to compensate for busy areas. And in my experience that’s all I had to do. 

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Codex Alpha said:

Gees, I can follow all the tech-babble in this topic and even to me it's boring as f.

"I don't like this topic because it's boring, but I'm going to post in it anyway."

A classic!