Is there a way to block PBR items ?

[Porky Gorky]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

automatically placed reflection probes scattered around every (ground level) scene.

Is there any way to see the auto placed probes? I want to see the area they encompass, how many there are and how they overlap.

Edit. Nevermind, the answer came a few posts after yours. 🙂

Edited July 10 by Porky Gorky

[Kristy Aurelia]

1 minute ago, Porky Gorky said:

Is there any way to see the auto placed probes? I want to see the area they encompass, how many there are and how they overlap.

Go back a few posts, I've made an edit with pictures. They don't show area, but anything outside a manual probe will be affected by one of the auto probes.

[Porky Gorky]

1 minute ago, Kristy Aurelia said:

Go back a few posts, I've made an edit with pictures. They don't show area, but anything outside a manual probe will be affected by one of the auto probes.

Yeah just spotted that, thanks!

[Qie Niangao]

12 minutes ago, Kristy Aurelia said:

There is an option to show reflection probes in render metadata section I think, I'm not logged in right now so can't tell the you exactly. It shows them as bunch of lines, where they all join there's an auto probe there. There is no way to actually interact with them.
The viewer generates the auto-probes, not the simulator, so maybe Henri's viewer does not? (If we're thinking of the same person)

Auto probes on terrain height level are placed in a grid, and higher up, in a kind of random arrangement near stuff.

Thanks! Yes, it's in Render Metadata and that "bunch of lines" is exactly what I was looking for. And I'm sure we're talking about the same Henri. I found where he replied to me about the skybox probes. It somehow never occurred to me that the auto-probes were viewer-generated but of course that makes sense.

[Kristy Aurelia]

3 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Thanks! Yes, it's in Render Metadata and that "bunch of lines" is exactly what I was looking for. And I'm sure we're talking about the same Henri. I found where he replied to me about the skybox probes. It somehow never occurred to me that the auto-probes were viewer-generated but of course that makes sense.

Oh and for completeness, my info about probes being viewer generated is from discussion from quite a while ago on Alchemy viewer discord, mentioned by one of the Alchemy devs.

[Henri Beauchamp]

58 minutes ago, Kristy Aurelia said:

Oh and for completeness, my info about probes being viewer generated is from discussion from quite a while ago on Alchemy viewer discord, mentioned by one of the Alchemy devs.

Well, maybe Alchemy implemented sky-box level auto probes, but I can assure you they do not exist in LL's viewer.

Example, on a platform at 1024m altitude, with a shiny (legacy specular ”High” setting), blank diffuse texture and white color cube; snapshots taken with LL's current release viewer, with both the ”fixed” (more like badly hacked: black ambient light, white blue horizon) midday PBR EE setting, and the legacy midday EE setting. See how shiny blue the box is (meaning no automatic reflection probe to shield it from the sky) and see also the absence of any yellow vector to indicate any reflection probe around the platform while the ”Render metadata” -> ”Reflection probes” feature is enabled.

Thus my feature request for per-root-object auto-probes...

Edited July 10 by Henri Beauchamp

[Kristy Aurelia]

5 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

Well, maybe Alchemy implemented sky-box level auto probes, but I can assure you they do not exist in LL's viewer.

Example, on a platform at 1024m altitude, with a shiny (legacy specular ”High” setting), blank diffuse texture and white color cube; snapshots taken with LL's current release viewer, with both the ”fixed” (more like badly hacked: black ambient light, white blue horizon) midday PBR EE setting, and the legacy midday EE setting. See how shiny blue the box is (meaning no automatic reflection probe to shield it from the sky) and see also the absence of any yellow vector to indicate any reflection probe around the platform while the ”Render metadata” -> ”Reflection probes” feature is enabled.

They do exist in LL viewer, Proof:

[Henri Beauchamp]

10 minutes ago, Kristy Aurelia said:

They do exist in LL viewer, Proof:

The only (nonetheless interesting) ”proof” your counter-example brings, is that there is a bug in LL's auto-probes generation (*)... 😛

Also, I would be curious to see what a white shiny cube looks like in your environment...

---

(*) That is, if your sky box does not have its own reflection probe, of course, but I assume you did make sure about that.

Edited July 10 by Henri Beauchamp

[Kristy Aurelia]

38 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

The only (nonetheless interesting) ”proof” your counter-example brings, is that there is a bug in LL's auto-probes generation (*)... 😛

Also, I would be curious to see what a white shiny cube looks like in your environment...

---

(*) That is, if your sky box does not have its own reflection probe, of course, but I assume you did make sure about that.

Its not my skybox, just a random one I found floating near my Linden Home. I don't have a skybox myself.

Pretty sure it doesn't have any manual probes, I didn't really snoop around, just took a quick screenshot to show that auto-probes exist.

I can't really go in there and rezz stuff either.

Auto probes do get placed, even if there are manual probes overlapping them or in the surrounding area.

[pizza7]

12 hours ago, WeFlossDaily said:

So what will the pro-PBR crowd say when 'automatically de-rendering PBR' becomes the most requested feature?

I'm so sick of being told to buy a new computer. PBR, no thanks. Auto-de-render, it yes please. =]

and i am getting sick of people with old old slow hardware, hindering progress.

there are always 2  or more sides to any issue.

[Pixie Kobichenko]

I have (as of January 2024) a brand new MacBook Pro.  I giddily upgraded two weeks ago for the mirrors & emojis cause “ooo colorful profile finally!”  I kept everything graphics wise at minimal except for shaders as I always have.  Tried to turn off the sky asi always have but it turned pink instead of black & wound up clipping a little fan to the side of my laptop and pointed it down on high & I was still feeling the laptop about to burn me.  I do have literal scars from a different laptop burning me about five years ago so I downgraded  my viewer yesterday.  Lost the pretty emojis & the prettier version of my avi.  But I’m no longer in fear of starting a house fire or destroying my brand new machine.  
 

I’ve been around since 2009 in SL.  Will be a sad day when I’m no longer given the choice to not use PBR and have to walk away from SL, but if what many posts are saying is true, then I feel like it would be a good idea to slow my spending in SL since “you can’t take it with you”.  

[Henri Beauchamp]

17 minutes ago, pizza7 said:

and i am getting sick of people with old old slow hardware, hindering progress.

Ah, yes... We shall ban from SL people who do not have enough money to buy a new PC...

Let's ban the poor ! 🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪

On my side, I'm getting sick of pedantic reactions such as yours...

[Reiisha Chau]

12 hours ago, WeFlossDaily said:

So what will the pro-PBR crowd say when 'automatically de-rendering PBR' becomes the most requested feature?

I'm so sick of being told to buy a new computer. PBR, no thanks. Auto-de-render, it yes please. =]

Pretty sure people were like this when meshes were introduced, and materials before that, and sculpties before that, and so on. Some people would have loved SL to forever remain as it was back in 2005, but that's obviously not going to help anyone in the long run.

PBR has been a standard in real time graphics of any kind for over a decade. Unless people are rocking hardware which was new when Quake was still a relevant franchise it should not have any issues displaying PBR. My budget (!) phone (!) from 5 years ago can do PBR in games just fine...

[Henri Beauchamp]

38 minutes ago, Kristy Aurelia said:

Pretty sure it doesn't have any manual probes, I didn't really snoop around, just took a quick screenshot to show that auto-probes exist.

I can't really go in there and rezz stuff either.

So I'm afraid your counter-example is invalid... If anything, go in a sandbox sim, rez a sky-box, and verify by yourself.

[Reiisha Chau]

4 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

Ah, yes... We shall ban from SL people who do not have enough money to buy a new PC...

Let's ban the poor ! 🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪

On my side, I'm getting sick of pedantic reactions such as yours...

Tech keeps moving on, especially tech like this. People will have to keep up if they want to, well, keep up. Otherwise, well, i don't see people complaining a lot that their Windows 3.11 PC's and hardware are not supported anymore.

Obviously you're going to agree that supporting Windows 3.11 is beyond insane, so that leaves the question, where would you propose the cutoff should be where supporting old and outdated soft- and hardware simply becomes infeasible to do?

Personally i think it's kind of ridiculous that 32bit support lasted as long as it did, given that the last 32bit only cpu was released in 2004 or something like that. I was checking older steam hardware surveys, and apparently even in 2020, less than 1% of users were on a 32 bit system, same with people who were on a dx8 or older gpu (which i think is the last one which doesnt really do pbr shading).

[Kristy Aurelia]

8 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

So I'm afraid your counter-example is invalid... If anything, go in a sandbox sim, rez a sky-box, and verify by yourself.

Fine... things we do to prove people wrong on the internet...

Firestorm, on Premium sandbox at 2000 height:

SL viewer, same location:

There's your High shine box, and a PBR metallic mirror sphere. Midday environment. As you can see auto probes are placed different, but they're there on both viewers. I'm guessing single line means 2 probes.

The black box is the skybox rezzer, and its weird particles.

Outdoor shot - there don't seem to be any probes outside:

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

Example, on a platform at 1024m altitude, with a shiny (legacy specular ”High” setting), blank diffuse texture and white color cube; snapshots taken with LL's current release viewer, with both the ”fixed” (more like badly hacked: black ambient light, white blue horizon) midday PBR EE setting, and the legacy midday EE setting. See how shiny blue the box is (meaning no automatic reflection probe to shield it from the sky) and see also the absence of any yellow vector to indicate any reflection probe around the platform while the ”Render metadata” -> ”Reflection probes” feature is enabled.

I never paid much attention to the automatic reflection probes until now, and I'm realizing I don't know what I should expect. What I did was go up to my little skybox over Bellisseria where there's no manual reflection probe, looked around for a while to make sure there were no automated reflection probes, and then tried to create a shiny white cube to see how blue it would be…

… except the moment I opened the build tool, before I'd rezzed anything, *poof* there's a yellow line going off in no particular direction, presumably indicate some kind of degraded auto reflection probe. I went ahead, made the shiny box and it was sky blue anyway, so yeah. That was in Alchemy, so I tried the same in the Linden viewer, then Firestorm, with exactly the same behavior, even including the same "no particular direction" for this yellow line.

So then I went down to ground level where there's the usual supply of auto-generated reflection probes and made my shiny box and it was sky blue because the probes were outside, then slid it into a part of the build where I'd put a manual reflection probe and it looked like a normal, not sky-reflecting shiny box. So a sky blue shiny box doesn't mean there are no auto-generated reflection probes in the scene. I guess I don't understand what that was meant to test.

Edited July 10 by Qie Niangao
"going off" not "going of"

[Arielle Popstar]

8 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

So I'm afraid your counter-example is invalid... If anything, go in a sandbox sim, rez a sky-box, and verify by yourself.

I just was checking Henri and found the reflection probes in my Opensim regions where I know for a fact none were placed. I see them at ground level and in a skybox 2500 meters up. Checked on FS beta 74746. How do I activate the Render beacon option in Cool?

[Henri Beauchamp]

15 minutes ago, Kristy Aurelia said:

SL viewer, same location:

Well, even if there is indeed apparently an automatic probe (confirming that it in my case, there should have been one too, but since there was none, then there is a bug in LL's code), your probe does nothing at all to shield your sphere from the sky as it should do !

So, yes, you get the same blueish cube too (less blue because there's likely some ambient white lighting in your sky box)...

Edited July 10 by Henri Beauchamp

[Porky Gorky]

28 minutes ago, Pixie Kobichenko said:

I was still feeling the laptop about to burn me.  I do have literal scars from a different laptop burning me about five years ago

You can buy pretty decent laptop cooling pads from about £20. I got one for my wife who games on her laptop and it worked wonders for her cooling.

[Henri Beauchamp]

8 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

How do I activate the Render beacon option in Cool?

Advanced -> Rendering -> Info display -> Reflection probes

But I did not modify this part of LL's code, so it should behave exactly the same, and the non-working example I posted was taken with LL's viewer (I could also reproduce the same issue consistently ever since LL released their first project PBR viewer).

Edited July 10 by Henri Beauchamp

[Kristy Aurelia]

7 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

Well, even if there is indeed apparently an automatic probe (confirming that it in my case, there should have been one too, but since there was none, then there is a bug in LL's code), your probe does nothing at all to shield your sphere from the sky as it should do !

So, yes, you get the same blueish cube too (less blue because there's likely some ambient white lighting in your sky box)...

The blue sky is showing because the auto-probes have very high near clip value, while manual probes default to 0. If you had a skybox large enough to enclose the whole probe and its near-clip extents, the sky should disappear.

I have been some sims where they have large multi-story buildings, so auto probes do reflect different rooms and skip quite a few walls and ceilings, but they don't manage to spill outdoors. Unless you're in one of the rooms close to the edge.

I really don't know why LL went with such a high near-clip value, I wish we could adjust it, that way it would produce a lot better results. But I'm guessing if the auto probe ever ends up inside a wall, or very close to one, then you'd get different kind of bad results

[Henri Beauchamp]

23 minutes ago, Reiisha Chau said:

Obviously you're going to agree that supporting Windows 3.11 is beyond insane

Supporting a 5 years old PC is not insane. It is normal, but for the rich who can buy a new PC every year...

[Qie Niangao]

31 minutes ago, Pixie Kobichenko said:

I have (as of January 2024) a brand new MacBook Pro.  I giddily upgraded two weeks ago for the mirrors & emojis cause “ooo colorful profile finally!”  I kept everything graphics wise at minimal except for shaders as I always have.  Tried to turn off the sky asi always have but it turned pink instead of black […]

1 minute ago, Porky Gorky said:

You can buy pretty decent laptop cooling pads from about £20. I got one for my wife who games on her laptop and it worked wonders for her cooling.

I've never used SL (let alone Firestorm) on a Mac so I don't know anything, but doesn't it seem weird that a 2024 MacBook Pro should need to work this hard?

I also never turned off the sky and I'm not even sure what that means but could it somehow make rendering so much more difficult?

Wish I had something helpful to suggest but this seems way different from the usual complaints of performance on low-end computers, unless a 2024 MacBook Pro isn't the machine I think it is. Hoping somebody knows what's happening here.

[Henri Beauchamp]

8 minutes ago, Kristy Aurelia said:

The blue sky is showing because the auto-probes have very high near clip value, while manual probes default to 0. If you had a skybox large enough to enclose the whole probe and its near-clip extents, the sky should disappear.

Hmm... Interesting !

I will definitely have to have a closer look at this arbitrary ”automatic probe” code, and get it to work better, at least in my viewer...

A ”good automatic probe” should be able to detect the bounding box of the smallest enclosing object, and build the probe around it... But that's basically the feature I requested (excepted that the latter would be activated on demand, via a flag on the root object).

Edited July 10 by Henri Beauchamp