Maybe a Joke === Maybe Not PBR

[Chic Aeon]

I am wondering if we need a place where folks whose computers can't handle PBR can find "Non-PBR" shops and not have to worry about shopping lag or lag in their homes etc. 

I am honestly not against PBR, I just don't swoon over it and avoided it successfully in SANSAR.  

But honestly if there are creators that never plan or doing PBR (or making a new brand for that stuff away from their older items) that want to get together I am happy to host.  But be sure to be willing to let me know in case you move into the PBR camp.

 

I am not sure if this is a great idea or just a whim but I can see there may be a need for that.   

Write here or contact me inworld. IMs go to email. Notecards are accepted automatically. I am kind of taking a vacation away from inworld as a test -- so far my sales are stable or better than when I am there (well DAMN).  LOL.

 

Note this is NOT an anti-PBR movement -- just something I think can be useful for people without stellar computers.  

Edited July 15 by Chic Aeon
spelling

[Chic Aeon]

Well thanks for the hearts but there were no hands up busily waving.  :D.   Maybe in the future.  LOL

[BriannaLovey]

On 7/14/2024 at 7:13 PM, Chic Aeon said:

I am wondering if we need a place where folks whose computers can't handle PBR can find "Non-PBR" shops and not have to worry about shopping lag or lag in their homes etc. 

I am honestly not against PBR, I just don't swoon over it and avoided it successfully in SANSAR.  

But honestly if there are creators that never plan or doing PBR (or making a new brand for that stuff away from their older items) that want to get together I am happy to host.  But be sure to be willing to let me know in case you move into the PBR camp.

 

I am not sure if this is a great idea or just a whim but I can see there may be a need for that.   

Write here or contact me inworld. IMs go to email. Notecards are accepted automatically. I am kind of taking a vacation away from inworld as a test -- so far my sales are stable or better than when I am there (well DAMN).  LOL.

 

Note this is NOT an anti-PBR movement -- just something I think can be useful for people without stellar computers.  

May be better to contact creators personally via notecard or IM. Many of them have busy lives, and probably don't spend a lot of time on this forum.

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, BriannaLovey said:

May be better to contact creators personally via notecard or IM. Many of them have busy lives, and probably don't spend a lot of time on this forum.

Thanks but not going to do that. I get too many folks contacting me for events and things. Just and idea. Many go unused

 

[Love Zhaoying]

On 7/14/2024 at 7:13 PM, Chic Aeon said:

 

I am wondering if we need a place where folks whose computers can't handle PBR can find "Non-PBR" shops and not have to worry about shopping lag or lag in their homes etc. 

 

Yes! Prim shops too!

[rasterscan]

On 7/15/2024 at 3:13 AM, Chic Aeon said:

I am wondering if we need a place where folks whose computers can't handle PBR can find "Non-PBR" shops and not have to worry about shopping lag or lag in their homes etc. 

 

Maybe a Non PBR sanctuary region ? Chuckles. Maybe a non pbr locations thread ? I've done my best to make the most of the new PBR firestorm viewer. It can make locations look stunning and fabulous. But many places are now a mixture of pbr and non pbr textures though, and that can look a bit odd in the new pbr viewer. I would summarise pbr so far as 'Welcome to our wet, shiny new world'

My own golden rule tips for those entering the pbr world with firestorm. On first login goto World>Enviroment and select 'midday'. The graphics seem to set up great. Then one can play with eep's etc. Next, before enabling reflections for mirrors click the monitor icon and save the current setup as 'non mirror'. Then after enabling mirror reflections save the setup as 'Mirror'. One can now toggle between mirrors working but dreadful water glitch or mirrors not working and nice water for sailing again.

 

 

 

Edited July 16 by rasterscan

[Innula Zenovka]

6 hours ago, rasterscan said:

Maybe a Non PBR sanctuary region ? Chuckles. Maybe a non pbr locations thread ? I've done my best to make the most of the new PBR firestorm viewer. It can make locations look stunning and fabulous. But many places are now a mixture of pbr and non pbr textures though, and that can look a bit odd in the new pbr viewer. I would summarise pbr so far as 'Welcome to our wet, shiny new world'

My own golden rule tips for those entering the pbr world with firestorm. On first login goto World>Enviroment and select 'midday'. The graphics seem to set up great. Then one can play with eep's etc. Next, before enabling reflections for mirrors click the monitor icon and save the current setup as 'non mirror'. Then after enabling mirror reflections save the setup as 'Mirror'. One can now toggle between mirrors working but dreadful water glitch or mirrors not working and nice water for sailing again.

 

 

 

To that I would add, enable vSync to make your machine run a lot cooler (it's enabled by default in the Official Viewer, but not Firestorm for some reason).

[steeljane42]

12 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

To that I would add, enable vSync to make your machine run a lot cooler (it's enabled by default in the Official Viewer, but not Firestorm for some reason).

Because it's an awful way to limit the the framerate, and even affects whole rezzing speed. Henri of Cool VL viewer had a very nice few posts why it's so awful in/for SL.

There's a built-in frames limiter in Firestorm, and another way to do it is through the driver, and yet another one is via something like RTSS.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

I'm kinda confused here. Frame rate is not affected by objects that use oldfashioned Blinn-Phong materials, as opposed to new PBR materials, right? So PBR-free sims won't be any snappier than sims with PBR-textured objects in them.

[Frionil Fang]

37 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

I'm kinda confused here. Frame rate is not affected by objects that use oldfashioned Blinn-Phong materials, as opposed to new PBR materials, right? So PBR-free sims won't be any snappier than sims with PBR-textured objects in them.

To me it seems the opposite: identical objects textured with BP materials render just a tiny bit slower than PBR materials. Synthetic test:

3 sets of metal-roughness test spheres for a total of 363 prims with 363 different materials on screen. Uncapped framerate 295-300, mostly 300. Same spheres with the PBR material removed, same settings, same camera angle, specular texture blank with 255/64 specularity (so only 3 different materials as it were): framerate 285-292, mostly 287. Yeah, the difference is less than 10% and a very contrived situation, but the results are very consistently like that. It does seem the BP shader is a little slower on the PBR engine than the PBR shader.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

6 minutes ago, Frionil Fang said:

BP materials render just a tiny bit slower than PBR materials

So I guess what @Chic Aeon is getting at, maybe, is to have non-PBR sanctuaries for people with older, non-PBR-capable viewers.

In time, that will exclude Firestorm, and non-PBR residents will have to resort to a limited list of sanctuary viewers to visit these PBR-free regions.

I guess, in light of this thread, making such a list would be constructive.

In other words, which (potentially future-proof) non-PBR viewers are available for non-PBR folk?

[gwynchisholm]

If your computer can’t handle pbr it’s time to upgrade from the finest hardware of 2006. 
I play this game on a metaphorical toaster and pbr materials impacted almost nothing.

[Arielle Popstar]

On 7/14/2024 at 10:13 PM, Chic Aeon said:

I am wondering if we need a place where folks whose computers can't handle PBR can find "Non-PBR" shops and not have to worry about shopping lag or lag in their homes etc. 

I am honestly not against PBR, I just don't swoon over it and avoided it successfully in SANSAR.  

But honestly if there are creators that never plan or doing PBR (or making a new brand for that stuff away from their older items) that want to get together I am happy to host.  But be sure to be willing to let me know in case you move into the PBR camp.  

I was thinking you meant hosting a Grid (opensim) with no PBR and using the older FS release. Is that not what you meant? That seems the easiest way to do it.

[Chic Aeon]

52 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

I was thinking you meant hosting a Grid (opensim) with no PBR and using the older FS release. Is that not what you meant? That seems the easiest way to do it.

No, NOT an OS thread LOL.  And I talked to the head of Kitely and OS will be (already has some) PBR and will use the PBR viewer. There was more to that conversation but I will keep that private.   Apparently the new code is IN the current server code but has to be implemented by the grid owner and some tweaking done -- so I am not saying that ALL of OS will be PBR.  Just to clarify.

 

I have more than 600 land impact on my new rental lot.  I can't imagine using more than half of that.  So I was thinking I could put up logos and maybe of photo of the products offered and landmarks.  Up in the sky of course.  It could get fancier if there was use. This is NOT me trying to make money (I am pretty much on the OMG there are WAY too many events camp)>  

I DO SO realize that the whole grid is divided on t PBR newness -- well at least the ones that have sampled it.  I try not to be ELITEST and my brand has always made low land impact with "smart" texturing -- so that is my focus.  I am not at all worried about ME -=== but there are plenty of folks that would like to keep using Second Life in a simpler manner that their existing (and it doesn't have to be that old) computer can handle.   

But if creators aren't interested that is fine.  I did try and I did offer :D. I will put my band-wagon back in the barn LOL

[Chic Aeon]

3 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

So I guess what @Chic Aeon is getting at, maybe, is to have non-PBR sanctuaries for people with older, non-PBR-capable viewers.

In time, that will exclude Firestorm, and non-PBR residents will have to resort to a limited list of sanctuary viewers to visit these PBR-free regions.

I guess, in light of this thread, making such a list would be constructive.

In other words, which (potentially future-proof) non-PBR viewers are available for non-PBR folk?

Actually I thought of that long ago and I suspect that just might happen but that was NOT the point of the thread.  There are some folks that would be perfectly happy visiting with friends at home or a small club without PBR products. There are plenty of folks that still live in the prim and 512 tiling texture world here.   But if people want to buy things in our Brave New World they might want to shop. And going to shopping events will most likely NOT work for them.  They will either buy on the Marketplace older items that are NOT PBR or they will need to go to the stores that are NOT PBR.   

My aim was to make an area where people with older of weaker viewers could find shops they could safely teleport into.   And yes, mine will be one of them.  

There are a lot of creators out there that are worried. I can honestly say that I a not.  My best selling items are OLD and PRIM (and yes OMG but true) and I have been selling more these last couple of months than usual.  It will never get back to the gacha days for me, but I am no longer creating for income so I really don't care. I do think it is interesting though and look forward to see how it pans out.  

 

PLEASE LETS NOT MAKE THIS ONE OF THE WAY TOO MANY PRO AND CON PBR THREADS --- OR I WILL ASK THE MODERATOR TO CLOSE IT.     KEEPING ON TOPIC IS GOOD.  PLENTY OF OTHE R  THREADS TO BOO OR CHEER ON.  TY

Edited July 16 by Chic Aeon
spelling

[BriannaLovey]

2 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

 

PLEASE LETS NOT MAKE THIS ONE OF THE WAY TOO MANY PRO AND CON PBR THREADS --- OR I WILL ASK THE MODERATOR TO CLOSE IT.     KEEPING ON TOPIC IS GOOD.  PLENTY OF OTHE R  THREADS TO BOO OR CHEER ON.  TY

At some point I am going to develop LSL-based tools that will allow people to determine whether or not a creator is using self-made PBR objects, and to separate creators into 3 separate lists:

1) Those who create PBR-only items.

2) Those who create items with PBR materials, but with fallback textures and normal + spec maps

3) Those who still create with only regular textures and normal + spec maps.

Assuming that doing so is within the limitations of LSL; I am a little rusty as far as that goes hehe

Edited July 16 by BriannaLovey

[Chic Aeon]

2 minutes ago, BriannaLovey said:

At some point I am going to develop LSL-based tools that will allow people to determine whether or not a store owner is using self-made PBR objects, and to separate creators into 3 separate lists:

1) Those who create PBR-only items.

2) Those who create items with PBR materials, but with fallback textures and normal + spec maps

3) Those who still create with only regular textures and normal + spec maps.

Assuming that doing so is within the limitations of LSL; I am a little rusty as far as that goes hehe

The problem with possibly both our ideas is (although yours might solve the issue) is folks may change their methods along the way.  I doubt I will make PBR items because for me (unless I just dragged PBR textures to some raw mesh I made) it would entail additional software and learning and I mostly just make thigs (well I guess always these days) for ME.   But if your script could check the parcel to declare it PBR free and then talk back to the database that seems doable (SO NOT A SCRIPT PERSON - painful when I go there).   

 

In theory maybe that could also be used in a kiosk that people who ONLY used legacy in the parcels could ping back and declare yes, they are PBR free (not just products) and people that needed that would know it was "safe" for them.  People who wanted to be part of the group could rez a kiosk that would report back and update the database and the kiosk could give an webpage URL to the database.  So once done it would be (maybe) work free. That would be great but of course I may be misinterpreting or expanding on your idea. 

Your idea would be better than mine I think and definitely less work once completed.  The Art Galleries of SL (which doesn't check anything but keeps fingers crossed that the info is correct) has been running for almost as long as SL has been here.   

 

Anyway thanks for posting.  

[BriannaLovey]

19 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

The problem with possibly both our ideas is (although yours might solve the issue) is folks may change their methods along the way.  I doubt I will make PBR items because for me (unless I just dragged PBR textures to some raw mesh I made) it would entail additional software and learning and I mostly just make thigs (well I guess always these days) for ME.   But if your script could check the parcel to declare it PBR free and then talk back to the database that seems doable (SO NOT A SCRIPT PERSON - painful when I go there).   

 

In theory maybe that could also be used in a kiosk that people who ONLY used legacy in the parcels could ping back and declare yes, they are PBR free (not just products) and people that needed that would know it was "safe" for them.  People who wanted to be part of the group could rez a kiosk that would report back and update the database and the kiosk could give an webpage URL to the database.  So once done it would be (maybe) work free. That would be great but of course I may be misinterpreting or expanding on your idea. 

Your idea would be better than mine I think and definitely less work once completed.  The Art Galleries of SL (which doesn't check anything but keeps fingers crossed that the info is correct) has been running for almost as long as SL has been here.   

 

Anyway thanks for posting.  

I will take problems like this into account if possible, but hopefully anything is better than nothing.

It would be far easier to implement this viewer-side, or to use Cool VL Viewer's Lua scripting API to check something like this, but that limits the viewers that people would be able to use this utility in.

Edit: Looks like there are no functions to get the texture/material properties of objects that aren't linked to the script's object :c

Guess it won't happen for now.

Edited July 16 by BriannaLovey

[Codex Alpha]

4 hours ago, BriannaLovey said:

At some point I am going to develop LSL-based tools that will allow people to determine whether or not a creator is using self-made PBR objects, and to separate creators into 3 separate lists:

1) Those who create PBR-only items.

2) Those who create items with PBR materials, but with fallback textures and normal + spec maps

3) Those who still create with only regular textures and normal + spec maps.

Assuming that doing so is within the limitations of LSL; I am a little rusty as far as that goes hehe

The current recommendation by LInden Labs is to use a PBR texture set + baked diffuse background.

This is actually the best choice, IMO, because again MOST OF THE OBJECTS I studied in game even by 'top' creators they were all using ONLY Baked Diffuse textures (maybe not in the original product I dunno, but in the world yes).

If a creator actually used Blinn-Phong textures and correctly, all the people who had ALM turned off would see possible junk. Just color with no detail at all, AND they'd have to download 3 textures anyway.

SOooooo. It would make sense to adopt their PBR system, BUT fall back to the typical baked diffuse.

I will NOT be making 2 sets of textures sets, sorry. I will probably be alone as usual, as I always take action instead of just talking about it (alone as usual) - but IF I move forward this .. IF.. there are other issues making me think it's not worth my time anymore (re: not respecting new users) - I'll be holding Linden Lab to their professed goal. PBR with fallback to a baked texture.. Or maybe I wont do that either.. A lot of my optimized 'industry standard' textures that I took a lot of time to learn and custom make don't work as a baked texture.. soooo I will have to see.

Edited July 16 by Codex Alpha

[BriannaLovey]

35 minutes ago, Codex Alpha said:

The current recommendation by LInden Labs is to use a PBR texture set + baked diffuse background.

This is actually the best choice, IMO, because again MOST OF THE OBJECTS I studied in game even by 'top' creators they were all using ONLY Baked Diffuse textures (maybe not in the original product I dunno, but in the world yes).

If a creator actually used Blinn-Phong textures and correctly, all the people who had ALM turned off would see possible junk. Just color with no detail at all, AND they'd have to download 3 textures anyway.

SOooooo. It would make sense to adopt their PBR system, BUT fall back to the typical baked diffuse.

I will NOT be making 2 sets of textures sets, sorry. I will probably be alone as usual, as I always take action instead of just talking about it (alone as usual) - but IF I move forward this .. IF.. there are other issues making me think it's not worth my time anymore (re: not respecting new users) - I'll be holding Linden Lab to their professed goal. PBR with fallback to a baked texture.. Or maybe I wont do that either.. A lot of my optimized 'industry standard' textures that I took a lot of time to learn and custom make don't work as a baked texture.. soooo I will have to see.

No worries. If you could leave the fallback texture as the default prim texture, that would be nice though. This allows some viewers like Cool VL Viewer to use the base_color channel as a replacement for a texture. I have heard that some creators are placing fallback textures on their stuff with a message in the texture telling people to upgrade their viewers, which is a lot worse than just leaving the texture as default.

Edited July 16 by BriannaLovey

[Chic Aeon]

OK here is where this is. :D.  I made a bunch of 512 signs saying "PBR Free Zone".  They are full perm and free for anyone that wants to use them. Pass them around, tint -- whatever.  I also put PBR Free Zone on my main store land tab.  That seems to be the best I can do for the folks having issues.    For the folks that LOVE PBR I suggest making a PBR "heart" ZONE.  All these things will help I think in the coming days.  I can't link to the texture pack but you guys are smart enough to find it. Some folks already did LOL.   

Let the Force Be With You!!!!!