The End Of An Era and what was a wonderful, enlightened virtual world....

[Rowan Amore]

1 minute ago, Rolig Loon said:

I think you and I are in the same boat, Rowan, or at least in the same fleet. I've learned what various settings do by experimenting for the past 17+ years. I keep my draw distance at 128m and my LOD setting at 2, and I cap frame rate at 100 because I found ages ago that it's what my machine can handle and still give me comfortable performance. I've fiddled with a handful of other Debug settings that make SL look good on my machine. You and I (and Zalificent and a lot of the others in this thread) are more adventurous than the average user, though. Most people who pick up SL want it to look good right off the shelf, or with as little tweaking as they can get away with.  Hence, the "idiot slider".  Their performance will rarely be as good as yours and mine, but if the slider is well designed they'll have a decent SL experience. 

Personally, I do not think Mirrors should be on by default.  Let people figure out how to turn things ON rather than OFF.  Maybe people wouldn't notice such a huge hit in performance initially if those things were only ON when needed.

I posted in another thread that with mirrors OFF, I get 60 fps at home.  Turn them on and even though I don't have a mirror out, it drop my fps to 30.  No wonder people are complaining.  I still have that slider showing as Ultra even after I reset a few things.

[Extrude Ragu]

I like the 'idiot slider'....

[Qie Niangao]

3 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Personally, I do not think Mirrors should be on by default. 

I think I agree. Especially as long as Shadows are off by default, which seem to have similar performance impact but a much broader utility. (Yes, I know shadows aren't perfect, but I'll turn off most everything else to keep them on.)

Even with Mirrors turned off, they look shiny enough to read as mirrors, better than anything we'd call a "mirror" six months ago.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

51 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

But that's what an "idiot slider" is for. The average user doesn't have the patience or technical know-how to make a lot of adjustments to optimize performance.

And therein lies the problem.

The list of what is turned on or off by different "Idiot Slider" values, is set by LL, and they have consistently got  it wrong for more years than I've been in SL.

Bloatstorm USED to use it's own list, but Beq recently revealed in a thread here, that now, Bloatstorm uses the default LL list. That means when you install New Bloatstorm, it uses LL's damn awful defaults to set your system up, and that hurts your performance, then you adjust the "Idiot Slider" hoping that will fix stuff, and it just breaks it even more.

Then you visit the forum for the first time and some Futurenesss Cultist Hardware Snob, tells you it's YOUR fault it doesn't work because you are lazy and stupid, and haven't mastered Settings-Fu.

Then the Futureness Cultists screams "PBR R LEET! Unbelievers MUST DIE!".

Then Scylla points out that isn't helpful, and won't help retention.

Then the Lion of Positivity Spam claims that the Unbelieves probably are dirty poor people who don't spend any money anyway so it's ok if they all just leave except they won't, they will all convert to the Cult of LL Fail-Viewer, because LL will change the habit of 21 years and actually make things magically better, no, really.

OBVIOUSLY...

 

And those ordinary Bloatstorm users who are used to only using the "Idiot Slider" end up struggling with Viewer 1 Zombie Clones and their damn awful UI, or desperately clinging to the not-blocked-YET Bloatstorm builds, or just sod off elsewhere.

 

This will NOT end well.

Edited July 16 by Zalificent Corvinus

[MoiraKathleen]

2 hours ago, Katherine Heartsong said:

Agree, plus viewers are not a religion to me, but no other viewer but FS also offers custom AO (to get rid of screen HUDs), and Favorites panel = no to me as well. Those are my needs/requirements in a viewer for how I personally use SL. As soon as another viewer has those two, I'll explore and compare.

You might want to try Kokua viewer.  Although it is very similar in layout to the LL viewer, it has also added some things from some of the other TPV's.  It does have the custom AO functionality, just like FS has.  It also has a Favorite Wearables button.  

6 hours ago, Harper Held said:

No rezplat, no gth, no gtp,no mapto, no me.

The Kokua viewer does have gth.  I'm not sure about the others you mentioned, because they are not commands I normally used, but you might want to check it out to see if they are present. 

As far as performance with Kokua, for me it's right up there with the LL viewer, though your results may vary depending on your hardware and settings. 

[Harper Held]

3 minutes ago, MoiraKathleen said:

You might want to try Kokua viewer.  Although it is very similar in layout to the LL viewer, it has also added some things from some of the other TPV's.  It does have the custom AO functionality, just like FS has.  It also has a Favorite Wearables button.  

The Kokua viewer does have gth.  I'm not sure about the others you mentioned, because they are not commands I normally used, but you might want to check it out to see if they are present. 

As far as performance with Kokua, for me it's right up there with the LL viewer, though your results may vary depending on your hardware and settings. 

That's tempting, I might try it out sometime. The last time I tried it, it was a bit too spartan for me. TY.

[Madi Melodious]

8 minutes ago, Harper Held said:

That's tempting, I might try it out sometime. The last time I tried it, it was a bit too spartan for me. TY.

Needs a Juggalo button. 

 

Edited July 16 by Madi Melodious

[CaerolleClaudel]

10 hours ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

 

 

 

 

Realized after I posted that while the CPU usage was only ~30%, the processor speed was cranked up to ~max at 4.68 GHz. So, I guess FS was only using a few of the cores, but was maxing those out. Just thought I would point this out.

[Arielle Popstar]

45 minutes ago, Harper Held said:

That's tempting, I might try it out sometime. The last time I tried it, it was a bit too spartan for me. TY.

Just a heads up that there doesn't appear to be a grid manager anymore on Kokua.

[Harper Held]

Just now, Arielle Popstar said:

Just a heads up that there doesn't appear to be a grid manager anymore on Kokua.

Yeah, they dropped opensim support I'm pretty sure. Same for the Genesis and Alchemy unless I'm mistaken.

[BriannaLovey]

7 minutes ago, Harper Held said:

Yeah, they dropped opensim support I'm pretty sure. Same for the Genesis and Alchemy unless I'm mistaken.

Correct. Firestorm and Cool VL Viewer are the only ones left. Singularity also works for OpenSim, but appears to no longer be maintained.

[Arielle Popstar]

13 minutes ago, Harper Held said:

Yeah, they dropped opensim support I'm pretty sure. Same for the Genesis and Alchemy unless I'm mistaken.

I had heard about Alchemy but thx for the tip on Genesis. I won't need to bother trying it then. If a viewer doesn't have a Grid manager it is useless to me.

[Rolig Loon]

1 hour ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

And therein lies the problem.

The list of what is turned on or off by different "Idiot Slider" values, is set by LL, and they have consistently got  it wrong for more years than I've been in SL.

Which is why I carefully said  (Well, I said it, but Rowan quoted me and I am too lazy to scroll back a page):

1 hour ago, Rowan Amore said:

Their performance will rarely be as good as yours and mine, but if the slider is well designed they'll have a decent SL experience. 

To keep my post simple, I didn't launch into the point that you are raising now. I agree that someone has to do a more careful job of setting the defaults along that slider.  They are far from optimal now. I would suggest that this is an excellent time to take that task on, since PBR and the extras that Firestorm and other TPVs have tossed in are changing everybody's visual experience at once. The slider ought to be a useful one-stop starting point (and a default for non-adventurous users), if it's designed properly.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

2 hours ago, BriannaLovey said:

I have tried bugging them about it since the PBR beta, and my suggestion was met with a firm "No" every time. They aren't interested in our suggestions. Cool VL Viewer on the other hand will allow you to turn off PBR.

Firestorm developers really hate us don't they?

[Nagachief Darkstone]

5 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Firestorm developers really hate us don't they?

I have a feeling it's more that Firestorm is the majority viewer and is under far more scrutiny from LL than a smaller userbase viewer like CoolVL.

I don't think FS wants to give more reasons for LL to abandon the TPV program.

[Arielle Popstar]

12 minutes ago, Nagachief Darkstone said:

I have a feeling it's more that Firestorm is the majority viewer and is under far more scrutiny from LL than a smaller userbase viewer like CoolVL.

I don't think FS wants to give more reasons for LL to abandon the TPV program.

I wouldn't give SecondLife a snow balls chance in hell without Firestorm and the support it gives its users. The Lindens are utterly incapable of providing the level of support that FS has over the years and there would be a lot of rage quitting residents without it. 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

10 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

I wouldn't give SecondLife a snow balls chance in hell without Firestorm and the support it gives its users. The Lindens are utterly incapable of providing the level of support that FS has over the years and there would be a lot of rage quitting residents without it. 

I think there's a lot of truth to this. LL provides diddle squat in the way of guidelines or support.

But it's also true that Firestorm can be confusing to new users precisely because it has so many features.

[HeathcliffMontague]

2 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

In Firestorm, you have graphic presets.  Make one for indoors with lower draw distance, no shadows, whatever makes you run better. 

This. As a driver, I even have presets called 'race' (very bare bones but with fairly high draw distance), 'cruise' (much more scenic) etc. Set others as you find you might need them. It's extremely handy.  

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Ok, just took Alchemy for a quick test spin. I haven't tried it yet in a busy parcel or region, which is one acid test, but I have to say I am very impressed by the performance and, most especially, by the "Lightbox" feature. The latter is the chef's kiss -- so many cool options! And a poser! I was able to run it at Ultra, with Depth of Field on, and take 6k pics while my FPS never dropped below about 12. For my computer, that's stellar.

There's stuff I wish it had -- notably area search and a "preview" button for snapshots (I forgot to check if there was a teleport history option), and I wish it didn't mimic the LL viewer interface so closely (esp. the camera floater) -- but this is a really good option, certainly, for photos.

[BriannaLovey]

36 minutes ago, Nagachief Darkstone said:

I have a feeling it's more that Firestorm is the majority viewer and is under far more scrutiny from LL than a smaller userbase viewer like CoolVL.

I don't think FS wants to give more reasons for LL to abandon the TPV program.

Ironically, FS has proven with this very release how much of a liability TPVs are.

Edited July 16 by BriannaLovey

[Arielle Popstar]

4 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I think there's a lot of truth to this. LL provides diddle squat in the way of guidelines or support.

But it's also true that Firestorm can be confusing to new users precisely because it has so many features.

I disagree. I find Firestorm much more intuitive but even then by default it does not show that many more options until some of the toolbar buttons are activated. Many of the features that make FS more user friendly, don't even exist in the LL viewer.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just now, Arielle Popstar said:

I disagree. I find Firestorm much more intuitive but even then by default it does not show that many more options until some of the toolbar buttons are activated. Many of the features that make FS more user friendly, don't even exist in the LL viewer.

Fair point. And the screen is generally less cluttered by default.

Also, I HATE HATE HATE the LL chat and camera floaters.

HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE.

Etc.

[Janet Voxel]

19 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Ok, just took Alchemy for a quick test spin. I haven't tried it yet in a busy parcel or region, which is one acid test, but I have to say I am very impressed by the performance and, most especially, by the "Lightbox" feature. The latter is the chef's kiss -- so many cool options! And a poser! I was able to run it at Ultra, with Depth of Field on, and take 6k pics while my FPS never dropped below about 12. For my computer, that's stellar.

Welcome sister…..to the light!

According to the devs in discord, area search is being worked on.

Edited July 16 by Janet Voxel

[Arielle Popstar]

2 minutes ago, Janet Voxel said:

Welcome sister…..

According to the devs in discord, area search is being worked on.

Maybe they could put the Grid manager back in now that they should be aware that Opensim Grids do have PBR capability.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 minute ago, Janet Voxel said:

Welcome sister…..

According to the devs in discord, area search is being worked on.

That's great news!

This is totally going to become my PBR viewer of choice. Performance is comparable or better than the official viewer, and it has some really great options. It might even become my photo viewer. I need to do a comparison of the pic quality alongside BD, but . . . with tonemapping options, a sharpness/clarity slider, etc. . . . as I say, I'm impressed.