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

[stevey87]

On 8/12/2024 at 1:30 AM, SandorWren said:

I DO have to assume you've upgraded your hardware since then. And you have high end hardware. I do, and even then I have run into the occasional issue.

well first of all let me say until I sold it a few months ago I was able to run second life on a base model surface go 3 with 4 gb ram so I really wonder what the heck people are running still in 2024 lol o.o

 

but yeah I'm on a rog zephryus g16 the $1500 model with a 4060 and the only setting I don't keep fully maxed all the time is draw distance that depends on where I am

[Nina Pizzicato]

I didn't know anything about PBR until tonight. I wondered why the latest upgrade was so buggy, major lag, slow rezzing, distorted avatars.  I switched viewers the same evening.  Anyone with a slower computer or laptop should try cool vl viewer.  It works well, no trouble loading, everything works fine, and much much faster than Firestorm or the Official viewer.  I also downloaded Genesis, and that is also very fast, and had some interesting features, that I'll play around with now that I have it.  In summary I'd say it's premature to say that the end is near, get a different viewer, and move on.  FS will likely fix it's issues, but in the meantime, there are other options.  I see it as just using a different mode of transportation to get to the destination, ultimately I still get what I came for...

On a last note, I compared the settings in FS with Cool VL and made adjustments, and happy to say that FS is working much better without any big loss of functionality.  On day one of the new version I was average under 10 on a desolate sim.  I'm currently mid 30 FPS on a crowded sim, so there's that too. 

Good luck people!

[BilliJo Aldrin]

I don't care about ALM, or PBR. Nothing will change for me on any of my parcels, there will be no PBR textures, and it will always be noon where I am. As long as I can chill, or hang out with a friend or two, my SL is good. The rest of you can chase your PBR and EEP's, I'll still be right here, being me and enjoying my SL.

And yes, I'll spring for that new computer when the time absolutely comes, but not for the advanced settings I can have, or all the new shinies I can marvel at, just so I can be me, with my system head, my Lara 5.3 body (no BOM) my full bright flexi prim hair, and anything else I still enjoy that progress has passed by.

Like SL was supposed to be about, you do you, and I'll do me 😁

Bathing suit added for forum modesty, I'm always naked in my pool.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

Regarding the thread title, I would like to see, "The End of a Thread, and what was an Awful, Contentious Discussion.."

[Love Zhaoying]

On 8/12/2024 at 4:05 PM, WeFlossDaily said:

Nice. I had no idea my last name was resident for a long time lol.

Oh, so you are "young" in Second Life! That explains a lot!

[Zalificent Corvinus]

4 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Oh, so you are "young" in Second Life! 

"Residents" have been around for 14 of SL's 21 years, that's not "young".

 

4 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

That explains a lot!

Yes, it explains the at there is the usual Captain Oldbie Sneer-down-their-nose Anti-Resident bias, that's been all too common for 14 years now.

[WeFlossDaily]

2 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Yes, it explains the at there is the usual Captain Oldbie Sneer-down-their-nose Anti-Resident bias, that's been all too common for 14 years now.

Yep. It does.

 

7 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Oh, so you are "young" in Second Life! That explains a lot!

Whatever.

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, WeFlossDaily said:

7 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Oh, so you are "young" in Second Life! That explains a lot!

Whatever.

I should have been more specific, sorry. I didn't mean "young", as in "newer to Second Life" because your last name is Resident, but merely because you weren't aware of it. Peace!

[WeFlossDaily]

3 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I should have been more specific, sorry. I didn't mean "young", as in "newer to Second Life" because your last name is Resident, but merely because you weren't aware of it. Peace!

Sorry, I forget to put a happy face on the end. =]

[PheebyKatz]

15 hours ago, Nina Pizzicato said:

I didn't know anything about PBR until tonight. I wondered why the latest upgrade was so buggy, major lag, slow rezzing, distorted avatars.  I switched viewers the same evening.  Anyone with a slower computer or laptop should try cool vl viewer.  It works well, no trouble loading, everything works fine, and much much faster than Firestorm or the Official viewer.  I also downloaded Genesis, and that is also very fast, and had some interesting features, that I'll play around with now that I have it.  In summary I'd say it's premature to say that the end is near, get a different viewer, and move on.  FS will likely fix it's issues, but in the meantime, there are other options.  I see it as just using a different mode of transportation to get to the destination, ultimately I still get what I came for...

On a last note, I compared the settings in FS with Cool VL and made adjustments, and happy to say that FS is working much better without any big loss of functionality.  On day one of the new version I was average under 10 on a desolate sim.  I'm currently mid 30 FPS on a crowded sim, so there's that too. 

Good luck people!

Quoting because seconding. CoolVL isn't my go-to viewer, just because FS has a few options I'd rather not do without all the time, but for the record, simply installing CoolVL Viewer actually fixed my voice chat never working in Firestorm. I tried fixing it repeatedly, and nothing ever worked. Installed another viewer, and boom, it worked all of a sudden.

If not for being un-used-to it, I'd probably be using it as my primary viewer. I just spent so long learning how to make FS work properly, I'm not ready to let it go just yet.

[BriannaLovey]

12 minutes ago, PheebyKatz said:

Quoting because seconding. CoolVL isn't my go-to viewer, just because FS has a few options I'd rather not do without all the time, but for the record, simply installing CoolVL Viewer actually fixed my voice chat never working in Firestorm. I tried fixing it repeatedly, and nothing ever worked. Installed another viewer, and boom, it worked all of a sudden.

If not for being un-used-to it, I'd probably be using it as my primary viewer. I just spent so long learning how to make FS work properly, I'm not ready to let it go just yet.

Would you rather:

1) Learn how to operate a new viewer?

2) Spend the same amount of time trying to fix Firestorm's inevitable bugs?

[PheebyKatz]

7 minutes ago, BriannaLovey said:

Would you rather:

1) Learn how to operate a new viewer?

2) Spend the same amount of time trying to fix Firestorm's inevitable bugs?

It's just autism, I can't help it. Changing viewers would be like changing the clothes I wear every day.

Gimme a few years and I'll change. Maybe. If forced to. XD

[Cube Republic]

https://www.firestormviewer.org/firestorm-6-6-17-will-not-be-blocked-but-you-will-lose-your-voice/

 

 

There you go 

[Rowan Amore]

17 minutes ago, Cube Republic said:

https://www.firestormviewer.org/firestorm-6-6-17-will-not-be-blocked-but-you-will-lose-your-voice/

 

 

There you go 

That will, in my opinion, cut down on anyone buying PBR only clothing as it will disappear to anyone still using a pre-PBR viewer.   People may not care about other objects showing up or showing as a white texture but when a garment is invisible, that's a problem.  They may need to include those B-P textures afterall?

[steeljane42]

10 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

That will, in my opinion, cut down on anyone buying PBR only clothing as it will disappear to anyone still using a pre-PBR viewer.   People may not care about other objects showing up or showing as a white texture but when a garment is invisible, that's a problem.  They may need to include those B-P textures afterall?

It won't disappear. Non PBR viewers just won't see the textures at all, like with rezzables. Pretty easy to test on the recent few releases which don't come with fallback textures.

Blog sails "fail to render PBR clothing", I know. They could probably change the wording on it.

P. S.

Likely down the line they won't see BoM 2k PBR clothing, though? Or might see it as broken one way or another. But to test this we'll have to wait until LL releases update for their baking service and a new viewer.

Edited August 15 by steeljane42

[BilliJo Aldrin]

30 minutes ago, Cube Republic said:

https://www.firestormviewer.org/firestorm-6-6-17-will-not-be-blocked-but-you-will-lose-your-voice/

 

 

There you go 

darn I'm 6.6.14, i'll have to update to that one 😂

Never mind, the one i downloaded for Open Sim is 6.6.17, and of course I can use it to log into SL. yay me 😁

Edited August 15 by BilliJo Aldrin
added a line

[WeFlossDaily]

21 minutes ago, Cube Republic said:

https://www.firestormviewer.org/firestorm-6-6-17-will-not-be-blocked-but-you-will-lose-your-voice/

I'm impressed. I don't use or like Firestorm. But I like this decision on Firestorm's part. Finally, some middle ground to work with from the most used TPV, though.

I don't suppose an ASCII reshader is open for discussion, though. I've been wondering if it could be implemented to render a scene based only on the outlines of the mesh without the need for bothering to load textures, which would mean that PBR or pre-PBR textures might not matter and would be rendered the same. Just a weird idea.

[Ziggy Starsmith]

10 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Regarding the thread title, I would like to see, "The End of a Thread, and what was an Awful, Contentious Discussion.."

Don't read it or quote it or comment then, fly away....

Edited August 15 by Ziggy Starsmith

[Rowan Amore]

13 minutes ago, steeljane42 said:

Blog sails "fail to render PBR clothing", I know. They could probably change the wording on it.

Yeah, they'd better clarify that.

[BriannaLovey]

45 minutes ago, Cube Republic said:

https://www.firestormviewer.org/firestorm-6-6-17-will-not-be-blocked-but-you-will-lose-your-voice/

 

 

There you go 

Well this is a very good decision on their part! I can imagine how hard the support team begged for this lmao. And it saves me the trouble of having to maintain a forked version!

I just hope they keep the prebuilt dependencies up for a bit longer so they can be properly archived, or simple instructions are made for building the dependencies from source as well.

Edit: No wonder they made this decision, just look at their viewer usage statistics!

 

Edited August 15 by BriannaLovey
data

[Sparkle Bunny]

I'm just glad I don't have to switch viewers now. Really wasn't looking forward to that.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

I'm surprised on two counts.

First, that LL is letting them do this. It could seriously impede the widespread adoption of PBR (or at least PBR-only items) across the grid.

Second, that the adoption of the new viewer is as low as 57.5%. That's worse than I'd guessed.

I guess this is a good thing? Sort of?

Better would be making the performance improvements that might make a PBR viewer attainable or palatable for a larger segment of users, however.

[steeljane42]

11 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Second, that the adoption of the new viewer is as low as 57.5%. That's worse than I'd guessed.

Many people don't like to update unless forced to.

It wasn't any different with BoM and bento. Until some people would start see a lot of broken content or forced to update because older version got blocked they are staying on what's already working. It's really not any different this time around. It took a while for BoM and bento to spread accross the grid, too. Give it a year and PBR stuff without fallback textures will be everywhere. 2k BoM skins will be a thing by then too, very likely, along with gLTF objects starting to replace current stuff at some places, too.

It's also the same with, for example, mesh bodies and heads. How many people still use older versions of Lara from 3.5 to 5.2? Quite a bit if check BB's daily stats. I suppose they are happy it works and don't care about the rest, even if older versions are not compatible with universal neck standard (and thus with any modern mesh heads for the last 4+ years).

[Luna Bliss]

4 minutes ago, steeljane42 said:

Many people don't like to update unless forced to.

lol I"m one of those...quite a few times I didn't update until I got the warning saying I couldn't log on anymore!!   Just lazy I guess, or always something else I should be doing. First releases tend to be buggy too, so never saw a reason to update quickly.

[BriannaLovey]

37 minutes ago, steeljane42 said:

Many people don't like to update unless forced to.

It wasn't any different with BoM and bento. Until some people would start see a lot of broken content or forced to update because older version got blocked they are staying on what's already working. It's really not any different this time around. It took a while for BoM and bento to spread accross the grid, too. Give it a year and PBR stuff without fallback textures will be everywhere. 2k BoM skins will be a thing by then too, very likely, along with gLTF objects starting to replace current stuff at some places, too.

It's also the same with, for example, mesh bodies and heads. How many people still use older versions of Lara from 3.5 to 5.2? Quite a bit if check BB's daily stats. I suppose they are happy it works and don't care about the rest, even if older versions are not compatible with universal neck standard (and thus with any modern mesh heads for the last 4+ years).

Regarding this, it would be useful to see more data from FS in order to see the rate of adoption for 7.1.9 compared to other releases they have made in the past. We only know that 7.1.9 was released 2 months ago, and nearly 43% of users aren't using it. This must be abnormal for the FS peoples to see, otherwise they would not have made this decision.