Cancelled my membership after nearly 20 years - cause of PBR Viewer Graphics issues

[Blue]

Today i have cancelled my membership cause of the worst graphics and issues of PBR Viewers. I tried any kind of settings and the issues with PBR viewers are to much for me. It is totally frustrating and i don't have the time to do beta / alpha tests etc. or wasting my time with that kind of problems. 

I am in SL since 2006 now and i hever had any kind of problems with graphics or viewer issues. My iMac Pro has an AMD Vega 64 Graphicscard and it worked fine and perfect before PBR Update.

My avatar is bright, shiny and missing the hair. Every reflection is a pain in eyes and my NAIM Optimal Prim / Mesh environment was broken. I could not get it to work, so i am done. I don't understand why LL is doing that kind of things to the long term users and change everything to "unusable". 

Totally frustrating experience and waste of time

 

Edited July 19 by Blue

[discussionbot]

10 minutes ago, Blue said:

i don't have the time to do beta / alpha tests etc. or wasting my time with that kind of problems. 

Sorry to hear that, I’m also in the same boat and understand your pain. Unfortunately that’s what LL expects us to do now. 
 

This is mostly a resident forum, you might want to also post here where Linden Lab might actually read it:

https://feedback.secondlife.com/bug-reports/p/pbr-performance-hit

[Blue]

I did that feedback, thank you so much for help. What a sad day, after all that long time. I will not buy a new workstation or PC just to run PBR Viewers. Thats wrong in my opinion. My iMac Pro is still a very powerful XEON workstation and it can render most complicates Blender meshes without any fan noise or graphics issues.

So it is not my fault.

[Henri Beauchamp]

You may try the Cool VL Viewer, even if macOS is not supported by me, but builds only provided, from time to time (*), by a contributor: kudos to him.

At least, you will be, for now (and until LL comes up with a faster and fixed PBR renderer implementation), able to toggle (in real time) between the old and the new rendering engine, as need be.

--------

(*) But you can build the viewer yourself from sources as well: once the build requirements installed, it's just a matter of launching the macos-build.sh script from a terminal.

[Sid Nagy]

1 hour ago, Blue said:

So it is not my fault

It is not your fault, but it isn't LL's fault either.
They make decisions to keep their company afloat. You make decisions to keep your wallet afloat.
There is no right and wrong in this situation.
 

Edited July 19 by Sid Nagy

[Rowan Amore]

You can still use 2 older versions of Firestorm for now.

https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/fs_older_downloads

[BriannaLovey]

Second the Cool VL Viewer. It runs much faster than other viewers. I am using it on Intel integrated graphics right now, normally getting about 60 FPS, compared to 20-30 on Firestorm (this is with PBR off of course, I don't bother turning it on ever.)

Edited July 20 by BriannaLovey

[RicDelMoro]

20 hours ago, Blue said:

Today i have cancelled my membership cause of the worst graphics and issues of PBR Viewers....

 

In addition to canceling/not renewing the premium subscription, I will stop purchasing items in SL because the Lindenlab's incompetence about the PBR issues. Stopping purchasing items is also a way to protect myself from future texture changes with unknown results. I've read  an owner of a famous hair store was complaining that the PBR messed up their work, and she will have to adapt her way to build because that. This might just be the tip of the iceberg. So it's wiser to stop buying objects that can be impacted by PBR until things get right.

[AmeliaJ08]

@Modulated what was that performance tweak you noted for AMD? Does it apply to Vega? I assume so but not sure if MacOS driver is in any way comparable to Windows.

 

[AmeliaJ08]

@Blue can you post the output of Help > About Second Life ? there might be a simple fix for what you describe.

 

[Modulated]

4 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

@Modulated what was that performance tweak you noted for AMD? Does it apply to Vega? I assume so but not sure if MacOS driver is in any way comparable to Windows.

 

They aren't..and that gpu is likely end of life as far as Apple is concerned. They provide the drivers, they aren't upgradeable on their own like Windows versions as far as I know.  As for the tweaking, I can't speak to that, maybe it's possible, but probably not.

[Kyrie Deka]

10 hours ago, RicDelMoro said:

So it's wiser to stop buying objects that can be impacted by PBR until things get right.

I believe it worth a mention as I was just looking in to this and it is fresh on my mind:

          When one goes from a Pre- to a release PBR viewer,

          in my experience,

          there are far fewer historical items that instantly are ICK in a PBR viewer than were fretted over.  I am happy with that.  

A mention here, because adopting a not shopping at the Marketplace or inworld stance seems like taking one's protest signs to the wrong (empty) field.  I fear it will not fix the issue one bit.  

 

[SandorWren]

On 7/19/2024 at 3:44 AM, Blue said:

Today i have cancelled my membership cause of the worst graphics and issues of PBR Viewers. I tried any kind of settings and the issues with PBR viewers are to much for me. It is totally frustrating and i don't have the time to do beta / alpha tests etc. or wasting my time with that kind of problems. 

I am in SL since 2006 now and i hever had any kind of problems with graphics or viewer issues. My iMac Pro has an AMD Vega 64 Graphicscard and it worked fine and perfect before PBR Update.

My avatar is bright, shiny and missing the hair. Every reflection is a pain in eyes and my NAIM Optimal Prim / Mesh environment was broken. I could not get it to work, so i am done. I don't understand why LL is doing that kind of things to the long term users and change everything to "unusable". 

Totally frustrating experience and waste of time

 

Did you cancel a paid subscription, or delete your account? If you deleted your account, then obviosly SL isn't important enough to you to wait out the bug fixes.  The previous non PBR version of FS DOES work fine on a MAC, and it still works.

Edited July 21 by Bagnu

[Reid Parkin]

On 7/20/2024 at 2:45 PM, RicDelMoro said:

Stopping purchasing items is also a way to protect myself from future texture changes with unknown results. I've read  an owner of a famous hair store was complaining that the PBR messed up their work, and she will have to adapt her way to build because that. This might just be the tip of the iceberg. So it's wiser to stop buying objects that can be impacted by PBR until things get right.

I'm speaking as a creator and merchant, and I think this is a valid statement. It seems the impact is on items such as hair, and my waterfalls are like long flowing hair. The waterfalls no longer have the appearance as was intended. Soft and gentle flow is now thick and rough. Rain flow is now thin white stripes.

I don't think we'll really know the extent of it until most people are using the latest viewer. People are still buying my items, although sales appear to be down. I have received no complaints or concerns, which could be because people are still using the earlier viewer. I'm holding back on creating two versions of these items, for now.

 

 

[Qie Niangao]

I think it's a challenging time for many merchants because items that are not expressly PBR-textured are going to be perceived as on the road to obsolescence, even if those glTF materials are doing nothing better than the Blinn-Phong materials did before. Worse, there are whole classes of products that are justifiably obsolete now, looking completely ridiculous once every viewer sees ALM all the time… latex with baked "shine" for example.

Also, nothing to do with PBR but related to the rendering upgrades in general, anybody buying BoM skins (especially faces) right now is making a very temporary investment. Unless those skins use 2K textures that will work when BoM goes 2K—is that even possible now?—soon enough they're going to look pretty lame compared to new products. Has anybody seen skin makers promoting "2K-ready" or anything like that yet?

[Blue]

Quote

Did you cancel a paid subscription, or delete your account? If you deleted your account, then obviosly SL isn't important enough to you to wait out the bug fixes.  The previous non PBR version of FS DOES work fine on a MAC, and it still works.

It does not work "fine" at my iMac Pro, but to answer your question, i just cancelled my paid subscription and paid out my Linden$ to Tilia and back to my RL PayPal. And after 18 Years of SL it should be no question, that SL was important to me. 

Some of my creations do not work anymore with the new viewer, hairs are gone, alphas do not work correct and the environment is shiny, bright and simply wrong. There are tons of complaints about Mac compatibility and PBR, especially the latest Apple Silicons. It does not work anymore.

Thank you for the helpful hint about Cool Viewer, i will give a try. But i am pretty sure that future releases will force PBR Viewers and we will see if it is fixed by LL or not. 

I don't buy any subscription, no membership, no Linden$ anymore, if it is not working correct.

 

[AmeliaJ08]

9 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Worse, there are whole classes of products that are justifiably obsolete now, looking completely ridiculous once every viewer sees ALM all the time… latex with baked "shine" for example.

Yeah but they were obsolete 10 years ago! maybe 7 if you're feeling generous

 

[AmeliaJ08]

1 hour ago, Blue said:

There are tons of complaints about Mac compatibility and PBR, especially the latest Apple Silicons

I mean... to be fair here, that should be expected by anyone running Apple Silicon. It's using Rosetta 2 for that to even be possible and MacOS is stuck on some ancient version of OpenGL.

I'm kinda surprised FS even offer a dmg for download given the inevitable issues that are going to pop up, Rosetta 2 is good but the performance penalty and incompatibilities that this will inevitably cause are bad for brand. Apple Silicon needs a native viewer.

 

 

[Sid Nagy]

.

Edited July 22 by Sid Nagy
My reaction was pointless.

[Qie Niangao]

9 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Yeah but they ["baked" highlight latex textures] were obsolete 10 years ago! maybe 7 if you're feeling generous

It's interesting how that pre-ALM obsolescence persisted due to a chain of dependencies. Merchants could keep selling it even to buyers who could see how lame it looked but wore it anyway because they knew it provided the best "latex" that could be seen by a large share of those viewing the wearer.

It's this insidious chain that's finally broken when the last non-ALM viewer finally stops working.

[Kylie Jaxxon]

10 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

I think it's a challenging time for many merchants because items that are not expressly PBR-textured are going to be perceived as on the road to obsolescence, even if those glTF materials are doing nothing better than the Blinn-Phong materials did before. Worse, there are whole classes of products that are justifiably obsolete now, looking completely ridiculous once every viewer sees ALM all the time… latex with baked "shine" for example.

Also, nothing to do with PBR but related to the rendering upgrades in general, anybody buying BoM skins (especially faces) right now is making a very temporary investment. Unless those skins use 2K textures that will work when BoM goes 2K—is that even possible now?—soon enough they're going to look pretty lame compared to new products. Has anybody seen skin makers promoting "2K-ready" or anything like that yet?

DeeTalez just released two new skins with 2K.  I took the demos, but haven't unpacked yet to give opinion.  

[AmeliaJ08]

34 minutes ago, Kylie Jaxxon said:

DeeTalez just released two new skins with 2K.  I took the demos, but haven't unpacked yet to give opinion.  

Ooh I'm in the market for a new skin, will have to take a look. Thanks

[Qie Niangao]

53 minutes ago, Kylie Jaxxon said:

DeeTalez just released two new skins with 2K.  I took the demos, but haven't unpacked yet to give opinion.  

That's very interesting! But I wonder, are those applier skins? Because BoM can't do 2K textures yet, but I'm wondering if skin makers can (confidently?) use 2K textures in the skin asset, knowing it will appear on the avatar when 2K baking is ready.

[Kylie Jaxxon]

12 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

That's very interesting! But I wonder, are those applier skins? Because BoM can't do 2K textures yet, but I'm wondering if skin makers can (confidently?) use 2K textures in the skin asset, knowing it will appear on the avatar when 2K baking is ready.

skin is tattoo...

Maybe I'm wrong since I'm not tech savvy at all, isn't this 2K?

 

Edited July 22 by Kylie Jaxxon
added pic

[SandorWren]

1 hour ago, Kylie Jaxxon said:

skin is tattoo...

Maybe I'm wrong since I'm not tech savvy at all, isn't this 2K?

 

It's not. EvoX uses 2 UV maps, each 1024, instead of the single one Evo uses. 2K equivalent would be four UV textures. But true 2K would be a single texture .

https://digitalregeneration.com/lelutka-evo-x-and-how-its-different-from-evo/

Edited July 22 by Bagnu