How text-only viewers might be able to save us some of us from PBR

[CaerolleClaudel]

2 hours ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Someone like that logs in and finds everything looks different or runs slower and now they've got to troubleshoot and learn about something they just don't give a rats about.

The other day I told my sister wrt to RL/adulting, and it applies to online stuff, too, ofc, including SL (esp SL?), “I hate having to learn about things I don’t want to even deal with.’ Such is life…I am very privileged in the things with which I have to deal, and the resources I have to apply to the situations, though, and I am grateful for that.

[Arielle Popstar]

29 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

I think it is a form of entertainment.  I sometimes think of it like spectator sports, where people have their teams and get really involved with them.  I never did like spectator sports, and did not understand the extent people would get involved with them, I just know that they do.  

From a rational perspective, I believe it is just a matter of LL trying to get extra life out of the platform.  There are no moral or ethical reasons involved, they are not trying to punish people who have older or lower end computers, they are trying to maintain and extend the life of their product.  They will do whatever needs to be done to keep it afloat.  In doing this, many variables exist, such as the tools, products, operating systems, etc that are being updated, all of which are used by Second Life.  

What we, the audience do, is try to make sense of it.  Often, we tie in ethical reasoning, and then form arguments around it, create teams, be cheerleaders for our sides to get more supporters, get in arguments with the other side hoping they lose supporters, with the feeling that trying to produce a sound ethical argument will win over Linden Lab.

Really, all people need to do is toss a few noobies in volcanoes, and avoid this entire mess.  Appeasing the gods of SL necessitates sacrifice, not arguments.

The way I see it is a war between those who will be able to sell new stuff to the consuming residents and those residents who would like to see the lab work on features that would reduce the learning curve and chaos of this virtual world. The way the Lab is picking and choosing new features to implement, it is unlikely to lead to new users who will stay and only seems to benefit the creators and storeowners.

It is getting increasingly desperate for some to have to consider moving to a text viewer to be able to continue to have some relevance.

[Sid Nagy]

25 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

What about a "text only" viewer with voice and other features?

Objection sir. My C64 with floppy drive and SpeedDOS still can't handle voice.
Especially when I run Linux.

 

Edited August 13 by Sid Nagy

[Love Zhaoying]

Just now, Sid Nagy said:

Objection sir. My C64 with floppy drive and SpeedDOS still can't handle voice.

 

Pretty sure I saw a low-Rez SL on a C64..(in a video)..

[Istelathis]

2 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

Objection sir. My C64 with floppy drive and SpeedDOS still can't handle voice.
Especially when I run Linux.

 

You need a superCPU

I think Linden could create a voice client, that will run on it.  The question is will they?  I think since they have aligned themselves with the dark force, and rejoice in the suffering of others (Linden feeds on suffering, it is their nourishment) they will simply lead you on with the prospect of it occurring.  Despite it bringing in a potential 17 million users, as that is how many were produced.  Nevermind the Apple ][e users, who could be added to the prospective clients, and LL is bleeding money.

We see Second Life running on an Apple 2c above, which I happen to be the owner of one.  Linden never finished this project, just another one put on their long list of failures 😠  All they need to do, is find the source code and bring it back, and I for one, would love to see Second Life running on my Amiga 1200, even if it is streaming.

(I really hope no one is taking this seriously, one way or another) 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 hour ago, SandorWren said:

BUT...If the people I spend most of my inworld time with can't function with PBR viewers, or have to limp along (Caitlin for example, can't at all, and Cinny switches back and forth), then PBR suddenly becomes VERY undesirable.

Cinn's position is, I suspect, that of most people -- they can run PBR at acceptable levels, most of the time, but have to throttle their settings in some situations.

Caitlin, however, is obviously one of those (*checks notes*) "three or four people" in SL who can't run a PBR viewer at all, or not to a degree that it is functional. It's a useful reminder of the knock-on effect that these performance issues are likely to have: it's not just Caitlin who is being impacted here. You have a very good computer, and can run a PBR viewer without problems, but your SL is going to be very detrimentally impacted nonetheless if Caitlin suddenly finds she can't run any viewer at all.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

You need a superCPU

I think Linden could create a voice client, that will run on it.  The question is will they?  I think since they have aligned themselves with the dark force, and rejoice in the suffering of others (Linden feeds on suffering, it is their nourishment) they will simply lead you on with the prospect of it occurring.  Despite it bringing in a potential 17 million users, as that is how many were produced.  Nevermind the Apple ][e users, who could be added to the prospective clients, and LL is bleeding money.

We see Second Life running on an Apple 2c above, which I happen to be the owner of one.  Linden never finished this project, just another one put on their long list of failures 😠  All they need to do, is find the source code and bring it back, and I for one, would love to see Second Life running on my Amiga 1200, even if it is streaming.

(I really hope no one is taking this seriously, one way or another) 

Peeve: SL needs C64-style Sprites with collision detection, etc.

[Istelathis]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Peeve: SL needs C64-style Sprites with collision detection, etc.

Along with SID music.

They also need to include ANSI to the chat, because I for one, miss ansi art.

 

I don't see why Linden can not use the SID chip to create a voice client, it would be glorious! 

[Cloud Python]

On 8/12/2024 at 2:40 PM, Extrude Ragu said:

This line is commonly touted as a way to demonize creators as being lazy and is misinformation in practise.

I see you couldn't be factually correct so instead opted to try to be "morally correct", making using of flaming language and buzzwords.
No part of my statement contains any form of misinformation, otherwise you would have been able to point it and correct it, instead the best you could do was this...

On 8/12/2024 at 2:40 PM, Extrude Ragu said:

it's not as simple as this

Meanwhile in the real world...

 

On 8/12/2024 at 2:40 PM, Extrude Ragu said:

Anyone who says 'hue just slap the albedo texture in diffuse' misses something important

A straw man fallacy is the informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction.

On 8/12/2024 at 2:40 PM, Extrude Ragu said:

This largely comes down to residents who aren't from a creative background

No true Scotsman or appeal to purity is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect an a posteriori claim from a falsifying counterexample by covertly modifying the initial claim. Rather than admitting error or providing evidence that would disqualify the falsifying counterexample, the claim is modified into an a priori claim in order to definitionally exclude the undesirable counterexample. The modification is signaled by the use of non-substantive rhetoric such as "true", "pure", "genuine", "authentic", "real", etc.

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

They also need to include ANSI to the chat, because I for one, miss ansi art.

The CBM Charset had special graphics characters, also.

[Istelathis]

Goin back on the topic that I had so rudely sidestepped with mah shenanigans, the LL Viewer does have the capacity to turn off rendering, if you just want to use it as a chat.

I see the option to disable PBR as being rendered as well, if you want to play around with that.  I haven't experimented that much with it though.  You'll have to enable the advanced menu.

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

Goin back on the topic that I had so rudely sidestepped with mah shenanigans, the LL Viewer does have the capacity to turn off rendering, if you just want to use it as a chat.

I see the option to disable PBR as being rendered as well, if you want to play around with that.  I haven't experimented that much with it though.  You'll have to enable the advanced menu.

You have solved the dilemma! I bet it has an awesome frame rate!

[Istelathis]

Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

You have solved the dilemma! I bet it has an awesome frame rate!

I got 40 more feeps!  

[Sid Nagy]

2 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

I got 40 more feeps!  

Have you already figured out how to spend those?

[Istelathis]

Just now, Sid Nagy said:

Have you already figured out how to spend those?

I am going to hold on to them, and hope they appreciate in value.  I'm not so sure how much interest feeps accumulate though, hopefully it pays off in the long run.

[Extrude Ragu]

20 minutes ago, Cloud Python said:

I see you couldn't be factually correct so instead opted to try to be "morally correct", making using of flaming language and buzzwords.
No part of my statement contains any form of misinformation, otherwise you would have been able to point it and correct it, instead the best you could do was this...

Meanwhile in the real world...

 

The process for making proper blinn phong bakes is 'not as simple as' hitting a button in blender. This is naive approach that produces incorrect results.

If one is creating PBR materials correctly, one is likely making use of trim sheets and hot-spot techniques to save VRAM.

What this means first off is that a good  optimised PBR textured object will have a UV map that is incompatible with blinn phong, necessitating the creation of a second copy of the object, and manually creating a UV map designed for blinn phong materials.

Blinn Phong diffuse bakes rarely come out of blender correctly and require color and lighting correction due to the baked lighting.

A creator who is creating proper PBR materials is likely leaning heavily on normal maps to control shading and the object will look broken without a normal map and specular material.

Both the normal map and specular exported out of blender are not directly fully compatible with SL and require channel packing and extra bakes to look correct, this is because the Alpha Channel in SecondLife for normal maps and specular maps are used to modulate environment reflection and glossiness. This is a process that usually involves either specialist packing software or Photoshop. Because Blender can only bake roughness, and not glossiness, every single roughness bake has to be inverted in a photo editor for Blinn Phong.

Creators that are selling clothes etc usually have more than one texture variant, and often sell items with multiple textures. To put this into perspective for you, my recent tennis set required me to bake +800 unique textures in order to compile all of the options you see in the HUD. This is not a fast process when it is done correctly.

You think you know what you're talking about. But you don't. You present something simple without acknowledging the true complexities of proper creation.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Istelathis said:

I am going to hold on to them, and hope they appreciate in value.  I'm not so sure how much interest feeps accumulate though, hopefully it pays off in the long run.

Maybe you can spend feeps on LITs at the SC?

[Istelathis]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Maybe you can spend feeps on LITs at the SC?

Anubis will never go for that, he likes to see me suffer.  There was a bot that LL had replaced him with, that was much nicer and gave me a LIT, but seeing that Linden Lab is a force of evil and all, they ensured it would never happen again 😡  They removed the bot, and put the old Anubis back, now he just sits there, staring into oblivion.  But, I did get my daily tokens back, which was cool. 

[Love Zhaoying]

5 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

There was a bot that LL had replaced him with, that was much nicer and gave me a LIT, but seeing that Linden Lab is a force of evil and all, they ensured it would never happen again 😡

Translation: You corrupted the bot somehow, and it was never the same again!

[gwynchisholm]

57 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Peeve: SL needs C64-style Sprites with collision detection, etc.

Behold neohabitat

an online virtual world game for the C64, a reworking of the original Habitat from 1985, the first MMO

[SandorWren]

9 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Cinn's position is, I suspect, that of most people -- they can run PBR at acceptable levels, most of the time, but have to throttle their settings in some situations.

Caitlin, however, is obviously one of those (*checks notes*) "three or four people" in SL who can't run a PBR viewer at all, or not to a degree that it is functional. It's a useful reminder of the knock-on effect that these performance issues are likely to have: it's not just Caitlin who is being impacted here. You have a very good computer, and can run a PBR viewer without problems, but your SL is going to be very detrimentally impacted nonetheless if Caitlin suddenly finds she can't run any viewer at all.

That's the impression I get from Cinny too. She'll switch to the older FS occasionally. But she doesn't complain about it much to me. So reasonably good for now. But who knows what viewer updates will eventually bring?

Caitlin is on a Mac though, and she's had to wait up to 20 minutes for things to load with the PBR FS.  She doesn't want to fiddle too much with FS settings, in case something messes up her computer. I can't help her either, as I don't know anything about MACs. At least Cinny is on a PC, and I CAN help her with issues.

My high end PC is only as good as the weakest one in my circle. And yes, my SL WOULD be very detrimentally affected.  PBR  really isn't important. Caitlin Is!!! So I am definitely NOT pushing for PBR!!! 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

26 minutes ago, SandorWren said:

Caitlin is on a Mac

There IS an in-world FS group for Mac users that I know has been very busy working through, and helping people with, the Mac-specific issues that have arisen with the new FS release. I have a friend who has made use of it.

She could also consider Alchemy, which is available to Mac users. I can't speak to the Mac version myself, but the Windows version is very good. It lacks some of the functionality of FS, but more is being added regularly (Area Search is coming, I've been told). It's definitely faster than FS, and it looks good.

29 minutes ago, SandorWren said:

My high end PC is only as good as the weakest one in my circle.

Nicely put.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

33 minutes ago, SandorWren said:

My high end PC is only as good as the weakest one in my circle.

Have you tried white listing your friends on your anti-virus?

Old friends simply don't meet the minimum specification for SL, we must embrace progress!

You might need to upgrade to modern industry standard friends, this should only cost you a few hundred dollars per friend.

 

[SandorWren]

3 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Have you tried white listing your friends on your anti-virus?

Old friends simply don't meet the minimum specification for SL, we must embrace progress!

You might need to upgrade to modern industry standard friends, this should only cost you a few hundred dollars per friend.

 

How would whitelisting my friends on my PC help them with their computers? And my friends are NOT replaceable!!! 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

4 minutes ago, SandorWren said:

How would whitelisting my friends on my PC help them with their computers? And my friends are NOT replaceable!!! 

Zali is joking, Sandor. She's suggesting that the computing requirements for PBR viewers is in essence putting a "price tag" on our friendships there, because you or they may need to buy a better computer or upgrade one in order to actually engage with them in-world.