LL Reaches Out on PBR

[Rita Vhargon]

6 hours ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

The fact that they're rushing to try and fix things and improve performance for those having trouble disproves a lot of the recent claims that they're actively trying to push out users on older hardware.

 🙄  and the other horrible advice that was thrown at distressed people coming here looking for help. Most just wanted acknowledgement that they were not alone, but the way they were treated by regular posters here was horrible. Telling these poor people that they are 'whining', and to go pull out that old GPU and just put in a new one, so easy, and thus making people feel inadequate because they don't want to and are not as confident or clever as the advisors. And telling people that 'I'm doing fine and so are all my friends so you have to step up and sort out your issues or quit or keep whining. THIS is how people were treated. Well, these regular posters who mostly ganged up and supported each other with likes and hearts were wrong,  because LL are taking the blame, owning the problem and trying to fix it.

It's a joke that anyone even thought LL only wanted people who can afford high end computers, and the rest of their customers can say goodbye. 

[Arielle Popstar]

8 minutes ago, HeathcliffMontague said:

Yep, it really only came to the surface with FS, I suppose.

Just hoping it isn't one of Firestorm's popular features that is causing the problem with it being slower then the official viewer. 

[Luna Bliss]

6 hours ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

the fact that they're rushing to try and fix things and improve performance for those having trouble disproves a lot of the recent claims that they're actively trying to push out users on older hardware. 

So true...it does eliminate that paranoid theory...I didn't think of that...

[Luna Bliss]

I see socks, socks, everywhere socks...

[HeathcliffMontague]

9 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

I see socks, socks, everywhere socks...

I just see LL taking a step in the right direction. Positive thoughts  

[AmeliaJ08]

I'm afraid I still see a lot of people kidding themselves about what is even possible.

I think a very simple test is this: if your computer could run SL at acceptable (whatever that is to you) frame rates with ALM enabled then you should be fine with PBR.

If it couldn't then you won't ever be able to have a nice time with a PBR viewer. I can't really see how this would change, on certain hardware the PBR viewer even performs better due it doing more on the fast GPU, you will see higher GPU utilization and higher frame rates vs older viewers so it is worth checking but please people, don't expect this to work well on iGPUs. It won't, it might be enough but it's probably not enough since nearly all of these already choke with ALM enabled.

I'm curious to see what exactly is going to change to better accomodate iGPUs and low end hardware but suspect the result probably still won't be acceptable to everyone. The biggest issue with this is that you won't have the option of just turning it off and dropping back to 2003 rendering like you have done until now, I don't think that is going to change.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 24 by AmeliaJ08

[Rita Vhargon]

5 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

However, a lot of what went on inworld and here on the forums and the way it was expressed went way beyond making their issues known and was very unnecessary.  I understand why and even sympathise but there's a valuable lesson in all this for those who choose to see it.

Are you saying people complained too much? If you are, I beg to differ. As someone pointed out, it took the Firestorm release and the meltdown that followed for LL to finally pay serious attention.

There is a valuable lesson here, and that is for regular forum posters to put themselves in other's shoes when they desperately seek your help. And use common sense. It was obvious that there was a major problem, hence the strong flow of posts and new topics flooding the forums. 

[Luna Bliss]

with the new PBR my rainbow socks even look brighter!  Thank you LL!

[HeathcliffMontague]

21 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

I'm afraid I still see a lot of people kidding themselves about what is even possible.

I think a very simple test is this: if your computer could run SL at acceptable (whatever that is to you) frame rates with ALM enabled then you should be fine with PBR.

If it couldn't then you won't ever be able to have a nice time with a PBR viewer. I can't really see how this would change, on certain hardware the PBR viewer even performs better due it doing more on the fast GPU, you will see higher GPU utilization and higher frame rates vs older viewers so it is worth checking but please people, don't expect this to work well on iGPUs. It won't, it might be enough but it's probably not enough since nearly all of these already choke with ALM enabled.

I'm curious to see what exactly is going to change to better accomodate iGPUs and low end hardware but suspect the result probably still won't be acceptable to everyone. The biggest issue with this is that you won't have the option of just turning it off and dropping back to 2003 rendering like you have done until now, I don't think that is going to change.

 

 

 

 

iGPUs isn't necessarily low-end hardware. OK, in an SL context it often is, I'll give you that, but just putting it out there. And people with ARM Mac-a-likes are struggling with DOOM  

Yes, some people seriously need to upgrade from their Office Dell. But that's an old stereotype if there ever was one. 

[WeFlossDaily]

SL would be stronger with multiple rendering pipelines.

PBR doesn't look bad. But it's too computational intensive for those of us on low-end machines.

Forward-Render is out friend and we still need it. ALM allows ppl to control their experience with it.

ASCII in theory should out perform Forward-Render by a factor of almost 8 just due to the pixel distortion required.

A Rotoscopic type of renderer could also provide a way to help ppl on the low-end experience SL with limited V-RAM.

[Paul Hexem]

1 hour ago, Rita Vhargon said:

 🙄  and the other horrible advice that was thrown at distressed people coming here looking for help. 

No they weren't.

23 minutes ago, Rita Vhargon said:

 It was obvious that there was a major problem

No it wasn't.

When someone comes to the forums saying things like "end of an era, SL is dead in two years" or "most computers in SL are 20 years old" or "only a NASA super computer can run this, everyone is leaving!", that's not asking for help or pointing out a problem. That's being a melodramatic and ridiculous, which is why the replies were also ridiculous.

The actual helpful thread exists. Nobody is using it nearly as much as the melodramatic ones. 

[Love Zhaoying]

29 minutes ago, Rita Vhargon said:

As someone pointed out, it took the Firestorm release and the meltdown that followed for LL to finally pay serious attention.

They would have fixed it without all the drama. I promise!

[Chelsea Hansen]

Just now, Paul Hexem said:

melodramatic

/me hates melodrama.  Distorts everything beyond hope.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Paul Hexem said:

When someone comes to the forums saying things like "end of an era, SL is dead in two years" or "most computers in SL are 20 years old" or "only a NASA super computer can run this, everyone is leaving!"

This talk is normal in the forums..

[WeFlossDaily]

Here are two examples of what I'm talking about.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

39 minutes ago, Rita Vhargon said:

Are you saying people complained too much? If you are, I beg to differ. As someone pointed out, it took the Firestorm release and the meltdown that followed for LL to finally pay serious attention.

I think this is objectively true. But then it could hardly be otherwise -- the point of feedback, even if it is sometimes "whiny and complaining," is to provide information, and if everyone had quietly adopted the new viewers there'd likely have been no need for LL to now look into improving performance.

39 minutes ago, Rita Vhargon said:

There is a valuable lesson here, and that is for regular forum posters to put themselves in other's shoes when they desperately seek your help. And use common sense. It was obvious that there was a major problem, hence the strong flow of posts and new topics flooding the forums.

Also true, but there is likewise some truth to the suggestion, made by both Fluffy and Gabriele, that a great many of the complaints were a form of rage-posting. Those still should have been taken as an index of the severity of the problems PBR was causing some people, but inevitably rage-posting begets rage-posting. In the final analysis, flouncing and "LL SUX!" posts are also likely counter-productive.

Key thing is that LL is now recognizing the problems, and working to do something about it. And after all, they are hardly the first corporation to pay insufficient attention to the impact of change. (New Coca Cola, anyone?)

 

Edited August 24 by Scylla Rhiadra
Typo

[Luna Bliss]

4 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

8 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

When someone comes to the forums saying things like "end of an era, SL is dead in two years" or "most computers in SL are 20 years old" or "only a NASA super computer can run this, everyone is leaving!"

This talk is normal in the forums..

It's a funny hyperbolic joke, but it's really not true. We only see it surface here and there when problems arise.

[Luna Bliss]

27 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

56 minutes ago, Rita Vhargon said:

 It was obvious that there was a major problem

No it wasn't.

When someone comes to the forums saying things like "end of an era, SL is dead in two years" or "most computers in SL are 20 years old" or "only a NASA super computer can run this, everyone is leaving!", that's not asking for help or pointing out a problem. That's being a melodramatic and ridiculous, which is why the replies were also ridiculous.

The actual helpful thread exists. Nobody is using it nearly as much as the melodramatic ones. 

I don't really understand Astrology, but apparently a lot of major stuff was going on.  I may look into Astrology now if another major correlation happens between super melodrama and the skies...

....es joke....Zal never knows when I'm joking..

Edited August 24 by Luna Bliss

[Love Zhaoying]

How DARE LL have an "unusable" release after 21 years of "experience"! There's just no excuse!

..see how ridiculous that sounds..?

[Zalificent Corvinus]

18 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

They would have fixed it without all the drama. I promise!

No, they would have assumed it was "all good" just like they did when they decided not to fix it, and release it 2-3 YEARS too early.

"Fixing" things costs money, they don't do that unless there's the possibility of NOT "fixing" things costing them MORE money.

 

If nobody had complained about PBR, and if nobody had migrated from Fail-Viewer-PBR Fubar, to non PBR TPV's, and if nobody had complained about Bloatstorm 7 ruined-By-PBR, they would have done exactly NOTHING.

 

"working as intended"

 

[Luna Bliss]

2 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

25 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

They would have fixed it without all the drama. I promise!

No, they would have assumed it was "all good" just like they did when they decided not to fix it, and release it 2-3 YEARS too early.

News Flash: They pay little attention to chronic complainers on the forum.

[Toothless Draegonne]

A long while before PBR was even a pipe-dream, most of the people I spoke to who "couldn't use ALM", were actually "couldn't run with shadows". Turning ALM off also turned shadows and projectors off, so of course, that translated into higher FPS.

Now there was some odd regression with performance that happened during PBR's development which I'm sure the Lab is poking around with. I know the ROG Ally certainly used to be able to run the pre-release PBR viewers at a medium to high setting, and that's an iGPU, albeit a more modern one. It still can, but it'll probably splutter and die in really busy areas.

And you can still disable a bunch of the more demanding things that PBR enables. It's just that now, you get to find out that you were always a chrome-dome with an extra-shiny head, regardless of settings. If the performance regression gets dealt with, hopefully the whole low-end-computers issue can be finally put to bed.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

28 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

If nobody had complained about PBR, and if nobody had migrated from Fail-Viewer-PBR Fubar, to non PBR TPV's, and if nobody had complained about Bloatstorm 7 ruined-By-PBR, they would have done exactly NOTHING.

It would be interesting to know more about how the decision to respond was arrived at.

On the one hand, what is said in the forum is not entirely irrelevant, and pretty clearly some Lindens do monitor what's happening and being said here. When LL decided to reduce the group slots for free accounts a number of years ago, the very loud protests here were, I am pretty sure, instrumental in the rolling back of that plan. And when Bonniebots became a thing there, LL cared enough about what was being said here to peremptorily shut down at least seven threads on the subject, and start throwing around suspensions.

On the other hand, complaints about PBR have been roiling this place for months and months, and apparently had relatively little impact on LL's decision making process. (And in-world, as I've noted, complaints were being shut down in the Phoenix-Firestorm Preview group chat as well.)

I don't think the noise here had no effect, but I suspect that it only became really important once LL and FS had some actual data demonstrating that they had a problem on their hands, possibly in the form of concurrency numbers, and definitely in terms of adoption of the new FS PBR viewer.

I don't think that the "whiners and complainers" were taken very seriously until that happened. But they did, I'm sure, provide amplification and context for the bad news that was appearing in the raw numbers.

Edited August 24 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Rufferta Mainlander]

I updated to the new SL viewer and the changes seem to have helped.

One problem was that the interface windows were all so big I could hardly see the screen. I found the answer to shrinking them here. 

Fingers crossed.

[Luna Bliss]

1 hour ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

don't expect this to work well on iGPUs.

yeah in the first SL viewer update they said it would work better with those having the integrated card and I do wonder why. I can't test it myself as I have a dedicated card, but I was able to load more of my alt dancers at the same time so was an improvement over Firestorm.

They say the next update will help fps, and I also wonder why.