[::Goshuin2024::御朱印プロジェクト始動！]

Had fun adventure~

https://www.flickr.com/photos/147479869@N04/albums/72177720313664402/

 

 

[What new name would you give Second Life?]

I'd simply call it

Worlds

We're so many things to so many different people

[Amusing pic on the Splash page]

I have autoplay disabled in my browser, so there is just a permanently disembodied arm lol

[Somebody finally gets a mesh lowest LOD right.]

On 12/23/2023 at 7:03 PM, animats said:

Ouch. I seem to have upset some people. Sorry.

My point here is that LOD transitions in SL tend not to be invisible. There's a lot of flickering in the distance in SL. I'm looking at how to fix that. Most game LOD systems do a cross-fade, rather than a cut, on an LOD switch. SL viewers do not cross-fade, but they could. I'm looking at whether it's worth the trouble to implement. The illusion only holds up if the different LODs match well.

Chicken and the egg situation. If there are crossfades, it's more worthwhile to be more careful with lods since the payoff will be greater than without crossfades.

[Time for Mainland 2.0]

-- Personal thoughts --

People's expectations of virtual worlds go up every year thanks to other platforms and the progression of technology.

We're never going to use up all of the abandoned land on the original mainland - The quantity is there, but the quality is absolutely not. Land developed ~20 years ago does not meet peoples expectations in 2024. There is insufficient political willpower to impose a covenant on the original mainland or enforce it - Trying to change the original mainland is therefor IMO a fools game.

Premium land is popular because the surroundings around ones home don't suck, but premium land is slowly turning the perception of SecondLife into a retirement community due to the fact it is whole islands of nothing but homes with absolutely nothing to see or do. If everyone moves to premium homes, exploration in SecondLife can be pronounced dead, because there is absolutely nothing to see or do in premium land.

A demand that is going completely uncovered is land for business. There are arguably zero attractive places to set up a shop in SecondLife that aren't private regions.

-- At the same time --

If we do a whole new continent, it's going to take a very long time to populate, as most residents have somewhere they go now. Although the quality will inevitably attract new residents, it would be a very long slog to fill a new continent. We're not exactly in a boom period.

-- So what do? --

My opinion is land improvement should be a multi-pronged approach, involving the de-boring-isation of premium land, and rather than create a whole new continent, make much smaller, higher quality development areas.

-- de-boring-isation of premium land --

There is zero reason to walk out of your premium home very far as it stands. I propose converting some of the linden homes (Say, 1 or 2 per region) to business premium land. This could be a small shop, a club, a park etc. . LL would provide the buildings in keeping with the expectations of premium residents.

The covenant will be strict about lag, noise and external signage so as to not annoy neighbors. When neighbors complain, LL should more often than not side with residents than shop owners, to make it clear that business is 'guest' in this land.

Shop owners could optionally choose to provide car/bicycle parking/rez to encourage exploration. It would count towards land tier, which would simultaneously help fill up the smaller premium plots and also help LL sell more pl00s subscriptions.

Additionally, street names and wayfinding signage shall be added to premium land, to help stop the whole place making you feel like a dementia patient who accidentally walked out of your care home.

-- Smaller, high quality development areas --

Rather than make  a whole huge continent that will take forever to populate I'd make much smaller, more concentrated new land developments in the style OP suggests with loose-but-not-no restrictions. Perhaps do these developments either side of the existing premium land so as to sandwich the more boring area with more interesting stuff either side, which should also get people out of their homes exploring more, bumping into each other and making the place actually have some life.

By keeping the development small, we ensure that at any given time it is bustling, we only expand it as it gets full.

I ran out of energy to keep fleshing out this plan around here but it's a starting point

 

 

 

 

 

 

[VERY NOOB QUESTION: Nomenclature for PBR Component Files]

Just realised I skim read and missed that you actually mentioned the metallic factor yourself. Whoops But yeah, it's set automatically, no need to fiddle

[VERY NOOB QUESTION: Nomenclature for PBR Component Files]

17 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said:

In this case your packer will create a metallic channel with a white color though, right? Which is metal, which means you want to set the metallic factor of the PBR material to 0.0 in-world.

Or your wood will be treated as metal. 🙂

The material will actually display correctly in-world.

GLTF Materials have an additional variable called `metallic factor` which is separate to the image and controls how much the image is used. When the slot is left empty, gltf packer automatically sets this value to zero so your material will display correctly in-world.

However, just in case you did  want it to be metallic. It does actually set the channel in the image to white, which allows you to edit the material in-world and set the metallic factor to 1 to use it.

[VERY NOOB QUESTION: Nomenclature for PBR Component Files]

Just now, Scylla Rhiadra said:

What I suppose is confusing me is 1) where to load the AO/Roughness/Metal texture, or 2) whether I should leave it, and load "AO" and "Roughness" separately, and leave "Metallic" empty, or 3) whether I load all three of these (and if so, where does "AO/Roughness/Metal" go?).

The AO/Rough/Metal is a pre-packed image (aka. An ORM Map) - You wouldn't use this with GLTF Packer (You wouldn't pack something that has already been packed!)

In this case, you'd put AO in the occlusion slot, and Roughness in the Roughness slot. You'd leave Metallic empty. Only metallic materials come with a metalness map usually, which is why one isn't shown on the page.

[bulk gtlf materials]

What I think would be nice is if the texture uploader would look at the average color of a texture and if it's close enough to 'normal map blue' upload it lossless

[bulk gtlf materials]

14 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Are you saying normal maps use lossless compression if and only if they are imported as part of a PBR material?

Uploading textures individually or via bulk texture upload is always lossy. That was because up until PBR materials the loss was not really perceptible.

With PBR materials, the lossy normal map is very perceptible, so they made the gltf uploader upload lossless normal maps. Hence it's important to upload PBR materials as gltf files.

[2024 - Will LL finally fully acknowledge the Adult side of SL?]

Honestly speaking the 2024 roadmap doesn't sound all that interesting to me aside from maybe the GLTF Scene import/ Heirachy/Mirrors etc.

I can't say participating in an LL owned adult venue sounds like something I wanna do. Although to be honest adult themed places just make me feel a bit queasy in general.

As for AI stuff. Let me say I've already messed about with LLM's (Large Language Models) myself and even run LLM powered npc's in my region that I personally developed.

Quote

including experimental use of smart AI-driven chatbots to help greet, educate, and mentor newcomers

I'm telling you now I don't think this will end well. LLM's when they don't know something, they make ***** up (aka. Hallucination). They even hallucinate new facts when they do know the true information. All they are is autocomplete on steroids. Using AI LLM's in SecondLife is well placed for entertainment sure, and I've developed that in my own region. But for education? I don't see it ending so well.

[2024 - Will LL finally fully acknowledge the Adult side of SL?]

50 minutes ago, gwynchisholm said:

The more stuff thats in this, the better

This is what most new people and as mentioned, casual users, are looking at. *snip*

If you ask me, they should replace this dialog with this page, or at least link to it somewhere on the dialog. It'd help users find so many more places. (https://secondlife.com/destinations)

[Has Second Life a fleeting weakness or I'm just imagining things ?]

I think what we saw was the rise of people treating SL like an actual job, especially around corona.

The amount of new content went through the roof, and thus if you put something up on the market you basically get drowned out.

As creators started finding they couldn't get their items seen on the MP, they turned to events. Now events are also becoming just as spammy as the MP itself.

SL has evolved to have residents that now see SecondLife as a business and not a fun hobby, in turn that slowly makes things less nice for residents because it's not a nice feeling to live in a world where everyone and everything is trying to nickle and dime you.

[PBR: Ignorance is Strength]

23 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Bu it does seem as though I'm going to need to know how to use EEP settings, interior lighting, and reflection probes in order to make my view of my own structures and parcel look as they are supposed to -- and that, moreover, I'm going to have to rely upon the hope that those who own the places I visit will likewise study up on this so that I'm not immersed in darkness visible when I go there.

Your content won't go dark in the way OP's picture shows when you log into a PBR viewer.

At worst, under defaults, your existing content might have washed out shadows, which is a valid criticism of the new PBR renderer, I don't much like the way it does that with legacy content myself. But I don't think you'll find it to be a show-stopper.

If you did want to make your existing house extra shiny, yes you'd have to study PBR, set up some probes and a new sky to get the best out of it, but if you just want to enjoy your house as it is the way you always have - No, I don't think you'd need to make any changes.

For most residents, they won't have to learn PBR to enjoy it. When they buy a new PBR enabled home, the creator will have set up reflection probes for them. Likewise I expect premium homes will eventually be updated to have probes.

 

[PBR: Ignorance is Strength]

9 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Google Translate was of no assistance in helping me understand any of what you say here.

I worry that this pretty much sums up why the average SL resident is going to feel cast adrift and lost by PBR.

He's talking about the guts of the system and some of the tweaks LL could make. It's techno talk.

Most residents also don't know what a vertex buffer is, a draw call or texel density means, but it hasn't stopped them enjoying mesh.

[PBR: Ignorance is Strength]

2 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

That's not true. Stop misinterpreting/misrepreseting things here and twisting my words. For me you're going on ignore. Bye.

Your very first screenshot, the one you were complaining about shows that you set the environment to the new PBR Midday.

You then go on to state:-

Quote

here are two snapshots taken with the building's reflection probe set to Ambiance 0 and 1

Which means you have a reflection probe in the building, something that won't be found in existing content. Are you saying the previous statement and screenshot are a lie? What

[PBR: Ignorance is Strength]

Lets put the doom and gloom to bed. Here's what lighting actually looks like under the defaults in PBR viewer as a new user would experience in a region that hasn't been updated for PBR. It doesn't go dark inside interiors. OP had to mess about with probes and ambience settings and change the windlight to the new PBR midday to make that happen.

[PBR: Ignorance is Strength]

8 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Now, imagine you were an actual noob, in your first hour of SL, and you'd witnessed part of the one hour night, and the sunrise, and then, the sun goes out for 2 hours, before magically reappearing for the sunset.

That's not what happens though is it. You've gobbled up OP's statement and accepted it as the truth, despite the screenshot is non default settings

[PBR: Ignorance is Strength]

Just now, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Where in this entire threat and I giving 'the work' so little chance?

It is in the loaded language

Quote

why does an abomination as Midday have

You intentionally write like this, to force me to agree with you that it's an abomination as though that is the accepted consensus.

In using this language, you declare you are not here to have a discussion, you're here to declare something to be broken. And you want to force me to agree with you, by forcing me to answer a question in which a new consensus is defined, despite I do not agree with it.

[How Far Into Realism Do WE Truly Want To GO?]

9 minutes ago, Conifer Dada said:

Since I came to SL in 2006 there have been many improvements intended to make the visual experience more realistic. These include:

Windlight environments with shadows - a definite improvement over the previous basic flat lighting.

Mesh - more realistic objects. Whether it's made avatars more realistic depends on the skill of the creator, how the owner adjusts the shape and what skin they use.

Projector lights - more realistic artificial lighting.

PBR - looks promising if there's no downside - e.g. lag.

I would put forward that none of these necessarily entail realism. It's perfectly possible to make a cartoony windlight, a cartoony mesh, cartoon style lighting, and stylized PBR textures.

All these do is allow for more creative control than anything else.

[PBR: Ignorance is Strength]

47 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Ok, let me rephrase the question then: why does an abomination as Midday have such a prominent place in the top menu bar?

Why declare something an abomination, before we have even figured out how it works?

People have been developing and testing PBR for SecondLife for years, why then, the instant it comes out, declare it broken after barely having had it for a week to try yourself?

Give it time. Mess about with it. The forum is an exciting place to create drama I know but it's rather quite unfortunate given the work that went into it to give it so little chance.

[PBR: Ignorance is Strength]

Just now, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Aren't you confusing creators with consumers here? Cosumers aren't trying to create anything, just rez stuff. And you can count on it that many have no clue what an environment even is. Point in case: just teleport around to some decently-visited sims. How many times did you have to adjust your environment because the shared environments were outright horrible? (I'm just permanently using my own.) Just talking about the past decade and a half here.

Again, consumers aren't being asked to do anything. Legacy is the default on old regions. Things won't break unless people ask them to break.

[PBR: Ignorance is Strength]

24 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

That's asking a lot of consumers for whom everything should look at least decent out of the box.

The point is, they're not being asked to do that. The region won't look like that unless they ask for it to look like that, at which point it's because they're trying to make something nicer than what they can make under the old legacy sky.

[PBR: Ignorance is Strength]

I could be completely wrong. I'm still figuring it out myself.

I think it's one of those things where if you just want to play SL without fiddling with probes and lighting the legacy setting is for you. Legacy is the default because the newer one takes a little work to set up a region for full PBR/ambient effects.

But if you wanna create something really cool then some time is going to be needed figuring out/transitioning to fully committing to full ambient lighting and the pay off will be your region will look newer/shinier in the end with a little bit of love and care.

We should be careful not to muddy the water by claiming the first screenshot is what most people see. There are people lurking the forum who will take any opportunity to jump up and down on the neck of any new SL features, claim it's ruining SL until it dies because that's what they do and then we can't have nice things. Most people will see Midday legacy on old regions, which looks fine.

 

[PBR: Ignorance is Strength]

My understanding is that Ambience controls the mix between environment ambient color (eg. The sky) and the overall contribution from lights within the probe volume (indirect lighting). Ambience 0 uses fully the sky color and nothing else, and 1 and above uses fully the lights and nothing else. The room might be getting darker because it is no longer picking up the sky at ambience 1.

Also, don't forget PBR introduces the concept of exposure. Your pupils dilate in a dark environment to let more light in and vice versa, so this can play a role in what you see I think.