Codex Alpha

True, but I hate rating anything 5 stars, because nothing is perfect. Back in my naive and idealistic days, I'd try to leave reviews that were fair and insightful, but anything less than 5 stars was met with grief (or from others back when they could comment too without purchase). One particular review I said "It's great, but one can only rotate by 15 degrees, so it limits options, and therefore hard to get exact poses", and I was griefed by the creator, who called me stupid, etc until I removed the review. Another was the same with the criticism (and to me helpful) " This warehouse door opens, but there is something blocking the way inside, so you will get stuck trying to get in" (which was a collision, but I was unfamiliar). Again, personal messages inworld getting all mad at me, how it was unfair, then "I will give you refund then"... In all cases, I was never about getting a refund, but offering a fair review, and to offer any issues so that people could make an informed decision - and if it was something fixable, to get it fixed. Why would I want a refund? I like the product, but this is where it is falling short for me! I even had a creator claim that I was unfair to give her creations less than 5 ratings because "i'm disabled, autistic!" etc. Over time, I just stopped rating things altogether. For me, if I can't put up an honest review without someone flipping out, then I'm not interested in giving ANY review, or ANY rating at all. By the time LL released Sansar, with their 5 star rating system, it was the same there. Anything less than 5 stars and you'd get called out.. .the person would complain in the Discord and lose their s*** because "someone rated my product lowr than 5 stars, what's wrong with it! ahhhh" and even others "If people are going to rate me low, I'm leaving Sansar!", etc. People are ADDICTED to the modern likes/thumbsup/love/5star only system, so it has become rather irrelevant, and I would encourage LL to come up with other ways to help people make a decision to what to buy or not.

No, it's a very real change and difference in entering SL in 2009 vs 2019 or 2024. The initial welcome and attitude even in Sansar in 2019 by its denizen of SL infiltrators also set the stage for much less friendlier introduction, much less carefree, and an atmosphere of 'you can't do this you can't do that' and 'stop that, stop this' that definitely changed. I am the LAST of 25 to remain here... the rest are gone and never to return. Do you actually think I've always been this jaded and now almost hostile to SL and LL in general now just because? My current darkened outlook is the result of years of observing and experiencing behaviour both from users and staff that formulates my worldview (or virtualview he he). Don't worry, I can't act this way for long, as it is not me at the core - so I will probably leave the platform soon - because the magic of excitement is gone now, and hopefully to be rekindled somewhere else AT THE START OF SOMETHING and not at the end - trying to build something awesome over a dead, rotting corpse.

5-star rating systems are irrelevant nowadays. 5 stars has become the new “average” or “normal” rating, with the lower stars indicating increasing levels of displeasure. Read: https://peakperformancedigital.com/5-stars-or-bust-why-the-star-rating-system-for-reviews-is-broken/

No loss. No loss at all.

Occlusion [R] / Roughness [G] / Metalness [B] This texture is composed of 3 unrelated grayscale images stored in 3 different color channels of an RGB texture. [R]: (Ambient) Occlusion is lighting data, removing the need to bake down shadows on to the Base Color map. Note that white (<1,1,1>) means no occlusion is applied, and black (<0,0,0>) applies full occlusion. [G]: Roughness data ranges from 0 to 1.0, but the actual range of physical surfaces ranges from approximately 0.05 to 0.985. No surface is perfectly smooth or completely rough. The rougher a surface is the less mirror-like it behaves. [B]: Metalness values are mostly black or white. Either the material is a conductive metal like copper, or it’s a non-metal like fabric. 0.0 is Non-Metallic, 1.0 is Metallic. There are almost no materials with gray metalness values. PBR Material Composition - Second Life Wiki

Oh look another one.

With the formula 196,345 | 2 | 2 | 2

Okay, but they'll laugh all the way until there's 5 users left... Not one person has claimed it was a majority, and moaning is okay. Moaning tells us that something needs to be improved. Framing people's concerns and issues as 'whining', 'complaining' or 'bit**ing' is a way for some to hand-wave and dismiss others and therefore avoid facing the core issue. It's the best way. There's a big difference between "We can't do that" vs "We don't want to do that, because what we want is all that matters. Don't like it - there's the door!" mentality

And on other related forums, yep. They frame any criticism as 'negative', but that's very common from fanboi groups.. and cults

"You're over-reacting" "You're too sensitive" "Don't be negative, only talk about good stuff" "It is you who is toxic" "I'm smarter than you so you should listen to me" These are phrases used by manipulators, NPDs, cult leaders, and their flying monkeys A lot of my battles and opinions may not even be things I personally suffer from, but I'm representing the average user - my friends, family and others - who will have no idea about this stuff, and are NOT here currently because of the same kind of attitudes and tech difficulty , or lack of documentation - and lack of CARE.. so they're off playing something else..

The current recommendation by LInden Labs is to use a PBR texture set + baked diffuse background. This is actually the best choice, IMO, because again MOST OF THE OBJECTS I studied in game even by 'top' creators they were all using ONLY Baked Diffuse textures (maybe not in the original product I dunno, but in the world yes). If a creator actually used Blinn-Phong textures and correctly, all the people who had ALM turned off would see possible junk. Just color with no detail at all, AND they'd have to download 3 textures anyway. SOooooo. It would make sense to adopt their PBR system, BUT fall back to the typical baked diffuse. I will NOT be making 2 sets of textures sets, sorry. I will probably be alone as usual, as I always take action instead of just talking about it (alone as usual) - but IF I move forward this .. IF.. there are other issues making me think it's not worth my time anymore (re: not respecting new users) - I'll be holding Linden Lab to their professed goal. PBR with fallback to a baked texture.. Or maybe I wont do that either.. A lot of my optimized 'industry standard' textures that I took a lot of time to learn and custom make don't work as a baked texture.. soooo I will have to see.

It's a very common phenomena on smaller platforms, where there will be a group of elitists who will defend the game/software/platform to the death against all newcomers and criticisms, and can really be a force of toxicity that can keep a place from growing. It's documented and even included in modern "Community Manager" courses. LL platforms suffer from this immensely, and even if we cannot fairly equate correlation to causation - my observances being on their platforms has the same behaviour - to their massive detriment (in part) - and goes all the way up to the top.

With the caveat: PBR in SL... People who might have problems here may have no problems in other platforms that have long been fit for purpose in PBR. We really need to keep this in perspective in the context of PBR in Second Life. These people are going to defend this platform until it has 5 users left.

Nothing is going to change this necessity, for the new user - who is lucky if they can even figure out how to walk. The LL Viewer is just fine for the starting user. It's only for folks who are interested in probing into the Developer areas and Debug Settings are going to be attracted to Firestorm. I just happened to try Firestorm after looking at everything inworld the slow way - with the shortcut keys.. then appreciating that Firestorm had it all built-in and available, and that's when I use it. I learned a lot about SL and it's top creators by information on their objects using Firestorm, that was simply not available in the LL viewer. I'm not the average user though, and I'm not an elitist tech snob, so I always keep the average normal user in consideration for everything. This argument doesn't matter. If people are having problems, they're having problems. When those users are average users, they're not going to be able to explain their situation in the terms and conditions that you may be familiar with. Computer systems vary; so experiences will vary. I"m not sure why you and others keep repeating over and over "Well it works for me"... so what? Hey guess what, it works for me too.. but who cares. It's the new user that all of this has to work properly for. Don't make me pull out the Ukelele and accompany the "Kumbayah" crowd.. or if they like a more rock rendition... "It's slow a**, It's f***'d up, I'm losing my mind but EVERYTHING'S FINE!"

No. There are extra steps that users will have to do to get the 'scene' to work correctly. eg. Second Life - How to Set Up Reflection Probes for PBR Users will have to set this up on their land. Also there are further posts and discussions that they will also have to be set up inside created buildings, and sometimes situations will need be enclosed in an entire box, like a skybox - depending on what is needed. When I use the phrase 'work out of the box', I mean it. Sansar worked out of the box. A user had to do nothing but start plopping down stuff into their scene. Everything takes skill, yes. But these forums are filled with techy nerds and game developers that couldn't make anything outside of SL who keep telling people 'all you got to do is buy a video card' and they're missing the point.