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.

They will work together, but PBR is mainly for the textures and how they reflect light from the environment. "PBR Viewer" just means it's capable of seeing those materials and how they work with the environment. Unfortunately it seems there are some extra steps to ensure they all work together - which gets into 'game engine' and 'game developer' level interaction and knowledge - that is going to leave a lot of normal users behind. These users are not going to learn it, they'll just leave, hence why I keep promoting "It better work out of the box", or have fallbacks, or don't do it at all then.

One needs to consider if the PBR (texture sets) are appearing as they should, without anything else being needed to the scene. It's not just about whether a "PBR Viewer" works for one person or not technically - but that it works 'out of the box' and displays properly PBR-textured items correctly. As you can see with these screenshots, I think it's a very nice design, but what pops right now to me is the top one, as it has more depth, shadows and detail. Not sure why these pics were posted and to show: as I seen no PBR-materialed objects in the scene - many of them seem to be the most commonly used 'baked' single textures. And that could still be fine to keep the texture load of the sim down.. But with PBR (which works with proper texturing), I would expect a shine to the water pond, some wetness patches on the stone work, some reflectivity of slight metal on the bed of rocks, some kind of light information from everything that tells me it is actually being lit by the environment first ( I see nothing) and by any other light sources in the scene. With PBR you can tell a story. The walking stones would first have a base material of stone/concrete, but then in further texturing could allow splashes on them, even wet footprints, that show that 'someone recently was standing in that pool and just walked across these stepping stones'. Or that not only with the passage of time moss has grown on the pond walls, but also dirt on the bottom parts, each having their own combo of color, metal(yes/no), and roughness. Nice scene, nice assets, they look great, but I don't see a "PBR" scene at all.

And that's the long and short of it. People want stuff working out of the box, and that's all that matters in the end to them. People just want to play a game, not join a cult.

I agree. It looks so boring and a pain the butt with all the reflection probes in rooms, encompassing in a box, etc all the weirdo things just to get it work, and not working 'out of the box' for a new user.. Makes me barf from boredom, actually.

We could use Steam Statistics Hardware page if we want a good look. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

It's always good for people to actively look to see what alternatives are out there. Second Lifers can be quite cultish in many ways: One trait being gaslighting each other into thinking "There is nowhere else! Where are you going to go?" - when there are more and more platforms with similar opportunities coming up every day. A cult always tries to keep its followers by telling them they would be crazy to leave... Of course, it needs to work on making better what attracted people to it in the first place. We may see a typical 'spike of curiosity', because of the shiny appearance, but all the same problems and obstructions will be in the way as before - and they won't stay. That's all technical terms you're using there, and boring to 99% of the people out there, who just want to come and dress like a wizard, have their own castle and throw spells at their friends and strangers and have mad, whacky fun. SL is a niche market. It attracts and caters to a tiny market of potential users and that will most likely never change. SL is more of an example of how "True Fans" (or cultists depending on how one wants to label it) can support a platform on their own, even if there isn't a lot of people. People can research the theory: Your brand doesn’t need followers. It needs fans Even if these forums do not represent the entire SL population, in general it's a bunch of people who go a lot deeper into a program/software to get what they want out of it - this is not the general population - who want to just come and have fun and do things and have it 'work right out of the box'. I've done the math. Although the results would have been different if I didn't invest 4 years into Sansar (which really boosted my skills with updated PBR, learned SP, MD and got me into Unity and Unreal workflows) - overall it's not even worth selling here. Creating new stuff and having results that would be worth the effort at this point is really sketchy. It's about $.20 an hour over time - which is fine as a bonus (if you're already making stuff and just upload a rendition to SL) - but as SL has many different workarounds, no animations so you have to script, now with setting up probes with products? WTF bla bla bla and so on.. Hell no. At best I am ceasing any production for SL until they figure it out. I am the last of a group of 25 leaving SL behind, or logging in less simply because it has failed to deliver to all of us the potential it promised us. For example, creating an optimized modular building that is super low LI, optimized textures using trim sheets, texel densities, proper PBR/BP workflows I believe is way overskilled for SL now (better for employee of game company) - all while people demand super low prices (top creators with low prices), demanding game developer level modify access levels - and paying a SL price for a game developers building set that would sell for $50-$150 a pop everywhere else... hmmm what makes more sense? SL is tough on creators for a number of reasons. I'm not going to list all the things, but just know between LL and some users it can really take all the fun out of it. Just see all the posts around here are like "You have to...", "You must!..." "You just have to put up with..." Huh? No This is not true. I am a mouthpiece that a naysayer can just handwave away as 'just one person whining", but I represent not only the views and opinions over time of myself, but 25 of my friends and probably more in the network who aren't here anymore and why. I stupidly have kept shooting my mouth off across all of LL's platforms to no avail. The problem in life and SL is that actually most people stay quiet. Just review what happens in general when anyone has anything critical of LL and the platform, what happens? Conversely there is a group who will never say anything because they have some skin in the game, and so will never recognize, support, agree with or even dare say anything critical - as their job(or angling for one) or status in the community, or livelihood could be in danger. IME, across all of LL' s platforms they've ever had, their actions have shown that this is not the case. In fact, I'd be so bold to say at this point in time: "LL doesn't want more users", because everything they do is to keep people out. I believe they are actually happy with the state of the platform - it's making money - and in general (As it was with Sansar), they (and some existing long time Residents) actually HATE the kind of players who could make them a success

PBR is just a set of textures. It's up to SL and their related viewers to represent it as intended. However, the current recommendation is to back up the PBR textures with a typical 'baked diffuse' texture as most are using now anyway (what people see if ALM turned off). LL is also recommending an ACES colorspace workflow - yet have very specific versioning requirements that are not up to date - and asking creators to change existing workflows to suit THEM. Once again wanting to be 'industry standard' but then introducting custom requirements, 'workarounds' and 'tweaks'. So far, bringing PBR under my normal workflow looks just fine without ACES - though I'm not that hard-headed that I won't experiment. Currently Unity and Unreal engines do NOT require ACES workflow, which gives them wide appeal to tons of creators - and they will switch to ACES inside the engine when needed (if at all) for a project. Sansar accepted standard PBR just fine, with no special requirements, just to add another LL-related note.

It's not about 'better clothing creators' or some 'exceptional skill' needed - as always it has to do with LL and how SL is working right now. Unless you made PBR everything on Sansar, as many of us have, all without all the prerequisite requirements and current workarounds and obscure 'game-developer' level things you guys are talking about... I dunno what else to say. You missed out. All of this seems so stupid and convoluted, I'm wondering why I'm the only one with the 'it should work out of the box' statements. The Stockholm Syndrome here and blindness to the needs of unskilled users out there is not going to end well for this place. Ask me why I and others have avatars, accessories, buildings, furniture, clothing, lighting, landscapes, alien stuff, earth stuff, scifi stuff, dungeon stuff, high poly stuff, low poly stylized, and entire worlds in Sansar, but you don't see any of it here.. Yeah.. that's how easy PBR is when a platform is fit for purpose, and it just works.. for everyone. (Keep in mind I'm talking everything in context of PBR and ease of use) Lots of information here on the forums.. and I recognize that. But noone wants to pour through forums and Discord channels to find out why they can't see PBR or others aren't seeing it as intended. No, I won't educate people on PBR, or 'have to include probes with items, etc' YIKES People should lament, people should point out why this is half-baked at this point in time, because they're not wrong. It's not PBR. its PBR on Second Life, is the issue. I appreciate that you don't take my statments personally, and see my posts as they are: commenting on ideas, not on you specifically I notice that and thanks.

It's not our job to inform users, it's Linden Labs.