Kurshie Muromachi

Still, just a small bit of data to think about even if it is a small group.

In regards to some of the discussion on gamers, VR and stuff, the New Paradigm Strategy Group did survey on gamers. It surveyed over 3000 people from the US in Q4 2019. You can check out the stats at the following link. https://research.npstrategygroup.com/gaming/

I was looking around and came across something that they could be utilized to do this dense mesh processing on the GPU. Something known as Mesh Shading. And, the RDNA2 on the PS5 incorporates Mesh Shading. The thing is that this tech has been around for a while. You can look here for more info. Here's a snippet... Here's a tech video of it. Update: Turns out that it may or may not be just Mesh Shading. Still unsure of this aspect. Anyways, looks like this thing refered to as virtualized geometry is actually something unique and was initially considered in 2009 in its rough form. There appears to be software rasterization of triangles involved. It's mentioned that 2 software rasterizers are running in async compute. They also do virtualized shadow maps. (Refer here) There's probably even more. It will be interesting to see more specifics come out.

My guess is that this is more to do with the production workflow (hence the Zbrush references) than it is to do with the target runtime. The target runtime is probably just automagic stuff within the limitation of hardware specifications. I thought the same thing. Last game I got (Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC) was quite a download. I can't imagine them distributing raw/full-rez content for target platforms. There's gotta be some optimization/crunching somewhere in the packaging. From the looks of the article I linked, they seem to be using traditional methods of delivery where needed but for higher-end stuff maybe they're considering the cloud for on-demand streaming. Flight Simulator 2020 has over 2 petabytes of content and they utilize Azure cloud for on-demand. So, maybe it works both ways. There's likely packaging optimization for target needs but also the option for on-demand streaming when needed for people who can handle it. In the article I linked above, it mentions the following... ... Anyways, I like the ideas for UE5. I think what they're trying to do here is what Blender Eevee is doing but on a game engine level with platform targeting + backwards compatibility. They're looking for ways to improve the production/iteration process because games do take a lot of effort and anything that can improve the workflow is a pretty big deal IMO. I imagine there's still going to be some handy work involved in some aspects like character animation where manual labor is critical to make a character work right. But I could see Zbrush models working more for static models. Would like to see more details on the production → gameplay process.

More information here with Q&A on specifics. Sounds awesome. https://venturebeat.com/2020/05/13/how-epic-games-is-tailoring-unreal-engine-5-to-make-next-gen-graphics-shine/view-all/

To add to Wulfie's response... There's a dev entry for providing search (F3) enhancement to find where something is in the menus. They have an example screen there so you can see what it looks like. I'm not sure what the status of this is in terms of making use of the feature and which version it's in. Something doesn't sound right. The toolbar should be at the left, tool settings at the top and status/info bar at the bottom. Do you have a link to this particular doc you're referring to? This can be set when you run Blender for the first time. You choose between that, search and playback timeline. You can change this in Preferences > Keymap > Spacebar Action. There's also the pie menu for those who like that feature. That's located in the same settings window but enable "Tab for Pie Menu" and I'd also recommend "Pie Menu on Drag". Not sure what you mean here. What exactly are you trying to disappear? If you're talking about an object, are you talking about deleting or hiding? Deleting - The usual X key or right-click Delete Hiding - The Outliner at the top-right with the eye icons is just for that. Just click the eyes. If you need it to be hidden from render, you click the Filter icon in the Outliner pane and enable the render icon. With those filter options set, you can then toggle those directly from the Outliner per object listed. I'm not a fan of this either. I would prefer having a built-in option to allow people to dump the errors to the built-in console so there isn't swapping between windows especially for people with single monitors. I did find a script that someone provided that may be of use to you and it's free. Tested it and it seems to work. If it's referring to the toolbar, it should be the toolbar on the left side. In this case, it may be helpful for you to expand/resize the toolbar so that you see labels. Hover your mouse just to the right of one of the icons and a drag cursor will appear. Expand it right till it shows labels for the icons (single column > dual column > labels). I can't help much with the DAE/SL related stuff.

I didn't check yesterday but the Lab has a new job up for a Systems Engineer. The jobs page was empty just some days ago so it's very recent. The posting seems to ask for things related to the AWS/cloud system.

If the cloud existed back then, and LL is working with the cloud, then a team dedicated to getting the cloud in place much sooner seems like an important focus in order to get further systems in place going into the future that rely on the cloud. You guys can disagree with me but I think the cloud for SL could've been officially in place years ealier. A lot of things tend to take a long time with LL because of priorities shifting around and lack of resources/heads to get things done.

Because it would've been released officially to the public sooner and what I was saying is dedicated focus, not just here and there at times.

Somehow I forsee Niran flipping his lid once again when this is released. But, expecting content creators to update their stuff based on the way things look... oof. Gonna wait and see just how bad this release will be. Anyways, watched the interview and something stands out... If SL is such a complicated architecture, then why didn't the cloud transition process start YEARS earlier? In 2012, Cloud Party was already officially using the cloud architecture to spin up/down instances when they were needed. I get CP was a new product and started the cloud up-front, but with SL being so complex, I think it would've been obvious to have started much, much sooner and focusing on it. Perhaps hired a team dedicated to it without interuption. It just seems like the cloud implementation is such a major foundational piece of what makes SL that other systems and even development progress rely on to be in place.

Experiencing the same issue but slightly different result where I click Place Your Order and the page refreshes and that's it. I even tried Safe Mode with no improvement. There's a Refresh Firefox option but I'm not gonna bother with that. I found some bug reports on the JIRA with similar sounding situations (dating back to 2015) and one backtracked down to an accepted status with no one assigned. I did try out the Developer Edition of Firefox (v73) and it seems to be fine even in the strict protection mode. So, hopefully the next Firefox release will resolve this for us. Edit: I found an alternative to the Refresh Firefox where I could backup just my about:config settings for a quick test since my concern was the advanced settings interfering with the operation of the site. With a fresh prefs file made, the site now works just fine. So, at least in my case, it's some advanced about:config privacy setting or borked profile issue.

I feel like there's some what ifs and catches to this. Things like universities or even certain businesses running SL. Not certain on this, though. With the exception of the voice call feature, according to Oz. This is probably a less used feature, but still.

There's a talk by Tim Sweeney (CEO of Epic Games) from SIGGRAPH 2019 on his thoughts of a metaverse. Gets a bit technical. Essentially his idea is a W3C of metaverse and it sounds like its own internet in a way. There's some Q&A at the end as well.

I see. That seems to make sense for the PBR side of things. But don't you have to account for objects close to one another that are from separate creators? If they precompute their AOs for a single given object, the AO isn't aware of close proximity objects that someone else made. In other words, AO is aware of self cavities, but not objects (from separate creators) touching one another. SSAO handles this sort of scenario but then it conflicts with the baked AOs.

@OptimoMaximo Nevermind the previous post... somewhat. I'm not a content creator but I've read a "bit" about PBR here and there. I was curious to see your table layout because I thought there may have been some loss in explanation. My lack of knowledge though. I didn't see Roughness mentioned but found from another forum post that the Specular Exponent is more or less the inverse of Roughness in PBR. Now, my question is why the loss of the Normal Map's blue channel for AO? Is it really not needed? Is there data to prove that it is not needed or is it just that SL doesn't actually use it or use it well? I'm finding little info on this. Is AO really needed if proper AO post-processing was done in real-time considering the nature of SL's dynamic lighting?