Ayashe Ninetails

Well, I'd just say keep an open mind. It's still early in the game and we've got a ways to go before it's all finalized and optimized as best as it can be. Right now, I'm not seeing how it'll work, but maybe there'll be an update that smooths things out a bit more. Hard to say. I hope I'm not cluttering up your complaint thread with my cautious optimism. I just think it's a wait and see situation more than anything right now. The good news is we've got options to not deal with PBR in the meantime, so that's a plus.

Yeah, I haven't even downloaded it to play around yet. Last I checked, it's free on Game Pass. I'm sure it's gorgeous buuuut...yeah. I hate to say it, but unless some things are standardized (lighting especially), it's going to be difficult to implement consistently good PBR across the entire grid. Some sims might look fantastic, but then you teleport somewhere else annnnnd... It's just the nature of what we're dealing with here. The same way some sims are fully meshed out and new and others haven't been updated since 2005. Not much we can do about that. I don't think it's possible to have a fully consistent environment in SL and that's what makes PBR kind of a tricky thing to implement, IMO.

LMAO yeah, a bit. I totally forgot about Detroit: Become Human, too. That's a gorgeous-looking game and visually holds up well even in 2024. Microsoft Flight Sim is a given, too, but fair warning - that one MIGHT set a PC on fire. It's beefy, lol. Under the ideal circumstances, PBR looks really good. The real problem we run into here (performance aside, which hopefully will work itself out as things get updated) is it's so dang hard to get the ideal conditions for it since everything is user-made and everyone's running their own EEPs. 😩

Here you go. This thread has a nice collection of examples in different games. Just scroll down a bit to the videos - https://www.neogaf.com/threads/graphics-analysis-5-best-games-using-pbr-shaders.1599686/

If you've never seen PBR in action before seeing it here, definitely look those games up on YouTube and check them out. I don't know if that's how it's going to look here in SL when all is said and done (when we get our new lighting or whatever the plans are), but it'll give you an idea of what it can do. It's definitely nice. I'm not sure about performance in those instances as I've not played those games other than WoW, but I don't think it's too demanding. RDR2 came out in 2018, so it definitely doesn't require the latest hardware to run. Our own PBR will most likely get better once everything is all finished. I believe we're still in a bit of a transitional phase right now.

Yes. I won't go further into this as it's far off-topic for this thread, but if you've got specific industry resources you'd like to share, you can send them to me and I'll take a look. I can only personally speak for the models I work with directly. They are absolutely not cheap to develop and train and projections are that they will cost a whole lot more by 2025.

PBR is pretty old, but I have no idea exactly how old. The first game that used it, if I'm not mistaken, is Remember Me, which released in 2013. It's still in use here and there. Another big title that's using it is Red Dead Redemption 2. I could've sworn WoW did a PBR update, too.

You don't want AI providing moderation for anything. At least not right now. Humans are still infinitely better at this. Good AI is also expensive AF to train and maintain. Source - Trust me bro. More seriously - I work in AI training. Yeah, it's been in development for quite a bit. I remember first seeing a blog post about it sometime last year. Rowan's receipts should be correct.

That could be what it is. The camera! I'm thinking mostly of the shopping/event videos showcasing what's on offer and shopping hauls and all that, so yeah - that's a very good point. Also, the flexi hair jittering in the breeze surely doesn't help. That always looks SO much better in static photos. Yeees, they definitely should wait on that until we get all the new features in place. 😂

Screenshots and photos made today look fantastic. Unpopular opinion, though - SL video always looks so terrible to me. Even the current ones. I'm always seeing some kind of lag and jerky movement for some reason. It comes off very janky. Part of that is my own fault, though. I watch a LOT of gaming content both on Twitch and YouTube - essentially grabbing a snack and treating the long, narrative games much like movies I can sit and watch someone else play all the way through instead of playing them myself, which saves lots of money, lol. I mean hell, some have so many dang cutscenes, it's really not much different. So in all that, I've seen some butter-smooth gameplay with all the graphical bells and whistles enabled (some of these people have the latest hardware and can play with every setting absolutely blown out to the max, which is another reason I opt to watch as it wouldn't look as good on my own system) and that pretty much spoils me, even if we had things like PBR working properly. I know it's not fair to compare it to AAA games, but even indies are bringing a lot to the table these days. Content INSIDE SL looks just as good, though, and nothing is laggy for me, but someone who doesn't play it might not know that. I realize my view is a bit skewed, but I wonder if others feel similarly when they run across SL content on YouTube. Video quality often makes it look dated in comparison, even when it's really not.

This was actually me back in 2020. It's why I downloaded Firestorm again. I was actually Googling around to see how Second Life 2.0 was doing (lol) as I'd vaguely remembered something about a new version being in development years ago and how people were concerned about inventories not carrying over or something, and I found the original still standing and said nooooo waaaaaay. I simply HAD to check it out and see if my account still existed. That's when I logged in and said omg, what is all this - why does it look so...not prim-like? People do still make comments about SL having dated graphics, too, but most of what I hear in my circles is about the absolute depravity of it all. 👀 More on topic - I don't have many complaints about PBR itself. I've mostly just decided to ignore it (I don't think it's been implemented well here and want nothing to do with game dev to make it work better, which is where I place tinkering with probes and textures) and left shadows off and set my EEP to a nice even CalWL-like brightness so I can still shop without dealing with dark environments or whatever. But I've since decided to take a break from SL anyway since I'm super hesitant to buy anything until this all works itself out.

It's very different for me. I came to SL from the MMO world (Everquest 2 in particular) for rather specific reasons. I liked its unique and entirely open character creation and styling possibilities. Prior to being told about SL, I whined endlessly about Everquest 2's character creator limitations and hideous character models and terrible armor. I was also huge Sims fan, so I wanted something a bit like that. A place to make and style characters and build anything I could want for myself and my homes. For me and my purposes, SL directly competes with the creative side of the more social MMORPGs, sandboxy building games, and The Sims. What it lacks in gameplay and stats and classes and skill trees and traits and life simulation it makes up for in design. Considering I'm the type of person to spend hours creating and customizing my characters and crafting for homes and downloading gigs of mods without actually playing the game (yes, I love MMOs with housing for that reason), it fit into that niche perfectly. I actually left SL once building starting moving off-platform and became more software-based. More recently, when I'm not spending time in SL (which is my current situation), I'm playing games with more free and open design that don't require 3D skills to build and make things - Minecraft, waiting on InZOI and Paralives, The SIms 4 (much less these days, though), Stardew Valley, My Time at Sandrock, Palworld, etc. I'm also a huge fan of deckbuilders and roguelikes and strategy games and point and clicks and retro gaming and puzzle games and a bunch of other genres, so I'm all over the place, honestly. I might also dip into WoW or Guild Wars 2 from time to time to play fashion wars (WoW's on pause, though - at least until hardcore classic servers make a comeback, gahhhhh). Mostly been working on the Steam, GOG, Game Pass, and Epic backlog like whoa over here.

Very welcome! I love that style myself. I'm trying to resist grabbing some, too. 😂

If you're looking for something similar to a New Rock style, definitely try Enchante' and Phedora. Azoury *might* have something similar in their older collection (check the Marketplace for that). I'd also check AsteroidBox and Cult. A few styles:

Layman's terms - it's better to limit framerate via your own GPU's software instead of using Firestorm to do it. It's more efficient. MSI Afterburner is a hardware utility for overclocking and hardware monitoring. Can get kind of advanced. I don't use it (I don't overclock anyway). https://www.msi.com/Landing/afterburner/graphics-cards https://www.msi.com/support/technical_details/VGA_MSI_Utility_AfterBurner

Yep. More powerful hardware (doable with a laptop, but costs a lot more), better heat management with plenty of room for fans/ventilation, far easier to upgrade, more selection for parts/upgrades and more sales/discounts on hardware, and more demanding games will generally run better. You can game on a laptop, too, but you'd likely have to spend a lot more money to get similar performance.

Over 30s in my region. Tattoo shops galore out here all over the place and it's usually an older crowd (40s+) sporting them. I mostly know that because I always went for that type and could never find anyone my age who had them. Older guys, though, yep. 😂 SL reminds me so much of just traveling around where I live sometimes just given the number of people I see sporting tats in general, so I feel right at home. And at least here, I can get the elaborate full body layout of my dreams without suffering under a damn needle.

Technically, so is partial. Most major social media sites classify partial under adult and either allow it if properly tagged/blurred (Twitter, Flickr, etc.) or disallow it entirely (Pinterest, TikTok, Facebook, etc.). Regional and cultural differences vary widely in this arena and some sites just want no part of that.

I think it's because an average user who is just logging in to SL to chat, roleplay, or socialize likely wouldn't expect to have to set up their own environments manually. That's generally one of those backend functions a developer handles - players just log in and play the game. Yeah, of course SL is entirely different because everything is 100% user-created, but if someone's not aware of how that works because they're so used to dev-made platforms/games, it's a bit of a shock. I've been here on and off since 2005 and I personally have no desire to tinker with my environment on that level either. I do photography and interior/exterior home decorating here and this will severely impact both activities eventually. I'm just not feeling it.

Seems like a bug. It flagged a bunch of threads as hot right after a brief forum update days ago. I peeked at another forum that's also running on Invision and it seems to be happening over there as well. Threads with little activity and most replies from a few days/hours ago and one or two new posts made within the hour with the Hot flag.

I hear you. Surprisingly, this issue goes way back. In fact, it ties in somewhat to the gaming lootbox controversies and how companies were using unethical tactics to hook kids into wanting to spend more and more money. Controlling all of this and verifying who is actually using your product is really difficult and I'm frankly surprised companies are trying again. For the longest time, even the most adult-rated sites gave right up and slapped a "sure I'm 18 whatever" button on the homepage and called it a day.

I don't know, but that isn't what this is. If you look at some of the articles, the kids are racking up huge bills and the parents are wondering if they're actually responsible for paying or not. These are not authorized purchases. The point is age verification is kind of pointless when kids are clearly not against yoinking credit cards and spending money. Grabbing a photo ID to use online isn't that far of a stretch. Likely why sites are now requiring selfies in addition to the ID.

Yeah, it's bad. If you go to Google and search for "in-app purchases kids credit cards" or something similar, then flip over to the News tab, there are TONS of other articles about this, too.

Surely you've heard the numerous stories about kids running up parents' credit cards buying in-game cosmetics and other in-app purchases? I'll agree that those are more extreme cases, but it doesn't even require all that. Not all parents are that aware of what their kids get up to on their PCs and some people have openly said they leave SL running all day/night.