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Scylla Rhiadra

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Everything posted by Scylla Rhiadra

  1. Scylla Rhiadra
    And all of this is why -- I'll say it again -- LL needs to look at the other side of the lighting equation in SL, and produce a series, even if only a small one, of adjusted, PBR-compliant EEPs for the library. AND make sure people know to use the new ones. I DO think that creators are walking into a potential disaster here, for exactly the reasons you suggest. The savvy ones will recognize the problems with existing EEP, and will find a way to compensate.
  2. Scylla Rhiadra
    That is indeed the case: so far as I've seen in my experiments, legacy materials are affected by the ambient differential as well. The other aspect of this, however, is the "reflections" part of the equation. If an interior wall is not encompassed by the reflection probe, it won't be "reflected" in PBR materials within the probe. Conversely, anything caught within a reflection probe outside of the interior will be caught. So, for instance, items in an adjoining room will be reflected if the reflection probe overlaps the boundaries into that room and includes within its bounds those items.
  3. Scylla Rhiadra
    Reflection probes are a particular PITA. I applaud creators who are incorporating them into new builds, but the notion that your average resident is going to build them for their own or pre-PBR builds? Or even have the foggiest idea how to adjust them? Nah. Not a chance.
  4. Scylla Rhiadra
    LOL First Prize: Top Funny Post today.
  5. Scylla Rhiadra
    It does, unless you want a lighter border within the structure. To look good, a reflection probe has to match the walls of the structure pretty exactly.
  6. Scylla Rhiadra
    If a reflection probe extends beyond the bounds of the interior it's designed for, it impacts the exterior it overlaps. The result tends to be that you'll have a dark boundary outside the structure, on the grass, the side of the building, etc. It looks pretty crappy. I haven't tried overlapping reflection probes: I'm not sure what effect that has? Maybe doubles the darkness? In any case, I imagine the overlap would be visible.
  7. Scylla Rhiadra
    And many of those old-timers contribute to SL in countless other ways as well. So yeah. I've seen zero evidence that the adoption of PBR is going to lead to a sudden influx of new residents. "YAY! At last I can join SL now that they have PBR!!!!!" -- uh, not so much probably? But there is reason to be concerned that we might lose some. Which is why I hope that the Firestorm team takes its time to fix what needs fixing in their PBR viewer: given how widely used that viewer will be, how well it works could have a real, measurable impact on SL.
  8. Scylla Rhiadra
    Yes, this. Ask a group of residents in-world how they feel about PBR right now, and inevitably you'll get at least one "Pabst Blue Ribbon," and a whole lot of "?????" (I actually do this, so I know whereof I speak.) That may change when the PBR-enabled FS goes live, but I doubt it. Again, yes! The possible impact of a nearly infinite combinations of different kinds of hardware mean it's really all but impossible to predict exactly how PBR is going to impact on any one individual. I totally get that we can't hold back "progress" and graphics advancements on the platform merely because a hopefully smallish percentage of residents are using hardware that isn't up to scratch. But I also reject the "they-just-need-to-get-a-better-computer" approach because it ignores the reality of the fact that many can't or won't. And whether they should or not is less relevant than the fact that that could impact upon things like concurrency. It's in no one's best interest if we lose residents because no efforts were made to accommodate those still using 5 year old laptops. So, some sort of balance needs to be struck here. Move us forward by all means, but provide options for those who will otherwise be left behind. And for god's sake, at least acknowledge their existence, preferably treating them without the condescension that was dripping from the voice of some of those I was talking to last night.
  9. Scylla Rhiadra
    I agree. And given that a great many things we purchase -- especially clothing -- tend to be no mod, this is really going to be the only option for consumers. Therein lies the rub though . . . "Fixing" EEP so that it doesn't produce a blue sheen, or overwhelm the scene with blinding whiteness and darkness, isn't particularly intuitive however, and we've received no guidelines from LL on how best to do this. The only person I know who's approached this in any sort of methodical way is Jenna Huntsman. The fact that LL recognize the problems that PBR represents for existing EEPs is clear from their own revision of the default "Midday" EEP. I think LL really is going to need to produce at least a small set of PBR-optimized EEPs to replace ones commonly now used from the Library. The alternative is that a really large percentage of residents (including public region and parcel owners) who don't really now how to do more than basic fiddles with EEP settings are going to find that, in practice, SL looks worse rather than better with PBR.
  10. Scylla Rhiadra
    OMG, it's true! The forum really is an "echo chamber of people who like to complain"!! 😀 Yeah, I think they mean well, most of them, and good for them to volunteer their time, etc., etc. But they are a bit of an echo chamber themselves. My suggestion, oft-repeated and dismissed because I had no "statistical evidence" that PBR was going to be an issue for some people, was that the group could benefit from hearing input from people who don't all own gaming computers (a term which was also dismissed, btw, as "marketing jargon") and regularly run at 120 FPS on ultra. Because, of course, people in groups like this tend to be tech-oriented, and have nice computers. On one occasion, maybe a month or so ago, a creator came in to find out why she couldn't also add legacy textures to an object she'd applied PBR materials to. The people in the group, most of whom seem savvy enough about computer graphics to talk about why LL rejected "linear tone mapping" (whatever that is) were pretty much sure she was just doing it wrong. Which, of course, she was -- but they didn't know what it was. It took me, who wouldn't know linear tone mapping if it walked over, shook my hand, and introduced itself, to explain to her how it was done.
  11. Scylla Rhiadra
    I have a few friends who work with FS, one of whom is actually a mod for that group -- and they are really lovely. But wow . . . some of these people are not only completely out of touch with the realities of most residents, but arrogant about it too. I had one guy, a moderator, claiming that my concerns merely reflected my own experience, all the while ignoring another person in the background who was literally trying to get his attention in order to ask about the negative impact the new viewer was having on his graphics. Oh, and the forums are apparently a "concentration of people in an echo chamber of people who like to complain." Smile and be happy people! We can guarantee that that iceberg poses no threat!!
  12. Scylla Rhiadra
    Peeve: The level of f$*@#($#@ entitlement in the Firestorm-Phoenix Preview Group. "Well, I'm getting 100FPS on the PBR viewer, and everything looks great! Where's your evidence that there are people this is going to impact negatively?" "You can't expect to have good quality graphics unless you have a high end GPU. That's just the way it works. Sorry." $@#*(%$##(@#@#$*%$$##
  13. Scylla Rhiadra
    Another faux artsy take on the pic of me reading. If you scrunch your eyes up properly, this one almost looks like a Pointillist painting. (Which of course it is not: I just upped the lighting, and emphasized small brush strokes.)
  14. Scylla Rhiadra
    The blue haze is really only indirectly caused by PBR materials themselves: it's reflection of the fact that much EEP ambiance lighting, as determined by the settings for Blue Haze and Blue Density, use a blue tone. PRB materials capture that faithfully in a way that legacy materials don't. That's why you'll only see it certain kinds of environmental lighting. The only real "fixes" for this seem to be, so far as I understand it, reducing the reflectivity of the object, or fixing one's EEP settings to reduce the blue colouring of ambient environmental light. Jenna Huntsman has some useful notes on optimizing EEP for PBR materials. https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Jenna_Huntsman?#PBR
  15. Scylla Rhiadra
    Frankly, everything in this thread, from the OP to the QAnon-inspired conspiracy theories about Mean Girls, just screams "First World Problems."
  16. Scylla Rhiadra
    Oh, is that what it's for? I wouldn't know -- no man I've ever been with has needed it. /me smirks
  17. Scylla Rhiadra
    With "Adult" regions that dispense Viagra to visitors on arrival.
  18. Scylla Rhiadra
    So, I am now getting IM spam from AvatarLife from in-world????? This (excerpted from a longer message) was sent to one of my alts this morning: You'd think that maybe LL would want to do something about that . . .
  19. Scylla Rhiadra
    Yet another faux watercolour. This isn't quite the effect I've been aiming for, which bizarrely enough seems to work best with nudes, but it's pretty enough to post. At least I got to wear clothes. Brrrrr!
  20. Scylla Rhiadra
    Not only is this nonsense, Arielle, but it's pretty insulting nonsense. You are suggesting, apparently, that people here are not capable of independent thought, or favour particular opinions because someone they like has expressed them? Give me a break. We're not a clutch of cliquish high school girls here, clamouring to be part of the "popular group." I know of no one here who doesn't express a particular opinion because it seems a reasonable opinion to them. What's more, this is a wonderfully handy way to explain away why people dismiss or disagree with poorly considered ideas. God forbid that we give people here credit for recognizing bad ideas: it must be, of course, because of personal "alliances" within the forum. 🙄
  21. Scylla Rhiadra
    At last! Some media coverage that really gets the essence of SL!
  22. Scylla Rhiadra
    Yeah, I'm not a fan either. I just enjoy how much she's pissing people off. 😀
  23. Scylla Rhiadra
    Taylor Swift just became the first woman ever to win the Superbowl!!! (And I seem to have been wrong: talking about Taylor Swift does not result in a forum catastrophe! Apparently everyone here is secretly a Swiftie?)
  24. Scylla Rhiadra
    There's a brilliant conspiracy theory floating about, premised on the assumption that Taylor Swift is actually a CIA operative (no, I'm not making this up!), that she is dating Travis Kelce in order to "fix" the game so that his team wins . . . which in turn will somehow help Biden win the upcoming election. Yes, I know, I know. Make it make sense.
  25. Scylla Rhiadra
    No but everyone knows that victory in this game will decide the outcome of the US election.
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