NiranV Dean

After a bit of sleep i'm back to explain further when shadows actually ramp up GPU usage. In the very last part of shadow rendering they are being translated and applied to the world, that's the part thats being run on the GPU, before it does these calculations however it does a simple check against lighting. IF the point in question is on the opposite side of where the sun is coming from, lets say you pulled the sun down all the way to where it is below the terrain and the moon lighting hasn't yet risen enough to be shown, shadows would simply "early out" with a "we're facing away from sunlight, we MUST be in shadow", there's no need to calculate where the shadow is if the point in question isn't in sunlight, which means we can save the rest and assume the point is shadowed. Any and all surfaces pointing away from the sun are automatically considered shadowed, this saves a lot of processing power with high resolution shadows and/or far shadow distances. However there is a point... specifically a sun angle which is a super edge case, you can put the sun in such an angle that the shader doesn't yet consider everything in shadow but still have the entire world shadowed due to the sun being in such a low angle that everything has a shadow drawn across, this is the post apocalyptic scenario you never want in this very case possibly every single point needs to calculate shadows fully, check against the shadow map and decide how shadowed something is, this scenario can often be achieved in very foggy or low-sunlight-high-ambient-fog windlights which basically eliminate any sunlight and have the entire world being shadowed, this will make the shadow calculation run rampant which is why @Nova Convair here might see such a huge framerate impact with "fog". Note that said shader is running on the GPU so a good GPU will negate most of this but also keep in mind that said shader will do a crazy amount of extra texture lookups which might be costly and comparisons against 4 shadow maps, possibly 2 at the same time (where shadow maps overlap) or more in possibly unseen weird instances, this combined with higher shadow resolution (usually in all Viewers except Black Dragon coming from higher screen resolution) can quickly massivey inflate the amount of times this calculation is run and can possibly quickly tax the GPU to the point it can't keep up anymore. I thought about moving shadows from pipeline into shaders to transfer more load from possibly CPU to GPU but i haven't exactly looked into the pipeline shadow calculation that much, most of it however should be just calculations which the shader could do too... i wonder if it was worth moving those into shaders.

A: Please stop using custom colors for your text, there are people here (like me) with the dark theme active, it becomes black on black. Just leave it default and it will automatically color itself to fit whatever theme someone is using. B: EEP is still far away from being usable, i could bet that if i were to test the latest release my master list of bugs would still be untouched (best case) or in worst case would be even bigger now. They better not "rush" this and they better not "clean up the last bugs and bring EEP as fast as possible" because in its current status EEP is more broken than Deferred Rendering was when it was a secret testing branch which basically crashed every hour or so... actually Deferred Rendering was pretty bugfree besides the crashing back then... but you get my point. Not sure if you've seen my list ~ i highly doubt you did ~ because its long and they will spend a few more months fixing just the worst of them. EEP is not going to be released anytime soon if they want to release something thats not fundamentally broken.

You cannot utilize your GPU to the fullest. Firestorm simply doesn't offer options that are capable of using your GPU to its maximum. Options that can ramp up GPU utilization quickly: The old original high quality depth of field at maximum resolution and high blur will quickly use 100% of your GPU. (I'm unsure whether FS has the old DoF, probably not) Screen Space Reflections is a pure GPU shader and will drive GPU utilization up quickly if you turn up the resolution. (Black Dragon exclusive) Volumetric Lighting is a pure GPU shader, although dependent on shadows it is a purely GPU dependent effect and will also utilize your GPU a lot if you raise its resolution. (Black Dragon exclusive) To clarify which options do not utilize your GPU (only little) Shadows: Most of their impact comes from them being CPU dependent, not GPU, the GPU only does little when it comes to shadows, most is done by the CPU. Draw Distance: Is mostly just CPU, you are essentially just tossing more draw calls at your CPU which it can't handle and will fall behind your already under-used GPU. Avatars: Same as draw distance. Fog: Is a pure shader effect but doesn't impact your FPS at all, its calculation is super fast and so easy on your hardware you could essentially run it on a pocket calculator. In short, all options that just toss "more of the same stuff" at the Viewer are going to the CPU and will likely reduce your framerate with your GPU idling. Everything done post process in a shader is run on the GPU, settings counting into this are: Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, Depth of Field, Screen Space Reflections, Volumetric Lighting, Exodus's Post Processing (Tone Mapping, Color Correction), shadow maps being translated and layered onto your world, half of which Firestorm doesn't even possess.

Fun fact, even tho its huge and seemingly uncompressed, it looks like absolute ***** when its shown in the loadingscreen. It's why i removed it, it's unnecessary and looks trash and might also cause a tiny unnecessary freeze and is just another potential crash spot on logout.

I think you forgot that i'd be LL then, i could just have it added with serverside support. Actually thinking about it i could do a lot of other cool things.

Well that's exactly why i'd put random premium on worhsipping it, it's a 50:50 chance to get 2-4 days of premium once every day but you can not stack it longer than a week so people will have to come back occasionally, this keeps people worshipping once in a while and they keep premium. Never. You're damaging/griefing Linden Lab property, this could get you a day or two on... THE CHAIR... and you'll get the dunce cap force worn via RLVa.

I'd deploy a simple 5 step plan to become the most loved person. Step 1: Drop Sansar. People will celebrate me for this. Step 2: Implement Mirrors. People will absolutely love me for this. Step 3: Drop EEP, bring proper Volumetric Lighting, Motion Blur, HDR, Tone Mapping, Volumetric Clouds, Volumetric Water. People will jump in circles. Step 4: Bring all kinds of cool stuff we always wanted, live posing, animation editor, configurable walk/run speeds, editable animations (priority, easy in/out etc). People will be lying on the ground having more orgasms in an hour than in the rest of their entire life at this point. Step 5: Errect a golden statue of me somewhere so people can worship me proper, possibly granting premium randomly.

1) I wouldn't be changing the UI much if LL would do a good job at that from the beginning, which they aren't. I also believe that different UI's aren't as much of a problem as people tend to make it. I know people are not me but i can switch between all Viewers, V1, Phoenix, Emerald, Singularity, Kirstens, Catznip, Firestorm, LL, Alchemy, Exodus, Black Dragon without having any issues learning or "relearning" the UI, i practically see no difference in how the UI operates across Viewers and i can find whatever i'm looking for extremely fast regardless of the Viewer i chose. I'd love to see more Viewers deviate more and much extremer from the default, i'd like to "relearn" the UI, "re-explore" how the UI works, right now i can't, all Viewers without exception work exactly the same, their structure hardly differs from the original and their layouts are the only thing that really change and those are invisible to me unless i start looking for them (aesthetic changes). To give you some examples, the main Viewer menu works almost 100% identical in all Viewers, the only difference is that some Viewers renamed some menus (Me, Communicate, World, Build - rather than File, Edit, View, Tools), functionally they are the same and mostly house the same options and only a few options have been moved around which isn't hard to figure out given that both versions are somewhat logically named and their options are logically sorted, example: i want to edit my status, what do i want to do? I want to EDIT (Edit menu) MY (Me menu) status, boom i'll either find it in Edit or Me depending on which menu structure is used. This probably is extremely widespread and only in SL, the moment the same people go outside of SL they are fine with completely different UI's from app to app, they don't waste a single thought on them at all but the moment they look at a Second Life Viewer they will feel like they are being thrown back into infantile stage whenever they see a different UI, as little as it may differ (or not). I don't know where this comes from but it certainly needs to stop. I can't begin to count how many people have asked me how to open preferences in my Viewer coming from Firestorm, i don't know how Firestorm does it but apparently it must be completely different from what i'd do -> Edit - Preferences (or simply Ctrl + P), the shortcut being the ultimate solution here i use to circumvent menu differences, such as going through Me - Preferences. Using shortcuts doesn't play as big of a role as you may think in my ability to find my way around the UI regardless of Viewer, its solely about the mindset of someone and how they go about it. 2) If (lets assume this would actually happen) LL forced us TPV's to use their UI and i highly doubt they would ever dare to, i can assure you that my EEP UI rant was only the beginning of a cataclysmic, world-ending chain reaction. LL's UI is so fundamentally flawed it could easily become the next viral meme. Their UI shows no consistency, no design, no thought, has little functionality, is completely unmaintained and has gotten less love than that one ugly child in a family of beautiful people, their UI is what is commonly referred to as "Coder UI", a UI that a coder quickly threw together to test functionality and is subject to change by real UI designers later. They have such an amazing, dynamic UI system that is even decently fast at doing what its doing and they keep ignoring it every time they get the chance to show what the UI can do. If i had to pick out one window that pisses me off the most (excluding EEP ones) it's a hard choice between preferences and their old environment editor. Their environment window is an insult to any UI, it wastes space for no reason, is overly complex for whats just a simple "select your presets" window and follows no layout or design of any of the other windows (not that any really does). Preferences is filled with random layouts, zero organization and lots of "You are an idiot" options, "Advanced Lighting Model" is how they call Deferred Rendering. What is "Advanced Lighting Model"? What does it do? Well obviously something with lighting and a model! Look i can open up any game, go into preferences, graphics tab and pick out practically any option, no matter which, i can type it into google and i'll find pictures, explanations (wiki articles) and all that stuff for said feature, here? Nothing. Chat tab is probably the cleanest tab i've seen in LL's preferences, it fills the entire tab pretty decently, makes good use of available space, looks somewhat organized and the spacing is eh-okay. The worst about this situation however is that even if we TPV's step in (and we rarely do) and tell LL that the UI is ***** they won't improve it, LL simply shows no intention to make a useable UI and forcing us wouldn't change the fact people prefer TPV's over the LL Viewer, if anything it would just make them hate the preferred Viewer even more and if they can add 1 and 1 together will find out that this is LL's fault and get even angrier at them as well. LL's UI is okay-ish to use if you can ignore the many big *****ing birdies it rubs right through your face but that's about it, their UI has infinite wasted potential just lying around.

FIFIFIFY

This. Can confirm, this is THE number one request. In that particular order. I absolutely hate it. I have been thinking of adding the feature to show lookat names with a twist, yours will be forced on, no way to disable it, while the other option hides it but also makes you unable to see other people's lookats as well. I hope this contribution doesn't include all the Enhanced Stalking™ features, Avatar Triangulation System™ and I-C-UR-Everything™ feature found in Firestorm, i want normal profiles back and i want to keep free profile pic uploads. Pitchforks and torches are ready in case free profile pics are going away.

Eye movement can be restricted by degrees (head and eyes both seperately). (full version) The poser can also control eyes as long as they are either rigged to any bone or attached to one. In addition you can edit the attentions.xml file in the Viewer's character folder and disable all kinds of lookats which will also disable eyes/head trying to face them. There's an official guide to do so here and my discord group also has a pre-modifed attentions.xml file for people to use. It is currently not possible to toggle the tiny random eye jittering off, unless you are willing to use the animation controls window and kill all default animations (this will get rid of several baseline animations such as breathing, walking/standing adjustments and will require you to reattach some attachments, such as my body to restart the tail animation)

Niran explanation mode engaged: - We are already in a state where people use Viewers for certain features. - Singularity does have Bento in its latest versions - Derender is only technically against the shared experience clause and as LL put it (i confronted Oz with exactly that) its okay because its mostly a security feature, otherwise it would probably be blocked. - Singularity is not being used for its inventory features, that's Catznip. Singu is used for performance and old UI or as better FS alternative. - My Viewer was never gone from the TPV list. The warning LL put up on the TPV list is purely that, a warning that it may cause inconveniences, such as you getting banned from regions for too high complexity (the scripts read your viewer reported complexity). - The reason LL doesn't take Derender is the same as with any other feature, they don't take things, they want them to be offered to them, preferably as fully compatible pre-made patch they just need to import. They are not lazy just too busy with many other things.

I like doing that. I am ̶u̶n̶d̶e̶r̶m̶i̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ integrating into your human society and no one notices.

I think i'm missing quite some context here.

Pancake posse? THAT Pancake (person)? I'm not one of them if you mean that, i just had to note that merely noting that something such as drama is going on is usually the actual starter for real drama.

So basically a firestarter.

Pet Peeve #69 Not knowing whether i should answer to this or not. Curiosity tells me i should ask you who's this referring to?

Now that's an idea... i'm currently working on windlight stuff... maaaaaybe i can squeeze this in somewhere. Detecting other viewer's appdata windlight folders should be easy (your custom presets) they are usually always in the same folder, detecting their system presets however is tricky the moment the Viewer is not installed in its default folder on either the same drive or C

Pet Peeve #1 That quoted #14 is actually my number one. I find it incredibly frustrating to remind people over and over that feature X is not coming from TPV Y but actually from LL. Pet Peeve #2 People not simply asking me for help on a matter regarding my Viewer...making me rage all day... leading into: Pet Peeve #3 People saying something along the lines of "i dont want to waste your time" or "i'm sorry to disturb you" or "sorry for being dumb". Just because i'm sitting on a powder keg doesn't mean i'll blow up the moment you waste my "oh so precious" time. That's what i'm here for after all. Pet Peeve #6 Having to tell people that Windlights are not a selling point of any Viewer as they can be easily moved from Viewer to Viewer and having less starting Windlights is only a sign of some organization rather than what people often perceive as "missing" or "lacking" features. You can always fill any Viewer with as many Windlights as you want (that is until it explodes, if it ever does) but don't make a smaller selection of presets a Viewer problem, it isn't. --- Pet Peeve #4 Having to explain people in a lengthy and very techy explanation why the back of their head is flickering through their front because they otherwise think its the Viewer's fault. Pet Peeve #5 Patch Notes. Specifically unreadable ones, unreachable ones or otherwise "missing".... Linden Labs is pretty good at that... not allowing a vast majority of people accessing the corresponding Jira's... There are probably a million more...

It is neither working nor fully done, that's the point here.

1. Shift only works in my Viewer (Black Dragon). 2. It does not preview, it switches to the next/previous item in the list immediately without opening the menu. It applies instantly. 3. I'm going to add folders/grouping/favorites and previewing some day.

I'm saying that all of these features you mention could be added to dropdowns and i already planned on adding them some time ago.

I rather prefer the dropdown as it allows me to quickly switch through presets with keys. I was planning to add a favorite and some organization/grouping feature to these dropdowns. Dropping the much faster and more efficient dropdown lists for a slow (and subject to inventory loading), inefficient inventory list that just bogs down your framerate even more just to have folders which could have been added to dropdowns as well is just plain bad, besides both options can co-exist. "Cursor Keying" how you call it has been a thing for since dropdowns exist: Recently i also added the ability to hold shift while doing so to instantly switch to that preset without opening the list first.

if(!progress == (new_bugs.size() > old_bugs.size())) { return true; }

I gave the new EEP release another spin. Shadows: Shadows get stuck and rotate with the camera when looking top down from max camera distance Shadows vanish or completely shadow the entire scene when looking topdown from max camera distance Smaller shadows vanish immediately after zooming away 1-2m visible on the feet of my skunk Shadows still cut off when zooming too close from a vertical angle Lighting: Lighting is absolutely overblown now Glow on shiny is still too strong Projectors are still cutting off hard on shiny and alpha surfaces (seen on spheres) Projectors light surfaces are flickering like crazy Shininess on some metallic beams are way too weak or non existent at all HUDs are darkened Lights are being culled much further away than anything else even when everything is already gone they are still there Fullbrights still shine through fog, weaker but still do, really foggy ones show this problem well. Sky is still only very weakly fogged in comparison to the world and water Water: Water is unfogged Water still vanishes when zooming close Water randomly flashes brightly or darker Water is too bright on shorelines Water reflections are too bright Water reflections from beneath are too dark Water vanishes from beneath as well when zooming too close Water reflections get culled when zooming flat too close to the water surface Water still occasionally is not rendered fast enough at the edge of the screen when rotating the camera around UI: Lots of important controls are still missing for personal lighting Water settings are completely missing for personal lighting You still cannot bulk-import windlights You still cannot simply use local presets rather than importing them (compatibility with old presets is basically 0) The UI is still huge and wastes tremendous amounts of space for no reason Selecting personal presets is still cumbersome and done via the inventory or an extra inventory list rather than a simple dropdown menu There is no window anymore to have all preset types and general settings in one window (the old Environment Settings window where you could select all presets easily from dropdowns) Needless to say given by the many many obvious issues still i'd say EEP is still far far away from a release or even a release candidate, the amount of bugs that immediately jump at you the moment the progress screen vanishes is enormous, project viewers and betas up to this date were more stable and less broken than what you call a "release candidate" right now. I might or might not add pictures to all these issues above but for now i'll leave it as list, this was just a quick test (half an hour of a 1 hour test was basically wasted running around and ranting before i decided to write everything down). You better go back to the drawing board with this and if this continues i might just decide to implement as many features of EEP as i can in my own Viewer my own way without breaking everything just to show you that what you have done here is questionable, i already started adding additional windlight features with my new water height feature that allows changing the water height locally, something thats really simple but incredibly helpful for photographers and unlike EEP it didn't break everything. I'm still incredibly pissed.