[Firestorm PBR Release Is Out]

3 minutes ago, Nala Blep said:

The faster SL moves away from OpenGL the better, and this is a solid step in the right direction.

Even older and midrange PCs will benefit from this in the long run. SL in its current state simply cannot properly utilize modern hardware. They cannot continue to take the minspec approach and expect it to stay alive.

If they continue along this path and get us into Direct X 11/12 or even Vulkan than people will see an explosion in performance. Yes this new client update is going to demand more resources, but the people quitting because they can no longer use their rigs from 12 years ago are just being unreasonable. Imagine running SL at max settings at a solid 144 FPS because it can finally use all of your CPUs cores, yes please.

PBR is a basic feature that has been an industry standard for a really long time, it allows us to create more immersive and realistic spaces, isn't that the entire point of Second Life? To create virtual worlds we can feel immersed in? I'm not going to sit here and pretend that these releases haven't been a little rocky, and yes the Firestorm client in particular needs some work, but being anti PBR/New lighting engine in general is just silly in my opinion.

 

Bull*****!!!

I may have been missing things in SecondLife, but never EVER, someting of the above mentioned. Techy, nerdy BS will feed the ones that watch too much YT videos mentioning crap like the holy grale of "raytracing". 100% of loss in performance for a EVENTUALLY 5-10% better look, not even a better feel. Kept up with AI generated frames between frames to give you the illiusion of having more frames than your card can generate. LOL!!! Thats like telling you, your 10$ note is now worth 20$ because i tell you so. Generated frames are what they are: genereated, not rendered.

Back to PBR: If you get 10% more shiny bling bling whatever BS for 100% more usage of your resources (CPU + GPU) is it worth it? It is NOT!!! In the end it is WASTED energy, that could be used better than for "mirrors" in SecondLife.

SL is, and has ever been, a social platform. What matters are the people and the emotional connections we create. If you desire something else, go somewhere else. There are dozens of platforms that will feed your desires better than SL can ever do.

Dani

[Firestorm PBR Release Is Out]

So, here is what i am thinking about this release, and why i had to switch back to the older version of Firestorm.

My PC isnt the newest, but i manage to run SL above 60 fps most of the time, and that was the same with the new version, after some tweaking. While the earlier automatic presets worked well for most people, i think, this time thats not the case. Seems the priority has been to show off the new super duper shiny stuff, nobody really has ever asked for. Maybe some have, but i guess they are a minority.

The two biggest flaws for me, who is working as a DJ in packed clubs with often 60+ people, is first of all that the viewer reacts like rubber. All inputs are delayed half a second or so and over time that drives me nuts and is unacceptable for me. AT ALL! And it happens with 100fps+, no matter where i am, even on my demo platform, thats at 2km height and empty. I am working with this viewer and that stresses the hell out of me. No new behaviour by the way. I had exactly that bug since the second Beta of PBR, and have mentioned it to the Beta group. It was so bad that i even stopped trying the beta versions.

Second: I understand and appreciate that SL is evolving. Not being an early adopter i am not eager to always have the newest shiny things only because they are new, but in the end i have mostly welcomed it, because you always gave us the oportunity to tweak things in a way it was acceptable, nice, or even amazing. But this new “look” can’t be tweaked. It is by far too bright and if you turn that down parts of the screen become just black holes. Plus the creepy light behaviour on water. I have a decent orange cloud EEP that looks so pretty around my stilt home but with PBR the water shines brighter than the sky and is RED instead of orange. Completely off how this could be released. Thats it? Really? Suggestions are i may fumble with my Monitor to make it look better, THATS NUTS! Because then i have other problems with other software. We need the ability to adjust The Picture. Completely: Brightness, contrast, color intensity the least.

I am a Firestorm User since the first version of Emerald Viewer and i feel sad that i have to write such criticism, because i cant even imagine how hard everyone has been working to make this work for all of us. So in the end, even if i may not be a Firestorm user anymore when the last version will be blocked one day, i also want to say thank you for the hard work!

Dani