Advanced Lighting Model usage statistics

[Neural Blankes]

Is there any data on the estimated number of users who have and use the Advanced Lighting Model option for their Second Life experience?

I realize that backwards compatibility is important when making products to sell or give away in world, but there are some things that can only be achieved via the things that the ALM offers (specifically materials).

If the majority of the community has shifted towards using this, it would benefit builders to know.  Once the majority has adapted, backwards compatibility doesn't factor in as strongly.

[arton Rotaru]

AFAIK the only number that has been floating around was 20% with ALM enabled. Though, that was at the time when Materials were released to the Main Grid. It was a number Oz Linden has shared at a User Group meeting. So the Lab has statistics on it, and I would love to see an update on this matter as well.

IIRC the 20% were gathered only from hardware which would be able to run ALM. So low end hardware hasn't been taken into account, and the overall number would be even lower than that at that time.

If I would have to guess, I would say it's still below 30 %, probably below 20 % still.

[Chic Aeon]

I agree that the number is still probably very low. The issue is that many folks cannot use it due to computer heftiness. If you are using mesh then baking in the advanced lighting features with cycles rendering is an option but of course that has issues too .

 

Unfortunately there is no easy fix for the issue. If you make you product look as good as you can without materials and then add -- that seems the best way.

 

 

[Neural Blankes]

Ok.  Thanks for the info.  I was hoping maybe it was a little more wide spread in use now, but I'll just have to be patient. 

 

Ther are so many neat things that can be done with materials.

[Pamela Galli]

I agree, probably less than half. I just bake in some specular as well as apply specular material.

[Dora Gustafson]

It seems the number is still low and I guess it will stay that way as long creators don't embrace advanced lighting.

The question is: why do you create? To make pretty things for a pretty world or to make a pretty income?

:smileysurprised::smileyvery-happy:

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Dora Gustafson wrote:

It seems the number is still low and I guess it will stay that way as long creators don't embrace advanced lighting.

The question is: why do you create? To make pretty things for a pretty world or to make a pretty income?

:smileysurprised:

:smileyvery-happy:

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There's a certain amount of "tomatoes are poisonous" thinking around Advanced Lighting - it's quite a bit faster than it was at first and more machines are capable of running it than some think. In particular, Firestorm doesn't turn it on by default with a number of setups that could run it quite well.

[Rhys Goode]

I find it hard to believe less than 30% use ALS.  No statics, but a few anecdotes, and an opinion.

When it first came out, I regularly  went to venues that were downright garish with it turned on, I had to disable it regularly. I have not encountered a place like that in several years now. Also, facelights were a big problem at first, rarely see a bad one any more. And bit by bit, invisiprims are dying from the grid. Hard to see how these changes could be driven by 20% of users.

About 5 years ago, I spent some time looking at my customer's profile,100 I think. Premium members with payment info on file made up 7 of 10 of my customers. My interpretation has been that people who are actively spending money in SL tend to have money in RC.  Not much of a leap to suppose that they are likely to have better computers than your average free player.

My current target demographic is people who buy fitted mesh avatar bodies. They spend about $L3000 - $L5000 for a basic avatar body, then $L10000 for new skins and new clothes.  Some people have 3 or 4 of them. Completely incompatible with old systems clothes, half of old mesh clothing wont work either.  At most of the clubs I hang out at these days, more than half the female avatars are in some kind of fitted mesh. Backward compatiblity is simply not an issue, here. These are active SL players, actively spending money. I cannot imagine people willing to toss around that kind of money are using 10 year old lap tops. Backward compatiblity is simply not an issue for this group.

I am confident that my target audience will be using ALS when they look at my demos, and decide to buy or not.  So far, I am having no trouble selling stuff that needs ALS to look good. So, even if that *is* only 20 % of the SL population, that is exactly the subset of the population I am pursuing as customers. 

 

 

[Trinity Yazimoto]

I am a bit thinking same than Rhys.

Among my 2 product lines of clothes, there is one i create from my artworks and one of its specificities is precisely to be material enabled, and omg, i love it so much everytime i apply them and the magical miracle happens before my eyes.

Idk what percentage of my customers actually can see that or not.

The thing is that most of the ppl being able to use ALM doesnt know how to use it correctly. So well, even with ALM on, i doubt a lot can enjoy the product fully anyway.

This is the reason why i made a lil notecard explaining how to get the best of materials with firestorm viewer (as i am only using that one).

That said, on my 6 years in SL ive been almost 5 years using a laptop with an horrible graphic card, so i wasnt able to enable ALM; i was even running most of the time without the basic shaders. So i cant forget there are still ppl having those limits, and it may be they are customers too, bec i was already a shoping addict myself. 

So i keep being really careful that my textures without ALM are looking perfect. As anyway, even if im using now a good computer, i dont run ALM full time. So of course, without ALM my clothes doesnt look shiny, or bumpy, or whatever effect i can give to them thanks to materials, but they look great anyway. Then of course, the ALM ability is a bonus. A great super bonus lol... 

(well if u havent noticed yet, im a total fan of materials, and i wish more creators used them)

[IvanBenjammin]

A lot of the cool factor of ALM is obviously lost without decent lighting. This includes actual lights, but more importantly windlight/environment settings. A lot of users have very flat environment settings, because that (apparently) makes their avatars look better. So you can have a user with a system that can run ALM, but won't see the point of it. 

I would think that at least 50% of users have systems capable of it, but maybe 20-30% who actually use it. Everything I make uses ALM. I've had a couple of customers complain that "It doesn't look like the pictures" (despite having an In-World store, and recommendations that it be looked at In-World before purchasing), but many more who tell me that my work actually sold them on the benefits of ALM.

There's also a not insignificant number of users who don't even know what it is, and maybe have never even opened their preferences to adjust graphics settings. All you can do there is suggest they use it, and patiently explain why.

At this point, its on content creators to use and promote it. It will never reach the majority of users unless a majority of content uses it. So use it.

 

 

[mikka Luik]

Sort of agree. I have only over the last 18 months had a machine capable of ALM and personally I love it - in small doses. With the emphasis on personal, so if someones creation depends on it - good. It is the choice they make.

If it is a case of users/customers having to tweak their viewer settings to see - then is also the creators choice. Choose your market.

[ChinRey]

Been too busy to watch this forum recently, maybe I shouldn't reopen a thread almost a month old, but...

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

There's a certain amount of "tomatoes are poisonous" thinking around Advanced Lighting - it's quite a bit faster than it was at first and more machines are capable of running it than some think.

---

That is true. But that also means more and more machines are capable of running ultra high graphics, that is with shadows switched on. Specular maps still work with shadows switched on but normal maps often don't and even when they do, the effect is very different from what they produce in high res graphics.

[Drongle McMahon]

"...but normal maps often don't and even when they do, the effect is very different from what they produce in high res graphics"

I am intrigued by this statement. I haven't noticed much difference, but then I haven't particularly looked for any. Can you give some examples? Maybe pictures? Is it maybe on attachements, which I never look at?

[Coby Foden]

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Drongle McMahon wrote:

"...but normal maps often don't and even when they do,

the effect is very different

from what they produce in high res graphics"

I am intrigued by this statement. I haven't noticed much difference, but then I haven't particularly looked for any. Can you give some examples? Maybe pictures? Is it maybe on attachements, which I never look at?

---

I haven't noticed that kind of behaviour either. The normal map's effect looks pretty much the same to me whether the shadows are on or off. I have haven't noticed difference either whether the object is an attachment or not.

[Drongle McMahon]

Sometimes the normal map effects can be sharper without shadows, so there may be some slightly deleterious interaction, but I wouldn't say that amounts to not working with them. Also, the illusory geometry that normal maps create doesn't cast shadows itself. In that sense, you could say they aren't working, I suppose, but I wouldn't put it that way.

[Dora Gustafson]

The normal map can not cast shadows of course because it is flat
but if light hits a normal (in the map) in an angle < 90° a virtual shadow is drawn at that point

:smileysurprised::smileyvery-happy:

[Drongle McMahon]

I don't think I understand the second part that. Not sure what a virtual shadow is. I would welcome further explanation, but only if you feel like giving it. Possibly you mean incident light will give no reflection from parts of a surface whose normal is at >90 degrees*. In that case, yes I understand that. For the first part ... yes exactly. That's why I was wondering if that was what was meant by saying they don't work.

Never mind. I am quite happy with normal maps so far, so I'm not desperately concerned with these questions. :matte-motes-big-grin:

[Dora Gustafson]

I say "virtual shadow" and you say "incident light will give no reflection"
I say "angle < 90° " and you say "normal is at >90 degrees"

:smileysurprised::smileyvery-happy:

[ChinRey]

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Drongle McMahon wrote:

I am intrigued by this statement. I haven't noticed much difference, but then I haven't particularly looked for any. Can you give some examples?

---

Trying my best to anonymize the creators here, please don't ask :matte-motes-wink:

 

Here is a display panel at one of my favroite stores, specifically intended to demostrate the greatness of normal and specular maps.

 

High Resolution graphics:

 

Ultra high:

 

Another panel from the same display. The difference isn't nearly as obvious here:

High:

 

Ultra:

 

And finally one of my favorite dresses. It looks absolutely spectacular in high res graphics:

 

Slightly duller with shadows switched on:

 

The thing is, normal maps are extremely effective in a environment with strictly controlled light settings, such as a computer game or a film set. But in a more ... liberal ... environemt as SL they are rather unpredictable. Mind you, I'm not saying we shouldn't use normal maps at all - I certainly use them myself - but we should follow Chic Aeon's excellent advice, make our builds look as good as possible without normal maps and then maybe add them as a nice little bonus for those with graphics settings that happen to work with that particular map. And - the point of my first post - we should remember that the effect of the normal maps is not just a question of whether ALM is switched on or off. It also depends on several other factors in a viewer's graphics settings.

Another factor we maybe should start considering, is that SL2 is right around the corner now. In one of his early posts about it Ebbe Linden promised us new wonderful surface effects. I'd be very surprised if displacement maps aren't one of those "new" (at least new in SL context) effects. They do for real what normal maps try to emulate with clever light effects so once they are in place, I can't really see that the normal maps will have much use anymore.

[Pamela Galli]

Very interesting!  I keep my slider on high, never ultra, so had never noticed this effect. This is really something that ought to be made known by LL.  

How hard would it be for LL to prepare a little manual for basic and arcane bits about mesh (like how yes a simple object can go from one to 8000 LI in the check of a box).

 

 

 

ETA -- So what IS the advantage of Ultra settings over High?

[Drongle McMahon]

Thanks for those examples.

Now I can see this effect very strongly in certain conditions: Set the time to 3pm. Put a normal map on a cube and give it a darkish colour with a blank diffuse map and a blank white specular map. Now set "Environment" to zero (the phenomenon doesn't affect env reflection), and Glossiness to a low setting, say 10. With shadow off, look at the cube from the shaded side. You can see strong highlights. Turn shadows on, and those highlights disappear. The cube face is left dark and flat, as in ChinRey's pictures.

What's going on? I think the effect with shadows on is correct. When the face is in shadow there should not be any specular highlights. If you look at the well-lit front face, there is little or no difference with shadows on or off, and the other faces are intermediate. So I think the apparent collapse of the normal map in shadow is because without shadows it has highlights that should not be there. That is to say the normal maps dont work properly when shadows are off, not when they are on. If you try the same thing with Glossiness=0 and Environment=100, shadows make no difference.

One of the problems people have with using normal maps in SL is that they see far less specular effects than they would like, unless they use local lights. This is because of the very restricted, unidirectional, lighting from the sun (or moon). By using very low Glossiness, you can get much more highlighting, and that seems to compensate nicely. However, a drawback is that you get impossible highlights from parts of objects that the sun doesn't shine on, unless you have shadows enabled.

If you use much higher Glossiness, say the default 51, the effect is still there, but less pronounced, because the highlights from unlit surfaces are much reduced. It seems that in this case, the combination of the inworld ambient occlusion with shadows (you can control them separately in the Advanced graphics settings) has the strongest effect. I have no ideas why that should be the case.

So my view of this is that the normal maps work as they should with shadows, but show artefacts when shadows are off. Of course, that is a pedantic analytical view, and it at odds with the more important pragmatic view. From the artistic point of view, it seems to be necessary to use low Glossiness to get useful effects from normal maps (because of the limitations of the lighting model). Normal maps are supposed to produce useful effects. The fact that these effects are then inhibited by shadows means to the artisat that the normal maps don't work with shadows. Take your pick.

Here is one of the things I played with, glossiness=10, environment=0, 3pm default lighting.

It's a plain prim cube, blank texture, blue colour, same normal map on all faces.

[ChinRey]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

Very interesting!  I keep my slider on high, never ultra, so had never noticed this effect. This is really something that ought to be made known by LL.

---

Oh they know. I opened a JIRA about it a while ago, including pictures of those first two panels among the examples. It was rejected as "expected behavior".

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Pamela Galli wrote:

ETA -- So what IS the advantage of Ultra settings over High?

---

The significant difference is that shadows are on by default. They've really improved the shadows effect recently and it adds a completely new dimension to virtual reality. Combine it with dynamic windlight that changes during the day and SL becomes more vibrant, more dynamic - more *real* - than it ever has before. But only if your computer can handle it. If your gpu is struggling to keep up, all you get is a rather annoying flickering effect. My computer, a seven months old fairly standard off-the-shelf box, is right on the edge there - it can handle ultra graphics with the SL viewer but not with Firestorm.

In addition all the usual settings, draw distance, LOD factor and such are increased a little bit by default with ultra high graphics.

 

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Drongle McMahon wrote:

So my view of this is that the normal maps work as they should with shadows, but show artefacts when shadows are off.

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You may well be right that thatis the intention. But in reality, creators have no choice but to tone the normal maps down to keep them from looking ridiculously exaggerated with shadows turned off.

Another factor we need to consider when it comes to normal maps, is windlight. As Ivan Benjamin pointed out earlier in this thread, many users - especially those who tend to buy expensive clothing - use very flat windlight to hide blemishes in their skin textures, seams between mesh body parts etc. That of course means they won't see much effect from any normal maps. At the other end of the spectrum, there are those who use dynamic windlight. As far as I know, that is still the default newcomers get and I'm sure I'm not the only one who would hate to loose the extra life it gives SL. Now, take a normal map that looks sharp and clear and well defined with regular noon setting. (One of those normal maps intended to add defined 3D details that is, not the subtler ones that only tries to liven up the surface a bit.) Switch windlight to sunrise or sunset and see what happens. If you haven't tried it before, I promise you quite a shock.

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Pamela Galli wrote:

How hard would it be for LL to prepare a little manual for basic and arcane bits about mesh (like how yes a simple object can go from one to 8000 LI in the check of a box).

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Funny you should mention that. I did actually file a JIRA about that too and it was accepted. Whether they'll actually do anything about it this century is anybody's guess though. Mesh related JIRAs tend to end up right at the bottom of LL's priority list and stay there.

Oh well, here's my usual LL-and-mesh rant again:

I think one of the problems here is that LL simply wouldn't know how to write such a manual. Don't get me wrong, I have the highest respect for the LL and what they've achieved. They have some really good programmers there and all the Lindens I've met have been marevelous people, always nice and willing and eager to help any way they could. And of course, they developed SL mesh in the first place. But in SL today we use mesh at a scale and in ways they never imagined back then and they haven't kept up with that development. Today, asking a Linden for help or advice about mesh is like asking you dear 12 year old brother for help with your college grade homework or - perhaps a better metaphor - to ask the world's greatest Fortran expert for help with your C# code.

So, even in the unlikely event that LL actually tried to write such a manual, I can't see it would be of much help. Any of the contributors to this thread so far probably knows far more about the practical application of mesh in SL 2015 than anybody working for Linden Labs.