Selling PBR assets

[Gusher Castaignede]

Hi Luna,

OpenSim 0.9.3 hasn't been released yet, see: http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Download

Whatever version of OpenSim the grid you're referring to is using is one from the development branch, not an official OpenSim release. That branch has this disclaimer "Note that this is code in current development. It can occasionally be bad, so use with care. Backup your regions, (grid,) and databases before any update, in particular to this test code.".

Kitely doesn't "upgrade" to code that is known to have non-trivial issues. Our experience has shown that even official OpenSim releases that supposedly were production ready still had issues that required us to spend months of full-time development to fix.

As for Firestorm versions later than 6.6.17: their support for Vivox voice, which is what OpenSim grids that have voice support use, is not guaranteed to continue. Firestorm is busy working on transitioning to the WebRTC voice solution SL is using. You can use them on Kitely if you wish, but your mileage may vary and you may lose voice support on OpenSim grids.

[Gusher Castaignede]

Which grid you refer to that has PBR enabled?

I have no plans to sell PBR items on the Kitely Market for the foreseeable future since Kitely currently has no plans to support it. I create these and sell them at my store on a grid that is PBR enabled and I am in the process of converting all my items in that store to PBR. Those are currently my hottest items. The 0.9.3 OS version on that grid is very stable and so is the latest Firestorm viewer used in conjunction with it - 7.1.11. That viewer is much faster and more stable than the old non-pbr FS viewer 6.6.17.

[Gusher Castaignede]

FYI, we've starting researching whether it's feasible for us to add PBR support to Kitely and Kitely Market before we upgrade to OpenSim 0.9.3 (which, as stated previously, hasn't even been released yet). If this can be done in a reasonable amount of effort we'll do it. Otherwise, PBR support will have to wait until OpenSim 0.9.3 is released and enough time has passed for the various issues it introduces to be fixed.

I'll discuss this in today's Kitely community meeting.

[Gusher Castaignede]

That would be awesome, even if it's a separate trial server
to get our hands on early research....

FYI, we've starting researching whether it's feasible for us to add PBR support to Kitely and Kitely Market before we upgrade to OpenSim 0.9.3 (which, as stated previously, hasn't even been released yet). If this can be done in a reasonable amount of effort we'll do it. Otherwise, PBR support will have to wait until OpenSim 0.9.3 is released and enough time has passed for the various issues it introduces to be fixed.

I'll discuss this in today's Kitely community meeting.

[Luna Lunaria]

FYI, we've starting researching whether it's feasible for us to add PBR support to Kitely and Kitely Market before we upgrade to OpenSim 0.9.3 (which, as stated previously, hasn't even been released yet). If this can be done in a reasonable amount of effort we'll do it. Otherwise, PBR support will have to wait until OpenSim 0.9.3 is released and enough time has passed for the various issues it introduces to be fixed.

I'll discuss this in today's Kitely community meeting.

I like that idea and look forward to see what comes of it. In the meantime, I'm going to pass a pbr item to my Kitely avatar and see what I can do with it.

[Luna Lunaria]

Okay so here's what I've learned: I can bring in a PBR item from another grid. 1-it will show some shininess but no reflectivity. Reflection probes can be added but they have no effect (needs OS Core upgrade). 2-it will show the PBR materials in the edit window but adjusting any of the values has no effect (needs OS Core upgrade). 3-The Market flags an error for missing textures. You can completely replace the standard blinn phong textures but when you try to upload the PBR material to the grid it will only upload the attached textures and not the actual gltf material file; those textures cannot be added manually (needs OS Core upgrade). This of course forces you to completely delete the PBR material since you can't upload it to the grid and the Market won't recognize the one currently in the item. So, for now I will wait to hear about updates before attempting to add any other PBR items to the Market.

[Luna Lunaria]

Thank you Luna,

I don't expect things to work before we add PBR support to our backend. If the server doesn't handle PBR data storage, retrieval, etc. then PBR can't work.

We're in the process of going over the hundreds of commits that were added to the OpenSim development branch since OpenSim 0.9.2.2 was released in order to decide which need to be integrated into our system for PBR support. This will likely take several weeks to complete and test before we'll be able to update our system.

[Koshari Mahana]

I tried PBR in another grid that has opensim-rel-0.9.3.9032 (this version has a lot of bug fixes and is working great). I liked the way PBR looked for the few items I saw but I have to say it slowed me down and I almost never have lag. I had to turn my draw distance down, I usually have it at 1024. Admittedly I was in a region with a lot of stuff and scripts running. I like the idea of PBR and the way it looks but I wonder if many computers will be able to handle it in regions with a lot of items and scripts. It's still really worth getting but I'd expect at least 1/2, if not more, users won't have it enabled.

[Gusher Castaignede]

The beautiful variations feature on marketplace will help alot and am guessing
that viewers without pbr enabled will not pose any harm...

I tried PBR in another grid that has opensim-rel-0.9.3.9032 (this version has a lot of bug fixes and is working great). I liked the way PBR looked for the few items I saw but I have to say it slowed me down and I almost never have lag. I had to turn my draw distance down, I usually have it at 1024. Admittedly I was in a region with a lot of stuff and scripts running. I like the idea of PBR and the way it looks but I wonder if many computers will be able to handle it in regions with a lot of items and scripts. It's still really worth getting but I'd expect at least 1/2, if not more, users won't have it enabled.

[Luna Lunaria]

I tried PBR in another grid that has opensim-rel-0.9.3.9032 (this version has a lot of bug fixes and is working great). I liked the way PBR looked for the few items I saw but I have to say it slowed me down and I almost never have lag. I had to turn my draw distance down, I usually have it at 1024. Admittedly I was in a region with a lot of stuff and scripts running. I like the idea of PBR and the way it looks but I wonder if many computers will be able to handle it in regions with a lot of items and scripts. It's still really worth getting but I'd expect at least 1/2, if not more, users won't have it enabled.

When I create items now, I add both the newer pbr textures and the older blinn phong textures and materials we're used to. That way it will not matter what viewer the buyer uses, they will see something instead of blank white. It's extra work but not as much as creating and listing a separate item. Below is an example; the pbr pic was taken with Firestorm 7.1.11 and the non-pbr pic was taken using Firestorm 6.6.17.