PBR = New tsunami of broken content?

[Ozwell Wayfarer]

It seems that some of my fears around the new PBR update are unfortunately starting to manifest themselves. For anyone who does not understand what PBR is, I have written a brief explanation of PBR on my blog (link below). I have been writing up a few tutorials and bits and pieces in advance of my store reopening (soon, I promise!).

The major reason my store has not reopened thusfar is this looming PBR update. The lighting model we use inworld is going to fundamentally change with the introduction of "light probes" (essentially a localised HDRI). This has the potential to break a LOT of stuff.

For the record, my experience of PBR so far in SL has been to go and visit the "Full PBR region" Winter Wonderland with the official viewer. It was a mixed bag, some things looked nice, some things looked odd (like the textures were unintentionally in full bright mode). But honestly, there was nothing there that blew my mind and it took fooooooreeeeeeever to load.

I have a RTX 3090 TI and a ton of RAM, so goodness knows what it will be like for people on less powerful machines, but I have NEVER heard my fans working so hard. My desk was literally vibrating. Once it had all loaded, I was getting about 30-40fps. Normally I get at least 40-60, even in heavily built out regions or large crowds of avis.

But besides that, I have seen some worrying comments over at NWN. https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2023/12/pbr-second-life.html

The consensus in the comment section seems to be "meh through to bad". Though there is one (very long) and mostly positive comment too, with some interesting points about the impact on the SL economy/content creation. The one comment that really has the potential to keep me awake at night is from Dancing Lemon.

"At this point in time, it's not good. Most objects at midday lol like they are fullbright, and transparent-to-opaque gradient textures are no longer smooth, but have a 'stepped' appearance.

The result being that most of our products now look awful, and with 100's of products we are looking at YEARS of work to fix them.

The irony is, LL are so scared of rolling out scripting updates in case it breaks some ancient item or other, but with this one change, they have broken pretty much every existing item on the grid." - pure nightmare fuel right there. lol

From what I hear, Firestorm is holding off from implementing PBR until the bugs are ironed out. As I mention on my blog, its taking so long, and I expect uptake is going to be quite slow, so I am now pushing on regardless. But I would be lying if I didn't say I am a tad concerned, considering I am in the middle of updating hundreds of items myself at the moment.

[Kimm Starr]

I just said this the other day. This whole thing is going to be a nightmare. Not everyone is going to be using the same viewer, all creators are not going to be creating for it, having so much merchandise in our inventory that won't be compatible. This list goes on. It gets to be a pain when there are too many differences across the board. It was so much easier being a creator years ago. Everyone had the same mesh type body so if you created skin, clothing, hair etc. it fit everyone. Scripting was the same for everyone, in opensim every world is a little different in what scripts you can use and how well they work. Now textures, ugh, I prefer baking my textures.

[Gusher Castaignede]

....modernization brings pain for a greater good...am also at Sansar but paused creating there until they finish the backend...some cool features being pumped there including cross platform Interoperability and with that new viewer Crystal Frost it may open the gates wider, not just hypergriding but also visiting other virtual worlds without leaving the viewer.... big new things come with pain.. while Sansar is fixing stuff am spending some time here...

[Ada Radius]

I'm looking forward to PBR, and ya I think it's going to suk at first, and maybe for a while. I don't like everything about the way SL is handling it, duh. But still, Metal, Roughness, and all the ways we can combine the industry standard components of PBR, these are things that all the other game engines have. We should have them too.

[Gusher Castaignede]

As we speak Pheonix Firestorm group just released a new PBR alpha update.... WeeEEeee...

[Ozwell Wayfarer]

Don't get me wrong, I welcome the introduction of PBR, so long as its done right. This whole idea that change and modernization is always good is a fallacy IMHO. Everything hinges on how change is implemented. Thoughtfully and with due consideration, or recklessly and incoherently.

All the issues people are raising currently could easily be solved. But the general consensus I am seeing at the moment on the SL forums and NWN is that its just not ready yet.

The major issue seems to be that eventually, people will be forced to use the Advanced Lighting Model. The option to turn it off will cease to be.

So one day, even if PBR is implemented perfectly, people are going to log in to find that they have to update their viewer. Suddenly everyone gets a massive performance downgrade that they are forced into, and lets say 20-40% of users get hit so bad, they have no real chance of using SL/OS anymore above 5fps without upgrading their hardware.

There should be some option to toggle things on and off. That is my major gripe. If possible, a simple toggle to switch between lighting modes in the viewer would be best. If that's not possible, have PBR and non PBR region types. Or allow it to be toggled in the parcel controls. I don't know, I'm not a programmer. But I don't see why something like that isn't possible.

As it stands, on day X, everyone will be switched to the new lighting model and if you don't like it, go buy a gaming PC or go suck lemons. That's bad business when your user base is already not exactly massive.

[Gusher Castaignede]

....have not upgraded PC for ten years now... using Asus TUF Sabertooth with ti video card with 6gb video memory and actually it's more than enough for creating 3d content and animation... we're gonna survive it... another ten years on same rig....lets do it!

[Ozwell Wayfarer]

I'm OK so therefore everyone is OK!!!! Glad we cleared that up

Seriously though, sure its possible. The minimum VRAM requirement for Blender is 4GB. So I guess you are safe for a few more years yet. And actually, some people on lower performance machines are reporting better performance with the new lighting model. But I am seeing a lot more people say "everything is grey for a long time and running at 5-10fps".

As a natural pessimist, I do admire/envy your optimism though.