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While SL embraces PBR in an attempt to embrace greater 'realism' using the increasingly creaky old technology we’re all familiar with there is a backlash among Generation Z and other younger demographics towards cutting edge gaming with hypereal graphics and an embracing of older, less graphically real aesthetics. Some of this may be down to the fashionable adoption of retro, as in the numbers buying things like typewriters and traditional film cameras, but is some of it also likely a backlash against the increasing trend for hyperrealism where it’s no longer really easy to spot something real from recorded game action.
I am not a gamer, hence there have been a few times when I’ve been watching videos purporting to be actions in the current Russo-Ukrainian war where the game graphics have been so good that they appear to be real, it’s only when one looks more intently that it becomes subtly obvious that it’s recorded game action and not footage of an actual battlfield encounter.
I’m aware of arguments that the graphics of SL/OS are ‘poor’ but I have never agreed as this is a very subjective area depending on so many different factors, such as the comparisons being made. Relative to Minecraft and Active Worlds the graphics of SL and Opensim are fantastic, but compared to a photograph or the hypereal renderings of high end computer graphics, very poor indeed. Personally I rather like the aesthetic of SL/Opensim and would argue that the aesthetics are neither good nor bad, but exactly what they are. I’m not arguing against hyperrealism for those who want it, but rather agruing that the current graphics are regarded as fine by the vast majority if those who use Opensim and SL.
This article in today’s Guardian prompted me to write the above after last week I read something about the implementation of PBR in Second Life. Sometimes maybe, less is more, and if the aesthetics of retro games are appealing to Generation Z and other demographics younger than the average found in Opensim, then maybe there is hope yet that our hobby will endure. After all, Active Worlds is now nearly in its 30th year, has a very faithful and dedicated community together with graphics that make Minecraft look good!
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/apr/02/why-are-yo...
I am not a gamer, hence there have been a few times when I’ve been watching videos purporting to be actions in the current Russo-Ukrainian war where the game graphics have been so good that they appear to be real, it’s only when one looks more intently that it becomes subtly obvious that it’s recorded game action and not footage of an actual battlfield encounter.
I’m aware of arguments that the graphics of SL/OS are ‘poor’ but I have never agreed as this is a very subjective area depending on so many different factors, such as the comparisons being made. Relative to Minecraft and Active Worlds the graphics of SL and Opensim are fantastic, but compared to a photograph or the hypereal renderings of high end computer graphics, very poor indeed. Personally I rather like the aesthetic of SL/Opensim and would argue that the aesthetics are neither good nor bad, but exactly what they are. I’m not arguing against hyperrealism for those who want it, but rather agruing that the current graphics are regarded as fine by the vast majority if those who use Opensim and SL.
This article in today’s Guardian prompted me to write the above after last week I read something about the implementation of PBR in Second Life. Sometimes maybe, less is more, and if the aesthetics of retro games are appealing to Generation Z and other demographics younger than the average found in Opensim, then maybe there is hope yet that our hobby will endure. After all, Active Worlds is now nearly in its 30th year, has a very faithful and dedicated community together with graphics that make Minecraft look good!
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/apr/02/why-are-yo...
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Come Portland and find this guy. He will tell you everything you need to know about PBR.
https://tinyurl.com/4wdhazws
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https://tinyurl.com/4wdhazws
But what an awful choice of beer though. I'm a strict Budweiser drinker, and I mean this stuff https://budweiserbudvar.com/uk/# and not the vastly inferior concoction of a similar name drunk by people not in the know!
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I am a tech dummy so don't really understand how PBR works but I can figure out that it will take a long time for people to implement for two reasons 1) People have invested so much in what they already have in their inventories especially in SL. PBR would mean purchasing items that are PBR textured. 2) The tech needed to run PBR not everyone can afford to have.
As for Gen Z and the backlash against high end games I think may come down to people just want simplicity. Its why games like Minecraft and Roblox are so popular with Gen Z. https://www.ypulse.com/article/2024/01/03/gen-zs-top-15-fa... In this article it seems to me that Gen Z use metaverse type games as their playground to meet up and connect. I know this is what my 14 yo does, and she spends her time in Roblox and also loves Call of Duty. Us oldies would meet up in the local playground or wander the streets on our bikes and have adventures or cause mischief together. Gen Z have their adventures in Metaverses now.
A world like SL or OS is just too complex for them to use. There is a game I like to play sometimes called Rising World and to me it is a cross between Minecraft and SL/OS in its building and mining style. https://www.rising-world.net It is way simpler to use than SL/OS and has better Graphics than Minecraft. It is currently moving from Java to Unity.
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As for Gen Z and the backlash against high end games I think may come down to people just want simplicity. Its why games like Minecraft and Roblox are so popular with Gen Z. https://www.ypulse.com/article/2024/01/03/gen-zs-top-15-fa... In this article it seems to me that Gen Z use metaverse type games as their playground to meet up and connect. I know this is what my 14 yo does, and she spends her time in Roblox and also loves Call of Duty. Us oldies would meet up in the local playground or wander the streets on our bikes and have adventures or cause mischief together. Gen Z have their adventures in Metaverses now.
A world like SL or OS is just too complex for them to use. There is a game I like to play sometimes called Rising World and to me it is a cross between Minecraft and SL/OS in its building and mining style. https://www.rising-world.net It is way simpler to use than SL/OS and has better Graphics than Minecraft. It is currently moving from Java to Unity.
My 20-something son, along with his fiance and their friends, run both. They like the retro because they grew up with that, and they like coming into SL on odd occasion for the social aspects, but they also have PS5's, Xboxes, and higher-end PC's running all the latest high-end games, especially mmorpgs where they can all be online together. I see the appeal for older SL graphics within our community here, which is fine for those who prefer it, but I myself am always trying to push the boundaries of what can be rendered in Opensim and I look forward to using PBR here to see what's possible.
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I'm interested, as I am always on the look for interesting visuals and use normal and specular maps quite frequently in my builds. I'm not a gamer, so I'm largely unaware of what is happening in that field apart from the odd video I see of game action. I like the fact that OS allows many graphical options and the platform is certainly capable of supporting spectacular visuals, as the work of Bryn Oh and Cherry Manga and others demonstrates.
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I think I might have been the one discussing PBR in Second Life. I think it is important to be clear about what we are talking about when we mention PBR. Physically Based Rendering (PBR) is not some new high-definition addition. It has been around since about 2013. It is largely "under the hood" and is likely present in either a graphic intense setting in Final Fantasy, or in a very minimalist setting in Minecraft. One of my favorite online games is "Kentucky Route Zero" which is a very minimalist 2D game that no one would ever mistake for being realistic. (Here is a screenshot: https://gyazo.com/eaf2d74e6281cb6e102d3bfd3271b721). Kentucky Route Zero uses PBR.
PBR is largely working "under the hood" and is simply telling light where it should go and how it should look. It allows you to do more with less. So instead of a Legacy Body with 6 billion triangles and vertices setting your GPU on fire, you can getas good a result or better with less and just some good texturing. Both SL and OS already offer specular mapping for textures. PBR is just the Peanut Butter to specular mapping's Jelly. It will not matter if you have a single prim block, or a detailed mesh house. Both will look better with a PBR engine rendering them.
I agree with you that the arguments that graphics in SL/OS are "poor" is not accurate. In fact, both offer some of the best graphics of any virtual world. It is the process of getting to that look that is an issue. It is much harder and much more taxing on your GPU than it needs to be.
PBR is not going to decide whether something is ultra realistic or not, it is just a standard process that delivers a better result to whatever you yourself choose to do with it.
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PBR is largely working "under the hood" and is simply telling light where it should go and how it should look. It allows you to do more with less. So instead of a Legacy Body with 6 billion triangles and vertices setting your GPU on fire, you can getas good a result or better with less and just some good texturing. Both SL and OS already offer specular mapping for textures. PBR is just the Peanut Butter to specular mapping's Jelly. It will not matter if you have a single prim block, or a detailed mesh house. Both will look better with a PBR engine rendering them.
I agree with you that the arguments that graphics in SL/OS are "poor" is not accurate. In fact, both offer some of the best graphics of any virtual world. It is the process of getting to that look that is an issue. It is much harder and much more taxing on your GPU than it needs to be.
PBR is not going to decide whether something is ultra realistic or not, it is just a standard process that delivers a better result to whatever you yourself choose to do with it.
Thank you for your explanation. I did read how Vulkan would allow much more for less in terms of hardware resources compared to OpenGL which has been seen as lacking for quite some time now. But your easy-to-understand explanation of what PBR is and does is most welcome.
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Indeed you are right, the issue is mainly of a software nature (rather than hardware), the "system" (so to speak) that we adopt in Opensim-based simulators, in Second Life, and in viewers more generally, to achieve good quality makes even very powerful computers "suffer".
Without going into excessive technical details, just consider that in Sansar, it offers (with VSync) 60 FPS even on dated computers with all graphics options set to maximum, including reflections (mirrors with real-time reflections and many other graphic beauties).
It's precisely the system as it's designed and implemented in these metaverses (and in video games), which manages to offer the maximum for the visual experience without overly burdening computer hardware.
This is because they preload the entire scenario which is then processed in a sort of "box", so they preload the map and even if you have to move to an adjacent simulator, the transition doesn't have the cross-sim and you still have to wait for the loading of the new map. Even the cache is managed differently.
Simply to notice the immense qualitative difference (also in physics), just enter Sansar where even not very recent computers with graphics set to maximum can manage the entire scenario and dynamics within it without lag or loading problems of textures or cloud avatars.
Try it out for yourselves.
The concept of the Metaverse is now focused on user experiences of this kind, Decentraland, The Sandbox, Minecraft, Sansar, and others are all decidedly more efficient and less "heavy" for computers.
SL/OS are much more complex starting from the viewers, and therefore much heavier, for this reason PBR, Mirrors, and much more will make many computers struggle.
Honestly, PBR is not of interest to me, much less functional mirrors in OS or SL, I actually think they are useless, they provide a very nice visual experience yes, but if SL doesn't change the way it manages this through the viewer just like Sansar and the others do, even recent computers will always struggle.
That's my opinion.
In particular, what impressed me positively about Sansar is the real-time reflection on a whiteboard in an Egyptian museum, and the fact that both a very performant computer and one from 10 years ago with a 5-year-old video card returned the exact same experience.
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Without going into excessive technical details, just consider that in Sansar, it offers (with VSync) 60 FPS even on dated computers with all graphics options set to maximum, including reflections (mirrors with real-time reflections and many other graphic beauties).
It's precisely the system as it's designed and implemented in these metaverses (and in video games), which manages to offer the maximum for the visual experience without overly burdening computer hardware.
This is because they preload the entire scenario which is then processed in a sort of "box", so they preload the map and even if you have to move to an adjacent simulator, the transition doesn't have the cross-sim and you still have to wait for the loading of the new map. Even the cache is managed differently.
Simply to notice the immense qualitative difference (also in physics), just enter Sansar where even not very recent computers with graphics set to maximum can manage the entire scenario and dynamics within it without lag or loading problems of textures or cloud avatars.
Try it out for yourselves.
The concept of the Metaverse is now focused on user experiences of this kind, Decentraland, The Sandbox, Minecraft, Sansar, and others are all decidedly more efficient and less "heavy" for computers.
SL/OS are much more complex starting from the viewers, and therefore much heavier, for this reason PBR, Mirrors, and much more will make many computers struggle.
Honestly, PBR is not of interest to me, much less functional mirrors in OS or SL, I actually think they are useless, they provide a very nice visual experience yes, but if SL doesn't change the way it manages this through the viewer just like Sansar and the others do, even recent computers will always struggle.
That's my opinion.
In particular, what impressed me positively about Sansar is the real-time reflection on a whiteboard in an Egyptian museum, and the fact that both a very performant computer and one from 10 years ago with a 5-year-old video card returned the exact same experience.
Yep, my 1050 loaded laptop works great in Sansar for sure. I also have an account in VRChat (PC only), and sine.space. All three of them work really well, thanks to everything being well optimized. I can run on low to mid settings on them and they all run smoothly... but because of that I typically run on high settings in those places, unless I'm in a crowded area.
But these places also suffer from slowdowns when they're crowded. People have reported that VRchat slows down with heavy crowds, and that's with users running in newer PC setups. I think it's slightly better with Sansar as far as handling crowds, I've been in some crowded spaces with my modest PC there and it hardly slows down for me. Of course I have to turn down graphics and switch off shadows... just like SL and OS.
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But these places also suffer from slowdowns when they're crowded. People have reported that VRchat slows down with heavy crowds, and that's with users running in newer PC setups. I think it's slightly better with Sansar as far as handling crowds, I've been in some crowded spaces with my modest PC there and it hardly slows down for me. Of course I have to turn down graphics and switch off shadows... just like SL and OS.
Love your thoughts on the matter. Already mentioned my SL/OS rig in a comment below. I don't mind the move to using PBR and 2k textures but as I said below, the move to Vulkan should have happened first! It is true that PBR isn't a new development for advancing texture graphics. Many games have used it for some time now, including the DOOM reboot from 2016, which uses Vulkan (along with Open GL 4.5).
In any case I don't think the end is near for either SL or OS. I just think the OS community has to be careful in vetting things like PBR. The overall experience counts first, and I feel that there really is more diversity of thought and creation in OS vs SL. That's what attracted me to come here after a year of being in SL. I love both communities, but find OS to be a lot more fun to be in. For whatever reason, even though there are fewer folks in OS, I actually manage to talk in world more often in OS. Right now my unscientific split for time spent between both is... umm... maybe 65% OS and 45% SL.
You mentioned Active Worlds... hehe... I also have an account there and yes, the graphics are ancient but some of the sims there are fun to mess with. The so-called x rated sims are my favorite, they're rather comical but I get a good laugh out of them!
As far as other older metaverses... the Cybertown crew is also active... they do chat a lot on DIscord and I have tried it a few times, worth a look for what is possibly one of the first metaverses to run from a web browser (definitely even more dated vs AW3D though).
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In any case I don't think the end is near for either SL or OS. I just think the OS community has to be careful in vetting things like PBR. The overall experience counts first, and I feel that there really is more diversity of thought and creation in OS vs SL. That's what attracted me to come here after a year of being in SL. I love both communities, but find OS to be a lot more fun to be in. For whatever reason, even though there are fewer folks in OS, I actually manage to talk in world more often in OS. Right now my unscientific split for time spent between both is... umm... maybe 65% OS and 45% SL.
You mentioned Active Worlds... hehe... I also have an account there and yes, the graphics are ancient but some of the sims there are fun to mess with. The so-called x rated sims are my favorite, they're rather comical but I get a good laugh out of them!
As far as other older metaverses... the Cybertown crew is also active... they do chat a lot on DIscord and I have tried it a few times, worth a look for what is possibly one of the first metaverses to run from a web browser (definitely even more dated vs AW3D though).
Here is a funny antidote, in way back about 2007 or so, the ATI video cards were notorious for needing the proper driver patch in order to work in SL without crashing. A group of very dedicated ATI fanboys leased a region to help ATI graphic card users who were unable to log in to begin with. It became a running joke around the SL gossip community for a bit.
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When I initially read the news coming out about PBR I was amused. In (or should that be on) Second Life I spend a lot of time exploring.
What I've noticed is that, for me and I acknowledge that your mileage may vary, the builds with the most appeal are OLD. They may contain mesh, but they are primarily prim and really EXCELLENT textures. Textures where the creator clearly did a lot of work to get the diffuse, specular and normal just right. I can think of three such creators, off the top of my head, who are no longer active on Second Life at all. Their shops are gone. The only legacy of their existence are the regions and plots on the mainland which one can find dotted around the grid, and as time passes those locations are slowly dwindling.
When I contrast those old builds with the majority of much newer mesh buildings, I find the newer stuff lacking. Much of it, to be honest, seems to have been taken from the various mesh sites on the web, and poorly converted for use in SL. And those builds, in my opinion, want for a soul. Somehow, these new buildings look less three dimensional than the old buildings from the days when the only way to make a brick wall look 3D was to fool the eye.
There ARE some really good new builds, I think. But they are few and far between. Every time I'm out bouncing around the grid ... it's the OLD stuff that has real character in my eye. That may be, in part, because the creators of today do some pretty weird things:
I recently went to fair where the 'latest and hottest' clothing was being debuted for the public. I was surprised to see that many creators these days are back to using the old 'baked in reflection' that was the only way to make a system layer look like it was shiny. Ummm ... don't these creators know about specular reflection? Of course they are all no-mod, so they got no sales from me because I'm not PERMITTED to fix their egregious flaws.
Not long ago I happened upon a building which was absolutely deformed from a distance. It only looked 'correct' when you got quite close. A little bit of investigation showed that the creator had uploaded the mesh with reasonable LOD values for High and Medium, and ridiculously low values for Low and Lowest. You might consider this for clothing ... but for a BUILDING?
There are some excellent creators still active in SL, there's no question about that. There are new people who will, if they keep at it, stand out from the all-to-average crowd.
But I, for one, won't touch PBR because it's the OLD builds from days gone by that encapsulates SL at it's most wondrous, I think.
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What I've noticed is that, for me and I acknowledge that your mileage may vary, the builds with the most appeal are OLD. They may contain mesh, but they are primarily prim and really EXCELLENT textures. Textures where the creator clearly did a lot of work to get the diffuse, specular and normal just right. I can think of three such creators, off the top of my head, who are no longer active on Second Life at all. Their shops are gone. The only legacy of their existence are the regions and plots on the mainland which one can find dotted around the grid, and as time passes those locations are slowly dwindling.
When I contrast those old builds with the majority of much newer mesh buildings, I find the newer stuff lacking. Much of it, to be honest, seems to have been taken from the various mesh sites on the web, and poorly converted for use in SL. And those builds, in my opinion, want for a soul. Somehow, these new buildings look less three dimensional than the old buildings from the days when the only way to make a brick wall look 3D was to fool the eye.
There ARE some really good new builds, I think. But they are few and far between. Every time I'm out bouncing around the grid ... it's the OLD stuff that has real character in my eye. That may be, in part, because the creators of today do some pretty weird things:
I recently went to fair where the 'latest and hottest' clothing was being debuted for the public. I was surprised to see that many creators these days are back to using the old 'baked in reflection' that was the only way to make a system layer look like it was shiny. Ummm ... don't these creators know about specular reflection? Of course they are all no-mod, so they got no sales from me because I'm not PERMITTED to fix their egregious flaws.
Not long ago I happened upon a building which was absolutely deformed from a distance. It only looked 'correct' when you got quite close. A little bit of investigation showed that the creator had uploaded the mesh with reasonable LOD values for High and Medium, and ridiculously low values for Low and Lowest. You might consider this for clothing ... but for a BUILDING?
There are some excellent creators still active in SL, there's no question about that. There are new people who will, if they keep at it, stand out from the all-to-average crowd.
But I, for one, won't touch PBR because it's the OLD builds from days gone by that encapsulates SL at it's most wondrous, I think.
PBR has me wondering.
On the one hand, Second Life has the best graphics of all virtual worlds already now, also due to how the resident creators go completely overboard with textures and meshes. Both the official viewer and the most popular viewer are based on way outdated OpenGL versions because Second Life itself doesn't support anything newer. Enough avatars within the FOV, and even an overclocked RTX 4090Ti won't be able to keep the world from turning into a slideshow.
Second Life doesn't even appeal to gamers with powerful machines, and I think a rather substantial number of users is still on the same 32-bit office-level machines they got themselves over a decade and a half ago because they haven't been able to afford anything newer ever since.
Not to mention that they're going mobile and, I think, VR as well. Remember that VR requires a constant 60fps on mobile, battery-powered hardware.
At the same time, they're introducing both PBR and 2K textures in what looks like an attempt at having the only virtual world whose graphics outclass Cyberpunk 2077. And Cyberpunk is notorious for barely running smoothly on absolute highest-end gaming machines while having a state-of-the-art graphics engine underneath. Second Life wants to pull this off on phones and headsets while using over 20-year-old OpenGL.
I guess we all know what 2K textures mean. They won't mean that creators will stitch four of their many 1K textures together to have fewer textures overall and more simple meshes. No, they'll rather replace each 1K texture with a 2K texture because so does the competition. Yes, on buttons on clothes. And when that stuff is ripped and taken over to OpenSim, the importers probably can't be bothered to scale the textures down.
When PBR is finalised, it might have a slow start because it'll require expensive extra software and more work. But once one big brand starts, or a small brand becomes big by having PBR before the established big brands, all big brands will have to follow suit on all their products, also because they say that PBR and non-PBR objects look terrible next to each other.
I'm not sure how quickly PBR will spread in OpenSim. If it starts on legal content made in and for OpenSim, nobody will know and care because that content won't be available on any of the two or three super-popular freebie sims.
As for SL content, until now, practically none of the importers could even be bothered to re-add normal maps or specular maps. That's why almost everything in OpenSim has flat and dull surfaces. So I wouldn't be so certain that they suddenly start adding normal maps, specular maps and PBR maps.
That is, until either a new freebie sim comes up or an old freebie sim re-emerges with PBR content. Exclusive and no-transfer, of course. Then PBR will become what EvoX is already now: a seemingly absolute necessity for the content it concerns. Everyone will have to offer PBR content. More recent freebie stores might start rushing to hang up PBR content, maybe even replace non-PBR content with PBR content. And just like EvoX now and BoM before EvoX, many won't know what it actually means, but it's probably the newest, hottest must-have now.
Those who actually turn PBR on will find that some sims will look rather jarring: Some content supports PBR, some SL mesh content right next to it is of the kind that has even got shadows painted on to bring near-photo-realistic graphics to those who use SL on potatoes, and maybe there are even good old prim buildings on the same sim. This will also be a sure-fire way to tell that the sim builder has PBR off, just like you can tell sims whose builders have their viewers permanently switched to midday or whose builders always fly and never walk on their own sims.
Oh, by the way, I expect PBR to have one good side-effect: Baked-on shadows that clash with generated shadows will finally be a thing of the past, at least on new content.
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On the one hand, Second Life has the best graphics of all virtual worlds already now, also due to how the resident creators go completely overboard with textures and meshes. Both the official viewer and the most popular viewer are based on way outdated OpenGL versions because Second Life itself doesn't support anything newer. Enough avatars within the FOV, and even an overclocked RTX 4090Ti won't be able to keep the world from turning into a slideshow.
Second Life doesn't even appeal to gamers with powerful machines, and I think a rather substantial number of users is still on the same 32-bit office-level machines they got themselves over a decade and a half ago because they haven't been able to afford anything newer ever since.
Not to mention that they're going mobile and, I think, VR as well. Remember that VR requires a constant 60fps on mobile, battery-powered hardware.
At the same time, they're introducing both PBR and 2K textures in what looks like an attempt at having the only virtual world whose graphics outclass Cyberpunk 2077. And Cyberpunk is notorious for barely running smoothly on absolute highest-end gaming machines while having a state-of-the-art graphics engine underneath. Second Life wants to pull this off on phones and headsets while using over 20-year-old OpenGL.
I guess we all know what 2K textures mean. They won't mean that creators will stitch four of their many 1K textures together to have fewer textures overall and more simple meshes. No, they'll rather replace each 1K texture with a 2K texture because so does the competition. Yes, on buttons on clothes. And when that stuff is ripped and taken over to OpenSim, the importers probably can't be bothered to scale the textures down.
When PBR is finalised, it might have a slow start because it'll require expensive extra software and more work. But once one big brand starts, or a small brand becomes big by having PBR before the established big brands, all big brands will have to follow suit on all their products, also because they say that PBR and non-PBR objects look terrible next to each other.
I'm not sure how quickly PBR will spread in OpenSim. If it starts on legal content made in and for OpenSim, nobody will know and care because that content won't be available on any of the two or three super-popular freebie sims.
As for SL content, until now, practically none of the importers could even be bothered to re-add normal maps or specular maps. That's why almost everything in OpenSim has flat and dull surfaces. So I wouldn't be so certain that they suddenly start adding normal maps, specular maps and PBR maps.
That is, until either a new freebie sim comes up or an old freebie sim re-emerges with PBR content. Exclusive and no-transfer, of course. Then PBR will become what EvoX is already now: a seemingly absolute necessity for the content it concerns. Everyone will have to offer PBR content. More recent freebie stores might start rushing to hang up PBR content, maybe even replace non-PBR content with PBR content. And just like EvoX now and BoM before EvoX, many won't know what it actually means, but it's probably the newest, hottest must-have now.
Those who actually turn PBR on will find that some sims will look rather jarring: Some content supports PBR, some SL mesh content right next to it is of the kind that has even got shadows painted on to bring near-photo-realistic graphics to those who use SL on potatoes, and maybe there are even good old prim buildings on the same sim. This will also be a sure-fire way to tell that the sim builder has PBR off, just like you can tell sims whose builders have their viewers permanently switched to midday or whose builders always fly and never walk on their own sims.
Oh, by the way, I expect PBR to have one good side-effect: Baked-on shadows that clash with generated shadows will finally be a thing of the past, at least on new content.
Thank you for your comment Jupiter. I can't claim to understand PBR but I did wonder how the ancient and by now creaking OpenGL would cope with this development. It's quite paradoxical that the last people to spend any money on OpenGL was Linden Labs, some 20 years ago, and then they subsequently fired all those developers who have now moved on to other things, taking their knowledge with them. OpenGL is long overdue for updating, and LL should really invest in developing OpenGL to be fit for the next 20 years, except they no longer have the expertise, or indeed anyone who knows enough about how the current OpenGL works.
I'd be very surprised to discover anyone still using a 32 bit machine, even the vast majority of Linux users have made the change to 64 bit, and though there are still some distros available for 32 it, they are becoming fewer every day. But I'm sure that there are plenty who access virtual world environments on the laptop they bought from the middle aisle in Lidl as a special purchase one shopping day.
I've always found baked on shadows a bit of a fraud, though I can see their utility in a world without computer generated shadows, but I've switched on shadows as long as I've been in virtual worlds. I also use both normal and specular maps on my builds, not always successfully, but I do like their effect. I'm also not averse to building with prims. I like mesh, but I'm not always convinced of its superiority over prim builds in all use case scenarios - sometimes it seems a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
I still don't understand what all the fuss is about with EvoX: it seems to me to have something of the element of the Emperor's New Clothes, or proprietary lock-in as per some computer software. In either case, a little redundant in Opensim. BoM to me is just a nice way to be able to use all that bloody awful system clothing from circa 2007, though it is great for when changing skins, as it makes it far less of a hassle than was the case with pre BoM avatars. What really strikes me as a little weird are those traditionalists who still wander the metaverse with a system avatar, I can't blame them for not going for the black market imports, but surely the existence of Ruth & Roth 2.0 offer a way to look better in a way that is actually optimised to the limitations of OpenGL than the usual mesh avatar offerings.
PBR with just be overkill, but I have no doubt you're right, it will soon be a must have, even in Opensim.
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I'd be very surprised to discover anyone still using a 32 bit machine, even the vast majority of Linux users have made the change to 64 bit, and though there are still some distros available for 32 it, they are becoming fewer every day. But I'm sure that there are plenty who access virtual world environments on the laptop they bought from the middle aisle in Lidl as a special purchase one shopping day.
I've always found baked on shadows a bit of a fraud, though I can see their utility in a world without computer generated shadows, but I've switched on shadows as long as I've been in virtual worlds. I also use both normal and specular maps on my builds, not always successfully, but I do like their effect. I'm also not averse to building with prims. I like mesh, but I'm not always convinced of its superiority over prim builds in all use case scenarios - sometimes it seems a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
I still don't understand what all the fuss is about with EvoX: it seems to me to have something of the element of the Emperor's New Clothes, or proprietary lock-in as per some computer software. In either case, a little redundant in Opensim. BoM to me is just a nice way to be able to use all that bloody awful system clothing from circa 2007, though it is great for when changing skins, as it makes it far less of a hassle than was the case with pre BoM avatars. What really strikes me as a little weird are those traditionalists who still wander the metaverse with a system avatar, I can't blame them for not going for the black market imports, but surely the existence of Ruth & Roth 2.0 offer a way to look better in a way that is actually optimised to the limitations of OpenGL than the usual mesh avatar offerings.
PBR with just be overkill, but I have no doubt you're right, it will soon be a must have, even in Opensim.
Many OpenSim users actually still don't know what BoM even is. But "BoM" was slapped on all those new SL bodies and SL heads that showed up in the Hypergrid in the early 2020s, so it was simply considered a code for "this is the new hotness now, and everything that doesn't have it on itself is old and busted".
Hardly anyone actually fleshes BoM out. The new old way of putting on skins and make-up and tattoos is either seen as a nuisance but one that you have to put up with, or people got themselves an Athena 6 and a Catwa BoM head and use skin appliers and tattoo appliers on them.
Only very very few BoM avatars actually wear layer clothes. That's mostly because the concept of layer clothes has been declared obsolete in 2015, and absolutely everything, no matter how skin-tight, absolutely has had to be mesh ever since, no exception. Since Athena 6, there has hardly been any layer clothing imported from SL. One "Free Bakes on Mesh" box with layer lingerie and layer stockings. One third-party box with mesh lingerie plus layer stockings. That's all. And nobody ever wears either. One of the reasons why nobody had come up with the idea to steal layer tights from SL; the other reason is because maybe half a dozen avatars all over the Hypergrid would wear tights in the first place.
What layer clothes have been around before the arrival of Athena 6 is being snubbed even more. People only want the newest, the best, the hottest stuff. And those old layer clothes aren't just old technology, they're "seriously old crap" that nobody would want to be caught wearing.
The concept of alpha masks in combination with BoM is completely alien here. First of all, "everybody knows" that alpha masks don't work on mesh bodies. That's what they've been learning since 2015.
Then, even those who may suspect that BoM might include alpha mask support for mesh bodies "learn" that this is allegedly not the case. And that's only because they try it with Athena 6 or Adonis 4, and the alpha modes on these bodies are completely botched, so alpha masks actually do not work on them specifically. At the same time, alpha masks work on Ruth2 v4 and Roth2 v2 out perfectly of the box, but nobody uses these bodies, so nobody knows.
Lastly, the general attitude here is that alpha cuts are a more advanced technology and therefore the successor of alpha masks, having fully superseded alpha masks and rendered alpha masks obsolete. Wanting to use alpha masks on a BoM mesh body from the 2020s is akin to wanting to wear Linda Kellie layer clothes on a BoM mesh body from 2020s. Never mind that Ruth2 v4 is actually bundled with Linda Kellie underwear. And never mind that mesh bodies in SL have quickly become available without tiny alpha cuts and with full alpha mask support instead because, after all, alpha cuts are nothing but an ugly and performance-hogging hack for alpha-ing because alpha masks didn't work on pre-BoM mesh bodies.
What EvoX is and means, I think many OpenSim users don't know that either. But it's being aggressively marketed, and it's on all the newest and hottest mesh heads and skins. So it has to be the new hotness that you absolutely have to have. If EvoX is juxtaposed with BoM by having EvoX and BoM heads next to each other on the same store wall, this also creates the impression that EvoX is the new hotness to BoM's old and busted because BoM has been around for longer, and EvoX "clearly isn't" BoM.
So you absolutely have to have EvoX nowadays. Outfitting a new avatar with something that isn't the newest, hottest shit is generally understood as cluelessness about what the newest, hottest shit is. Sometimes, even refusing to upgrade your avatar to the newest, hottest shit is.
The next big thing will be something like EvoX 2K. Same as EvoX, but with 2K textures.
Fortunately, classic avatar layers, skins included, only support diffuse maps, but no bump maps, no specular maps and definitely no PBR maps. So unless bump maps, specular maps and PBR maps are firmly applied to the body or the head, and BoM can't mess with them, BoM or EvoX can't be combined with PBR. At least it won't be possible to market PBR skins because PBR skins aren't possible.
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Hardly anyone actually fleshes BoM out. The new old way of putting on skins and make-up and tattoos is either seen as a nuisance but one that you have to put up with, or people got themselves an Athena 6 and a Catwa BoM head and use skin appliers and tattoo appliers on them.
Only very very few BoM avatars actually wear layer clothes. That's mostly because the concept of layer clothes has been declared obsolete in 2015, and absolutely everything, no matter how skin-tight, absolutely has had to be mesh ever since, no exception. Since Athena 6, there has hardly been any layer clothing imported from SL. One "Free Bakes on Mesh" box with layer lingerie and layer stockings. One third-party box with mesh lingerie plus layer stockings. That's all. And nobody ever wears either. One of the reasons why nobody had come up with the idea to steal layer tights from SL; the other reason is because maybe half a dozen avatars all over the Hypergrid would wear tights in the first place.
What layer clothes have been around before the arrival of Athena 6 is being snubbed even more. People only want the newest, the best, the hottest stuff. And those old layer clothes aren't just old technology, they're "seriously old crap" that nobody would want to be caught wearing.
The concept of alpha masks in combination with BoM is completely alien here. First of all, "everybody knows" that alpha masks don't work on mesh bodies. That's what they've been learning since 2015.
Then, even those who may suspect that BoM might include alpha mask support for mesh bodies "learn" that this is allegedly not the case. And that's only because they try it with Athena 6 or Adonis 4, and the alpha modes on these bodies are completely botched, so alpha masks actually do not work on them specifically. At the same time, alpha masks work on Ruth2 v4 and Roth2 v2 out perfectly of the box, but nobody uses these bodies, so nobody knows.
Lastly, the general attitude here is that alpha cuts are a more advanced technology and therefore the successor of alpha masks, having fully superseded alpha masks and rendered alpha masks obsolete. Wanting to use alpha masks on a BoM mesh body from the 2020s is akin to wanting to wear Linda Kellie layer clothes on a BoM mesh body from 2020s. Never mind that Ruth2 v4 is actually bundled with Linda Kellie underwear. And never mind that mesh bodies in SL have quickly become available without tiny alpha cuts and with full alpha mask support instead because, after all, alpha cuts are nothing but an ugly and performance-hogging hack for alpha-ing because alpha masks didn't work on pre-BoM mesh bodies.
What EvoX is and means, I think many OpenSim users don't know that either. But it's being aggressively marketed, and it's on all the newest and hottest mesh heads and skins. So it has to be the new hotness that you absolutely have to have. If EvoX is juxtaposed with BoM by having EvoX and BoM heads next to each other on the same store wall, this also creates the impression that EvoX is the new hotness to BoM's old and busted because BoM has been around for longer, and EvoX "clearly isn't" BoM.
So you absolutely have to have EvoX nowadays. Outfitting a new avatar with something that isn't the newest, hottest shit is generally understood as cluelessness about what the newest, hottest shit is. Sometimes, even refusing to upgrade your avatar to the newest, hottest shit is.
The next big thing will be something like EvoX 2K. Same as EvoX, but with 2K textures.
Fortunately, classic avatar layers, skins included, only support diffuse maps, but no bump maps, no specular maps and definitely no PBR maps. So unless bump maps, specular maps and PBR maps are firmly applied to the body or the head, and BoM can't mess with them, BoM or EvoX can't be combined with PBR. At least it won't be possible to market PBR skins because PBR skins aren't possible.
Hardware isn't the only reason why people run the 32bit viewer. I still run a 32 SL viewer for the simple reason that I want to keep my OS and SL installations completely separate, and there only way I can reasonably achieve that is to run 32 bit for SL, and 64 bit for OS. That won't be a problem after my next hardware upgrade and I ditch windows altogether.
As for EvoX ... I fail to see the appeal. Perhaps it's just my old eyes, but the EvoX textures don't look good enough to me to warrant departing from the 'standard' skin. And, of course, I find it incredibly amusing that the high tech EvoX heads seem to use exactly the same skin layout that heads use in DAZ3D.
I use a system avatar quite frequently when I'm HGing all over the place. It rezzes faster, no matter what grid I land on, and being old school I attract less attention :)
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As for EvoX ... I fail to see the appeal. Perhaps it's just my old eyes, but the EvoX textures don't look good enough to me to warrant departing from the 'standard' skin. And, of course, I find it incredibly amusing that the high tech EvoX heads seem to use exactly the same skin layout that heads use in DAZ3D.
I use a system avatar quite frequently when I'm HGing all over the place. It rezzes faster, no matter what grid I land on, and being old school I attract less attention :)
The Linden Lab devs have been talking about moving to Vulkan in the last few years. That should have happened well before even tackling PBR and 2k textures! Many GPUs as far back as the 900 series from Nvidia and their AMD equivalents are compatible with Vulkan. If that move happened first, then PBR and 2k textures becoming part of the SL engine would make perfect sense, and could be scaled enough to work with plenty of PC's. Of course, upgrades would be a likely necessity. I'm on a 1050 GPU/8th Gen i7 H CPU on a laptop and SL is kinda variable, depending on which sim I'm on. OS on the other hand is mostly a smoother experience for me. I do have 32 GB of DDR4 RAM so most of the time I don't experience too much texture thrashing... keeping shadows off is the usual thing to do to speed up things, along with 128m or less of draw distance.
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This was a nice read, your points I feel are valid enough to get people to think first. The introduction of something like PBR materials also has some hidden cost's not apparent to some folks. The cost of hardware upgrades on the users part may be more expensive than worth the price. Thanks for the post.
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Hardware costs are an increasingly important consideration. I find that my setup, with an Intel Core i3-3220 CPU 3.30Ghz x 4 with 16 GB of RAM and an NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR struggles on Second Life these days, but performs well on Opensim. I know it's hardly cutting edge hardware, but it's now approaching the situation where relatively high end hardware is required to enjoy all the bells and whistles, which is especially problematic when many users are using hardware that's designed to web surf and watch movies. I'm fairly convinced that the reason behind the failure of Sansar and High Fidelity was partially related to the requirement for relatively high end hardware.
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