EEP, Second Life Environmental Enhancement Project, Makes Acclaimed Developer Say EEK!

Example of reported EEP display problems featured in Niran's post

I haven't been closely following Environmental Enhancement Project (known as EEP), Linden Lab's bid to greatly improve legacy WindLight environments while introducing new inventory objects for defining the environmental settings. However, SLer NiranV Dean, creator of Black Dragon, the third party Second Life viewer with a cult following due to its amazing graphics, has been following EEP quite closely. And according to him in an epic, before-and-after illustrated rant he recently posted on the official community board, EEP as it currently exists is an L of titanic proportion:

I am absolutely speechless what a pile of broken mess you want to sell us. This has been by far the worst experience i have had in Second Life so far, it was a displeasure from login to logout and i could cry tears, that is how much this hurt me... [Rendering is] absolutely, totally and completely broken from back to front. Shadows, let's start with shadows. Shadows have become noticeably worse, they are ugly, pixelated, bad, inaccurate and constantly bug out, clip away and shadow blur is at a point it basically starts destroying itself when i turn around the camera and that's with the minimum draw distance...

And so on like this, except with more salty language. He's not the only one: Among the follow-up reader questions I just sent to Linden Lab after my talk with Ebbe Altberg is this one: "EEP has ruined teleports and region crossings for a lot of people."

Fundamental to Niran's objections is a monetization option for EEP, at the expense of users being able to edit WindLights:

 

"What are they even hoping for?" he asks me rhetorically. "WindLights are probably gonna get sold for a mere few L$, maybe L$ 10-50 if at all. [Linden Lab's] cut is incredibly small. They get like a few L$s they would have to sell millions of these to even get a number that is worth looking at and for this shit...

 

"It's literally the definition of 'one step forward, X steps back'. It is held back and being destroyed in so many stupid ways with so simple stupid bad decisions that go against the community as a whole. And this 'we will pull through with this no matter what, no debate' mentality is a stab in the back that is besides it being completely and totally broken. I'm disappointed and angry at a whole new level and I do get disappointed and angry a lot for a lot of reasons."

 

Given Niran's proven skill at SL graphics, if he's disappointed and angry, SLers in general should be concerned.

Comments

[Chic Aeon]

I only tried EEP on the beta grid -- the DAY it was open for testing and I too haven't been watching all that closely. I was happy with the way Windlight still works on EEP sims once they went grid wide (MAIN was one of the last channels and I am on main).

I love the idea of multiple windlights on various levels, beyond that I don't care much. I can say that from the forum chatter it seems about 80 - 20 with folks NOT happy with EEP. Lots of things have been incorporate due to comments and that is a great thing and I know a TON of work went into this, but personally I am going to keep using Firestorm until the block it (the one without EEP) and hope that the third party viewers give us an option.

I am willing to install the Linden Viewer when EEP (if EEP) gets adopted but beyond that I would rather stick to the old Windlight. Tons of complaints from the photographers and bloggers.

On the PLUS side this week (kind of a segue as it seemed they wanted to roll out EEP at the same time - MY interpretation of comments) the Linden Homes are a HUGE hit and likely the best thing the lab has done for us in years. It really does feel like the "old days" and that it a wondrous thing for those of us that were here back in the day :D

PD. I might even be willing to install the Black Dragon viewer (LOL) if that is my "keeping the old Windlight option for photography" *wink*.

[Nalates Urriah]

Niran wrote the rant before the latest EEP viewer came out. So, some of his ranting is out of date and the new feature Personal Lighting handles being able to tweak environment settings, which was missing.

EEP has not affected teleporting or disconnections. These problems were popping up long before EEP hit the grid. Whatever server change aggravated crossings and disconnects made it to the grid the same time as EEP. Everybody jumped to the conclusion it must be EEP.

I quote Simon Linden in my blog talking about the problem last Tuesday. We have had two sim updates that capture more information to help figure out what is going wrong. Simon says the problem is the destination region is not connecting to the viewer. It is very much a server issue. EEP uses inventory and asset delivery on the server side, just as everything else does. The rest is viewer side stuff. Since most viewers do not yet have eep code, it isn't likely to have any effect on crossings as EEP stuff is not being requested by most viewers and yet they disconnect.

Simon hopes to have some fixes to improve crossings and reduce disconnects for the next sim RC updates.

[NiranV Dean]

Nalates, you do realize that i wrote the rant with the very latest available EEP version and that i ranted about the Personal Lighting as well... i even posted pictures about it.

Did you even read the rant?

[Georgia Orwell]

I've really been enjoying the nostalgia of uncontrollably flying off of sims viewer crashes. So the official sources are telling us they are working hard to "figure out", "isn't likely", and "hopes". So, Niran is the one that doesn't know what he is talking about?

Sorry, my brain is crashing.

[Nalates Urriah]

@Niran - When you wrote, "...they are going to take away the ability to locally modify any region windlight..." I stopped reading because that is a pre-current EEP viewer thing. I went back looking for the phrase "Personal Lighting". Searching the page the term 'personal lighting' doesn't appear until someone asks about it in the comments.

I'll continue to think you wrote before you tried the latest EEP viewer. And I would guess you missed the discussion of possible coming user made changes to the environment editor in the third-party dev meeting about the need to tweak no-mod environments. Now we have a viewer with the changes added that were discussed.

So... do you remember what you wrote?

As to the permissions on environment settings... That allows artists to be paid for their creations. A good thing. For the entitlement generation, it is a horrible travesty.

@George, obviously your brain did crash. Thanks for the apology.

Tuesday they were still figuring out how to fix the problem and testing hypotheses. None of that has anything to do with what Niran does or doesn't know. If you follow Niran you know the rants get quite dramatic. If you can get past the hyperbole you can see Niran's opinions about aspects of EEP. But, that is still opinion and it is worded to influence people to see it Niran's way.

When Niran writes, "... the past 7 years, in its current state it will break rendering as a whole, it's a fucking mess from what i was shown." This is true or false depending on what one infers. It does not BREAK rendering as most will understand it. It likely will totally break Niran's gorgeous rendering in Black Dragon. So, knowing a bit about Niran I think I understand the why the rant. But, Niran is creative and can come up with something. Persistent person...

[NiranV Dean]

@Nalates

Go read the rant provided in this post. This post is about what i wrote about the very latest EEP available in the Second Life forums.

Thanks for nothing i guess.

[Chic Aeon]

I actually read this post (OMG- really?) on the forum thread when it first appeared. It is dated (I just went back to check) Posted Sunday at 03:59 PM (edited). There was another post following this dated one. And I did note information on the personal options WHEN IT FIRST CAME OUT.

So just saying that was in there and not added later. And of course you can believe me or not, but I don't use Black Dragon and have no interest in telling lies.

[NiranV Dean]

The edit was due to two reasons, the first being me accidentally hitting send after the first bit (eeeeeehh)... the second was for ... removing too inappropriate language. The original post was much more aggressive and downright insulting and attacking Lindens, though i still think they deserved much more ass-kicking than i gave them. EEP is downright broken and the fact that they considered this for release is a catastrophe.

Whirly was, what sounded like, pleading me to look into it, she absolutely insisted on it and her prognoses "it will make you scream" was not far off to say the least. If Whirly didn't bug me so much about it i wouldn't even have looked into it, i just hope they take this serious rethink how they want to continue with EEP.

@Nalates
You make the same mistake as everyone else. You think of me as much more skilled than i am. I can't fix any of these rendering issues, i can't fix EEP and if this went into my Viewer (spoiler: i wouldn't merged it) it would have not only broken all my fancy extra graphics, it would have downright broken my entire Viewer's rendering as a whole, i wasn't joking when i said that. By now you should know that i complain for reasons, i don't complain because i have fun doing so, i complain because i know it can be done better but they opted not to do it for whatever stupid reason... and even then i'm really just saying what all the people with actual skill think too, they just don't want to say it for what i guess is credibility or because they gave up on LL listening to them.

[JohnC]

Well this EEP has messed up my region windlight settings it seems. I just spent 2 months building a desert sim with an atmospheric hazy morning light and arrive today to find that my beautiful light has been converted to baby shit orange. I am not happy. Lighting is everything when creating, right ? people do understand that?. But Of course no one at LL would know this, they think lighting is a sort of game that you mess around with trying different settings where and when you please, so whats the fuss, who cares. Of course this is what comes of using a 3rd party viewer, a fantasy within a fantasy, and all the LL lovers who use the official viewer cry "its your fault" . LL has never been bothered at all about f..king over creative people who try to make something more beautiful from this mess we call SL. I guess its true, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. I am hoping someone is going to tell me this is all temporary. But I installed the official viewer today and nothing changed, wall to wall baby shit, so I am thinking of just deleting the sim. and calling it a day

[JohnB Good]

@Niran,
I for one appropriate your donated time to the community with tech support and your awesome viewer , Thank you!

[Evely]

I had an sim restart last night.. when I came back I noticed the changes.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMUAxtWQfSs Some are really bad. very..

[hackey]

Look,she only says ¨by far the worst experience i have had in Second Life so far¨.

Give it a couple of months and I am sure they will surpass that.
So cheer up!

[Amanda]

Simon Linden can deny EEP affected xings but xings are 10 times worse since March 19th when they rolled out the server updates containing EEP. Something in that server update screwed up xings both by tp and regular xings. They weren't great before but now their down right horrible. Sailing is almost impossible.
Whatever they did yesterday that was suppose to help hasn't worked, at least by my experience today.

I tried the EEP viewer (yes the newest version) and immediately had people on my region who were using standard viewers complain about the sky It looked like something from an apocalypse movie. I was able to fix it by changing to Firestorm and setting my windlight back up. I won't be trying EEP again until I have no choice. They released EEP on the grid before it was ready, if it can ever be ready.

[JohnE]

As a testimonial, i can say without a doubt the EEP viewer changed my life, nolonger do i wake up in the morning tired but refreshed and relaxed, my life feels more complete while my confidence has returned, i would recommend this product to anyone looking for a better outlook in life.

Thanks Linden Lab!

[Minethere Always 2]

all the cool kids hangout in Sansar, I for one find it much better then Inworldz ever was. Btw, Inworldz is still holding my inventory hostage....Long live the free metaverse folks!

[JohnC]

Sansar is better that Inworldz? wow,I need get over there with the cool kidz right away :)

[Mondy]

Niran always has strong opinions, and why not? It's his viewer and he can put in what he likes, if EEP F..messes things up so that the graphics aren't working properly I'm not surprised that he has something to say about it.
I often log in with Dragon Viewer to take Flickr shots because I can take *better* pictures using it!

But EEP is here to stay. What I can say though is that there are now setting to control personal lighting, and the firestorm tram are also testing a beta that will eventually make it to everyone else to control personal lighting. Windlights unless set on a parcel or region were always personal to you anyway. What I see isn't what you see (Usually I set Nams optimal prim & skin, but with EEP that doesn't look the same anyway, CalWL still looks pretty good though when copied/imported)
Anyway, the new personal lighting controls give a fine grain control over lighting and shadows using mouse pointer or NESW globe icon that you can mouse over the arrows and hold down which is pretty intuitive, actually easier to use than the old sliders for east west and Est angle.
I guess each 3rd party viewer will decide which legacy windlights they include by default when they update, and there's no getting around many of them look different under EEP, but at least the control is there to adjust and save to each persons liking.

[NiranV Dean]

@Mondy

The globe controls are nice and fancy, they are quite quick yes but they have accuracy issues, they are by far not as accurate as the sliders were and don't allow the full range control yet (they have issues at the outer edges) + you cannot easily swap to the "opposite" mode, stuff i will look into when i merge EEP (if i do) but i'll also offer the old sliders, i prefer the sliders since they are much more accurate and easier to handle accurately (no accidental moving the sun up or down if you can't pull the mouse in a straight line).

Each third party Viewer wont be adding their own legacy windlights by default (not possible because these presets are no longer loaded, you now apply them from inventory rather than a menu). Something i will hopefully get changed as well, i'll bring back the old preset dropdown to use legacy windlights just as we used to.

The personal lighting is missing a metric fuckton of settings, i hope we are allowed to add them (they said we can add missing ones, which and how many is unknown).

[Mondy]

@ Niran FS have added around 200 of the legacy windlights to their beta. It's not possible for other third parties to do the same ?

[NiranV Dean]

@Mondy

How did they add them?

Unless they re-implemented local presets, they can only import them and convert them to inventory objects and then you wouldn't get them unless Firestorm either does something hacky and puts these into your inventory (like it attaches your bridge) or they got them into the Library which as far as i know only LL can do.

[Mondy]

Hey, I'm not a Dev or a coder :)
I don't know how they do the inner workings but they have them, there's old presets that can be applied to personal lighting or copied into inventory and used from quick prefs so they don't have to be applied from the Environment menu. Other windlights can be imported and any preset can be fine tuned and then saved.
The old optimal Nam prim & skin that doesn't look the same under EEP took me a few minutes to get looking right and save. Obviously it would be a pain and take a lot of time to do that for every single W/L but that's the one I use day to day personally so I don't need to. I suspect most people won't need to change every W/L either.

[AJ]

If SL had an in-world government, I'd be standing outside it's white house waving a placard that says, "Niran for President!". Seriously.