Here's the results of my survey on the PBR upgrade in Firestorm, which brought in 177 responses. (A pretty large sample size, as these things go.) Asked how it's changed their overall Second Life experience, a plurality -- nearly 1 in 3 respondents -- chose "Much worse than before". That's compared to 20% who said Firestorm PBR has made their SL experience "much better".
Overall, the reaction is about evenly split between the Somewhat/Much Worse camp (45%) and the About the Same or Somewhat/Much Better (42%).
My initial read of these results is there's a hiccup of adjustment as SLers get accustomed to the virtual world lit by PBR. More on those later, but meantime, here's some readers' decidedly mixed reaction to the PBR update:
I reverted back to the earlier Firestorm version when i had an issue with defaults and phoenix mode. The lag was worse, but there seemed to be many changes put in at once. I did not ask for another viewer, better quality graphics would be welcome but not when the price is a bunch of other changes. Should have released PBR without the other features thrown in there. I will wait for the next (hopefully fixed) version. -- Sharon Classito
I personally look forward to all the new things PBR will bring, I feel sorry about the ones who have older PC’s that can’t handle the new changes. I hope they can still have an enjoyable experience in SL. That isn’t on Firestorm to fix though. -- Danica Ravenheart
PBR has killed my machine too many times. I got rid of SL viewer and used firestorm not that the PBR Crap is there i had to remove it. I left alchemy in the dust when they went PBR. I don't need 3 strikes to tell me this crap sucks. Heck i run my Non PBR Genesis viewer exclusively now. its MUCH faster than either SL or fS But when yu get near PBR crap it freezes up. PBR needs to be removed. we need fixes for important things like Caspervend, Bad sim crossings, inventory issues lagg issues and random Disconnects. The last thig we need is a resource killing viewer ripping computer choking "ne material" that just adds another intensity to Advanced lighting. -- Blaze
I've been using PBR in Alchemy for several months. It's been more optimized than pre-PBR, and looks great. They've been patching up bugs and issues about as soon as LL does. I've just about stopped using FS because after switching and seeing all these new features being added to Alchemy, I realized I don't really need FS anymore except for Area Search. Once that's added I can with FS just for OpenSim, only because Alchemy doesn't support it yet.
I've been testing PBR in OpenSim Next Gen Core and it's been nice. I'm very glad that FS works to support modern features and OS. Regardless of the viewer I choose to use as a daily driver, I applaud and deeply respect the developers of Firestorm for their hard work and dedication, especially in the face of these big changes rocking the user base and the reactions to it.
SL is changing for the better, and we will see what comes of it and do our best to help give good feedback and report issues so it can be the place we know it can. -- Galaxy Littlepaws
Much more feedback here!
Please support posts like these by buying Making a Metaverse That Matters and joining my Patreon!
Become a member!
Much more feedback here!
Please support posts like these by buying Making a Metaverse That Matters and joining my Patreon!
Become a member!