Day: October 4, 2024

2024 week #40: SL CCUG summary: tone mapping

Posted on by Inara Pey
Poesy Wildes, August 2024 – blog post †
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday,  September 5th, 2024.

Tis meeting was also livesteamed on You Tube by the Lab. The video is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks to the Lab for providing it.

Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with related viewer development work. This meeting is held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis.
  • Meeting dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they re conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
  • The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of the meeting.

Official Viewers Update

[Video: 1:18-2:30]

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.10.10800445603, formerly the DeltaFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, etc), dated September 11th, promoted September 17th.
  • Release Candidate: ExtraFPS RC, version 7.1.11.11074622243, September 30.
    • Performance improvements: enhanced texture memory tracking, broader hardware compatibility and higher FPS gain.
    • Aesthetics improvements: new Antialiasing setting – SMAA; Contrast Adaptive Sharpening; Khronos Neutral Tone Mapping (can be changed to ACES via the RenderTonemapType Debug setting).

Near-Term Viewer Release Roadmap

  • ExtraFPS work is focuses on bug fixes with the aim to get it promoted to default viewer status ASAP.
  • The first maintenance RC to follow ExtraFPS will be the Maint B viewer, which will include updates put on hold during the focus on performance issues plus additional updates, some of which may be further “post-PBR” performance / aesthetic improvements.

WebRTC Status

[Video 2:34-3:41]

Summary

  • A new project intended to move Second Life away from reliance on the Vivox voice service and plug-in, and to using the WebRTC communications protocol (RTC=”real-time communication”). Roxie Linden is leading this work.
  • Key benefits:
    • WebRTC supports a wide range of real-time communications tools in common use (e.g. Google Meet), supporting audio, video and data communications, and is thus something of a “standard” approach.
    • Offers a good range of features: automatic echo cancellation, better noise cancellation and automatic gain control, much improved audio sampling rates for improved audio quality.
    • Opens the door to features and capabilities to voice services which could not be implemented whilst using Vivox.

Status

  • Still awaiting wider simulator RC deployment. Per recent SUG / TPVD meetings, this now looks set to commence on October 16th, although the date may still change.
  • In the meantime, WebRTC support is available on the following regions Pop Rock RC, comprising: WebRTC Voice 1, WebRTC Voice 2, WebRTC Voice 3 and WebRTC Voice 4.
  • LL is already looking ahead to further work with WebRTC once it has been deployed, in terms of “Voice and media”. More to follow on this in the future.

Graphics Team Work

Linear Alpha Blending

[Video: 4:08-6:06]

  • Again, as per the previous CCUG meeting, in order for PBR lighting to render anywhere close to correctly, alpha blending had to be switched from SRGB to linear colour space. This can cause some older content using Blinn-Phong, to look either more opaque or more transparent than in did pre-PBR.
  • For those with access to the Content Creation Discord channel, this work is now available in a pre-release viewer there.
      • Note: due to a request from Derrick Linden, I am unable to post information on how to access the Content Creation Discord channel. Requests to do so should be made to Vir or Derrick Linden.
  • This work is supported on (the Beta grid) – again, refer to the Discord channel for details on this.
  • Those using the Discord build are asked to provide feedback (with screen shots as appropriate).

Tone Mapping

[Video: 8:00-12:18 and 24:31-End]

  • Originally slated as being a part of the viewer to follow ExtraFPS, the Khronos Neutral tone mapper (another code contribution by Rye Cogtail), which should improve overall ambient lighting in SL, making things somewhat brighter and more vibrant.
    • Options for this are available within the ExtraFPS viewer as debug settings:
      • RenderToneMapType – set the desired tone mapper (either Khronos Neutral (new default) or ACES .
      • RenderToneMapMix – mix between linear and tone-mapped colours.
    • If this approach is continued, these options will likely become UI elements within the Sky settings, allowing the desired Tone Mapper  / mixing be set at parcel level for the viewer, together with Advanced Graphics options for determining which should be the general default.
    • Results to these have thus far been mixed, so more feedback is being sought – which is felt to be better (ACES or Khronos Neutral (or even something else, etc).
  • Some concerns have been voiced by creators over the idea that tone mapping can be user-configurable (“how can I make sure the tone mapping on my item is correct, if the user can change tone mapping in their viewer?”).
    • Allowing tone-mapping offers the ability for people to view Second Life as they prefer / set their regions / parcels to be viewer under specific lighting conditions; ergo offering tone mapping options via the EEP Sky settings as has been suggested above was seen by most at the meeting as a good thing.
    • Some questioned how consistency of appearance can be maintained (per the question above)  if they cannot be certain on the adjustments users make to their viewers.
    • One suggestion was for LL to designate one as the default that creators should be testing and creating against, and if the parcel is different, then it is up to the parcel owner to deal with.
    • Overall, keeping with Khronos  / glTF would be preferred,
  • Further help in setting the brightest / contrast for for scenes can also be offered through exposure control and the colour gradient, with Geenz working on these as well.
  • The above grew into an extended technical discussion through to the end of the meeting, please refer to the video.

In Brief (Q&A)

  • [Video: 12:23-13:30] A brief discussion on glTF punctual lights (coming with glTF scene import), which might also offer the opportunity to offer more lights on alpha (rather than just the 6 closest, as it currently the case).
  • [Video: 15:00-16:50] more Bakes on Mesh channels (e.g. individual left / right eye channels to allow for individual eye colours er eye:
    • Nothing currently planned beyond the existing Aux channels.
    • LL has had internal discussions on a “simplified editor for decorating houses, etc.”, and feedback has been requested as to what kind when / if the concept of layer channels is re-visited, it might be from the perspective of replacing them with something more accessible – but this is not something currently being investigated.
    • In terms of channels for individual eye colours (or similar), a feature request was requested.

Next Meeting

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

Nils’ Autumn Lights in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey

Kondor Art Club, October 2024: Nils Urqhart – Autumn Lights
Currently open through October at the Kondor Art Club is a new exhibition of photography by Nils Urqhart entitled Autumn Lights.

For those not familiar with his work, Nils is a professional photographer-artist hailing from France in the physical world, whose work is focused on landscapes, particularly those found within France’s numerous (and quite breath-taking) mountain ranges. In this, he covers everything from the magnificent and dramatic heights of the French Alps to the much lower (in terms to summit height, but no less impressive in scope and landscape) Jura and Vosges, the latter with their distinctive ballon summits, and Bugey.

Kondor Art Club, October 2024: Nils Urqhart – Autumn Lights

Since 2007, Nils has brought many of these landscapes and scenes into Second Life, offering nigh-on 180 (at the time of writing!) exhibitions which serve as travelogues of his walks and hikes through the mountains and countryside of France. Within Autumn Lights, he presents a fall walk through the Vosges and (primarily, I think) the French Alps, capturing the golden richness of the foliage, the majesty of the snow-capped peaks beyond and the rugged beauty of the land and the homes people create within the valleys and among the hills.

These are images that bring home the full depth of Nils’ compositional skill. Within them we find greens, golds, browns and yellows set against skies so blue they stray towards cobalt and touched here and there with ribbons of cloud; or the yellow tides of trees flowing up the slopes of stonewashed hill to meet their zenith, the rocky slopes rolling back to where their rounded tops are backed by snowbound peaks at even greater heights; or the checkerboard of small fields sets within the golden march of firs, their boundaries marked by embankments and dry stone, the grass within them pale and sunwashed…

Kondor Art Club, October 2024: Nils Urqhart – Autumn Lights

Each image offered through Autumn Lights has a story to tell; a story of the stately grace of these mountains, the formation of which started 300 million years ago and sharing something of an ancestry with the Himalayas, together (on a smaller scale) the people who populate them, which itself reminds us that humans inhabited these region as far back as the palaeolithic period.

But more than this, these images tell the story of a man in love with the country and landscapes in which he lives and travels; they form – as I’ve noted-  a travelogue of his times within these mountains and their foothills, walking, hiking, exploring. As such they can be appreciated for the beauty they convey quite naturally and fully, whilst also inviting us into Nils’ life and allowing us to witness them through his eyes and thus share in his love for the places he records on camera.

Kondor Art Club, October 2024: Nils Urqhart – Autumn Lights

A genuinely beautiful selection of images.

SLurl Details