The new project manager for the popular third-party Second Life viewer has revealed that PBR will be coming to Firestorm in the next release.
PBR before and after comparison from the official Firestorm blog
If you’re a Second Life user eagerly awaiting the addition of glowing reflection PBR graphics to Firestorm and other popular third-party viewers, here’s an important update for you.
After nearly 13 years on the project managing a large team of volunteer developers for the most popular TPV, Firestorm, Jessica Lyons recently announced that she has passed the role on to: Beck Janus. (Jessica will remain CEO of The Phoenix-Firestorm Project, Inc.) We now have Jessica to thank for her tireless (and, frankly, underappreciated work by the community) work running the project. It’s a good time.
Over the holidays, Beq updated me on Firestorm’s PBR status.
"We updated the alpha release at the end of December. For now we still consider it an alpha version, but that will change soon and we are awaiting the first set of major maintenance updates from Linden Lab. This was something we had anticipated before the holidays, but was hampered by last minute issues.
"Once that’s accomplished, I’d like to move us into the beta phase. It essentially declares: Firestorm’s next release will be a PBR release. (without entering a date)."
Please give it enough emphasis!
More from Beq:
"PBR is running reliably for many of us. I am using it as a daily viewer. However, there are several big problem items (common problems) that we are exploring with Linden Lab, such as objects failing to render, textures remaining blurry, etc."
"There are also concerns about the user base." As Beq said. "Do you have questions like how much RAM do you really need for ‘normal’ use? I think 16GB is starting to become the minimum requirement and this is causing a lot of people to struggle. I’d like to look at some statistics and see how we can best support those affected."
This strongly suggests that most laptop owners will not be able to run Firestorm with PBR enabled.
"I can’t go so far as to say ‘don’t run away’," When I raise that point, Beq tells me. "People are still ‘running’ at 8GB, but I think you should aim for 16GB to get a reasonable experience without completely canceling your setup. But as I said, as more people test it and a wider range of hardware is reported, that data is starting to emerge."
For now, if you want to be one of the first to play the Firestorm update, click here to join our in-world group.
I’m concerned about the additional memory requirements PBR will add. And I remain concerned that Second Life’s progress depends primarily on a team of unpaid, undervalued volunteers.