OpenSimWorld is the directory of 3D Virtual Worlds based on OpenSimulator and connected through the HyperGrid. Learn More
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Yes, a mirror was the first thing I made with PBR, and it's actually a true real-time mirror, but I'm much more interested in true reflective surfaces like you see here and in creating true PBR materials. The latest Firestorm release 7.1.10.75913 has been very stable with no issues, and I find it's a lot faster than the older versions. It also handles graphics with a lot less lag since it's using multiple cpu cores for processing instead of just one. You'll also notice it is reflecting the room, and that's because I added a reflection probe inside the structure. For those still using older viewers, I still add the older textures so they don't just see white surfaces.
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By the way, 7.1.11 has been out for a while. I've noticed that at least teleporting to other sims seems to have picked up speed.
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I'm avoiding alpha and beta releases for now and sticking to the official ones since I'm in the middle of a lot of work. I'll play more with those later :-)
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It is becoming possible to make actual, real-time mirrors. The secret behind this is called "Physically-Based Rendering", PBR in short. It's available from OpenSim 0.9.3.0 on and from Firestorm 7 on.
It's heavily disputed, though, for four reasons.
One, Firestorm 7 is still rather buggy, and PBR is not wholly defined itself yet. It's all a WIP.
Two, Firestorm 7 is even buggier.
Three, Firestorm 7 has the Advanced Lighting Model permanently on. No way back to "good old" forward rendering without ALM. No way back to turning all fancy rendering features off because your machine is weak.
If you have a sufficiently powered computer with dedicated graphics, and your performance bottleneck has been the CPU because Firestorm 6 only uses one core/one thread, then Firestorm 7 will be faster because it uses multiple CPU threads.
But if you have a toaster with on-board graphics where the graphics have always been the bottleneck, Firestorm 7 will be dramatically slower because a lot of the fancy-schmancy graphics bling-bling that you had turned off for performance reasons is now turned on permanently.
Finally, four, OpenSim with PBR does not look like OpenSim with ALM or OpenSim with forward rendering, only with mirrors. PBR is an entirely new rendering system. You'll notice things like a higher contrast, as if someone had wiped a layer of dust from your screen, or reflective surfaces suddenly being blue because they reflect the sky.
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It's heavily disputed, though, for four reasons.
One, Firestorm 7 is still rather buggy, and PBR is not wholly defined itself yet. It's all a WIP.
Two, Firestorm 7 is even buggier.
Three, Firestorm 7 has the Advanced Lighting Model permanently on. No way back to "good old" forward rendering without ALM. No way back to turning all fancy rendering features off because your machine is weak.
If you have a sufficiently powered computer with dedicated graphics, and your performance bottleneck has been the CPU because Firestorm 6 only uses one core/one thread, then Firestorm 7 will be faster because it uses multiple CPU threads.
But if you have a toaster with on-board graphics where the graphics have always been the bottleneck, Firestorm 7 will be dramatically slower because a lot of the fancy-schmancy graphics bling-bling that you had turned off for performance reasons is now turned on permanently.
Finally, four, OpenSim with PBR does not look like OpenSim with ALM or OpenSim with forward rendering, only with mirrors. PBR is an entirely new rendering system. You'll notice things like a higher contrast, as if someone had wiped a layer of dust from your screen, or reflective surfaces suddenly being blue because they reflect the sky.
They still do have their issues, especially with water surfaces where they produce nasty artifacts.
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