Please de-shiny the Zindra roads.
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Laetizia Coronet
Zindra roads look ike ice or glass and it's quite terrible. I'll be glad to volunteer for this if need be.
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WeFlossDaily Resident
The roads are too shinny. But the leap in logic to making them PBR isn't the correct solution and makes zero sense. Go outside and look at a road in RL. It's not shinny. It's made out of asphalt. A road can be made, and should be, out of the simplest textures possible. Oj, and they should be seamless.
AlettaMondragon Resident
WeFlossDaily Resident Zindra was designed as a futuristic continent. It's not only the roads but also the parks, the monorail and the public buildings that follow this design. Not everything has to be realistic. I agree that a seamless road pavement looks better, but just for the record, if you go outside and look at a roadway with a concrete pavement, you'll see it isn't seamless, either. So realism doesn't require seamless asphalt roads.
WeFlossDaily Resident
AlettaMondragon Resident, you appear to be a little confused about the difference between concrete and asphalt, as you are using the terms interchangeably when they are in fact entirely different materials with entirely different construction processes. Futuristic doesn't mean that something gets a free license to look awful.
"It looks awful, but it's okej, 'cause it's futurist!"
No.
RL asphalt seams are called joints and occur because the paving machine used to put it down does so in lanes. Go look outside. You ought to be able to find a joint in the middle of a two lane road, but the road isn't gonna be laid out in shinning squares of glistening metallic-like material that borderline look like mirrors. If anything, a futuristic road should be completely and entirely seamless. We can't just misinterpret how RL construction processes work as justification for the blight that are the roads of SL.
AlettaMondragon Resident
WeFlossDaily Resident You appear to be a little confused about reading comprehension, or maybe there are just no roadways with a concrete pavement where you live?
I didn't use the two terms interchangeably when I wrote "a roadway with a concrete pavement, you'll see it isn't seamless". A concrete pavement is one where the top layer is not asphalt but conventional concrete, and as concrete is more prone to cracking due to temperature changes, pressure, shrinking, etc, it has joints that give the surface a tiled look. This is what I meant when I wrote it is not seamless, as opposed to an asphalt pavement which is seamless, except for the construction joints you mentioned. The big difference, other than the look, is that the asphalt will crack randomly everywhere regardless, while the concrete pavement will degrade in a more controlled way because of the gaps (joints).
As for the futuristic part, I stand by my opinion that a futuristic road can be shiny, I think the current shine of these roadways is low enough not to be a problem, but much better than a matte surface. Of course a properly made material would help.
By the way, have you seen the very realistic asphalt at the SLB?
SarahKB7 Koskinen
I understand that the Zindra roads were originally made to look shiny to simulate a metallic feel which matched the "futuristic" theme of Zindra and Horizons when it was new in 2009. And it worked (sort of) when Second Life only had Blinn Phong and Materials shine.
Nearly two decades later, SL now has PBR too. The metallic roads of Zindra still retain their Blinn Phong shine settings, but now because of PBR, this legacy shine has been vastly increased to the point where it now has the appearance of shiny polished glass and not metallic and it looks strange, cheap looking and outdated.
Because of PBR's effect on Blinn Phong shine, I would suggest either turning off the road's shine altogether, or change the road's surface to a new PBR low metal shine setting. But doing this will make the roads look plywoody or white to those still using non PBR viewers like Firestorm v6.6.17
Redoing Zindra's roads is a big job, Zindra now has over 400 regions (including the new expansion) and Horizons adds even more to that total...
AlettaMondragon Resident
SarahKB7 Koskinen If they don't remove the BP textures, they can add a PBR material and those still on V6 will still see the BP textures. I guess I'll have to redo my demo with a nicer metallic material and make a feature request based on that.
Kelsie Dakota
This road has always been one of the worst on any continent. Even back in 2009, it was unimaginably ugly and unrealistic.
Besides, we’re talking about the adult continent here—it should be warm, inviting, and charming.
It’s hard to understand why LL manages its projects so poorly; it’s self-sabotage.
AlettaMondragon Resident
Kelsie Dakota "it should be warm, inviting, and charming"
Maybe a guy with a noob avatar should be posted on every corner to greet everyone like "hi bb hru", "pls come" and "mmm"?
AlettaMondragon Resident
Alright, finally I could spend a few minutes playing with this, so I made a comparison of the Zindra road prims and what they could be with PBR materials. I've applied a metallic material based on the "Metal - Polished" material available in the Library but with a base color of HSV 200,25,15 (Hex #1c292f) and roughness factor turned down to 0.100. Very basic but the result already speaks for itself. If you look at the original surface closely, it's not bad, but the source of the problem with it in PBR is that the environmental reflection doesn't apply properly. This is because the shininess value of the face is set to Low, in the old old shininess system before "advanced lighting model". As you can see in some of the pictures attached, I've remade the surface to see the difference, while the edit tool indicates the Low shine setting would be equal to a 0 glossiness, 100 environment reflection setting, in fact it is not. Applying a default blank texture as specular and setting 0 glossiness and 100 environment, the result is already better. So the problem is not the shininess but the extremely outdated method to apply shine.
The metallic PBR material I've applied to my demo prim is very basic so it can be much better than this with a proper material, it doesn't need to be this shiny, however in my opinion it just looks so much better. Zindra roads are supposed to be made of metal (or some futuristic alloy that looks similar) so as I've said earlier, removing their shininess would ruin them. As you can see in the pictures, with a proper metallic material they can be easily moved forward from 2009 to 2025.
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AlettaMondragon Resident
Two more pictures, comparing the PBR and the original surface at midnight
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Horny Nuzzle
I am highly amused that a user named Oil Supply voted for a proposal to de-shiny the roads on Zindra. Makes one wonder why they got so shiny �
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Abnor Mole
updated the status to
tracked
Thank you for the feedback and bringing this to our attention.
We can agree that PBR has definitely had an impact on the Zindra roads. We're looking into possible options for dealing with this.
Cuddles Supply
Agreed, though it gives the roads a nice after rain look.
AlettaMondragon Resident
I like the shiny roads, maybe they would really need proper materials now that we have PBR, but completely changing their design or making them matte would ruin them.
Skyler Pancake
Please just replace the roads. They were good when put in, but need a massive overhaul.