ARC denotes Avatar Render Cost. We have had this tool in the viewer for some time. When used we see a numeric value that is green, yellow, or red. Red denotes the avatar’s render cost is too high… according to someone. It tells me I’m almost dressed…
You can enable ARC reporting in Viewer 2 and 3 via the top menu. It is in the Advanced item. If you do not have an Advanced item in your menu press Ctrl-Alt-D (viewer 3 is a little strange, if you have a problem try using ‘D’ or ‘Q’ with Ctrl-Alt to get Advanced open). Then in V2: Advanced->Rendering->Info Displays->Avatar Rendering Cost. Or in V3 use: Advanced->Performance Tools->Show Draw Weight for Avatars. The change from old ARC numbers to new Draw Weight numbers is about 10 times greater.
With the introduction of mesh the feature needed to be updated. The value presented is more of a relative scale than an actual measurement. With the new mesh objects the numbers’ color scale is off. Even if your avatar is nude and bald it can fall into the red zone of the scale.
If you remember reading my article Remember the ARC Nazi?, you may remember that at some point it will be possible to set your viewer to skip rendering avatars or objects that are too heavy to render. It is the ARC and ORC (Object render Complexity) numbers that will be used to allow you the control and defeat greifers.
In March I wrote about a new tool in the article: New Mesh and Render Complexity Tool. This is the general display of object render complexity. Advanced->Render Metadata->Render Complexity. Unfortunately it is not working in the SLViewer Second Life 3.2.4 (245302).
You can follow the progress on this feature in JIRA STORM-1679 – Avatar Draw Weight number is always red.
But, the new viewers replace ARC with Draw Weight.
It is crap. Period. Arc up people.
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