RLViewer 2.9.12 Released

Marine has a new version of the viewer out. See: RLV 2.9.12.

Snail Racers & Hedgehog Spectators

> Snail Racers & Hedgehog Spectators

One of the interesting changes in this viewer is how you can control shadow render. Seems Marine got a Maitreya body and is wearing it. From what Marine wrote I take that it cut her FPS nearly in half in some scenarios. Looking at the Fast Timers (Ctrl-Shift-9) shadow render was taking more time to figure out how to render the attached mesh items. I wonder how many people check the render cost of that Maitreya body and compared it to other bodies? See: Second Life: Mesh Body Revolution.

Mesh Body Comparison - 2015

Mesh Body Comparison* – 2015

It seems one can gain some FPS by not rendering the shadow of the mesh body, but instead using the classic body. Chalice Yao and Marine are trying another option in their  viewers; NaCl and RLV. One option would be to turn off rendering shadows for any attachment. That would probably significantly improve FPS in a crowd.

In RLV there is now a new Debug Setting: RestrainedLoveAvatarShadows. It can be set to any of 4 values;

  • 0 – Omit rendering shadows for any rigged attachment
  • 1 – Omit shadows for rigged mesh, but render shadows normally omitted by alpha layers
  • 2 – Chalice’s algorithm – the results apparently look pretty much like the normal render, but gives better FPS in a crowd.
  • 3 – Standard Linden SL Viewer render.

Read Marine’s description of the settings for more details. (link above)

Marine reports a 150% to 180% increase in FPS using the new setting. I think she means 50% and 80% increase… turning off shadows completely doesn’t double my FPS, which would be a 100% increase. I get more like a 50% increase, so…

There are issues with the quality of the shadows using the setting. But, with Ambient Occlusion turned on they are still decent quality. Without Ambient Occlusion shadows are a bit weak. You’ll have to try it and make your call.

*The image does NOT show what I was wearing when I measured ARC. All three cases had the same attachment set except as noted in the text.

7 thoughts on “RLViewer 2.9.12 Released

  1. I knew there were some meshes totally killing my framerate and i knew i only had that happen with human Avatars so far but the Maitreya Body Mesh? Ohhoh. Was not expecting that, good thing i did not buy it. Something was telling me it’s not that good as it looked like.

    I like the try of increasing the framerate but i don’t like the fact that they are butchering the shadows for it. Shadows are fine as they are (i mean fine as in for SL… you know…), rather than butchering them you should butcher the Maitreya Body Creator’s head for making a mesh body that is so horribly framerate killing AND very expensive. When i saw the price i was shocked, i know humans pay a lot more for a lot less (content and quality) but the Maitreya Body just shot the bird right out of the sky.

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