I was  curious how this would work with the Avatar Impostures setting. But, the Imposture setting is gone. RenderAvatarMaxNonImpostors is a replacement setting. Looking in the Settings I see RenderUseImpostors is labeled obsolete and refers us to RenderAvatarMaxNonImpostors and RenderAvatarMaxComplexity (default: 0).

New Show Complexity Look

Render Weight values and colors have changed. You can see the values by enabling what used to be Show Avatar Draw Weight, in Firestorm is or has been Render Weight, and is now Show Avatar Complexity Information.

You’ll see various people interchanging the terms Render and Weight and now Complexity. Whatever we have or do call it, this is still just a number that tells us how hard the viewer has to work to draw/render the avatar and that is a matter of complexity. Higher is bad, lower is better. To see the numbers: Top menu – Opening Advanced (press Ctrl-Alt-D to reveal menu item)->Performance Tools->Show Avatar Complexity Information.

Looking at the image above you can see the value and color coding relationship has changed. In previous version almost every avatar rated a RED weight number. Now we see way more green and yellow rated numbers.

Plus we see two other numbers that can help us with setting Debug Settings values. There is the previous Weight number which has no  unit of measure, it is just a comparison number. The numbers are different but very close to what previous values were. This is good because I can keep the values I put on my outfit folders. I don’t have to change them. A new value is m² and another is kilobytes. These last two tell us how much surface area the avatar has and either the amount of data that had to be downloaded or the memory being used. Whichever, this should have an affect on the size textures used.

There also seems to be graduated color shifts where previously it was a hard change from green to yellow to red.

There also is a rant number. I have no idea what that is about. I might figure it out after I’ve used the viewer enough.

To see the numbers do this: Opening Advanced (top menu or Ctrl-Alt-D to reveal)->Performance Tools-> Show Avatar Draw Weight.

We have other complexity related Debug Settings:

• RenderAvatarMaxComplexity – Maximum Avatar Complexity; Above this value, the avatar is rendered as a solid color outline (0 to disable – default: 10,000,000). I am running this at 120,000 – This is the setting labeled Maxium complexity in the avatar section of Advanced Graphic Settings.
• RenderAvatarMaxNonImpostors – Maximum number of avatars to fully render at one time; over this limit uses impostor rendering (simplified rendering) with less frequent updates), reducing client lag
• RenderComplexityColorMax – Max visual complexity of avatars in a scene.
• RenderComplexityColorMid – Max visual complexity of avatars in a scene.
• RenderComplexityColorMin – “
• RenderComplexityStaticMax – Set a static max value for scaling of Render Complexity display (-1 for dynamic scaling)
• RenderComplexityThreshold – Only color objects higher than render threshold (-50,000)
• RenderAutoMuteByteLimit – Maximum bytes of attachments before an avatar is rendered as a simple impostor (0 for no limit). – This setting works with the new complexity settings. Starting out I recommend you set this at 0 to disable it, which it is by default, until you see how the panel settings work for you.

I have commented on those settings I think I understand. I’m not sure how they all work together or what overrides what and when. There are lots of factors that can be tweaked. I haven’t taken time to play with all of them.

As it is now, I am not getting any notices of how many avatars are not rendering me. But, I do get a notice when I change my Render Weight or now Complexity.

New Complexity Popup

When you change clothes or otherwise change your avatar’s ‘Complexity’ that notice pops up and stays on screen for about 60 seconds.

I think this is going to make a significant change in how we think of our avatars and buy clothes. We will likely see requests for this information to be made available to scripts. That would allow club, event, shop, and others to push people to reduce lag by lowering their Complexity rating.

What do you think? See the SL Forum for discussion: Project Viewer version 3.8.4.304433 – Avatar Complexity.