Second Life’s Jelly Babies – BUG?

The coming Quick Graphics Viewer now in RC has some odd behaviors. Well, it is an RC version, so no surprise. One of the ideas with this viewer is to reduce render lag by telling the viewer to avoid rendering complex avatars. These are avatars with lots of high polygon count attachments and large textures that require lots of computer power to render.

The Candy Princess - by  Bewitched Difference @ Flickr

The Candy Princess – by
Bewitched Difference @ Flickr

There is a setting in Preferences* that lets you set a personal limit for what you want your viewer to render. Any avatar over that limit will render as a jelly baby. But, if you change the setting to NO LIMIT you’ll find there are still avatars that render as jelly babies. What’s up with that? 

I’ve thought settings other than Max Complexity were causing the avatars to render as jelly babies. See: Avatar Complexity Update Week 37. Whirly Fizzle thinks it is a bug causing their jelly baby appearance. It could be a bug. It may also be that Avatar Impostures are rendering as jelly babies in this version of the viewer, probably not. Or it could be avatars that exceed the default anti-griefer limits controlled by other settings.

Whether it is one of those or not, the BUG-9962Avatars often permanently stuck as jelly babies even when Max complexity = No Limit, is filed.

I personally think the other settings in place to reduce griefing are triggering avatars to render as jelly babies. But, I haven’t done testing to prove that.

You can supposedly force the jelly baby avatars to render by turning off Avatar Impostures. You’ll find that setting just below the Max Complexity* setting. It worked for me. An avatar with a Complexity= 171,600, m2=55, and 12,670kb refused to render with Max @ NO LIMIT, and Imposters = 12. Changing Imposters to NO LIMIT rendered the avatar. Changing it back to 12 derendered the avatar and Max Complexity was at NO LIMIT for both settings.

It also seems that data size is now weighted heavier, has more influence on which avatars render and which don’t. Most of the avatars over 7,000kb went jelly baby on me.

Avatars that render at a distance often go jelly baby as I zoom in. Once they go jelly baby zooming out doesn’t render them, as it did previously. That’s a change that may not be well accepted. But, since few have seen the previous behavior, I doubt there will be much screaming. But, it is certainly annoying. I suspect it may be the cause of any blow back from the community. Otherwise, this is a nice feature that doesn’t otherwise get in your way.

*Preferences->Graphics->Advanced Settings… (button)->Avatar (section)->Maximum Complexity (slider)

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