Second Life’s Full Perm Fair

I had never heard of it. But this is apparently the 6th fair. It’s an interesting event with a ton of Full Perm stuff for sale. I runs from March 1 to 22. You’ll find it in Old Europe Village. It is small but jam packed.

Full Perm Fair - March 2015
Full Perm Fair – March 2015

I am guessing the purpose of the fair is to provide source items for people good at texturing and weak at mesh modeling.

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Avatar Render Cost 2015-07

Penny Patton writes about reducing her avatar’s render cost. (See: Draw Weight.) Kay Jiersen picked up on the article and wrote an article too. (See: Render weight best practices for Second Life.) Some time ago I wrote: Second Life Performance: Render Muting, which is about the same subject.

Penny Paton's Example of Dense High ARC Mesh
Penny Patton’s Example of Dense High ARC Mesh

Penny is pointing out there is a bit we can do to change our render cost with only a minimal change in appearance. Kay suspects few people are even aware of the Avatar Render Cost (ARC) feature in the viewer and have no clue they need to do anything. I agree with Kay. But, she goes on to recommend changes to Second Life, which is where I disagree.

Kay made field trips to various places in Second Life where she recorded the ARC values of avatars in the regions. Kay points out that only 81 of 190 (42.6%) avatars would render using a setting of 80,000 for Render Muting. That means 109 or 57.3% of the avatars would not render .

The horrible frame rates (FPS) I am getting have me looking at a new computer and a better video card. But, I actually have little hope that will help FPS in regions populated with 30+ avatars.

On an empirical basis Kay found that jewelry is a major culprit in high ARC. 

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Physique 1.4 release official announcement!

From Slink’s official announcement (quoting and paraphrasing):

Thu, Aug 28 2014 11:39:30 AM PDT

Physique 1.4 is now available at the Slink Mainstore. If you own this body, please visit the redelivery terminal to get the new version sent to you. If your purchase is not on the list, please contact Slink Resident for a redelivery!

Slink Free Dress
Slink Free Dress

The new body has a few very nice new features, and resolves some of the issues experienced by users of the previous version.

Fixes:

  • Resolved a small geometry issue that was causing “ants” (small gap) around the neck seam between the body and either the visage patch or the SL default head, on lower Antialialising settings.
  • Resolved an issue with the weights on several vertices on the underwear layer that was causing it to clip through the clothing layer on the pelvis region.
  • Resolved an issue that was causing the Visage neck patch to throw an error when the Neck Fitting buttons were pressed on the Alpha and Clothing Layers HUD.

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