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
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?
Second Life™ is getting a new tool to hopefully induce people to reduce avatar generated lag; the Avatar Complexity Rating. I’ve written about it before and I am trying to play with the Project Quick Graphics Viewer version 3.8.4.304761, which adds avatar complexity settings and notices.
Complexity KB Value
The notice that appears in the upper right of the screen just after login tells you your avatar complexity number. I suggested that it be colored, green good and red bad, just as the Show Avatar Render Complexity Information (ARC) display does.
They note the other factors that can cause avatars to be rendered a Jelly Babies;
total attachment surface area
total attachment byte size
You can change the values of these settings in Debug Settings. See:
RenderAvatarMaxNonImposters – The maximum number of avatars closest to your camera who may be fully rendered. Avatars beyond those will be rendered as ‘imposters’, which means that the rendering will be a little simpler and they will be updated less frequently. Increasing this value can cost you in performance if you’re in a crowd. This does not cause them to render as Jelly Babies.
RenderAvatarMaxComplexity – Any avatars over this complexity will be drawn as solid color outlines. Changing this value directly may cause problems; use the slider in the advanced graphics preferences floater.
RenderAutoMuteSurfaceAreaLimit –The limit for the total surface area of attachments before switching to solid color rendering. The default (10 million square meters) is intended to protect against deliberate abuse and should rarely be encountered.
RenderAutoMuteByteLimit – The limit for the total number of bytes of attachments before switching to solid color rendering. The default (10 million bytes) is intended to protect against deliberate abuse and should rarely be encountered.
As you may have guessed, the last two are mostly to stop some griefing issues. But, those settings can be used to improve viewer performance.
Changing RenderAvatarMaxComplexity in the Debug Settings doesn’t seem to be a problem. Whether I change it in the Preferences panel as the Lindens recommend or in Debug Settings the change is reflected in the other. But, getting to the Preferences setting is much easier. Whether changing the setting there affects other settings not affected by using the Debug Setting, I have no information. It is a possibility, but I have not seen anything that leads me to think that happens. But, this is a Project Viewer and it will change.
This is a PROJECT viewer, meaning it is more crash and bug prone than the Release Candidate viewers. I crashed and hit 100% disk use with this version of the viewer almost always in the first 15 minutes. But, I wanted to see the new features. So, I keep re-starting it. Sometimes it runs longer than other times. I have yet to pin down what I am doing different between a quick crash and longer run times.
New Complexity Information
It is important to note that during this Project Viewer time that you can provide feedback to the Lab and they are much more likely to listen and make changes. After the features are in an RC viewer they are MUCH less likely to make changes. So, if you think you may have a grip or suggestion, get it to the Lindens (JIRA Feature or Bug Report).
In Second Life we have way more standard size rigged mesh than fitted mesh. Every so often I find a standard size mesh something that fits me close enough I can tweak my shape and get a near perfect fit. The Iffyta AliKat’s Groovy Bikini, shown here, is one of those things.
One of the things missing from promotional material is the Draw-Render Weight of items. Including it would help people reduce lag. Like demos help us decide if we want to purchase. Anything over L$99 without a demo is a no purchase item, as far as I am concerned.
Iffyta Swimsuit Draw Weight
My avatar as shown has a Draw Weight in the SL Viewer of 85,478 (red) with the suit and 82,616 without. That means the suit adds 2,862. I think that is pretty good. You can also see the polygon count in the top is pretty good. In the bottoms it looks a bit high to me. But, for less than 3,000 points I won’t complain. My prim-flexi hair has a Draw Weight of 47,000±.
We are getting closer to hands on. The Oculus Rift is to release in the first quarter of 2016. At this point I think the first round of pre-release technical challenges has been met. So, any possible delay would be from manufacturing and supply problems.
Now that the Samsung Galaxy S6 is in production the supply of display screens for the Oculus should be adequate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5XVq4NLnwk
Unity and Unreal, game engine platforms, are both announcing support of HTC RE Vive. This means game developers can move away from having to develop support for the various VR headsets and use the support provided by Unity and Unreal. This saves developer’s time and means new games will move through the development pipeline faster.
Strawberry Singh has a meme called What’s Your Digits? It is about shape and mesh bodies. So, what can I add to that?
My Digits 4/2015
If your new to Second Life™ you may not know the viewer’s appearance editor reports the wrong height for avatars. You can check this yourself by rezzing a cube and stretching it to whatever height you think you are. Make it phantom and walk into it.
