Tag Archives: ARC

Second Life Project Viewer version 3.8.4.304433

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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

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).  Continue reading →

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Second Life: How Fashion Reviews Can Reduce Lag

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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

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±.  Continue reading →

Second Life & Virtual Reality

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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.  Continue reading →

Second Life: Mesh Body Revolution

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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

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. Continue reading →

Second Life: The Jelly Babies Are Coming

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I went to the Open Source UG Meeting this morning. Not something I usually do. I had some questions and this UG is a good place to get certain questions answered.

So… what is a jelly baby? The picture explains it better than words.

Render Muting Effect

Render Muting Effect

The solid color avatars in the image are what we call jelly babies. I first heard Whirly Fizzle use the term. I like it. I’ve also heard avatars rendered this way called Gumby or Gummies. I talked about this in: Second Life Performance: Render Muting.  Continue reading →

Avatar Render Cost 2015-07

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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.  Continue reading →

Second Life Performance: Render Muting

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We have and are hearing lots of complaints about how some number of avatars lag our Second Life™ experience. If you open up the Viewer Stats (Ctrl-Shift-1) and look at server performance (Simulator: Time Dilation, Sim FPS, Physics FPS, and others), you often find the region server performing well; TD=0.999, Sim FPS=44-45, Physics=44=45. Even with lots of avatars in a region. So, it isn’t region/simulator lag that is the problem. Over the last year large steps in reducing simulator lag have been taken with CDN being the most recent. The lag is now in our viewer.

Render Auto Muting

Render Auto Muting

There is a value the viewer displays labeled Avatar Render Cost (ARC). In November 2011 I wrote about ARC and how to use it, as it had recently changed. (See: #SL ARC Replaced) Things have changed since then. We now find the value displayed in two different ways. Try: Top Menu->Advanced (press Ctrl-Alt-D if you do not have that menu item)->Performance Tools->Show Draw Weight for Avatars. This will display a colored text above avatars showing their ‘render cost’. This does clutter the screen, but makes it easy to see which avatar has what ARC.  Continue reading →