Why does the SL client render (rez) items you can't see?

I'm wondering if this is just the way a openGL world works?

Let me explain what I mean.

Logically, one might think that you would TP into an area, facing a wall of adverts (for example) and the wall and the images only you can see in your view would be the vesy 1st things to render.

It seems that pretty much everything is rendered (even stuff behind your avatar) at the same time (when you appear)

I'm just wondering, is it just (the way the system works) which means, what's directly in your field of view does not get full priority?

I guess I have often thought the same about even some 3D games on computers, where (in reality) the system (software used to generate the 3D world) only ever has to render what you can see NOW and nothing else.

Have you turned "object occlusion" off? It sounds like it. LL made "object occlusion" part of the viewer a few years back. It is supposed to burden your client's rendering with only things that you can see and not bother loading anything about those you cannot see. If you turn off "object occlusion", you load everything within your draw distance, then sort out which you can see.

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, that setting is still on.

I guess this actually harks back to a question I put forward a few weeks ago, which was (something like) why is it, when you are staring full screen at something, it takes ages to rez, whilst things behind you are still rezzing as you are waiting for the stuff that's filling your screen to come fully into view.

I'm sure it's done for very good reasons

Where is the object occlusion setting?

MENU: Advanced>Rendering>Object-Object Occlusion Ctrl-Shift-O