Avatar Rendering Cost: Change Your Habits?

I did d/l the RC with ARC. Kinda fun to see mine. I have some items that are fairly high ARC, like my typing attatchment. I wont give it up tho, its kinda unique. I dont mind seeing my own and will play with it however, I would never tell anyone else what theirs is, unless they ask. And as far as banning someone for a high arc? Never happen. This is why only seeing your own is logical.

The only benifit I see with ARC is to show proof that highly detailed Furry, Animal based, and machine based (especially the over-sized ones) AVs have lower rendering costs that some people's jewlery.

Before ARC came out I heard a complaint from someone with a full detail movie style Transformer AV who got kicked out of a region because another person thought they were causing too much lag, ignoring the jewlery attachments on the normal sizers.

I have also heard complaints about when ARC first came out from some of the furries that hang out in the same region as me, some of them hate it saying it can be used as a form of discrimination aganst them.

I have even seen people trying to jack their ARCs as high as posible, I just can't see the numbers because my network only alllows me to be on the RC for a few hours before crashing, yet my system can handle any thing I throw at it (I have a tendancy to crank up graphic settings on all of my offline programs and my computer takes it with no difficulties). I have to use the main veiwer most of the time because it has a lower crash rate for me.

As for me, I don't care about my ARC I use alot of attachments for my AVs (my tiny robot and "Iron Man" AVs are 90% prim based and my "Matrix" AV is about 40-50% prim based), the only problem I get with them is when the asset server dies and none of my attachments load.

If you took away all of the AV attachments, every one would just have varitions of the defult AVs and you lose most of SLs diversity, and to me that is boring as hell.

The biggest lag monsters of SL are the badly coded scripts that only do a simple task (like Chilli Chao's flashing glow cube), I may still be figuring out LSL but I know some people who use simple scripts to do simple tasks (you don't need 50 pages of code for most scripts, only code what you need, in other words Keep It Simple). As for the heavy textures in alot of places I manly just have to wait a few extra minutes for them to load, wich is only slightly anoying.

I have also been to events that fill up the region I'm in and every one basicly gets simalr frame rates and the ARCs are so close to each other (from what I hear) that its just a normal SL thing for full regions to lag. Try going to the NCI Friday beach party to see what I mean, if you look at the crowd you lag alot, look away almost no lag.

Laggy scripts should be replaced, certainly, but I think there's a very widespread misunderstanding about what laggy scripts are, and how they can and (especially) cannot affect performance. But I and other scripters have bored this forum about this enough for a while.

In fact, scripting is one area where by design, content developers are quite constrained in how much a single script can affect performance. Lots of imposed delays built in to library functions, for example, tightly limited memory, and a rigid scheduler.

If constraints anything like these were imposed on building, texturing, or (heaven forfend!) dressing one's avatar, the streets would be ankle deep in blood from the revolution.

well the scripts can't really count in the ARC, as scripts do not generate directly low fps on the client side but they do slow down the other scripts and the simulation speed server side.

In an ideal world, the ARC would show the full client side fps drain and the APC (Avatar processing cost) would give you a comprehensible metric of your avatar script drain on the sim.

(Please don't use the term lag as it's a stuff everything term)
Client side fps drop.
Network lag (that's the true one)
Server side sim load.

You know you don't need 100 fps to play SL. 30 fps is smooth video (what you see in a movie theater), 20 fps is quite acceptable (except for high energy combat games........which there are many out there much better than SL), and I find as low as 10 playable.........not the best by any means, but it's not so bad that you cannot do things in SL.

Well I'm exhausted & my brain is runnin on "auto" right now... the only "for instance" I can think of is:

my ARC is "1" when I wear my original full-body tattoos (large sized images) my tattoos (undershirt, underpants, and glove layers), real nice jeans (they LOOK real high resolution), socks ( heh ) & a t-shirt, then my club vest.

Now maybe I mis-read the Blog, but I thought it said all big textures add onto your score. (not that the fact that it DOESN'T is a reason to complain, heh). I'll quote a Resident named Ann Otoole on this one:



I gotta say I still love playin around w/ the ARC, and I'm glad ta have it.



LMAO!!!



That's true, even though I've only seen versions of the Wetikon made out of more prims than neccessary, small as they might be. Maybe there's a 1 prim version or somethin? The ZHAO II that I use, ain't even the "standard"/COLA version. It was changed by some NCI folks for classes, and when I compared it to my other ZHAO II, it actually is a noticable (not HUGE) difference in performance. I don't mind givin' up one HUD slot, but that's just me. (and yes I use guns w/ HUDs, HUD weapons, a Concert HUD, and whatever else I feel like at the time.)



Exactly. I don't run around playin "ARC Police" ( lol? ) on the Sims I visit, but I do leave it on a lot. The 1st thing I did with the ARC ..."tool"... is to gauge MYSELF, not harrass somebody who came on my land. I showed it to other folks & they did the same. I lag MYSELF a lot less, now that I can gauge my ARC before I hit a Live concert or whatever.

Hell, before Havok4, I remember crashing Sim after Sim goin ta see cover bands and Live shows with other folks just by us being there, & now I can look back at a room full of "metal porcupines" and bling, and see it in a different light. Hmm. Think I'll TP on over ta Sanctuary Rocks later on & snoop on everybody before my ancient box crashes SL.



IMO SL is just "ahead of it's time". But now that the project is underway, the only thing for a business to do, since they still make a profit, is to continue. I ain't read Kyrah's input as "pointing a finger" at me, but a commentary on some complications in making content for SL, versus making content for a videogame company.



Hell yeah it is



I hear ya, but next time I make an av for folks ta buy, I'm gonna use this tool..."Alpha, Beta or no Beta". For example, I think I'll go back and make a lotta changes on my Sewer Rat/Nezumi av. I never been in the game industry either and a few things mentioned in the Blog never even crossed my mind. I'm takin' all the bump-mapping outta that avatar, when if this ARC thing had never come out, I wouldn't have even THOUGHT about changing that. I wanna contribute to folks who buy my crap havin a better experience...so I'm glad to have the ARC, I'm glad I tested it w/ friends for hours, and I hope they make it more robust and exact as soon as they get the chance. It's a start. *shrugs*

I gotta cut down the size of my posts

I do do this actually, since a prim that's reduced to <0.01, 0.01, 0.01> size tends to get culled by level-of-detail so at least they shouldn't impact people (though I suspect ARC still counts them, does it account for prim size?). I also re-use many prims for features that can't be turned on simultaneously.

I think really I've done all I can unless LL gets a move on with a way to easily turn a linked-set into a sculpty, but then in my experience the prims in my attachments are usually a lot less costly than a sculpty when it comes to rendering so I think it may be one case where optimising for ARC will actually make things WORSE. How much does ARC penalise sculpties? Because one sculpty to me seems to cost (in actual performance) around 10-15 regular prims like spheres and cubes.

While I like the direction the feature shows in client-awareness of lag causing items etc, I think that it could be much better implemented; really it should create an avatar impostor for the person (render their avatar to an image) and time how long that takes, it would give a much more accurate measure of relative avatar costs in REAL performance terms. Only has to do it once at full-res as well, and re-do it if the avatar changes so it can update the value.

Sadly Kyrah, "lag" remains the stuff everything term the average user identifies with for any performance issue, and I wonder if anyone more savvy really expects the average person (as someone mentioned above) to care much about more than whether it works okay or not (which is admittedly vague in scope) on the relatively average machine (also necessarily vague in scope).

You also cannot use a game like Doom as an example, as games have more limitations inherently built into them than SL does....with SL essentially trying to be a virtual world, relatively uncontrolled development platform and game...not catering exclusively to any of those three user communities...so therefore unable to really efficiently address any.

I don't think even most content creators are necessarily proficient across the board in performance related cause and effect, which is actually an SL selling point...in that you don't have to be.

You can see in most related threads many people are just not understanding it so it will have dubious value to the whole...same as the present performance settings and such are something that do not occur to the average user, who simply wants to log in and do their thing...and will, as they have.

Another excellent Kitty post which taught me something, and Qie, never worry about boring anyone with details.

I guess I still wonder how expecting user self control in an environment promoted as being freeform is going to work...but there sure have been a lot of very wonderful explanatory posts with good perspectives.

Whether a texture is big or small doesn't matter as far as ARC is concerned, no, it's one of the flaws.

Anne's example wouldn't work like that though since she forgot about baked textures (and unless they changed it back again we can't upload 2048x2048 anymore, it should get resized to 1024x1024).

When you change clothing the viewer will download the textures of all the layers you're wearing and composite them on top of each other to end up with 5 baked textures: head, upper body, lower body, iris and skirt.

Upper body and lower body are the only parts we can layer clothing onto:
upper body: upper body from skin, undershirt, shirt, upper jacket
lower body: lower body from skin underpants, socks, pants, lower jacket, shoes

Whether you're entirely naked or wearing something on every layer doesn't really make any difference (neither does alpha in this case), you'll always have 5 baked textures for your avie no matter what. There is a cost associated with baking the textures the first time (each viewer does that for its own avie and then uploads the textures to the sim where others can fetch them to see you), but there's no rendering difference. There's also no cost for texture size since they all get resided down to the same size when baked; if you did use a 2048x2048 for a clothing layer then you just wasted a lot of time on detail that will never be visible anyway.

The fact that ARC doesn't take clothing layers into account isn't a flaw .

g

...

Heh, I got jokes...but nah I getcha. That's another thing I like about SL, no matter what I still learn somethin new every day. Ya know, if there was a way to actually make DECENT shoes without prims, I would be giddy with glee, cause my av barely uses hair. Sometimes a "stock" ("Ruth hair" mohawk/fighthawk like what's trendy now, sometimes a liberty spiked mohawk (still not many prims or textures, cornrows (higher ARC score), or dreads (the highest ARC score of course).

This month my av has been either bald, or I just use the mohawk, so usually I just slap on some shoes, a belt, pick out a cigar (my av loves his cigars.) and he's ready ta go. Even better is when I put a suit on 'im...just add shoes & he's good.

I dunno how many folks, percentage-wise, on the grid have used the ARC, but strangely enough, I have been seeing more & more "green avatars" in the last 2 days.

Today I was at (no pun intended) Greenies House, and there was a group of 5 Goreans, all green scores except for one...I counted 3 furries, two were green and it's been like that at a LOT of spots I've been to.

...either it's just a big coincidence, or ppl are passin the info on, like everybody did when Torley made that video of the old trick of running two instances of the Client at one time.

I *did* change my hair after finding out that my former hair brought my ARC up over 1600 points to a total of around 2000 (and that's for male hair and nothing overly fancy!). Having worn my hair for almost a year before (didn't I say I'm male?) I took the opportunity and went shopping for new hair. I came back with an ARC of around 650.

Result: Everybody happy - me for having new hair and the good feeling of being eco-friendly, the shop owner for a sale and the environment, too... well, as soon as I have taken my old hair apart and have built 4 prefabs from its prims.....

Don't be silly. Nobody said that.

Oh?

With the exception of a few pieces of jewelry and some of my hair, I'm not a hugely primmy dresser; however, my ears and tail contribute a lot to my ARC and there's no way in hell I'm getting rid of them. So, no, I won't be changing my habits.

Yes, quite. Did you *read* the two quotes? And the discussion that lead up to them?

Peggy said that she would mute me in a hurry (without having any idea of what I might do in such a situation). I said, if there was a problem, and if I tried to resolve the problem by discussing it, but was muted (showing that the person I'm talking to politely is completely uninterested in cooperating), that I would ban them in a hurry.

That is not at all the same thing as saying that "inconsiderate avatars with an ARC of 5000 (what I believe to be very arbitrary) would be banned in an instant."

If you were responsible for the smooth operation of one or more sims, and if you tried to deal with a *problem* (which implies that people are having trouble and asking for assistance), and when you approached people they muted you, what would you do?

BTW, I did misspeak -- I would simply eject them for the first such offense, and only ban if the problem were repeated and significant.

Folks, please try to communicate -- don't just look for things to flame about.

I tend to use prim attachments my self on my tech based AVs, so if my ARC goes up I don't care, the AVs I use fit my style and I will not change that.

Well, I have started evaluating new hairstyles based in part on how much they add to my ARC score. Found a beautiful Flexi hairstyle just recently that worls great for my avatar, but because it has a lot of transparent textures and flexi prims, the ARC score jumps something like 800 points just for the hair. I'll reserve that for special occasions, and keep looking for a nice style for daily wear, that doesn't add so much to my ARC score.

Right now, I figure on a Furry avatar I'm doing OK if I keep my ARC score at 2200 or less.

So I think this thread pretty much sums it all up...

a) Despite being easily testable, people choose to not believe that the ARC score is valid. Obviously, this is because if they believe it, they have to then consider their own behavior.

b) Even those who do consider ARC valid still won't change their habits. Even me. I haven't changed anything. I dropped a few thousand ARC but only because I have the skills to remake my hair. Others who are not so skilled would not have the option I did. I would not have gone to completely different hair.

c) People, in general, are against banning high-arc avatars even from crowded events... despite the inescapable mathematics of the situation.

In short, this is what we've known of humans all along. Humans act in ways which are individually selfish. If we want broad changes, then the system must be setup to incentivize those changes. People will not do it out of the goodness of their hearts.

For me, I definitely want a way to tell MY client what it will and will not render. I'm the first to admit, I have little patience with people wandering around at 5k arc cost, each one costing me 2fps if they are within the imposter limit. I see no downside in a setting on MY client to tell it to imposter anyone over X cost. Even better, whatever LL uses as the defaults on that setting will, over time, become the new budget because now people now that anyone over that budget will be ugly for most other viewers. Heh, and for those that only care about how they look to themselves, we have a word for that and it's good for me to know about them too.

As a SIM owner, I also want a way to ban based on ARC score. This is NOT something I would ever do in my store. But if I was hosting an event that I expected to be popular, yes, I would include ARC maximums in the invitation if I had the tools to do so.

Insofar as all the red herrings that have been tossed out by the naysayers.. Look, it doesn't matter about your three thousand other reasons that can cause bad graphical performance. What DOES matter is that you can watch your framerate go down as the total ARC being rendered goes up... In some cases, dramatically. Do we need tools and ways to identify the poor construction techniques for soemthing other than avatar attachments.. Yes. As a builder, would I love that? Yes. But does that have ANYTHING at all to do with suzie narcissist's decision to come to a crowded event in an outfit that will cost everyone around her 2-4fps? No, it does not.

If you believe that graphic cards can render an infinite number of polygons per second and have infinite memory then yes, ARC is valid...

There's a very good reason why alpha "costs" per face, but instead of realizing that your hair is always going to be a performance hit regardless of how much you adjust it, you just did the exact same thing you accuse others of: you don't care if your hair eats up someone's fps, you'll wear it regardless.

Make sure "Avatar Imposters" is checked, right-click on the offending avie, Mute and they'll render as a gray attachment-less cardboard cutout.

My ARC is 525 right now (didn't actually plan it that way, just seem to be wearing a non-alpha prim skirt, generally I'm between 800-1200). That's for hair, earrings, necklace, bracelet, snuggle bear, prim skirt, sculpty shoes and prims nails. I love my prim nails, but I could go without them which would put me at 410.

Either way I'm anything but "under-attached" and my total right now is still only about half the ARC of your hair alone (which you said was 900) which you said you refuse to change. You'd be "suzie narcissist" from my perspective.

My thigh boots are 810 prims... my hair 218... my belt another 72, but this time there's a fair few sculpties in there for good luck... my glasses are prim, not texture... and they bling.

Right now, I don't care about my ARC, because I'm on a build platform at 720+m; on my own with nobody else on the island.

Judge me if you will...

I just kind of keep rereading this with wonder.

Indeed it's like saying we know eating coco puffs all the time is bad for you, so I'm going to eat other things like a block of chocolate..

It is a single factor, but not the end all factor in lag. You can be the only person in a sim and lag out due to the textures of the sim builds...and not having your graphics options at the recommended settings for your machine... too many expect a 16meg vid card to handle ultra high draw distances and options... ain't going to happen

...me too, sad part is I wrote the OP.

Well I just managed to reduce my ARC from 3300+ to 830-880 just by finding lower impact flexi hair that is 93 prim over my previous 133 prim hair. From my partners reaction I look better than ever. So no high ARC is NOT needed by all residents, I am not saying all can ARC down to the triple digits without sacrificing looks. If there are lower prim, lower ARC attachments that look better or the same as the higher ARC versions why not do yourself and others a favor and use them?

Honestly I would like to see attachment makers step up and be ARC conscious, and this does not me sacrificing quality. It just means I would like to see those on top of their game innovate and make things that look better with lower client side impact.

Now will residents wear more attachments as they are made more efficient? I would not doubt it but again ARC efficiency should be good for the attachment business as then people will buy and wear more attachments and outfit that use attachments.

I am quite sure we all dream of the day where flexi hair is comprised of millions of realisticly moving physical flexi strands, but until then we have to do the best within the limits of users current technology base, that means accommodating systems up to 4 years old with reasonable maintenance (I.E. Driver Upgrades.). Not all of us make enough to upgrade every year or are we rash enough to upgrade without a great deal of research. Many of us without the money are looking for the $300 upgrade now that will work for us for 4 years while those with the money to burn will get the "Latest" every year and spend $1200 in the same 4 years.