Its the hair....

now keep in mind, the avatar rendering cost is not to be used as a witch hunt (loosely quoting Torley there...), but I believe it is a useful tool to look at ourselves and how we might be affecting our surroundings.

I turned mine on, to see what it said about the people in the room around me, and while most registered in the green, a friend was bright red, over 3k. I asked him what he thought it was, he started taking things off, and when he took off his hair, he went down almost 2k. Two other people in the room, who were also in the red took off their hair and same.

Luckily for me (since I dont wanna run around bald lol) I was running in the green with my hair on (taking it off for a check found it rendered at about 200).

I expected to see high numbers from people wearing lots of studs and jewelry etc., and they do render high but the hair seems to be the biggest culprit!

From now on when I shop for hair, I will be checking the rendering cost when I put on the demo and it will affect whether I buy the hair or not to be honest.

OMG, I know what you mean. Most of my hair purchases have very high prim counts, and because they are usually flex products, they are very very high hits on the ARC scale. The prim count and ARC don't affect my decision to purchase a particular hair, but I do take them into consideration when deciding which hair to wear when going to a well-attended event.

I think it is the alpha transparent textures in hair that makes for the high rendering costs. The wet icon AO adds a lot too because it is alpha texture and worn on the avatar, whereas the ZHAO - which is worn as a HUD - adds nothing to avatar rendering costs.

My dragon avatar has the highest rendering cost in my inventory - way above any of the flexi hair.

I have a ton of different hairs from various places. Most scored around 500-700. The worst culprit was Tami McCoy (Dangerous) with a score of 2200, and the lowest was Pazazz (The Urban) at 25.

Oh Deira, you are right about the dragon avatar's ARC...mine is off the charts!

More and more hair is being made with sculpted prims, which can dramatically reduce prim count, while giving a much more natural looking result than conventional prims. I've been wearing a newer piece called Cake, which I found at FNKY, and wearing a total of 122 prims, including the hair, I'm at 476.

My fav hair is terrible. Adds 1000s. Its awful I know and I feel ever so guilty, but umm! avatar render cost is a bit like carbon footprinting in RL. If you just have to fly around the world and you're going to end up adding gazillions of carbon thingys to the atmosphere anyways, then umm! you might as well go first-class =)

*bump*

Worst offender in that category is the awful looking flat curl alpha textured hair, actual prim hair generally isn't bad at all.

<insert boiletplate commentary about how ARC is utterly worthless and pointless as a rendering cost metric>

Prim count is irrelevant for ARC though (one of the reasons it's a ridiculous metric) and sculpties are rather heavy on the poly count as well.

If you're reusing the sculpt map and texture applied to it then it's not that bad as far as ARC is concerned, but each unique sculpted prim could count as both a unique texture applied to it and the unique texture of the sculptmap.

(/327/52/259275/7.html#post1999295 and onward)

actually my two favorite hairs are the worst, adding about 2k each

I just won't wear them out and about. I also have some hair I like that only adds about 200, and I will wear that when I go to crowded places.

And I know my little footprint won't make a big difference hehe but I will know that I tried

Rather than rehash piece meal all this, allow me to point u all to here: /327/a6/256544/1.html

could save a lot of repetitive questions and answers - it explains why the cost and the texture impact, etc. It also covers the witch hunt possibilities.


So- scultpy hair huh? Would love to see that - Where? An slurs, please? Thanks.

A while ago, in the Hangout, several of us were trying to get as primmy and high ARC as we could. I managed just over 5000 while wearing a long coat, my usual long hair, and high-prim dollfie boots from Nevermore.

There may be a trade-off on the number of tasks (prims) vs complexity of geometry. I suspect, although cannot prove, that fewer tasks to produce the same geometry is probably more efficient for the render pipeline. Clearly the more tasks a given attachment has, the more points it scores for the ARC. Whether this is actually meaningful is probably debatable. In a static scene, it probably isn't. In a dynamic, ever changing scene, particularly where those hundreds and hundreds of tasks are also flexible, its significance becomes more considerable, as these tasks are constantly being re processed.

i think i found one of the highest ARC items ever, naked, bald and without any attachments, my arc is 1

add on my charmed magic powers item, and it goes up to 131120

so thats 131120 for just 1 item!

Now.... The fun part is.... Did your frame rate suffer at all? (^_^)

I've seen 2k ARC avatars that can kick me down by 5fps when they're on my screen. But, I have a 10k outfit myself that doesn't do a thing. (=_=)

Meethinks it's a tool that needs heavy reworking to avoid being a weapon for social griefers and is too easy to misunderstand. (>_<

I have been lagging a lot recently, but i just put it down to the fact that sl sucks ^_^

Naughty, Armidi, Zero Style. I'm sure there are more.

And hearin lays the problem....

I hear comments all day long about " OH Im lagging ! " and "Omg nothing will rez " or " ffs how come i cant see textures loading "

Mentor group chat is questions from resident wanting to know why X & Y is or is not working right ?

I go and take a look sometimes ... Only to find someone with 30 body and face lights... 600 prim sculptie hair .... Bling on every part that bling can be attached to and parts its not supposed to be o-O Looking like a Christmas tree ....Wearing Outfits made with ultra high-rez textures ... Ghetto scripted AO's with un-animated ( jump from one pose to the next in a millisecond ) poses .... Skins that are more lifelike and detailed than than some RL people i know also ultra high textured ... Flexi add on belt's ... and godknows what else ...


And they wonder why they are lagging ? ...pffft Its a joke

ARC might not be the greatest tool to calculate cost ... But for god's sake i hope people start to use it ahah

No lag on me. (^_^)y

I am worried if I broke the avatar rendering cost in some way. Tonight, I was wearing a 3 prim (all standards no sculpties) prim dress with underware and shoes, all custom textured and prim hair that consisted of a single sculptie with a cornrow pattern with alpha spacing (short cornrows with no bald spot). My ARC came in at 88. How did I get such a ridiculously low score or am I just getting super prim stingey everywhere?

From the sound of that, you only had one alpha texture total. The ARC result will be practically near your prim count and nothing more. (^_^)y

Prim count is not taken into account, only prim properties make a difference.

From Iyoba's description you get:
base - 1
hair attachment - 10
hair sculptmap - 5
hair texture - 5
hair alpha face - 4
skirt attachment - 10
skirt texture - 5
shoes attachments (left foot & right foot) - 2 x 10
shoes texture (likely more than one, but since it's not specificed assume 1) - 5

Which brings you up to 60, the remaining 28 will be textures, and some prim/prim face property she didn't mention but the prim count simply does not come into it.

I'd rather just move a little slower than go bald, or wear an unnatural hair. I like Tami McCoys hair I don't care how primmy they are....they look natural.

So...those sculpture prim hairs that make you look like a Sasquatch affixed to your head and shoulders is less lag inducing than a prim hair with alpha textures? Hmmm.

Kitty, I don't think that's right, exactly. Prim count *per se* doesn't matter...but those texture costs have to be multiplied by every prim they are applied to. So, if you had hair with 200 prims that have an alpha texture applied to all six faces, you would get 200x6x4=4800 ARC points.

At least, I think that's how it works.

She said the entire hair consists of a single sculpty with an alpha texture on it, so that's only one single face with an alpha texture on it.