Which AO is "least laggy" to you?

I know a lotta folks have switched from the common WetIkon Animation Overriders to ZHAO, but for some reason the ZHAO's are always a lot laggier for me. Yeah I know that ALL Animation Overriders cause lag... my question is "Which AO has created the LEAST amount of lag for you?"

There is a "new" WetIkon version around with optimized code that's a LOT faster than the old one...that's the best I've found so far.

heyas;

i was building a new total ao (for tinies), and found that the basic franimation 1.8 script was better than the zhao version of that script. i dont know what the wetikon thing is using inside, though.

i also tried streamlining the franimation 1.8 by ripping out some code that i think was left over from various people putting in 'extras,' that weren't used any more, and by removing the listeners.

i may be prejudiced against listeners, but i think any ao that doesnt use them will have less lag.

If by laggy you mean there's occasionally a second or two of "default" animation before the AO device "kicks in" (for lack of a better way of describing it), then I've found ZHAO II to be very good.

Totally. (^_^) ... And the ZHAOII HUD beats chat-lint commands any day. (^_^)y

I use ZAHO II as well. It takes time moving all the stuff over and re-writting the cards but it is worth it. I had heard there was a utlilty to convert your cards for you but have not actually used it so I can't say for sure.

I use the one from JK Lab, and it's just spiffy.

I don't think it uses Zhao, I think it has it's own system all together. But wtf do I know?

The reason that the ZHAO is more "laggy" is because the refresh rate is lower. If you go in and look at the Franimation AO in the Wet Ikon attachment, you'll see that the AO is actually firing at something like 0.01 seconds. Whereas if you look at the Zhao, it may be set to refresh at closer to 0.1 or 0.05.

This really is the source of most of that "lagging behind" from Zhaos... and I've found, if I just dial that up, the results are quite good.

I've used 2 AO's Zhao I & II. I love them both.

I have never actually found any modern AOs to be laggy at all. I use a ZHAO-II as it seems to be the most advanced that I am in possession of, but changes to the way scripts work these days have resulted in AOs being a lot easier on sim resources than they used to a year or two ago.

I've tweaked the timer some more in ZHAO-II, and also changed the sequence of some function calls, and tried some other streamlining. This allowed me to reduce the poll frequency slightly, which is really mostly needed for the stand/sit change, because there's no way to detect that asynchronously.

A couple of people have compared ZHAO-II to other popular AO scripts (testing in empty sims), and have reported lower script sim time and IPS numbers, in some cases fairly significant reductions.

Yes, in a slow sim, the slower timer will sometimes cause a slightly perceptible delay in the animation kicking in. I tried to set it to a value where that would be imperceptible for the most part. I'm sure I wasn't successful for every combination of sim + client PC.

Winter, if you haven't tried ZHAO-II, take it for a spin if you like and see what you think. My goal was to provide the same level of responsiveness (or as close as I could get) while reducing sim load, and I think (hope ) I was somewhat successful.

And to stress Ordinal's point - some time ago (a year or so?), LL changed how scripts load the sim, so a lot of the issues with scripts lagging the sim down went away. These days laggy scripts run slower, but they don't affect the sim as much as they used to. So a lot of the old 'conventional wisdom' about AOs isn't really true any more.

actually, regardless of time specified, no timer event fires faster than .05, and generally not faster than .1 (the default according to lsl wiki), any faster call just gets queued up (only one timer call in the queue at a time, ever), and if the code in the timer takes longer than the time before it's supposed to trigger, it bumbps the next timer event back.

most AO's will be running code non-stop, or nearly so, because the code the execute in the timer takes longer than their timer interval.

wetIcon IIRC is built on the framination engine by the same person, including some optimizations and workarounds for specific problems, ZHAO was built off of that, to include a hud, and IIRC ZHAO2 obvious attempts to improve on that as Ziggy pointed out above.

I use one that has zero lag. It is called Linden Labs.

There's an unfortunate upper limit to the script efficiency of AOs because they have to keep polling the avatar's animation, rather than getting an event telling them that the animation has changed. A jira, http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-408, proposes to allow scripts to get such an event.

That would greatly reduce the amount of script processing used by AOs, and would reduce the "lag" described here: the delay before the AO's walk animation kicks in after standing still, for example. But the impact of AOs on crowded locations is probably not so much script processing as the time it takes everybody to download everybody else's before-unseen animations. I don't really know how much data is transfered for a few seconds of animation (the raw bvh files don't seem that huge), but there are often noticeable gaps before seeing somebody else's animation; there's lag there somewhere.

Thanks for all the info...I was using a "stripped down" Franimation AO today that takes commands on channel /63, so it was less "disruptive" than using the default chat channel, and it seemed to run smoother (I have everything "filled up"including swimming anims, except for a 'Sit' pose, 'cause that interferes when I ride my motorcycles )... BUT still no HUD of course, so I'm glad to hear the input about the ZHAO!

I'm gonna crank up the refresh speed to .05 like a few of you suggested...then load it up with anims to the hilt and head straight for the "AO proving ground": Midian City, and stand way too close to everybody I pass.

I use pandora,
simply, reliable its good enough

I don't have a clue what I use. Made my ao myself from a tutorial using a free script given as part of the tut.
It might be franimation though I am not sure. Its just a script that you had to alter and put the poses and the script inside a prim to wear.

I am never sure if the lag is just plain old SL acting messed up or my ao, so i just ignore it lol. Never really take much notice. Though I do try take it off in high lag areas.

Well my current AO was a "prefab"... I've gotten a bit lazy in my old age. But it does use a sort of glitched copy of the Zhao II and I must say I am indeed impressed with it's responsiveness. To be fair, however, I can't remember if I kicked up the timer on this one or not. (it's also possible that the animator did, before selling it).

Anyways, this talk of AOs finally got me to go out and grab a "clean" Zhao II from the source. I settled on the MultiButton one, as I had been missing some of the features of the old Zhao, particularly the one-click sit-toggle.

I sat down and began a bit of a project for myself, which is a replacement shell for the MultiButton. Something a bit compact, with a few of the buttons removed, and a little eye-candy, etc. I may go in and poke at the Menu GUI while I'm in there, just to suit my own particular ideas of "User Friendliness"

I always preffered the Franimation over the Zhao, simply because of it's ease of use and the "slow to kick in" nature of Zhao 1, that I only recently figured out how to fix... But now, I think Zhao II definitely bridges the gap, and may be a step up for the entire "AO industry"

One last thing. I really want to applaud the Animation Overrider community. I know there are only really a handfull of developers of these scripts, but it's REALLY cool to see the whole genre treated as open-source. Allowing someone (like me for example) to go in and adapt the existing code to our own ideas. A lot of other industries have become very secretive and in many cases hostile to other developers... and in many cases, hostile to customers who would like to make alterations. Thank you for remaining a calm spot in a weary world.

remember to call llMinEventDelay =) (0.05 seemts to be the lower limit)

I hate to harsh on your Groove there Void.. but as I recall, I ALSO looked this up on the wiki. And you're right, THERE I seem to remember, it says that there's a built in delay. BUt you know what's funny? When I tried it inworld, the Zhao, set at 0.05 (default as I recall) performed noticably slower than a Zhao notched up to 0.02. (in fact as I recall, the Franimation was set to 0.01, which is what gave me the idea to try it).

I suggest that this delay may not be hardcoded, but may have been a factor relating to the speed of servers when the wiki data was originally tested. Obviously some further reproduction is in order, and I'm not in world to check my settings and do tests.

The wiki(s) have been wrong before.
Sucks not actually having Official specs on LSL, doesn't it?

The multi-button is a mod submitted by another user/scripter, as are the other variants in my store. If you come up with something that you think others would find useful, let me know, I can add you to the group so you can set up a box with your version.

Regarding the timer - this is pretty counter-intuitive, and I'm going from memory here, but I think I noticed that the responsiveness could get worse if you made the timer too fast, and/or made the minimum event delay too low. I think it's because the event queue is always full of events (timers or control), and that forces the script to be in constant poll mode. Whereas a slower timer, and a lighter timer event handler, lets the script react to control events faster, so the stand/walk change actually happens quicker. Like I said, going from memory here, so I could be wrong.

So... play around with it, but I'd suggest experimenting with lower values as well.

While you're here... question for you. I'm using this modded version. I found that I really can't put many animations in it before I get the dreaded stack/heap collision. Is this due to the mod, or an intrinsic issue with the ZHAO II? I seem to recall having no problem loading and configuring more animations using an Amethyst collar, at one point.

Thanks!

I don't know, I haven't really played with it. The easiest way to verify would be to move the same animations/notecard into a stock ZHAO-II and see if it has more free memory left over.

Also, I don't have your frame of reference. I don't know what an Amethyst collar uses, or how many animations it supports. It's possible that ZHAO-II has less capacity than the collar, period. If/when I do the next re-write, I plan to move the notecard reading/parsing into a separate script. That code ended up larger than I anticipated.

OK thanks.

Has anybody tried the AO Plugin for MystiTool? I was going to get a MystiTool, then saw this as well. Is it worth it, or just don't bother?

http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=479095

That's a ZHAO-II integrated into the MystiTool. It should work exactly the same as getting a separate ZHAO-II. With this you pay a little money (ZHAO-II is free) and save an attachment point.

If you have a MystiTool, this totally makes sense, if for no other reason than to reduce HUD clutter. If you're planning to buy a MystiTool only for the AO plugin, then it might be cheaper to pick up just the AO, since it's free (LM in my profile)... I have no idea how much MystiTool costs. It'll be the same AO, and you'll have to buy your own animations in both cases. Of course, if you buy the MystiTool, you get all its other features, obviously.

Hope that helps. I created ZHAO-II, and I'm not affiliated with MystiTool in any way.