Low Prim wardrobe for crowded sims

I just attended the Skin Fair 08, and the opening of the Rue d'Antibes sim. Took forever to get into each, as they were constantly full. Once I got it, the lag was horrendous. So I am putting together an outfit/avatar that is a low prim version of myself to be able to move about better in busy areas.

So far, I've got jeans, a blouse, and shoes, that are all no prim.
I detach and turn off HUDS and AOs.

But I need decent hair! Can anyone suggest hair that is no prim or low prim, yet still attractive? I do not want to look like Ruth! What about sculpty hair? How many prims is that usually?

Thanks for the suggestions,

There are a few skins which have 'painted on' short hair, and of course you can always just use the sliders, but if you want a low prim hair-do, I find up-do's with a single bun to usually have fewer prims. I'm not in-world so I can't give you any examples at the moment.

What's your idea of low prim hair? Under 10, 25, 50, 100 prims? I recently made an Anime style hair that's right around 50 prims that still looks pretty wild and I have a freebie floor-length pony tail that's just 20 prims and one flexi for the tail. (^_^)

I have long straight brown hair, which I styled myself.

When it's loose, its a combination of collar-length appearance-slider hair with just 4 flattish cuved flexi-prims for the long back and side curtains. It works well.

For ponytail I have short slider hair with flexi ponytail attachment.

Alternatively I sometimes replace the ponytail with a tight 3-prim tight bun at the back.

Sculpties are worse than any kind of regular prim so they don't really fit into the "low lag" category at all.

Besides, with that kind of lag it's likely the sculpmaps would never rez for most people and they would just see oddly shaped blobs on top of your head .

This wont do a lot of good unless everyone else in the sim does it. I have always thought it was so funny when some one wearing 200 flexy prims of hair and clothes complains about lag.

I suggest switching to simple mode when you attend such functions....I can't remember the key combination off the top of my head CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+5? If you have the client menu up go to Client > Rendering > Types > Simple

Turn animated textures and particles off also

I've attended some monstrous events and in simple mode it's a breeze.

What you can do is buy some bangs and a ponytail and then attach those to your styled linden hair. I can't remember which stores sell just bangs and pontails.. gurl6 or pazzazz I think.

Oh, it might not have a huge impact on the whole scene, but paring down the outfit can help your own frame rate and make it easier to move around. Attachments on your own avatar can make a pretty big hit just because they are usually front and center in your camera's view.

The Naughty discount store in Zuni has some older Lost stuff like that too, mix and match attachment sets to go with non-prim hair. Some other useful bits there like cute low-prim (just soles, uppers are textures) shoes too.

*shudder*

Personally, I rarely experience lag. When I attend an event where I know there will be many people, I make it a point to turn off my Mysti tool and AO. I also take off prim clothes and accessories if I'm wearing any. NOT because it will feel less laggy for me, but because it seems to be the polite thing to do. I don't completely understand all the causes of lag, but am wrong to think it's sometimes viewer side? Not including scripted stuff, is prim lag only felt by those with older computers?

Because you want an event to be enjoyed by everyone, whatever their 'puter specs are, wearing as few prims possible is a nice thing to do, but people shouldn't make others feel bad for wearing high-prim hair. Then again, maybe I just don't understand the causes of lag...

In the four sims Valentine's Hunt last year the lag was so bad it took nearly half an hour for some of the things in 64m to rez.

At the first hunt, everybody took of their shoes and hair and it was amazing! Suddenly we could all move.

I also entered a later one, unfortunately everyone didn't chime in with that plan and things were much, much laggier.

When hundreds of people take of hundreds of prims, it makes an amazing amount of difference! Unfortunately, when only a few do it, the drop in the bucket is barely noticeable, if at all, it seems...

It's been a while, the soles on the ones I had in mind are really 4 prims each, but they are perfectly good little keds-type flats! We aren't talking ruthslippers here)

LOL I'd love to see that

Hi Princess, check on my line of quality hand drawn textured shoes. See my signature for the location. Your plan of making a low lag avatar is commendable and it would be great to see more people follow in your steps. My textured shoes show that style does not have to be sacrificed and a dreaded return to the newbie look isn't necessary in order to acheive your goal. Good luck!
edit to add---> I vaguely remember something about Robin Sojourner making textured hair. So maybe check her profile.

It's even funnier when someone who's wearing a scanner, mystitool, huddles, shield, AO and whatever else complains how my hair is causing sim lag .

On-topic: anything with transparent/alpha or semi-transparent textures will render slower than if all the textures on it were opaque as well.

Sorry, but I still don't understand how hair causes sim lag.

I think it has sometime to do with that fact that all those prims have to rezz in the sim at the same time, and it puts a load on the server, which slows everything down.

Sorry I don't know more. Maybe someone else can explain it better?

It doesn't, at all.

The only thing attachments do (assuming they're in view) is add more polygons for your graphics card to render which translates into a lower FPS and is part of the fit-all label "lag".

(Flexi prims do add additional load on your puter since it has to recompute their - visible - position, but again that's not something that the sim has to worry about)

---

Less attached prims makes your puter happy since there's less for it to render.
Less scripts in attachments makes the sim happy since there's less for it to do.

Thank you for the explanation. This is what I thought, but I wasn't sure, and this thread was starting to confuse me. So if someone experiences lower FPS during an event, lowering their draw distance and avatar rendering would be more helpful than asking someone else to take their hair off.

I don't know if there are separate rendering modes for textures and prims, but staring at the ground (a single texture) for a minute after landing seems to help me tremendously. It gives my computer time to render the surrounding textures even when they are not "seen", then when I look up the prims render more quickly.

Also, under the Client menu you can turn off trees, water, sky, etc., set your preferences to lowest settings, and mute anyone you see with particles/talking bellies/xcite parts, etc. I also detach everything and put on low prim hair.

Shopping iz srs biznz!!!

True... Which is why I respond to some lag complainers with "You need moar cores". (^_^)

Dual FX74 + Dual 8600GT + 4G RAM = No lag on me. (^_^)y

That's the first thing I do for big events. (^_^)y

I went to the Skin Fair too, and contributed to the lag with all my usual attachments.

Now, too late, I realize what I should have done: Streak the Skin Fair! Everyone there ought to be starkers anyway...how else can you demo the products?

I highly recommend Robin Sojourner's hair textures, which come in a variety of colors from ash blond to black.

These hair textures can be styled using sliders, just like the LL default hair, but the high-quality texture gives a gleaming realistic look that we tend to associate with prim styles. I've loved Robin's approach to hair since my earliest days in SL, and I've stayed with it. Few people even seem to notice it's not prim-based.

If you're going to high-lag shopping area, you'll never arrive bald or find your hair up your butt.

My other shop-strike tactic is to remove my Mysti-Tool and Huddles and use a simple AO that is only 1 prim plus the a walk and run anims. Keeps me from waddling, but also downloads very quickly.