Lag bomb or no?

So, I've built my flying spaceship house. It's got lots of textures, lots of scripts.

I'm using copy trans builders products, and some open source scripts like a modified Timeless Prototype Linked Door script, which has the listens turned off, except for a few instances where they listen for lock/unlock commands on a specific channel. As far as I know, I have only one script in the whole thing that's listening to channel 0, and that could be changed. There's a multimove script, WITH shuttle, a few texture animation scripts. Some sit scripts and a couple of couches and beds with MLP. The whole thing comes in at about 400 - 500 prims. No sculpted or flex prims.

"I" do not lag in my house. But I have a friend on an underpowered computer who freezes up after a few minutes. I've given people other people the tour and they don't seem to have issues.

I typically wear (among other things) a Thomas Conover Advanced Border and Performance scanner. It tells me that my sim performance is "awsome" Time dialation is usually about .99. The other number (not sure what it is) is usually about 4300 to 4500. I'll admit, there's not much going on in my sim right now--just a couple houses and shops.

I might make this thing a product some day. (Tho. . .really I'm not in any rush.) With this in mind. . .I wonder what would happen if it's rezzed in a real sim. Any comments?

Lag has several components, as I'm sure you know. Some are associated with the load on SL's own servers, so they affect all residents equally. The servers can only handle a certain number of avatars and prims in a sim, for example, so they tend to bog down as load approches those numbers. As a builder, you have control over many of these issues, since you can scrimp on prims and use efficient, low-demand scripts. You seem to be doing that. Many of the things that people complain about, though, are due to limits on the client side. A computer with inadequate memory, a slow processor, an out-of-date graphics board, a restricted pipe to the Internet, or an overheating CPU can stumble along miserably. As a designer, you can't do much about that beyond doing things like avoiding unnecessarily high-resolution textures. Compassion for your friend's lag problems has to have its limits. Moving your build to ground level in a busier sim will increase lag, but if you keep an eye on server-side lag issues that you CAN control I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about visitors who don't have good enough computers to appreciate your work.

I HAVE noticed that different computers see SL in different ways, and better computers have fewer problems. And I don't have a lot of pity for people who can't move when they're wearing 200 prim blinging necklaces and hair that makes their ARC jump up over 10k.

At the same time. . .I don't want to be a resource hog if I can help it. I just want to be sure I'm doing everything I can do, within reason, to keep things "green" so to speak.

Everything I have gleaned through 4 years of building and reading tips in this forum, condensed into one paragraph:


Everything is a trade off. You do the best you can to build low-impact and remain reasonable. Sometimes you have to make a choice between realizing an artistic vision and staying low-impact. If every single builder were only building low-impact builds then SL would be dull as dirt. All buildings would be modern and modular and only use a few textures.
Yawn. Each and every thing you build will make these trade offs. If you are going to be texture heavy, try to use fewer sculpts or mega prims.

It's not unlike trying to budget your money in RL. You can't afford everything - so you need to prioritize.