Attachment culling in SL 1.8.2: Is this wise?

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Am I right in understanding that this means attachments will not display beyond a certain view distance? I'm a little concerned about the impact this would have on how others see attachment-heavy avs (furries, robots, etc.) from a distance. What concerns me even more is how it will affect the "macro-avs" I've seen some folks use -- I'm guessing the threshold is based on distance alone, and doesn't take attachment size into account?

Perhaps the culling should be disabled by default. While I understand the desire for performance improvement, this feature could produce some rather undesirable effects.

As it is now, the LOD (level of detail) system in SL doesn't apply to attachments at all. This means your client will render all the prims (although in a simplified form) of any AV in sight. This is why my weather ear ring can show clouds and snow to people far away even though the actual prim which has the particle properties is a tiny sphere.

Seems that in 1.8.2 the prims too far to render a significant amount of pixels will simply be iskipped (and their particles as well ?).

Yeah, I have a suspision that this patch is going to royally hose furs everywhere.

I have a feeling this update is going to cause me a whole lot of grief. I should sick an abuse report on the Lindens >:D

But I guess I Should prepare for the fact that some of my avs might not look right on people after this.

See, you shouldn't have to. It's LL's burden to keep existing content working correctly, except in cases where the change is absolutely necessary (which this certainly isn't).

Eh. Sounds like a good feature.

There have been plenty of times when an avatar walking into view with a 300,000 polygon hairpiece has annihilated my client. I cant think of any better fix off the top of my head.

I'd like to see this on the preview grid before they go live with it. LOD is already applied to avatar prims as it is (they drop poly count at a distance) and actively culling them at some distance could cause some avatars to look really jacked up.

An option to turn off avatar rendering completely in cases where the avatar is covered in prims would probably be helpful. Lindens say it could cause griefing or something, but we can already wear invisicubes, and we can't cloak our names from showing up on the screen above our heads, or hide our presence on the radar or from sensors.

I'm in two minds. Firstly, I agree with Adam about hair... even if it's me wearing it.

On the other hand, it could really spoil a lot of hard work, especially on furred avies.

Of course... it would explain why there are no furry Lindens!

<nods sadly>

See? This is what you get when people will not use attachments in a responsable manner. I have no personal issues with prim hair, but when getting someone in my camera view slows my framerate by a noticable amount?

<sigh>

To be honest, this WILL neuter some avatars. Technical solutions to social problems do that. Problem is, there are always people who will not work with others and have to be fenced in so that they can't keep being a problem. Still... If I have to choose between seeing perfect avis or getting a usable framerate?

I'm sure a number of folks would find this feature useful, for the reason you stated. I just don't think it should be enabled by default. Based on the description, it sounds like distance is the only factor it uses when deciding whether or not to render an attachment. That could cause problems for many avs.

But only if they are a ways off, right?

coco

What if you're a 20-foot tall mech?

Define "a ways off" though. I've noticed LoD doesnt notch up sometimes in SL when it should, too.

It seems as if this will be rolled into the "Avatar Detail" slider.

If you keep the slider higher up, I'd hope it would have no or small effect.

This sucks bigstyle... while not a furrie myself, this looks like an LL sanctioned slap in the facwe to the furry community, and makers of furry avatars


And itll screw up the robot avatars i sometimes play with too

I'd hope so, too. The problem is that it will be set to "medium" by default. When newbies see avatars not appearing the way they were intended to, they won't know to adjust that slider.

THANK GOD. The way avatars are priorotized right now means that everything will rez on an avatar first, no matter what else is in the sim. And I'm sick and tired of a bunch of curled prim hair, that take up the space of 200 prims in one cubic centimeter, therefore lagging my whole client to death.

Also this feature can either be completely turned off as i understand it, or lowered such that almost nothing on avatars gets rezzed. Therefore everyone has a choice in what and how much they want to see of. So there's absolutely nothing to whine about.

Just so I can understand this better, the higher the prims and/or the bigger the prims of an attachment, the less we'll see it from afar? What will a medium level of culling look like exactly or what will be culled ...

I'd at least like to prepare myself ... I make hair and even though it never reaches an astronomical number of prims, I'd like to see just how much it'll screw up the look of my items if it does.

This is the metaphoric equivalent of LL using a sponge to bail the Titantic. I think the question in not so much as "should they?" as much as "can they afford not to try?".

At this point, they're in a position of "do whatever you can think of to keep this system from sinking nightly regardless of how diminished the experience might be". I don't envy them the dilemma they have put themselves in.

Not so! I've had the Lindens tell me that it's our job as developers to adapt to whatever changes they see fit to make in Second Life, even if it breaks existing content.

I can't see how it would hurt to preview this and gather more facts. Hopefully they set this up on the preview grid before Wednesday.

I'll check to see if a Preview Grid can be set up as possible...

My current av has loads of attachments, like over 20, LOLEX, and I haven't seen this culling in practice for myself yet to get a feel for how it goes.

This is one of those types of things where I jump into a club and camscan all around, in all ranges.

well just like our ability to go through walls went the way of the dodo bird so does expansive attachments.

If this new 'Feature'/'fix' effects AVs such as the Arkon or even my WA wide 50 meter tall Steel Girder AV then will we be seeing these and other attachment dependant AVs going to waste?

Geee, LL thanks for taking SL DOWN another notch

Yep, same here. My boyfriend and I have an amusement park that broke with 1.7 We were basically told "tough shit, you agreed to the TOS. Have a nice day." Well, that particular version of the TOS had just been released with 1.7, and we hadn't agreed to those terms when we built our amusement park...still trying to sell half a sim of land.

And what about developers who aren't around anymore, or who have decided to drop out of the content development business? Where does that put all the customers that bought their items?

Also, what if there is no way to adapt to a particular change? If attachment culling is being implemented the way it sounds like it is, then that could very well be the case here.

Torley, thanks a ton for checking on the possibility of a preview grid for this. We really need to see for ourselves what this is all about and give LL some feedback before it goes into production.