Hiro's report on culling preview

Okay, I tested out the new avatar attachment culling preview. Since I made a stink about it, here's my report:

The Good:
- Culling is very tough to notice on the default setting, and near-impossible to notice on a high setting.
- The culling seems to use the largest dimension of the largest prim in an attachment as to what to cull. This is good, because if you have some big attachment with little details (like macro avatars), the whole thing isn't culled. It also means that 0.01m thick wings won't get culled too soon.
- Overall, a pretty solid job, I believe it needs some tweaking to be ready for release. Thanks to Linden Lab for taking seriously the issues of expression of one's identity, and with not breaking SL experience.

The bad:
- Lower settings can cull in pretty close ranges.

The ugly:
- Tiny objects get culled pretty quickly, even at the default (medium) setting.
- On lower settings, if I zoom in and out, even at close range, I'll have attachments blink in and out and in again.

Advice to LL:
- Set the default higher, and set the minimum base higher.
- Set a minimum draw distance no matter what - I was able to get things culled within about 10m or so.

Pictures to follow...

First picture:
Me, zoomed out, minimum setting... culled swords. Okay, no biggie here.

Next picture:

This is the minimum setting I found that didn't cull my swords at max zoom-away from myself.

Shot 3:

minimum setting, welcome area.

This person in the picture was wearing pretty big wings that got culled.

After about two-thirds setting I wasn't able to personally observe any culling.

My swords (You're familiar with them Hiro) don't cull on anything except the second to last click to the left, at max zoom. I wonder why mine take longer than yours. Mine are composed almost entierly of tiny prims... I think the largest prim on mine is has 0.1 as it's largest dimension.

Picture 4:

Me, on expedition to FurNation.

Minimum setting, the head and guitar disappear at a fairly close range to camera. This can't be more than 20m away at maximum.

Picture 5:

What our furry friend looks like from close up, WITH his head on. (Pictures shown with permission.)

Picture 6:

Here's me in an Optimus Pr--- *cough* I mean, non-copyright-infringing transforming robot, a "transformer" robot, if you will. It's a rather large avatar. At minimum settings and max camera range, no culling occurs.

That poor Furry. He'd better take this all the way to the supreme court.

OK, since I have to have draw distance at 64, I take it this means I will be able to see lots less of a person's attachments until I get right up on them.

coco

Picture 7:

I made an array of little 0.01m cubes and toruses, attached them.

This picture is medium setting - the default with the slider in the middle.

Notice this is not very far off from the avatar. In one frame, it's there (left), and as I pull out just a little more, it's gone (right).

Does it cull per prim or per object?

Per object.

Picture 8:

Here's the low setting, repeating the same as the picture 7 picture.

This is a significant loss of detail.

Picture 9:

Here's the full shot from the last picture where the attachment is culled, to give you a better idea of just how close the camera was to the avatar.

This means things like jewelry, custom eyeballs, and eyeglasses can potentially be culled.

Again, this is low-setting.

Not cool, not cool at all

Picture 10 (final picture):

This is the same attachment, with 1 prim stretched in the X direction to 10m, 1 prim stretched in the Y direction to 10m, and 1 prims stretched in the Z direction to 10m.

The shot is full distance, minimum setting. It is not culled. -- proving large but thin items are preserved.

but it's fine with the settings up yes? if so I still think having the option to tone down attachments is a good thing. I'm always for more options.

Yes, we all know that...but will a new person or people who don't look at the forums and have no idea?

NO RICKARD WE MUST STRONGARM THE WEAK OF HARDWARE INTO VIEWING EVERY SINGLE THING ABOUT US NO MATTER WHERE WE ARE AND NO MATTER THE IMPACT ON THEIR EXPERIENCE.

Pay attention, dude.

Why would you be putting it on the lowest setting unless you were getting horrendous framerates? In which case, being able to not rez attachments on avatars would be a good thing.

What's the problem here? Anyone getting 30fps isn't going to turn the LoD down to nothing. People who are getting 1 fps are. And they'll enjoy the speed boost when they don't have to render 500 furryheads. Or 30 prim hairdos.

In low-framerate settings I routinely turn all graphics options off, and sometimes simply cease to render avs altogether. That's what chat history is for.

Can we drama about something else now?

Do people have any idea what half of the settings do? Outfit composite limit? What's 100 do compared to 0? Or 53?

Does the average user understand particles, and how many they should render on their system?

Bumpiness draw distance?

fog multiplier ratio?

All of these things would, theoretically asplode the average user's head. And yet, 120,000 accounts and growing...

I think the SL community can cope with another detail slider.

LF

Then I guess one could just get on a messenger service and quit SL altogether...

Particularly if the default is at 50%.

You and Enabran are the only 2 people being drama queens in this thread, thank you. You'll see that I'm fairly positive toward my opinions toward culling.

If I'm in a room with 50 avatars, all standing around (as people do in big gatherings), then it stands to reason that I don't need to render 50 avs standing around doing nothing. Considering my computer cries with more than 10 avs, this is a Big Deal.