And boom. Vertex shaders and shadows are gone.

First thing I noticed when logging into 1.10 recently and removing my skirt (I still had underpants on, was doing some tests with click actions): "HOLY MOLY SHINY LEGS! Like gleaming in the sun or something, with Avatar Vertex (was never much fond of that wording) on.

And then I logged off shortly afterwards in shock. I'll be going back in later...

While we're on the subject of little details, think LL could revise the avatar mesh for a double detail, smoother looking avatar? With today's technology (or even "this morning's" or "last night's" (in a yearly sense)) we can handle a bit of an extra buff and polish. ^.^

Heh.. at least you're shiny, my entire body is solid black and so is everyone else's.

Stop using unsupported drivers, Ron. I have a BFG 6600GT with ForceWare 84.21 and avatars look fine to me. Your video card must suck ass if it has THIS many problems with SL...

Yes, yes, yes, I agree, 110%. I pretty much quit going into the preview after 1.9.1.16 and followons were just so horrible for me, but now I have a new hope for the future.

Now if only they'll implement llTeleportArgent().

(as far as I'm concerned they should defer HTML on a prim indefinitely, though)

Or just revise the avatar mesh, period. Even with the same mesh resolution they used to look a LOT better.

Oh, and how about letting us pull skirts closer in to the body. I'm tired of having to wear my shirt baggy to keep my belt from looking like it's floating an inch from my waist.

Sheesh, do you ever stop thinking about yourself? It's not all about you!


(omg fic)

I've heard that avatars are a low priority as far as updating them, and I can believe that, but I think it should be a higher priority. Problem is if you mess with avatars you stand a pretty good chance of upsetting a lot of people by messing with their basic "identity" in world.

Doc I agree with you 100% I was (and am) quite relieved when LL decided to not blindly release a version that obviously was having a lot of problems for many people (I was one of them).

And I wish that people would keep in mind that many can't afford to replace a video card (or in some cases entire computer) every time SL does a update. Updating is fine (and should be done), but how about OPTIONS to turn off the new features if there is a problem with them or if they lag older systems enough that it is not worth it? Or even if the option someone does not actually LIKE the look of (for example some builder used so much shiny on a build that you need sunglasses to view it) a feature a particular time, or in general.

There are times when options are good even if you have a computer that was built by NASA and can run every setting at 100%.

As for updating avatars, something else to keep in mind. If they change the mesh the chances are good that a LOT of content will be broken (shirts, pants, and skirts especially if it is to match the other). Can you imagine how many people would be upset when 65% (probably more) of all the clothing content suddenly looked like crud and had to be redone with new UV maps? Although I think they could add a slider to the skirt to make the top opening smaller and should be done.

-DB

I don't really see how a higher resolution mesh would screw up clothing or skins, you're not changing proportions, merely adding more vertexes to give a smoother appearance. But yes, any drastic change to avatars would need to enforce some kind of backwards compatability mode or else a lot of content suddenly dies.

What would be really cool would be the addition of external skeleton creation. Make certain prims act like bones in an animation program, jointed at their ends, and allow the mapping of BVH animations to them. This could allow real motion for human (and inhuman) appendages like fingers, tails, tentacles (omg tentacle rape! o.O; We all know it'll happen, it's already in the works with flexiprims!), and non-human legs (insectoid and digitigrade for instance) or extra legs (taur forms). The system is already in place in the human avatar, I think building based on that system (making a wholely seperate system for prim animations, using the animation part from the avatars) would yield great results.

And in fact, I'm going to go suggest that now...

I think (I'm not sure) that avatars already are one of the harder things to render in sl. I certainly notice more of a framerate drop with several avatars in frame, than from a complex build using a lot of prims in frame. from that empirical observation I concluded that any avatar update would require a similar number of triangles but have them arranged better and change the way they deform for movement and avatar shape changing... which would significantly effect avatar appearances . IE, they way I think it should be improved isn't doable without breaking peoples avatars.

Oh don't get me wrong, with 30 avatars in view (particularily 30 furries, as per last Saturday during an auction) my frame rate drops significantly, however I'll be the first to admit that I'm not running a high end machine. But if it's just me and a significant other, it might be nice to see avatars with a bit more definition. And indeed, those people with bleeding edge machines might be able to use this "cut above" mesh in their daily romps around the grid.

In other news: /13/88/107334/1.html

All of those shiny people, where DO they all come from. ;p

AUGH!

That's about the tenth time I've made that typo.

No, I don't want "llTeleportArgent()". Can you imagine, every time someone teleports from a script I'd be dragged along with them...

Suuuurre, we believe you. ^.^

Well it is not the avatar itself that is hard to render...it is all the ATTACHMENTS. Such as prim hair, prim shoes, jewelery (the kind that has more prims that most peoples houses), etc. Hair I beleive is the hardest due to all the twisted torus that most designs have used.

Also more abilites with attachments (as suggested by Feynt) would probably increase this problem. While you can always kill viewing all prims via the debug menu if one is having significant lag, but it would be better if we could just stop rendering attachments. Of course the best thing is to have people detach prims at slow events and only use avatar hair and shoes.....but it is easier to pull teeth from a Rhino.

-DB

I'm not convinced it's attachments which make avatars hard to render. Most of the time the people I'm around aren't using many, or prim heavy attachments. Prim attachments do have a negative effect of course , just saying that the avatars them selves are also difficult to render. attachments actually cause the worst drop in client framerate when switching level of detail. When every torus on an avatar's head suddenly changes shape (either gain or loss of detail) it will bring my viewer to a crawl for a few seconds.

Part of the reason object detail is always on high for me. Also part of the reason I like to play with 256 draw distances, though it ends up making some sims take forever to fully rez. On the other hand, I'd rather be able to see all buildings and people as grey masses and not have my client sieze up for 5 seconds while it tries to grab everything around me when I teleport across the sim.

Please Note: in my above post "lag" has been changed to "drop in client framerate" to avoid any ambiguity or confusion. That is all.

Please note in my above post about the client siezing up for 5 seconds, I really do mean 0 fps for 5 seconds, with windows claiming it is not responding. -.-