LL Blog: Avatar Rendering Cost

sad thing is a person with a single tiny blank prim and in a bare newbie avatar can cause enough lag to slow down the performance of the sim to the point the rendering cost is worthless.

And here is a fun fact, change the camera angle and position... guess what the cost changes!

It also doesn't consider the fact, a sim loaded with prims and textures will cause graphical lag even if you are in first person camera and the only soul on the entire grid...


It's just going to be a way to cause strife in the user base with complaints about how people look...

What's next everyone in Ruth avatars changed just for gender?

Another annoyance is that people complaining about LAG due to ARC are actually bringing upon themselves. The original blog states that having ARC on causes lag on your machine because of all the extra calculations that have to take place. If your lagging, one of the first things you should do is shut off ARC.

Unless you have a state of the art machine, large textures (when they load), windlight and voice all use more resources and contribute a significant part to the lag on YOUR machine. If people think that they can go to an event where there are a large number of avatars and experience no lag they are dreaming. We all know that going to a busy place will be laggy, it's common sense.

Personally if I am trying to take some good quality photographs I want to use the ARC in the opposite way. If you have a a low ARC you probably look like crap and I don't want you in my shot. Go back to RUTH ISLAND.

Quote:
"
If you have a a low ARC you probably look like crap and I don't want you in my shot. Go back to RUTH ISLAND.
"

You dont know my current ARC,and what it is right now, it might change at any moment.

1.assumption... i "probably look like crap.."
2.assumption, i want to be in your shot.
3.assumption, i am not on RUTH ISLAND right now.

do you know anything that isnt an assumption, about ARC?

ok lets look at it a different way.. my ARC is my choice not yours, what i look like is my choice not yours, i dont want you take my picture, where i am, is none of your business..

It's very possible to have a low ARC and look fabulous.

Hmmmm how about the fact that, as several people have mentioned, ARC fluctuates while you stand still doing nothing. Given the description of how it works that should not be possible. It's just a mathematical addition process. Something is obviously wrong with either the program, or LL's description of how it works.

Has anyone done the math manually to determine what their ARC should be, and what is displayed? I would be interested to know the results.

Well, I'm off to Ruth Island to take pictures for my upcoming "Worst Dressed in SL" article...

Agreed! I was messing around with my main again last night. Putting on one thing at a time. Almost all things I put on kept the ARC fairly low.. it stayed at 1 in fact until I added boots. The killer was when I again added my prim hair. I tried hair from other sellers and none came near the ARC range of the hair I normally wear or the other two I have from the same designer.

It is just a matter of looking for some options.

It's funny. I keep reading about all the hypothetical problems this tool should be causing us, what with people allegedly going around and complaining about other folks' ARC's.

But you know, I have yet to see anybody yell at anybody else in-world for having a high ARC. I was in one place where we were all playing with it, and somebody had an ARC of over 2000-something, and everyone was just like "lol".

It's just not happening. It "could" happen, but it isn't. So, I say don't worry. If you want to use the tool to trim your own resource demand, that's cool. If not, then don't. It's not like anybody's ACTUALLY descriminating against anybody because of this, as much as some people are afraid of that happening.

Other than those in this thread that outright said they would be telling people with high ARCs to alter their appearance or leave

Oh waaah. Wouldn't you rather find out now where not to go, as opposed to showing up and getting yelled at? Or are you the sort who would insist that you should be able to go to their places whether they like it or not?

I'd rather see LL fix real problems versus creating a false metric taht can cause issues with the subscribers and creating a witch hunt situation.

I show up and they complain, I leave. No business from me, or anyone I know.. and word of mouth will spread.

LL touts this as a good thing, yet it doesn't even give the same rating regardless of camera position or movement. (heck even noticed variations based on light sources)

And personal attacks when someone points out there is a flaw in your arguments is not a good way to discuss things.

It wasn't a personal attack. I don't think I ever said that "the sort who would insist that you should be able to go to their places whether they like it or not" was a BAD sort. Some would call such a person principled. Besides, even if it were a bad sort, I was asking you, not describing you.

I would absolutely love this. I run SL on different machines with *very* different graphics performance. On my fast box, I'd just run full throttle, but on the pokey ones, it would be wonderful to have the "avatar complexity" slider turn higher-ARC avatars into imposters, even if they're up close. It would be a big win, and would seem just as simple to implement as the current impostering method.

Given that this "feature" is only available in the release candidate viewer, it is not in wide spread use and many people just don't know about it yet. So, it is not surprising that there isn't much finger pointing going on.

We will just have to wait and see what happens once this becomes the standard download. There will still be a lot of people that will be using the 1.19 viewers or other 3rd party viewers that may not have this in them.

Until the 1.20+ viewers become the norm, we won't see much impact from this.

So go vote for it =)

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-7165

That was so funny. Brings back my days as a teenager. When all we wanted to do was get into someone pants.

Voted. And *thanks*!

Me too. Anything for a good cause.

I was listening to the SL radio thingie in-world. The were talking about the ARC and its uses- the announcer said that running around with it turned on was a lag producer also.. things that make you go hmmm...

Since I'm bald, my single largest ARC-booster is my boots. I'd probably be double digit without them, but otherwise I'm somewhere in the 200's. I wasn't surprised that I was green, but what surprised me is how many other people are. People with nice hair, good shoes, jewelry. At the club I frequent, most people are in the greens and yellows, with only the occasional red. So, I was beginning to think that maybe people are putting on their drama pants for nothing.

Today, however, I happened to go to a hair store. (No, I'm not gonna try to boost my ARC so I can be in photo shoots, I was the store sells other stuff, but hair is their main business). I turned on the ARCometer, and saw red. Sure, there was the occasional green or yellow, but mostly red.

While I was there, a guy teleported in, and as he rezzed in, I watched his ARC climb. And climb. It finally stopped just shy of 3000. While I was watching the number, I noticed he had seven(!) face lights.

I find it amusing that many people who are among the first to complain about lag are in the group who say they won't change their appearance based on their rendering cost.

Best of all, they don't see the contradiction.

Ah well.

I think it's great! When things are lagging terribly, it will be nice to see who's contributing to it. Av attachments has been a case of the tragedy of the commons. Perhaps we can find a way to make popular places not so laggy now! (As the old saying goes ... nobody goes there any more, it's too popular.)

Yes, there will be foolish, ignorant abuses of this, which is a pity, but the good should far outweigh it. At least, for those who actually want to take steps to reduce lag rather than those who expect someone else to solve all their problems.

It only produces lag for YOU, not for other people. Long, floaty, flexy, primmy hair, on the other hand, cause lag for everyone nearby.

You'll be contributing to your own lag if you do that, that tool is cpu intensive.

so does scripts imbeded in plain 1 prim attachments that don't show up in the arc

Script-based lag is the source of a lot of confusion and misconceptions. For the most part, scripts cause lag *in other scripts*, not slow frame rate. That is, unless the scripts are moving prims, they tend not to cause lag to other people (scanners being a notable exception).

If it takes a long time after sitting or clicking for an object's behavior to kick in, then a prime suspect is script-induced lag. If you can hardly move due to a low display frame rate, the prime suspect is high-ARC avatars.

It sure would be nice to have a magic red arrow pointing to the culprits whenever there is lag, but that's not likely to happen. Instead, we have to educate ourselves and do our bests, and take or granted that many people will misunderstand.

Oh please, I think they need to change this tool so you can only see your own ARC score. Pointing fingers and threatening to burn the witch isn't a healthy environment.