WarKirby Magojiro

I know there's already a thread about it in general, but I want to make a thread to specifically gather facts about what it does, and how it works.

Given the typical lack of documentation from LL, we'll have to figure things out for ourselves for now.

Firstly, for those not aware, this is a new feature in the 1.20 RC client. It's an option in the advanced menu.

Advanced > Rendering > Info Displays > Avatar Rendering Cost

For simplicity, it will be referred to as ARC from here on.

ARC displays an integer value over the head of every nearby avatar. This number is a representation of how hard the avatar is to render. Mostly based on attachments.

I'd like to use this thread to gather knowledge on how it works. If you have any info, post, and I'll edit stuff into this OP.


Knowledge about it so far:
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An avatar wearing no attachments at all, has an ARC of 1. Therefore, we can logically assume that it does not take any of the following into account

Mesh Hair
Shape
Skin
clothing layers
eyes
animations

It seems to be affected by complexity of prims. Twisting a torus adds to it's ARC.

There doesn't seem to be much, if any effect, from multiple identical prims. In my testing, 1 torus added the same ARC as 10 toruses, while they were identical..

It costs more to have textures. In addition, each additional texture in an object increases it's ARC. Putting different textures on each of the toruses I was wearing increased their score considerably.

Glow adds a fair amount.

Transparency adds a lot.

Texture size does NOT seem to affect the score. A 512 texture gives the same as a 1024.

The highest recorded ARC to date is 237,456
An average avatar usually comes in 200-3000 depending on attachments.

Kitty showed me this post of hers on the LL forums. Seems quite informitive.

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Eloh

methinks this will only end in penis-envy-esque chauvinism

but, I concur, flexi prims and semi-alpha-transparent prims do seem to incur a heavier avatar rendering cost in my experience (however, I haven't tested flexi prims across different graphics or LOD settings), whereas clothing layers (or any another textures baked onto one's avatar) don't add anything to the avatar rendering cost.

Vaelissa Cortes

Hopefully this will start people making more optimized items. Too bad it doesn't count scripts.

Envoy Costagravas

Bling sells.

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Beezle Warburton

More likely it'll be an excuse for people to yell at other people.

ZOMG U HAZ HAI CONT! GTFO!

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Beebo Brink

Where the heck did you pull that number from?

I wandered around SL yesterday with ARC enabled and I didn't see any avatars much under 1000, and most were ranging 2-3k.

I can get down to the 200-300 range wearing some sculptie shoes instead of my most prim-heavy boots, but I wear mesh hair rather than prim hair. Very few residents do that, and one prim hair style alone is enough to send that number soaring.

I'd peg the norm at around 1000-1500, but that's assuming a mix of men and women in the crowd. Winnow out the men and the average would probably bump up to 2000-3000 for jewelry and hair.

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Forrest Streeter

It probably depends on where you go. A visit to Bare Rose yielded encounters with ARCs in the 4 digit range almost exclusively.

And just to rub it in:



ZOMG U HAVE HI COUNT!

Verkin Raven

That's a nice looking av, Forrest.

I don't think the number of human avatars I've ever seen in SL which didn't make me projectile vomit has reached the two digit mark yet.

WarKirby Magojiro

I added something interesting to the OP

Sveid Heidenstam

I find myself still unable to remain logged in long enough before crashing to acquire a screenshot with my ARC. However, in all my usual outfits, it seems to remain under 3000.

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Rooke Ayres

My current primary avatar (me) has an ARC of only 237:

A pair of glasses (17 prims - 2 w/Alpha), a pendant with chain (chain has 75 prims - pendant - 7 prims), and the Turquoise belt buckle from the Library (17? prims)


My alt (female used for modeling) was hovering around 3850. When I say hovering, I mean it was going up and down in value depending on the angle of view (occlusion?). Anyway, she had on the requisite prim heavy hair (120+ prims) and shoes (50 prims), and my Flower petal jewelry set (close to 300 prims, w/gradient alpha textures, shiny, and bump mapped).


Will the new snobbery be, "I have no ARC, U hav a hi num, GTFO!", or "My ARC can crash an H4 Sim! Muwahahahaha!" ?

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Carita Marama

1702 with ears, tail and fishing rod. No jewellery today, mind.

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Carita Marama

On reflection, I suspect this knowledge is just going to lead to more teeth-grinding on my part. I already wish at times that I hadn't learned about "show updates." So often I'm in a class where people are politely requested to remove all scripted items to reduce lag, and I can see that there are four or five (or six or seven) selfish sods sitting tight with about a dozen running scripts apiece, because they think no-one can tell! It doesn't do my blood pressure much good, and it's as well I don't use voice because sometimes the language is something shocking.

I also wonder what I'm doing that makes those people as mad as hell, because there's bound to be something. There's not a single thing you can do in SL that won't piss off somebody, which I guess could be why so many peeps just choose to please themselves regardless.

Nonetheless, thankies for this useful info, I will be watching my number in future and try to keep it within bounds of reason.

Whittling, now 1177.

Mourna Biziou

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Carita Marama

Advanced>Show Updates or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+U. It shows running scripts as a succession of floaty triangles rising from the object. You get more and heavier triangles depending on the amount of activity. There are also different colours, haven't worked that one out yet. Among other things, it's an extremely useful feature for finding invisible scripted objects that ill-disposed persons may have left on one's land, rot 'em.