Avatar Rendering Cost - ‘heaviness’ of prim hair not a myth?
April 13, 2008 2:21 pmWhen Tateru over at Massively wrote about ‘Avatar Rendering Cost’, a new feature in RC 1.20’s Advanced (former: ‘client’) menu, she asks a good question: ‘Will we see products one day labeled like this? “Purse, scripted, 8 prims, 90ARC“‘
One of the things that the new Second Life 1.20 release candidate viewer sports is a nifty new feature that busts some serious myths about avatar related lag. In short, by enabling the option, every avatar gets a number displayed over their heads showing how much work your PC needs to go through to render the avatar. This is the avatar rendering cost.
So far we have seen green numbers (low numbers, which are good), and red ones (high numbers, which are not so good). The amount of work that goes into rendering an avatar (now that we can easily measure it) isn’t quite affected by things the way we thought it was.
You activate the showing of ARC numbers the following way: Advanced > Rendering > Info Displays > Avatar Rendering Cost.
Curious about my own ‘rendering footprint’ - opposed to my ecological one - I did some ARC testing, browsing through the different ‘avatar versions’ I use often. Impressive is, that different hairstyles could mean a change of +5000 ARC units. And that my Greenie avatar came out pretty well. I should take a look a Quickly Alter - which is just one, huge sphere - too.
Next test: put 60 avatars with ARC 8000 on a sim and compare that with 60 avatars ARC 400 on the same sim? I think that - although this is an important factor and fun data to toy around with - we must surely not ’stare’ blind on avatar lag. How our avatar looks, for most of us, does depict ‘who we are’ in the virtual world. With big events the Avatar Render Cost will be far from the sole factor determining the amount of ‘laggyness’: optimal build quality, draw distances, scripts, sim class, state of the grid, … are not to be forgotten about. But yes, Miss Tateru, I would like to know the ARC of a hairstyle before I buy it! ;)
30 Responses to “Avatar Rendering Cost - ‘heaviness’ of prim hair not a myth?”
Of course the ARC of an avatar may well have little or no difference in the load on a sim. A 5000ARC avatar and a 1ARC avatar are likely to exert the same load on a sim (exception: scripts).
But the load on the viewer isn’t to be ignored. It’s nice to found out that virtually all my outfits are in the green.
Lol, in the end, the Greenie turns out to be the “environmental green” solution. ;-) (How does “Recycle your computing power! Be a greenie, and never lag again!” sound? ;-) )
However, I wonder how’s mine. But, why does a fairly simple hair style add 5000?!?!
This is also dependant on camera position. The farther away you go, the less it costs to render an avatar.
Also, put 60 avatars in any sim, and connection speed of the server is likely to be a bigger issue.
lol, so we all should become greenie - rendering friendly :)
Sadly my attempts to play with this feature caused me to crash… repeatedly…
If I turn it on and then cam anywhere I go ‘boom!’… >_>
Before that happened I foudn out I weigh in at just under 2000 ARC total…
Tateru, if I refer to ‘laggyness’, it’s not only sim lag, but the lag as I experience it. (And thus caused by the client having hard time rendering all too. ;))
Kailie, for this little Avatar Render Cost experiment, all shots were taken at the same camera distance and position. =)
Smiley and Nock, all become Greenies sounds like a great idea. Part time that is. I love them, but still love my ‘Vint’ look even more. ;) As for the But, why does a fairly simple hair style add 5000?!?! I don’t know. But the only thing I had in my inventory to wear that let it rise this much, were three hairstyles (the other two were at +- +3500 ARC).
Indeed sad, Shadow. But you can let someone else check for you? I’m sure that nobody would mind to focus cam on you, when you promise to undress! ;)
MMmmm… maybe… but do we ahve fewer ARC points with or without clothes…? o_0
And how much ARC points are genitals? :D
I don’t think clothes count, as those are simply textures stretched on that avatar’s body :-P However, genitals are attachments, and I think it would be much more PG13-ish on the Main Grid if you all decide to quit using them as a protest about how much ARC it takes. Then we’d be closer to a merge! :-D (I feel like in Survivor. Tribes merge. Muhaha… And yes, i’m just kidding :-P)
P.S.: Technically, i’ve already semi-merged the grids through DuoGrid, but that’s another story :-P
I don’t know about textures not effecting performance… they may not be noted in the ARC number, but on buildings people complain about high res textures… I’ve heard some extend this to AV skins and clothes…
Oh and really only guys ‘need’ any sort of prim ‘bits’… Though I’ve seen a number of products aimed at women made of prims, those are rarely used… Either way I can’t imagine most requiring that much ARC… But since I don’t know how ARC is calculated, I can’t realy begin to guess…
I only have prim nipples (if I can still find those in my invent), but bound to test them for ARC now. :d
I love the graphic showing the different styles and ARC, priceless Vint! I was amazed by one of my hair styles at how many prims it took to make it appear so simple!
Zoe, it’s not only the amount of prims, but also their shape. Anything round takes up more ARC than anything that is made our of a box, for instance. (Or so I concluded when watching my ARC.)
It is also the textures, texture animation and so on… All of these factor in. A 70 prim wig might have a lower ARC than a ten prim one. It depends on how it is made.
Goes to measure my naughty bit…)) Like i’ve not done that already! :P
Ok, ahem, that’s more then we should and want to know… O.o
@Smiley
Speak for yourself.
OK, stupid me forgot to check for grammar errors. :-P
Edit:
“Ok, ahem, that’s more than what we should and would want to know… O.o”
:-O First of all, that was fast. Second, i’ll rephrase my comment. That’s more than what I should and would want to know… O.o
Better
pardon me…. If not for the nipple remark already made, I would have left it alone…and trust that I won’t bother next time.
See what you did smiley, I was hoping for a free show, but nooooooooo…, no exposed willies in casa de smiley =p
As if….)
Stephen… and? What are the numbers on your naughty bid?
As for Kailie, indeed. Imagine, they don’t even HAVE any available.
[…] I tested some of my outfits for ARC values previously, and yes I must admit I keep it in the back of my mind when going to busy sims. Do you? Or is ‘Avatar Rendering Cost’ still a strange and surreal thing to you? ;) […]
Vint, just stick with the latex, it’s much smoother…. mmm… yeah and it’s easier to render… :)
*sticks out her tongue at Veryon* (That is, if you allow me to do that…. ;))
Vint, you really are a star- thanks for posting these illuminating pieces about ARC, as I admit the whole thing has sent me into a bit of a tailspin!
=^..^=
[…] does oddly conform to the description, ranging from technical explanations (by Vint Falken, twice, and Tateru Nino) to the usual contradictory comments on the official blog and to opinion pieces as […]
I’m willing to be the hair uses a mix of high resoluttion textures and alpha blends.
Hair does NOT need to have 1024 resolution textures, most avatar skins are only 512 for example. Hair makers can make some nice things but their cluelessness to rendering costs… Gah, just boggles the mind.
An interesting test might be taking that 5000+ ARC hair and turning it’s textures to plywood. I’d be willing to bet the ARC goes way down.
Care to comment?