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Meshes get messed up when I zoom out


Viggy Ruhig
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Hello,

  I'm trying to figure out what is wrong with viewing meshes.  I have a premium house on SL, and when I spawn some mesh chairs in my house, they look ok until I zoom out and then they get all crazy looking.  When I turn the graphics on the highest possible, it seems like I can view them from further away without them going all crazy on me, but still if I zoom out a bit further they get all messed up again until I zoom back in and they appear fine agian.  Anyone have ideas why this is the case? (oh, and these look good to others, just not me.)

My graphics card:  Radeon HD 6850

 

Thanks.

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You need to set your lod setting up higher. In Firestorm you can do this on the quick preferences pane. In the Linden View I believe you need to go through the ADVANCED menu > Debug >RenderVolumeLODFactor (4 is best if your computer is happy with that).

 

Unfortunately not all mesh designers test their items as lower (default) settings so some objects will fall apart visually -- others will be fine.

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Chic gave you the quick work-around for the problem you encountered.

Changing the RenderVolumeLODFactor setting will solve the visual problem but create other problems. One of those being slowing your viewer and increasing the amount of data one downloads before rendering the scene.

By setting your LOD to 4 you effectively cancel many of the optimizations built into the viewer and SL system designed to improve performance. But, there are times when you may need to use a high setting. (Setting values beyond 4 do nothing for visual rendering but do have an effect on other viewer settings.) For instance in the current Blood Letters game finding clues can be surprisingly difficult at settings below 4.

You encounter the problem because many desingers in SL simply do not know how to use LOD (Level of Detail) effectively. So, you have to compensate for their poor design skills. Well designed items do not seriously degrade in shape ever regardless of the distance. 

In some cases items designed for interior use, where they will never be seen from great distances, push the LoD for levels 3 and 4 to extremes. At the distances they are intended to be viewed from they do not degrade shape. But, past those distances thay will.

For Sl the Lab considers a setting of 1 to work best. They determine their idea of BEST from statistical measuresments of viewer performance. Users having to deal with poorly made content tend to have other ideas of best. Many recommend a setting of 4 as it hides poorly designed items' failings. 1 to 2 is often considered a good compremise.

Various ideas are being discussed to place more pressure on designers to make beter use of LoD and thus improve SL performance.

All this is done to reduce load on the viewer's render engine and improve performance. LoD is a part of all 3D real time render engines not just the SL engine.

 

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As Nalates notes - the common '4' setting is really all about 'hiding flaws'.

In the days of Sculpty - it was the default community recommendation because sculpty degraded very quickly otherwise.

Now with Mesh skilled mesh makers can optimize so much better - and you shouldn't even need to go above the Linden Lab recommendation of 1.25... Except... should and reality never quite meet up.

I suggest trying to up it in steps or down it in steps. Go for either the default, or for 4 - and then slowly pull it in the other direction until the stuff and distance that matters to you... works right.

I've slowly found my setting creep back up to 4 after having put it down to the Linden Lab default earlier in the year. I am debating getting rid of some things I own so that I can tweak it back down again...

Because as Nalates also notes - much of the optimization SL has had of late depends on this setting being low...

 

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  • 5 months later...

The biggest problem is that LL stupidly, did the same with mesh as it did with prims: set a limit only for rezzed items on the sim (15,000 prims or Land Impact) and not on worn items. This gives no incentive to clothes and mesh body makers to make their meshes or graphics efficient.

Many people still go on the numbers game, bigger is better, which it is to a certain degree, but often not noticeable or needed, which includes 1024x1024 texture files for minor details when a 512x512 or even a 128x128 would do (for a belt buckle for example) and far too many faces. A decent shadow map created on a high poly mesh, but applied to a low poly one is far more effective, uses less resources, and is hardly noticeable if at all. This is like the days of 1,000 prim jewellery rings: you couldn't see it, but it lagged sims out like crazy.

Physics and Level Of Detail (LOD) are particularly important for meshes, because they are of irregular and complex shapes, and thus put a large strain on the physics engine which is what determines avatar and object positions and interactions and hence the more calculations and data, the more lag.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh_and_LOD

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  • 3 years later...
On 11/21/2014 at 5:01 PM, Chic Aeon said:

You need to set your lod setting up higher. In Firestorm you can do this on the quick preferences pane. In the Linden View I believe you need to go through the ADVANCED menu > Debug >RenderVolumeLODFactor (4 is best if your computer is happy with that).

 

Unfortunately not all mesh designers test their items as lower (default) settings so some objects will fall apart visually -- others will be fine.

Ty soooooooo much. My stuff dont look like crap anymore lol. ❤❤

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Just now, Kendra Eleonara said:

Ty soooooooo much. My stuff dont look like crap anymore lol. ❤❤

Good but remember to TEST and view before you buy next time as keeping your LOD at 4 can be problematic on some computer systems :D.   I said that FOUR years ago BEFORE I personally turned my LOD setting down to 2. My fairly hefty computer runs MUCH BETTER NOW! 

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14 hours ago, animats said:

Also, go back to Marketplace where you bought something with a crappy low level of detail model, and give it a one-star review.

While I agree that folks "should" be making items that work for LOD2 at least (Firestorm 75% default), it really is the responsibility of the BUYERS to TEST and DEMO before they BUY.   Some people always run at LOD4, have no issues and don't have a lot of company and are perfectly happy with LOD4 goods.   So --- if I read a review saying that the item wasn't good at lower LOD levels, my first question would be "why didn't you go see the demo?" And if there was not demo --- why did you BUY?  :D

 

Edited by Chic Aeon
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