Collision and lag

[Kiyoshi Nyoki]

Hello xD

As a builder, I have never paid much attention to collision and its effects on sim performance (mostly because I only built for my own enjoyment). Recently I have finished a build (a stage with roof, the stage area is one big flat prim, the complete build is unscripted, nothing is set to physical) for someone, and that person now complains that the collisions the stage causes lag on the sim.

In his words, a collision "score" of 5 is abnormal. As far as I have been able to test, 1 avatar standing on a flat prim would cause a collision value of 0.45 for the avatar, and 0.45 for the prim. Two avatars cause 0.45 for each respective avatar and 2 * 0.45 = 0.9 for the prim. A collision value of 5 would mean some 11 avatars standing on the dancefloor. This leads me to believe that, since there are floors all over SL (we hardly ever walk on grass after all) the collision value of that specific dancefloor is not very important for lag as such.

I have been trying to do some reading on the subject, and found out that apparently avatars colliding with eachother, or scripted prims that rely on collision are more to blame when lagspikes occur. Obviously I want to prevent the dancefloor from being deleted because of the wrong cause, so I hope someone can shed his / her light on this issue.

Thanks a bunch!

Kiyo

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

To me this sounds like your typical "let's focus on a single number and by all means do NOT use our brain". If your dancefloor returns a value of 5, you could easily bring it down by splitting it into 4 seperate prims resulting in 1.25 per prim. This is ofcourse nonsense and only adds to the overall load on the sim. Lots of people dancing means lots of lag, I wouldn't worry about the collisions, you might want to worry about the person claiming your floor is no good, but I can't help with that...

[Kiyoshi Nyoki]

The worrying is exactly what I am doing now Thanks for the reply. I figured myself as well that this most likely was a case of staring too hard at a single number, and I have been trying to get that into this person's head, but to no avail so far

[Subversive Vavoom]

I've had people ask me if megas sunk into the ground contribute strangely to lag, presumably due to collisions. I wonder if there is any actual weirdness with those???