Less lag in skyboxes?

[Irene Muni]

In a recent post about skyboxes I have read that "A lot of established club and/or store owners build in the sky to reduce lag."

1. Is that true? Is there less lag in "high" than in "ground"?
2. If that is true, why?

Sorry by the question, by my ignorance in many issues is enormeus . Thanks in advance.

[Ceera Murakami]

Absolutely!

There's less lag in a skybox because there are fewer prims and scripted objects in camera range. SL calculates the drawn position of every object in your draw distance that could possibly be rendered from your current angle of view and viewing position, even if those objects can't possibly be seen, because they are on the other side of an opaque wall or a hill of terrain. Lag is also affected by every scripted object or avatar within your draw distance. So, the fewer prims and scripted objects and avatars that you have near you, the less lag you'll have. This means that if you have a skybox at 3000 Meters up, and no nearby neighbors that also have skyboxes at that altitude, you'll have a lot less lag.

Here's a simple experiment that proves this.

Find a sim that has a lot of stuff on the ground, and has no adjacent sims on at least one edge.

Turn on the statistics, so you can see your frame rate.

Stand at the sim edge, and look inland, toward the center of the sim. Note your frame rate.

Put a prim right in front of you, blocking everything you can see. Frame rate won't change for the better. Might even get ever so slightly worse, since you added one more prim to calculate.

Turn around, and look out past the sim edge, into the endless void sea. Frame rate improves! This is because there are no objects to calculate in that direction.

Sit on the prim rezzed earlier, and edit the prim to send it to 3000 Meters up. Note what happes to your frame rate while looking various directions.

==========

Note that if you build a very primmy store or club, full of scripted vendors and avatars, and put it way up high, it may still be laggy, just from what you put up there and the avatars in the area. But it will be less laggy than on the ground amid lots more prims and people.

[Ellla McMahon]

Hello Irene : ) .. quick answer .. Yes, less things to be drawn on your screen.

From SL Wiki Skybox

.. Skybox heights typically start at 500 m. The "classic clouds" layer is at about 150-225 m

Why bother?

Performance - What's in the sky is a lot less dense than what's on the ground. When less things need to be rendered, performance improves.

From Turn off WindLight rendering there's minor improvement in some cases is to turn off 'Classic Clouds'

And from Troubleshooting teleporting

Fly Up, then Teleport

Your current location may be preventing you from teleporting successfully.

1. Fly to an altitude of 200 meters.

Residents can check

- Statistics Bar to see the performance of your computer and the Second Life world

- Fast Timers results to see what's using your computer power.

[Irene Muni]

Thanks, thanks, thanks. Clear and obvious explanations for a klutz like me. Thank you very much

PS.

How do I give 4 and 2 points??? Both answers worth 4 points!!

OMG, vote https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-1498

Points in order of arrival LOL