Avatar Draw Weight

[Penny Patton]

You're right! I didn't realize I had to detach and reattach the item to see the draw weight change. Nevermind then!

[Marianne Little]

Whoa, that will crush the apparel and accessories market in SL.

Like it or not, but fashion, "fashionistas", blogs and Flickr is what gives SL merchants an income. Take away this part and watch the economy go under. 

I can agree to some of what you say. Green, yellow, red, as it is today. But no outlining in yellow or invisible avatars. Teleport delays is better. Avatars with yellow numbers could get a pop-up warning that they have to click away before they can teleport.Like "Your draw weight is over green limit. Are you sure you want to teleport?" If a Draw Weight counter is active in the sim they teleport to, they have already got a warning from LL and know why they are booted.

Red avatars could be stopped from teleporting unless the sim has a very low number of avatars. Because if I dress up to fulfill a certain look, I am in no way interested in sims with many people. I search out sims where I can up graphics and spend a lot of time zooming in and out and testing poses. If others are there, I tend to crash . I am not in a social mind either, I am focused on my avatar and the surroundings.

Let the market decide if the content with high draw weight has a future. Let merchants be forced to state draw weight in adverts, but let them sell it. Buyers can decide if they will buy the stuff just for taking pictures high up on platforms in empty sims or buy other stuff that they can roam the grid in.

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

...

 

What we really need, is an avatar impact budget. That you CANNOT buy your way up in... and works on a throttle of some kind.

a green, yellow, and red.

If you're green your SL is normal, if yellow, you cannot teleport or cross sims, and your avatar gains a yellow 'outline' visible to self and everyone else. If red, you get a popup to pick which things to remove, default sorted by their 'impact' - and your avatar goes invisible until you hit at least yellow.

- But then the numbers set for these would need to make sense, and start higher than ideal, then get scaled down to the final goal after a year, scaling down 1/4th to the goal per quarter.

(ie: give people time to replace bad junk)

.

 

Also...

A second system whereby items OVER a certain limit cannot be sold or traded, and merchants with too many such items lose their selling privileges until they remove relevant listings...

...

 

 

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[ObviousAltIsObvious]

in the 1960s and 1970s, automakers used the exact same rhetoric when they were faced with new safety, efficiency and emissions regulations. it would destroy the industry and the economy, they insisted. when the crying was over they adapted and the world didn't end.

[Penny Patton]

Yeah, I don't think throwing restrictions on avatar content like Pussycat suggests would kill the fashonista market. Especially being that it's actually incredibly easy for content creators to optimize their own content. 

The bigger problem would be the outcry from the masses who would, quite reasonably, not understand why content they spent money on suddenly cannot be used. That's why in this situation I'd prefer such limits be tied to new features if possible.

 Seeing as how LL keeps missing chances to do that, their best bet in the meantime is to make a big push to spread awareness and figure out how to incentivize efficient content. 

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

When all the script counting tools came out people screamed bloody murder when others started banning them (and still do), and many claimed LLs was stealing their ability to be what they wanted to be in SL.

But...

As many merchants died off, they were rapidly replaced by more agile coders who put out high quality low script goods. And some merchants who lacked such skills went to those agile merchants and said "hey buddy, can you sell me a script kit?" - and a business model that had been known for selling lag-inducing shoddy goods changed and expanded into the thing that has largely saved our SL experience.

We've got it better in SL than ever before now - as the nightmare of script bloat is largely historic or a blip on the radar when that one bad neighbor who insists on wearing her 2009-loot logs in...

When the change from 'prims' to 'land impact' occurred, alongside mesh, creating a hyper awareness in the community of the land-impact of rezzed goods... Well... A LOT of bad merchants got pushed out. But they were replaced by developers of 3D content who can now produce amazingly good works on ultra low land impact that hold up even at a distance.

- This has NOT hit the worn goods merchants, because they face no accountability checks.

 

But you cannot rationally claim that the market was hurt by script-counting or land-impact-crunching when you compare things like "hair resizer scripts" and furniture/houses that are popular now, versus what was for sale from 2009-2011.

 

If anything... forcing accountability on worn goods would shove the bad makers out, and make room for more skilled actors to be seen, and become blogged about, and then popular.

The good high skill merchants are there... but they fade away in the clutter of search results and fashion blogs that largely focus on well known brands - some of which are good, and some of which are not. Users have no awareness of the difference unless they have the kinds of knowledge people like Penny have... and know what to check for when they experience spikes in lag.

Most of the time when people get his with massive lag in SL, you see them complain up a storm against LLs or griefers... and not against themselves... which is where they SHOULD be looking.

Past experience has proven that putting accountability in place will not just work, it will improve the market in a variety of ways not even directly related, as new kinds of merchants are able to rise up and bring in new ideas, while bad content is pushed out.

It won't kill SL fashion at all, any more than similar moves have in the past.

 

I am NOT convinced my particular brain storm of ways to do accountability are the best. They are just brain storm ideas... ready to be discarded the moment somebody else posts a better idea.

 

[Whirly Fizzle]

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Penny Patton wrote:

 

The bigger problem would be the outcry from the masses who would, quite reasonably, not understand why content they spent money on suddenly cannot be used. That's why in this situation I'd prefer such limits be tied to new features if possible.

 

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Their content can still be used though, there's nothing stopping them from wearing it and seeing themselves correctly.

When this new automute feature is out, all that will change is for those users who decide to enable the feature (maybe it will be enabled by default for very high draw weight avatars?) will see the high draw weight avatars as an imposter - unsure yet if LL are going to keep the multicolour jellybaby imposters for this feature (current behaviour) or change it to the normal "2D cutout" imposters.

 

[Penny Patton]

I've heard the derender imposters will change. Not sure what they're aiming for, whether they'll be like the regular avatar imposters or different somehow.

According to Oz, I think, the feature will be enabled by default, with the cut-off draw weight depending on your computer's rendering capability. 

[Whirly Fizzle]

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Penny Patton wrote:

According to Oz, I think, the feature will be enabled by default, with the cut-off draw weight depending on your computer's rendering capability. 

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Ahh, I hadn't heard that.

Thanks Penny!

[SaraCarena]

Looks like the Firestorm jellybabies are slightly different from the sl viewer ones. I`m not keen on the jellybabies or 2d sprites so I have imposters turned off most of the time and I`ll turn down the eye candy graphics and go as low as 12 fps before I think about turning imposters on. I`ve seen the "bug" that leaves some above limit av`s invisible, for me that could be a usable feature, with nametags off too you could just pretend they`re not even there. Would it be doable to have an option between sprites and invisible in Firestorm, sl viewer or both?

 

I`m totaly not into judging users by their av draw weight, I like places with lots of cool looking av`s but it`s not too hard to come up with a low DW outfit for for busy sims. I`ve started labelling outfits with their DW and have a few at 18-20k that look fine.

[Oz Linden]

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Whirly Fizzle wrote:

Their content can still be used though, there's nothing stopping them from wearing it and seeing themselves correctly.

When this new automute feature is out, all that will change is for those users who decide to enable the feature (maybe it will be enabled by default for very high draw weight avatars?) will see the high draw weight avatars as an imposter - unsure yet if LL are going to keep the multicolour jellybaby imposters for this feature (current behaviour) or change it to the normal "2D cutout" imposters.

 

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The current thinking is that we will use the mono-colored avatars for those who are over your limit (I've toned down the brightness of the colors a lot), and continue to use the "2D cutout" (really, we just leave out some of the fancier shader passes and update less frequently) style for more distant avatars.

We've also changed the coloring of the avatar draw information display so that it's relative to your own limit, not some arbitrary values we've picked; those under your limit will be green or green-yellow, shading toward red for those far over your limit. The hope is that will help you decide how to adjust your own limit.

Each avatar will also report to the simulator whether or not each of the other avatars it sees is over its own limit (without reporting what that limit is). My current thinking is that the simulator will use that information to report to each avatar an approximate percentage of those who are limiting rendering, so that you'll be able to tell whether or not others can see you in all your blinged-out glory.

 

[Penny Patton]

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SaraCarena wrote:

I`m totaly not into judging users by their av draw weight, I like places with lots of cool looking av`s but it`s not too hard to come up with a low DW outfit for for busy sims. I`ve started labelling outfits with their DW and have a few at 18-20k that look fine.

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I would say, no matter which side of the fence you fall on, thinking of it as "judging people by their draw weight" is the wrong perspective.

 Wearing millions of excess polygons and a gig of texture data affects the experience of everyone around you. For the graphics quality SL presents, there's no good reason even tablets and low end hardware shouldn't be able to run SL with deferred rendering, at a smooth 60fps.

People don't do this because they're bad people, they're simply unaware. Considering how attached people are to their avatar's appearance and how much money they might have spent on it, a lot of people get understandably defensive when this is pointed out. It's also worth considering that, right now, the lack of knowledge and incentive among content creators means not a lot of optimized avatar content is being produced making it impossible for the average user to manage their draw weight.

 Hell, you can't even see the draw weight of an object until after you purchase it. There's not even a place to list it on the marketplace.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Whirly Fizzle wrote:

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Penny Patton wrote:

 

That's why in this situation I'd prefer such limits be tied to new features if possible.

---

When this new automute feature is out, all that will change is for those users who decide to enable the feature (maybe it will be enabled by default for very high draw weight avatars?) will see the high draw weight avatars as an imposter - unsure yet if LL are going to keep the multicolour jellybaby imposters for this feature (current behaviour) or change it to the normal "2D cutout" imposters.

 

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I completely forgotten this feature was in the pipeline.

Its similar to what I was suggesting, but as something each person sets on their own.

This might work, but many might just dial it up and then still complain that "why can LLs fix the lag?" when "the lag" is their own doing...

But if it gets content makers to start optimizing, that will be enough.

 

[Penny Patton]

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Oz Linden wrote:

We've also changed the coloring of the avatar draw information display so that it's relative to your own limit, not some arbitrary values we've picked; 

 

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I'd almost rather it was kept to those "arbitrary values", so long as those values represent realistic expectations of what avatars should be in terms of draw weight. Like Pussycat said, a lot of people are just going to crank up the limits then continue to complain about the lag as if it's not their own doing. You might as well, at least, have the colour values be a reminder of this.

 I'd also like to see LL push this information in other ways, such as adding Draw Weight as a value to marketplace listings, just as "prims" currently is (by the way "prims" should really be updated to "Land impact"), and find other ways to encourage content creators to make more efficient content. A little bit of both carrot and stick to reign the problem in.

 Not just avatars, either. I always found it odd that Land Impact doesn't take texture use into consideration seeing as how overuse of textures is such a big issue. Maybe some kind of tool to allow people to resize textures within SL?

[Perrie Juran]

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

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Whirly Fizzle wrote:

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Penny Patton wrote:

 

That's why in this situation I'd prefer such limits be tied to new features if possible.

---

When this new automute feature is out, all that will change is for those users who decide to enable the feature (maybe it will be enabled by default for very high draw weight avatars?) will see the high draw weight avatars as an imposter - unsure yet if LL are going to keep the multicolour jellybaby imposters for this feature (current behaviour) or change it to the normal "2D cutout" imposters.

 

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I completely forgotten this feature was in the pipeline.

Its similar to what I was suggesting, but as something each person sets on their own.

This might work, but many might just dial it up and then still complain that "why can LLs fix the lag?" when "the lag" is their own doing...

But if it gets content makers to start optimizing, that will be enough.

 

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Tagging you more out of convenience.

The way I see this it is not a solution.  I personally find that screen shot disgusting.  I'd rather lag than look at those ghosts.

It's more like a case of the cure being worse than the disease.

The disease being unoptimised content.

Maybe I'm being a negative nanny here but this has the potential of really causing strife unlike any we've seen in SL before.  You think it's bad now when someone wearing a 10,000 lumen face light comes into a club and people jump on them about it?   What will it be like when so many people will be looking at Jelly?

I don't have time to check this test viewer but i do have a question.

Oz said we'd be able to set our own limits.  Will this be based on a Per Avatar setting or an agregate setting.  I can handle being around two or three Ava's with an ARW of 300,000 if no one else is around.  But the problems start when I'm at a club with 30 or more Ava's.  It's the total aggregate score of all the Ava's present that is causing the problem.  Not an individual Ava per se.

Will it be easy to change this setting on the fly as needed ala a quick preferences such as firestorm has or will LL make us have to dig for the setting every time we need to change it.

/me sighs.  All this work on a panacea for a cure and not one ounce of work spent by LL on teaching basic health habits.  Why is LL so afraid to tell people it's a good idea to wash your hands before you eat?  Preventative medicine is always so much cheaper than a hospital stay.

[Penny Patton]

My impression is that you'll be able to entirely disable the derendering feature if that's what you want, which renders it more of an educational device than anything else.

I agree this is not the ideal way to approach the issue, but given that LL has passed every good opportunity to introduce something akin to "Land Impact" for avatars (and even managed to nullify the effectiveness of land impact itself by not including texture use), I'm not sure what they can do at this point that won't be disruptive in some way.

 

 The biggest problem I see is right now, at this moment, there is very little the average SL user can do to optimize their avatar because they are entirely at the mercy of content creators. Somehow, pressure needs to be put on content creators to produce better optimized content. 

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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/me sighs.  All this work on a panacea for a cure and not one ounce of work spent by LL on teaching basic health habits.  Why is LL so afraid to tell people it's a good idea to wash your hands before you eat?  Preventative medicine is always so much cheaper than a hospital stay.

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Any education initiative will only reach those:

1) Capable of understanding it.

2) Interested enough to pay attention

aaannnnddd....

3) Not convinced that they know better already.

Everything I've seen suggests that the percentage of SL users who meet these three criteria is teensy-weensy-bobeensy - in other words, the same percentage as those in RL who meet those criteria and are old enough to access SL.

[Perrie Juran]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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/me sighs.  All this work on a panacea for a cure and not one ounce of work spent by LL on teaching basic health habits.  Why is LL so afraid to tell people it's a good idea to wash your hands before you eat?  Preventative medicine is always so much cheaper than a hospital stay.

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Any education initiative will only reach those:

1) Capable of understanding it.

2) Interested enough to pay attention

aaannnnddd....

3) Not convinced that they know better already. 

Everything I've seen suggests that the percentage of SL users who meet these three criteria is teensy-weensy-bobeensy - in other words, the same percentage as those in RL who meet those criteria and are old enough to access SL.

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Sometimes I forget how many people there are that just want to plug in and play.

But a solid educational initiative could have a ripple effect.

Sometimes I think I must have been lucky with the people I first met in SL.  We all wanted to know everything and were always helping each other.  We gobbled up all of Torley's videos, etc, etc.

The thing is that someone needs to take the lead.  Even if the tutorials are not produced by LL, they could still be more aggressive in promoting them.  LL should be taking the lead.

The last thing posted to Tips and Tricks was in May 2011 !!!!!!

[Penny Patton]

I just arrived in a sim that has a "no mesh avatars" rule, the idea behind it being that mesh avatars create more lag and framerate problems than other avatars.

There is a lot of misinformation out there in SL. I've often wondered why LL doesn't try to clear that misinformation with blog/website posts and videos. Let alone straight up tutorials. 

[SaraCarena]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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The thing is that someone needs to take the lead.  Even if the tutorials are not produced by LL, they could still be more aggressive in promoting them.  LL should be taking the lead.

 

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As usefull as this thread is for people who actually see it, which won`t be many compared to the number of users in sl, creators and merchants could take a lead by putting poly count and draw weight on inworld ads and the details section of market place listings, along with a description of why higher draw weight = more lag for everyone.

I know I`d be more interested in a creators product range if it had that info than if it didn`t.

[Pussycat Catnap]

If like me you have a LOT of preset outfits (and I guess most people do this now-a-days), it can be interesting to go down them all and note their Draw Weights.

Been doing that on an alt and its kind of surprising.

Mesh or not, as a lone factor has no importance.

 

The Belleza Mesh body seems to be only 3000 Draw Weight by itself.

- Removing EVERYTHING drops me to 400 draw weight. Adding the body jumps me to 4126. Then removing the body drops me to 1000. I have no idea where the extra 600 comes from. I guess things still in memory have a cost...

 

 

Sculpty items I had were often adding 10,000-20,000 draw weight.

One mesh belt by itself was worth 60,000. One I'd been putting onto outfits thinking it was a nice but low-lag option to go for... Oops.

Two invisible items I had - weapons to appear on a gesture command, were each over 30,000 draw weight... even while not visible. Their sheathed visible versions were under 10,000. This one makes no sense to me.

Some flexi/mesh hair I rather liked was worth 20,000 draw weight. But another brand's mesh/flexi hair was worth under 10000.

Removing two bracelets cut 100,000 off of one outfit... And while they were nice, they weren't THAT vital to fashion...

 

Some seemingly high detail outfits I have are low draw weight. Some seemingly simple one are very high.

 

I've started labeling any outfit over 80,000 draw weight, so I can go back to them and edit them down and find replacements...

Ideally I'd like to get everything under 60,000 - most of the outfits I have seem to come in between 55,000 to 69,000... but gotta start somewhere.

 

[Penny Patton]

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

If like me you have a LOT of preset outfits (and I guess most people do this now-a-days), it can be interesting to go down them all and note their Draw Weights.

Been doing that on an alt and its kind of surprising.

Mesh or not, as a lone factor has no importance.

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 Oh, totally, a number of things impact the draw weight of an object.

How many polygons? How much texture data? Does it use shiny, alpha or glow? Does it have materials? Is it scripted? I'm pretty sure the LOD models for mesh items are factored in as well.

 Remember, not all mesh is created equal. Mesh content CAN and SHOULD be more efficient than content made with sculpts and regular prims, but the sad fact of the matter is that with no hard caps on avatar resource use, content creators often do not even try to optimize their creations and are entirely unaware that this is why SL runs so poorly even on high end hardware.

 It's also worth noting that while Draw Weight works fine as a general guideline, it's far from perfect. You will occaissionally see items that should, by all reason, cost less in draw weight than another item, yet despite all logic end up giving a higher draw weight. But generally, on the whole, a higher draw weight does signify a higher resource use somewhere.

 

 Sculpty items often carry high draw weights because sculpts are fairly high poly and most sculpted items are made from multiple sculpts. In addition to the complexity of the models, sculpts are an additional texture in VRAM, and plenty of content creators are producing very large sculpt maps.

Items that are invisible due to alpha textures are still being rendered. Everything about them is still being rendered. Their textures are still in memory. Your videocard is still churning out that geometry. Just because you can't see it does not mean it's there. In fact, being invsible ADDS to the rendering complexity. This is why it's better to detach such items when not in use.

Just because you can't see any additional detail doesn't mean the object is simpler to render. A 1024x1024 store logo slapped on a hidden cube inside an attachment is still taking up memory. Every extra polygon in a model adds to the complexity even if all those extra polygons add up to a single flat surface with no discernable detail.

 

 These are all things to keep in mind, especially if you're a content creator.

[Vulpinus]

OK, I know this thread's a little stale, but it's exactly what I've just been looking at. I've read the thread and watched the video...

...and it's left me with some concerns, and certainly stopped me going shopping for stuff for my new body, which I was just about to do.

First thing - if LL are going to introduce this 'feature' of not rendering those over a certain weight (it's a liltle like the airline companies tried to introduce for fat (or just big) people, isn't it?) they had better fix the "Show Draw Weight for Avatars" reporting.

I mean, I'm trying to figure out what my hair is, and everytime I detach andd reattach it, I get a different reading. Wildly different, like from 2800 extra up to 37,000. Come on LL - how does that help me?

The only consistancy seems to be if I add my usual shoes, plus the hair, to my otherwise naked self. Then, apart from looking a little odd, I go from a naked 1000 to 72,103. Doing this a few dozen times leads to the conclusion that the shoes are about 17,000 each (Huh? - they are plain, uninteresting, black, mesh shoes) and about 37,000 for the hair :smileysurprised:

I recently pulled the textures out of a small antique telephone I had bought, because I found out it had thirteen 1024x1024 textures in it. Thirteen! A bit of remappping later and I had the whole lot on a single 1024x1024 and I can't tell the difference. Looks like I need to start doing the same with my avatars.

It's a shame - I really liked that hair.

ETA: If (when) this is introduced, seriously LL, we need some help in the matter regarding what we are buying, or rather what to avoid buying. Otherwise things won't be pretty. Literally.

I've just checked the hair in my profile picture - that's 42,000. Ouch.

[Whirly Fizzle]

You can get the draw weight of an attachment without taking it off to see the drop in total render weight.

Edit the attachment (you can do this when it's worn or rezzed on the ground) -> Click the "More Info" link in the build floater.

Under "Weights of selected", the display weight is how much it adds to the total draw weight of your avatar.

 

 

[Vulpinus]

Oh great, thanks. It didn't occur to to me that it was the same measurement. I use that on furniture I'm looking at buying.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Vulpinus wrote:

OK, I know this thread's a little stale, but it's exactly what I've just been looking at. I've read the thread and watched the video...

...and it's left me with some concerns, and certainly stopped me going shopping for stuff for my new body, which I was just about to do.

I've just checked the hair in my profile picture - that's 42,000. Ouch.

---

Its actually inspired me into the exact opposite recourse.

A LOT OF SHOPPING.

To replace stuff.

And I've now got another reason to insist on a demo.

EDIT: Thought you said your avatar was only 42,000 Draw Weight when dressed like your profile. Which would be great. But just re-read, 42,000 for just the hair... yeah, ouch. But hey, my favorite hair was over 90,000... /cry...

 

What I've noticed is that with mesh, I can simply cannot predict what it will be until after I see it rezzed on me or somebody else. BUT I can predict it by brand name.

So hair shops like "Wasabi Pills" - my alts that don't use dreads have replaced most of their hair by buying new stuff from there. "Wasabi Pills" almost always has super low draw weight without sacrificing detail. I wish (s)he'd do dreadlocks, and dreads that covered ears (so I could wear them as a Neko). I think the highest draw weight I've found from one of the ones I bought there was around 5,000. Most were in the under 3,000 range (but it was all so low I didn't bother writing it down, so I'm not sure exactly where they fell).

So um hey... shop at Wasabi Pills... They do mesh hair right. If word of that gets around to other mesh hair makers, then maybe whoever keeps selling the 10,000 to 20,000 hair templates will stop it and learn to model right.

 

I've noticed that flexi ALWAYS drives up draw weight by absurd amounts. And you can test this by wearing some prims and toggling them from normal to flexi... This is why hair is often such a killer... because Flexi hair is still quite popular for obvious reasons. Some makers who do hybrid mesh/flexi can ALMOST get reasonable draw weights... so I have kept one such hair from Analog Dog that is "only" about 10,000 draw weight. I can wear it when my other items are low...

Sculpty jewelry seems to the worst offender of anything one can buy in SL. Especially if its a belt or ankle item, which makes no sense but has been a consistent find across the things in my inventory.

Most mesh bodies are actually very low in draw weight. I have no idea if this holds for mesh heads as all of the ones on the market are caucasian featured only so I've not even bothered with demoing them.

All of the mesh eye brands that look good to my eyes, are very high in draw weight...

 

I've taken to replacing the textures of hidden prims with a blank texture and with the default transparancy texture from the library - in both cases it has ALWAYS had 0 effect on Draw Weight. So I'm suspicious about the claim that textures are the primary issue in this. It is possible I have missed a case of the texture being rezzed somewhere, but I've tried to be thourough in looking for that... still, will keep testing this to be sure.