Complexity Score

[Charolotte Caxton]

What number should I be striving for? Thank you!

[ChinRey]

Very hard to say. Ideally 50,000 or less but few people manage that - it takes a bit of planning and work to get a good looking modern avatar as low as that.

The default cutoff limit for mid graphics on the official SL viewer is 80,000. If you can stay below that, you can be fairly sure most people can see you. 100,000 is also fairly safe.

Above that fewer and fewer people will see you as anything but a colored silhouette.

[Charolotte Caxton]

Oh cool, thanks so much!

[LittleMe Jewell]

I shoot for 70,000-80,000 but will let myself go up to 100,000 sometimes - if I really love the outfit / hair / whatever and don't plan on going to any really crowded places.

[Nalates Urriah]

Another way to think of it... Avatar Complexity Information (ACI) is an indication of how hard your avatar is to render by your video card, how much work a graphics card has to do to render you and others. So, lower means better performance. BUT... we don't all have the same video card. So, different people see different ACI values for the same avatar. Hopefully this gives you the insight that the number is more a subjective number for your individual use.

So, targeting a specific number is probably not the best goal. But, a specific number is easy to talk about...

The popup that says 'X avatars cannot see you' is probably way more meaningful. It is also harder to use for planning our ACI or recommending to others, so we tend to just deal with ACI as if it is a universal reference. 

So, if I have and ACI of 'X' and in a crowded sim 23 of 25 avatars can't see me, I'm either hanging out with a bunch of people will lame computers are my Outfit is WAY too complex. Whatever X is, it needs to be less... if you want these people to see you.

A good thing about having ACI is I can put on that medieval battle outfit with and ACI of 900k and not drag down the sim or those around me. Only those that have the horsepower to render me will download the mesh and textures for my outfit. 

...and the Lindens are working to make the ACI-do-not-render process more efficient for the viewer and server. Plus the math that comes up with the number is being looked at. Those "internal changes" we see in the server updates are often changes to the data collection they are running to help decide how ACI can be most realistically calculated. That means we may see ACI values change.

[Charolotte Caxton]

Oh, cool, thanks so much, Nalates.

[Alwin Alcott]

10 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Very hard to say. Ideally 50,000

The default cutoff limit for mid graphics on the official SL viewer is 80,000.

100,000 is also fairly safe.

Above that fewer and fewer people will see you as anything but a colored silhouette.

i agree these numbers are very ideal.. but think that's for the really lower end HD graphics and cards.

most places i go, people mostly put their limit between 200 and 300.000. A normal mid range graphics card should be able to handle that.

As soon mesh attachements, including bodies and clothes, get better designers, who care about the rendering cost, this limits can go down.

For example a well know male mesh body ( not the obsolete unupdated beta thing) brings me up over 180.000/ 250.000 (incl clothes) at ease... the newest, from another brand, keeps me at 70.000/90.000 (or lower... at the beach

Next to mesh bodies, hair and jewelry are often the real bad things