Avatar Complexity and the servers

[Mila00001]

Hello all *waves*

Since you all have been so helpful, I'm back to ask another question  Specifically, about Avatar Complexity. I totally get that a high AC score affects other people's viewers, and that if I'm wearing, for example, a 360K outfit, that many will not be able to render me or they will render the jelly-doll. I also read on these forums that some people's graphics cards can get fried (seriously, I did read this).

My problem comes in where I have a few outfits that are near and dear to me and score over 350K. As I said, I understand that a high AV score affects others' viewers. Does a high AV score also affect the server, as in making a club laggier ? I'm very confused on this. Thanks again!  

[Rolig Loon]

The work of rendering your high-complexity avatar is done locally by each person's graphics card.  If a person has set her own viewer's Maximum Complexity setting high enough so that you do not appear as a jelly doll, then she has made the decision to force her computer to render you.  If the graphics card can't handle the job, any rendering lag is her problem.  Other people who have set a lower Maximum Complexity level will see you as a jelly doll and have less rendering lag. That sidesteps your question about the effect of your avatar on the region servers, though.  The servers have the responsibility of uploading your avatar appearance to each person within range. To the extent that every bit of data in the upload stream takes some bandwidth and a certain amount of time, your complex avatar is certainly adding to the load on the servers.  In a busy region, where the servers already have to deal with a lot of avatar information, your complexity definitely doesn't make things easier.

Edited December 16, 2017 by Rolig Loon

[belielhell]

 

Some people brag about increasing ARC and of course these actions can slow down or crash SL servers, each is against SL CS and/or SL TOS.
No matter if they call it testing or something else...

[Qa Boa]

Go through each outfit and remove each piece one at a time (or do it in reverse and put on each piece one at a time) and watch your AC score. Most often it is ONE THING that jumps you from 100k to 400k. I've run into this myself. I was averaging 65k AC than when I put on a "simple" mesh watch: BOOM! 372k. Needless to say, I don't wear that watch anymore.

So for those outfits, you love a lot - piecemeal them together to see where the AC culprit it.

[Mila00001]

16 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

The work of rendering your high-complexity avatar is done locally by each person's graphics card.  If a person has set her own viewer's Maximum Complexity setting high enough so that you do not appear as a jelly doll, then she has made the decision to force her computer to render you.  If the graphics card can't handle the job, any rendering lag is her problem.  Other people who have set a lower Maximum Complexity level will see you as a jelly doll and have less rendering lag. That sidesteps your question about the effect of your avatar on the region servers, though.  The servers have the responsibility of uploading your avatar appearance to each person within range. To the extent that every bit of data in the upload stream takes some bandwidth and a certain amount of time, your complex avatar is certainly adding to the load on the servers.  In a busy region, where the servers already have to deal with a lot of avatar information, your complexity definitely doesn't make things easier.

Excellent and kind explanation. I will radically cut down my AC as much as I can! Thank you all!

[Nova Convair]

The good thing is here that everybody has a choice. 
If someone walks around with a millionaire arc I couldn't care less because I have set my limit to 250k. Everybody above that value isn't rendered by my viewer. I even think that 250k is way too high and I probably will lower that one day. Atm it's very rare for me to see a jelly babe placeholder so either most people have a look at the arc or the creators went better and have a look at the arc.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Mine is set at 20,000. I only render friends and people I'm interacting with.

 I'll unjelly (is that a word?) people individually to look at them for a minute. Sometimes, they look better as jellies.

Edited December 20, 2017 by BilliJo Aldrin
added a question mark

[Callum Meriman]

On 12/16/2017 at 4:24 PM, Rolig Loon said:

The servers have the responsibility of uploading your avatar appearance to each person within range. 

I wonder if this is still true now the CDNs are in place. The server would just send the UUID and then it would be offloaded, surely?

[Bobbie Faulds]

Just an FYI, it's safer to set a number for your ARC and not leave it on unlimited. The newest griefing thing is for an avi to show up with a super high ARC in the millions. I have a picture form someone where the jelly doll shows an ARC of 10 million. This will cause most to crash out of SL from the overload.

[Love Zhaoying]

18 minutes ago, Bobbie Faulds said:

Just an FYI, it's safer to set a number for your ARC and not leave it on unlimited.

If your PC is high-end, what's a good "safe" number? 1 million? 500 thousand?

[Rolig Loon]

2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

If your PC is high-end, what's a good "safe" number? 1 million? 500 thousand?

That obviously depends on how "high end" your computer is. The harder it has to work to render a scene, the slower it will respond. Ultimately, if the scene is too complex or your computer is too slow, rendering will fail and the computer will lock up. My own rule, with an NVidia 1070GTX, is to cap ARC at 300K. I see very few jelly dolls and I don't have much annoying render lag. I could probably set it higher, but I don't see much need. 

[Bastilla Loon]

On 12/20/2017 at 6:53 AM, BilliJo Aldrin said:

Sometimes, they look better as jellies.

Also true in real life.

I generally try to keep my ARC under 100,000.  I'll echo what some others say; there is sometimes a single object that shoots your complexity way up, and it's way out of line with what that object needs.  Some designers are better than others at making mesh objects that don't use way too many polygons.  Sometimes you get something that looks like it ought to be simple, but is way over-subdivided.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

4 hours ago, Bastilla Loon said:

Also true in real life.

I generally try to keep my ARC under 100,000.  I'll echo what some others say; there is sometimes a single object that shoots your complexity way up, and it's way out of line with what that object needs.  Some designers are better than others at making mesh objects that don't use way too many polygons.  Sometimes you get something that looks like it ought to be simple, but is way over-subdivided.

I'm usually right around 100,000. When i'm at a club I'll render each person in turn. If i like what i see, they stay rendered, otherwise its back to jelly land for them

[Nalytha]

1 hour ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

I'm usually right around 100,000. When i'm at a club I'll render each person in turn. If i like what i see, they stay rendered, otherwise its back to jelly land for them

I don't understand this. So, if you like what you see, they stay rendered. If you don't like what you see, you derender them. Are jelly dolls really that much more appealing than a mediocre avatar? 
 

[Nalytha]

57 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

I wish I could render everyone, but I'm working with a failed graphics card fan. I have to be selective about how many avatars I render or my card will over heat and my computer go to sleep.

 

Ooooh! This totally makes sense. 

[Creed Aldrin]

Hi. Let me comment.

First, there are 3 types of lag: viewer, network, and server related. While discussing frame rate slow down, it is vital to distinguish between them. Because if frame rate drop is caused by one type of lag, then fighting other types of lag to their extinct will make little infuence on slow down. Viewer related lag is most common.

 

Second, Avatar complexity is the margin above that single avatar is going not to be rendered. But it is all avatars together and other objects like furniture, and lighting reflections from all surfaces all contribute to overall sim complexity that graphics card have to render each frame.

so there are some general guidelines:

• decrease viewing distance
• decrease the count of rendered avatars
• decrease avatar complexity threshhold
• switch off advanced features like avatar shadows, shadows from projectors, water reflections, or any shadows at all (but keep advanced lighting model)
• switch off advanced lighting model totally

Depending on what is going on at given location, you fine tune the mix of these settings to your taste and preferences until frame rate is okay. but switch off advanced lighting totally works best

 

Edited January 15, 2018 by Creed Aldrin

[OptimoMaximo]

2 hours ago, Creed Aldrin said:

switch off advanced lighting totally works best

ALM always on:

Advanced lighting model introduced normal maps which should be used to fake geometry detail. Decrease geometry on the models and use normal maps, ALM will be your friend. If people keeps claiming all single detail to be modeled and geometry existent, ALM finishes off an already almost geometry killed performance, of course. The problem doesn't lay in the materials, it lays in the poor models, where "designers" just model fine details. Keep doing this and you keep getting 90's game style rendered textures on movie standard density characters, instead of more advanced, closer to actual realtime cg standard modeling+texturing techniques. More geometry for rounder edges and fine details modeled to the extent of having, say, a eye tear sac actually modeled, actual geometry, is *not* high quality. A balanced mix of geometry detail combined with a wise use of materials would make a more optimal asset to render. 

But quality lays in the rounded geometry, sure. How dare I say it's waste of time to look for "quality" when the avatar UV maps haven't been rearranged to have a higher resolution and better texture mapping. Backward compatibility is more important, let's go for more geometry. Let's keep the unproportioned ratios between upper and lower body UVs, keep the 3 avatar texture body sections instead of going for a 2K coverage (4*1024) or higher if you wish, so that normal map, specular and glossiness detailing could really kick in with less geometry (if the creator actually knows how to use materials in general, not specifically in SL, this latter is a re-adaptation of something well known). Begin to use another texturing resolution  and technique standard and see how things improve. We need better made/optimized mesh content along with ALM and the materials features; switching off the new features to stay in the past equals to hiding your head in the sand. It's a retrograde mindset that clashes with the claim of SL to be more conform to the current online VG standards.

 

Now, let the "lowpoly stuff partypooper" bashing session commence, jump on me fiercely!

Edited January 15, 2018 by OptimoMaximo
added last line

[Love Zhaoying]

..gives new meaning to “you’re so jelly”..

[OptimoMaximo]

20 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

..gives new meaning to “you’re so jelly”..

LOL! +1 plus actual like =)

[Love Zhaoying]

6 minutes ago, OptimoMaximo said:

LOL! +1 plus actual like =)

Thank you!

[Creed Aldrin]

4 hours ago, OptimoMaximo said:

Now, let the "lowpoly stuff partypooper" bashing session commence, jump on me fiercely!

IIn the future world, where Sansar is going to take place Facebook now occupies, most users will posses 1024 or 4096 cores GPU just like now crowds have 4 to 8 cores android phones (hardly needed to make phone calls). This will be fashion trend set by celebrities. But now, SL is a niche and many try to play their "VR" not only using random laptop, but obsolete laptop i guess this somewhat lower quality of their experience... but only to a small degree, since all VR is in our brain, you know

Edited January 15, 2018 by Creed Aldrin

[Love Zhaoying]

21 minutes ago, Creed Aldrin said:

IIn the future world, where Sansar is going to take place Facebook now occupies, most users will posses 1024 or 4096 cores GPU just like now crowds have 4 to 8 cores android phones (hardly needed to make phone calls). This will be fashion trend set by celebrities.

Such Dystopian!

 

21 minutes ago, Creed Aldrin said:

since all VR is in our brain, you know

Stahhhhp!!! If it was in my brain, I could control reality more better.

[Love Zhaoying]

On ‎12‎/‎30‎/‎2017 at 10:20 PM, BilliJo Aldrin said:

I wish I could render everyone, but I'm working with a failed graphics card fan. I have to be selective about how many avatars I render or my card will over heat and my computer go to sleep.

That sounds um..really ghetto!

[OptimoMaximo]

35 minutes ago, Creed Aldrin said:

IIn the future world, where Sansar is going to take place Facebook now occupies, most users will posses 1024 or 4096 cores GPU....(omissis)

The same will go for Sansar, there is some leveling to do. What you will get from VR is a first person experience of the 3D environment, this doesn't mean it will allow or anyway run smoothly without a polygon count check. Sure thing you're going to get all the benefits of Physically Based Rendering in realtime, with the aid of normal maps to to fake geometry detail, so everything might look sharper and detailed. However, this doesn't necessarily mean free higher polygon count in the scene than what's supported in SL.

[Taff Nouvelle]

I see many people saying, "turn off Advanced lighting". If you go to a stage show or dance show in SL, if it has been well run, there is a really good chance that the show uses advanced lighting effects which you will completely miss. I spend hours getting the lighting just right for the companies that I work with, and it is a shame that the audience does not always see the full effect.