Two Simple Tips to Increase FPS and Reduce Lag in a Sim.

[Penny Patton]

A lot of the tips I give on building and optimization can get a bit technical but I wanted to share two simple tricks anyone with even the most basic modding skills can do to make a sim where people can enjoy higher framerates and less lag.

 1. Turn all alpha textures from "blended" to "masked".

Use ctrl+alt+t to reveal all objects in a scene with alpha textures. "Blended" alpha textures show up red, "masked" alpha textures show up blue.

As you can see in this example, even a lot of the solid building walls with no windows or anything have an unused alpha channel and it was left in blended mode. Blended is a big strain on rendering, simply getting rid of all of the blended alpha, save a few water and light effects, will result in a noticeable FPS increase on most computers. Plus, most of the texture glitches people experience in SL, from weird lighting behaviour to the infamous "alpha sorting bug" are all due to blended alpha. Get rid of the blended alpha and you get rid of the bugs.

 How do you do this? Simply edit the object, selecting the appropriate faces if necessary, and in the Texture tab change "Alpha Blending" to "Alpha Masking".

This will turn your texture completely solid, but don't panic, all you need to do is change the "Mask Cutoff" from 0 to 100, then increase or decrease the cutoff value until the texture looks how you like it. For most textures like those in the example, you can usually just leave it at 100, it's only those with feathered edges where you may need to mess with the cutoff value to get the best result.

2. Put building interiors into skyboxes.

Often, most of the detail in a sim is in the building interiors. Whether you're talking castles, office buildings, or people's homes.

Do you really need to see all of that from the sidewalk? Move it to a skybox placed well out of draw distance and you've greatly reduced the amount of content your visitors need to render all at once.

How do people get inside the building? Simply put a teleporter inside the door. If you have a premium account you can create a sim experience so that people can open a door and walk right in to instantly, almost seamlessly, transition to the building interior. Don't have access to an experience? The "Anywhere Door" from Curio Obscura is a popular alternative predating experiences.

 You can find lots of building facades on the marketplace, too. From fantasy to urban to sci-fi. They're often very light on Land Impact. Otherwise you can use the buildings you have now, simply set the windows from blended to "no alpha" and instead make them shiny and reflective. Using skyboxes for building interiors also makes building a sim a lot easier, as you're no longer constrained by the ground level landscape, or even the exterior size and shape of your building. This allows you to be a lot more creative.

 And, of course, there's room for exceptions. The rare foyer or small building that is open to the outside world can remain and you've still managed to move most of the sim's content out of draw distance, making your sim load and render much faster.

[MoiraKathleen]

I didn't realize the alpha masked showed up a different color with the highlight transparent option.  That's very cool!  I try to look for things on my parcel that are alpha blended to see if I can change them to masked, but I usually miss some things, so the different coloring is very helpful.  I think changing the alpha mode is one of the main reasons I modify objects that are modifiable. 

[Penny Patton]

1 hour ago, moirakathleen said:

I didn't realize the alpha masked showed up a different color with the highlight transparent option.

I think it's new, like very new. Or maybe it was in Firestorm or some other TPV then only just recently got added to the LL viewer? Not sure. But yeah, I absolutely love it for all the reasons you give.

And yes, that's definitely one of the reasons I avoid no-mod items. Not the only, but definitely something I regularly do when building so it's a must.

ETA:

OH! And the whole masked/blended thing applies to avatars, too! Whenever possible mask the alphas on your avatar. It's THE first thing I do with hair. I was so sad when Magika announced they were going no-mod (for "security reasons", which means "baseless superstition"). One less hair store to spend money at. Masking alphas on rigged mesh will also get rid of that odd "halo" that appears around your avatar when standing in front of water or blended alpha textures. And just like in the environment, it fixes lighting issues. Blended alpha hair always looks odd under local lights.

Edited August 23, 2018 by Penny Patton

[Penny Patton]

Someone asked me some good questions so I want to share them, and my answers, here!

1. I assume you have to rez the building twice: once on land and the second time on a platform? (or do you set it up so that only one version is rezzed at a time? )

Depends. There are two ways I do it.

1. Use a faux exterior building (a building with no insides), these are usually very light on LI. Then I build the skybox independent of the exterior. Either from scratch or using skyboxes I find on the marketplace. Sometimes I use multiple skyboxes and link them via door teleporters.
2. Use a building constructed so that you can basically take it apart. Some buildings will let you remove a significant amount of exterior/interior, allowing you to rez a ground version and a skybox version of the same building at a reduced LI cost.

2. Some of us want to be able to see our neighbors, landscape, roads, etc when we look outside our windows. Do you reproduce phantom versions of building faccades and land features on the platform ( or just show a photo) or do most people just not care what they see out the window?

Again, it depends.

Sometimes I just turn the interior windows solid and apply a glow to suggest lighting coming in from outside. Other times I create a tiny window diorama, usually a screenshot applied to a curved face (like the inside of half a hollow cylinder) that extends past the window enough that you can't see the edges from inside. At other times I'll actually use a surrounding landscape object around the skybox and set it up to look similar, but to the actual surroundings, just simplified and shrunk using forced perspective tricks.

 These aren't hard rules you must follow at all times, just guidelines to help make a sim better for yourself and visitors. You don't have to have the entire building interior inside the skybox, or even have a skybox section of every building.

You can have a foyer or even a room with an exterior deck that are at ground level, with the rest of the building interior in skyboxes. And certain types of buildings you may want entirely on ground level (like a small gas station or coffee shop with indoor and outdoor seating). The idea is that the majority of the sim's building interiors are separated to their own skyboxes so that the sim as a whole is easier to load and render.

[ChinRey]

7 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

I think it's new, like very new. Or maybe it was in Firestorm or some other TPV then only just recently got added to the LL viewer?

It's brand new and no third party viewer has it yet, only the LL one. It only works with ALM switched on btw.

 

6 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

2. Some of us want to be able to see our neighbors, landscape, roads, etc when we look outside our windows. Do you reproduce phantom versions of building faccades and land features on the platform ( or just show a photo) or do most people just not care what they see out the window?

I have a unique solution to that problem. I build a big low lag landscape that works as a whole, cooperating with my neighbors whenever neccessary and possible. Yes, I know it goes against everything SL stands for but there is actually no law against it and LL forgot to include a "no cooperation" clause in the TOS (please don't remind them).