LOD Setting in SL Viewer.

[Selene Gregoire]

1 hour ago, moirakathleen said:

There is one creator I bought a fireplace from last year which included 2 versions of it - 1 version with lower LI and 1 version with better LOD's.  I thought that was a great idea (though I'm sure it's more work on the creator's end).  

Many creators do that for things like decor and furnishings. In a nutshell, it's mainly a matter of uploading twice at different LOD levels.

[Selene Gregoire]

1 hour ago, smirkingdevil said:

Thank you to all that replied!  Your discussion on this topic is appreciated and helped enlighten me.  Of note, for future help to other noobs like myself:

Although the above reply helped me find exactly what I needed, my SL viewer did not look like the above screen shot until I turned on "Preferences>Advanced>Show Advanced Menu."  Only then was I able to see Advanced>Show Debug Settings.

Of note about the creator of the chair in question: her attitude went from, "Your viewer is messed up" to "I did not make that chair anyway" to "I am a creator and cannot help you with YOUR technical issues."  Won't be buying from her again.

Setting the RenderVolumeLODFactor to 4.0 helped, but still did not fix the problem completely.  I can now see the chair from outside a doorway, but if I rotate around and walk away from the door and then return, the chair is a triangle again until I move forward a bit.

The worst thing about this is: I bought the chair, I placed the chair and I know the chair exists.  My guests however, do not know the chair exists, which defeats the point of having the chair in the first place if they have the same issues I had.

Anyway, I spent hours trying to fix this problem and posting here mostly got it fixed.  Thanks again!

 

 

There's also the Developer menu... Advanced > Show Developer menu 

It's not a good idea to mess with some of the things in the Dev menu unless you have some idea of what you are doing and make note of what you do so if you run into trouble you can get the help you'll need to sort it out and fix it. But there are a few things on the Dev menu that can be helpful from time to time so it's good to have it available. That way you won't ever need it. lol

[Raevyn Addams]

1 hour ago, smirkingdevil said:

Although the above reply helped me find exactly what I needed, my SL viewer did not look like the above screen shot until I turned on "Preferences>Advanced>Show Advanced Menu."  Only then was I able to see Advanced>Show Debug Settings.

Anyway, I spent hours trying to fix this problem and posting here mostly got it fixed.  Thanks again!

Sorry about that. I always have mine enabled and forget sometimes that it's not by default. Glad you're able to get some kind of resolution at least. 😊

[Alyona Su]

3 hours ago, Selene Gregoire said:

4 hours ago, moirakathleen said:

There is one creator I bought a fireplace from last year which included 2 versions of it - 1 version with lower LI and 1 version with better LOD's.  I thought that was a great idea (though I'm sure it's more work on the creator's end).  

Many creators do that for things like decor and furnishings. In a nutshell, it's mainly a matter of uploading twice at different LOD levels.

Agreed with this, and those are the best creators because they are forward-thinking. The whole LOD issue is among the reason's I'm still a fan of good old fashioned prims. If something is prim-based and well-built (it actually looks great) I'll go with that and willing to spend the LI for it (within reason) because it will not crumble to pieces and since prims are build into the viewer, it doesn't cause FPS-hell workload (truth: fewer mesh and more prims = better FPS in my experience and I've been around for a little bit.)

[Crim Mip]

The LL viewer defaults to 2 which is the max on it's slider. With debug setting you can go higher. Most third party viewers let you take the slider to 4. Mesh models can be uploaded with detail models for various distance ranges. Doing that properly increases the LI a bit so some creators cheat and stick in single polygon shapes into those in order to lower their LI to make their item appear more attractive to buyers. Personally, I try not to buy from such creators. Any who's products can't hold up with a setting of 4 are flat out crappy makers and deserve horrible reviews on their products.

[Paul Hexem]

As someone that runs LOD 4, I avoid creators that require LOD 4. 

If max is your minimum, you're a bad creator and should burn your computer. 

[Bree Giffen]

This thread has reminded me about the LOD setting which I have completely stopped using for months. I just checked and it is set to the default 1.125. I have simply stopped bothering to look at anything that doesn't show up in the viewer. I recall seeing triangles on some store displays and have just skipped over them. What were they? Dunno. Don't care. 

[Alyona Su]

9 hours ago, Gadget Portal said:

As someone that runs LOD 4, I avoid creators that require LOD 4. 

If max is your minimum, you're a bad creator and should burn your computer. 

^ Someone give this person a golden prize, please.

@Bree Giffen Agreed! I went to a couple sales events and I spotted this: 

ALSO: If 90% of the vendor images are shown and the rest are gray - I skip them. If a creator cannot optimize the textures in their advertising I think it's safe to presume their creations are likewise over-bloated and improperly built.

Edited August 31, 2019 by Alyona Su

[ChinRey]

11 hours ago, Alyona Su said:

ALSO: If 90% of the vendor images are shown and the rest are gray - I skip them. If a creator cannot optimize the textures in their advertising I think it's safe to presume their creations are likewise over-bloated and improperly built.

That also applies if the vendors themselves show any signs of LoD issues. If they can't even make a simple flat vendor board with perfect LoD, they sure don't know how to handle more complex meshes.

[animats]

On 8/30/2019 at 12:35 AM, smirkingdevil said:

 Everything worked great, except for one chair, which appears as a triangle from just a few meters away, but pops into view if closer or sitting in the chair.  All other items purchased from the same vendor work just fine and can be seen from across a room while they are next to the bugged chair.  I contacted the store owner and she stated my “LOD” was set too low.

No, your LOD is not too low. That product is badly designed. Long story, but I'd ask for a refund. Common problem with furniture.

If you have to crank up the viewer's LOD factor, SL will run slower. Not worth doing for one crap chair.

[animats]

21 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

This thread has reminded me about the LOD setting which I have completely stopped using for months. I just checked and it is set to the default 1.125. I have simply stopped bothering to look at anything that doesn't show up in the viewer. I recall seeing triangles on some store displays and have just skipped over them. What were they? Dunno. Don't care. 

Yes. I have a Deadpool animesh. The thing disappears at less than 10 meters. Since I put movement scripts into animesh, this was really annoying. I'd keep losing Deadpool as he moved around. Or he'd sneak up on me in pursue mode. So Deadpool has been retired to a dark corner of inventory.

I've had to talk to some animesh body makers about LOD issues, and I now have two animesh body models with semi-reasonable lower LODs. They still look OK at distance. Progress on the creator LOD front is slow, but it's happening as we keep pushing.

[Coffee Pancake]

14 hours ago, Alyona Su said:

^ Someone give this person a golden prize, please.

@Bree Giffen Agreed! I went to a couple sales events and I spotted this: 

Vendor spots often have limited Li available to the stall holders. Worn clothing has no Li constraints.

Without trying the demo there is no way to tell if the model on display is the same upload as you would buy and wear. It's far more likely to be a special upload with very aggressive LOD settings in order to be rezzed on budget.

The actual outfit could easily be hundreds of Li rezzed.

14 hours ago, Alyona Su said:

ALSO: If 90% of the vendor images are shown and the rest are gray - I skip them. If a creator cannot optimize the textures in their advertising I think it's safe to presume their creations are likewise over-bloated and improperly built.

Which is not how textures in SL works.

Images are encoded as progressive jpeg 2000. Every texture loads though a sequence of steps, each with increasing detail further refining the content already downloaded. When you are in a texture heavy environment, like an event, there's a staggering number of textures that need to be fetched, easily far larger than the viewer will even attempt to downloaded simultaneously. The textures that get picked to have the next 'step' downloaded can seem counter intuitive as the viewer does not see the world the same way you do.

There is no correlation between how fast a texture loads, in a texture rich environment while your viewers download que is maxed, and the "creators ability to optomise".

There is no correlation between quality and a texture remaining grey longer than it's neighbors.

I would go as far to say that it can in fact mean the exact opposite of your presumption. In a nutshell, the viewer see's the world based on bounding boxes, bigger bounding boxes imply the thing is bigger on screen and more important. This is not only wrong as often as it's correct, it's also trivial to manipulate (with or without intent).

The number of variables between your eyes and a texture/object make it impossible to apply any meaning to the order things load, the speed at which things load, or things that simply don't load.

Even when an object or texture persistently, repeatably, fails to load. Such failures often have far more to do with other things in the scene than the item in question.

Well made content can easily be the last thing on your screen.

 

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, animats said:

Progress on the creator LOD front is slow, but it's happening as we keep pushing.

There is a notable lack of guidance with creators of all types being left to discovery by trial and error.

[Alyona Su]

11 hours ago, ChinRey said:

That also applies if the vendors themselves show any signs of LoD issues. If they can't even make a simple flat vendor board with perfect LoD, they sure don't know how to handle more complex meshes.

This is a good point, though I figure most creators are purchasing vendors they have not created.

9 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Vendor spots often have limited Li available to the stall holders. Worn clothing has no Li constraints.

Without trying the demo there is no way to tell if the model on display is the same upload as you would buy and wear. It's far more likely to be a special upload with very aggressive LOD settings in order to be rezzed on budget.

The actual outfit could easily be hundreds of Li rezzed.

Which is not how textures in SL works.

Images are encoded as progressive jpeg 2000. Every texture loads though a sequence of steps, each with increasing detail further refining the content already downloaded. When you are in a texture heavy environment, like an event, there's a staggering number of textures that need to be fetched, easily far larger than the viewer will even attempt to downloaded simultaneously. The textures that get picked to have the next 'step' downloaded can seem counter intuitive as the viewer does not see the world the same way you do.

There is no correlation between how fast a texture loads, in a texture rich environment while your viewers download que is maxed, and the "creators ability to optomise".

There is no correlation between quality and a texture remaining grey longer than it's neighbors.

I would go as far to say that it can in fact mean the exact opposite of your presumption. In a nutshell, the viewer see's the world based on bounding boxes, bigger bounding boxes imply the thing is bigger on screen and more important. This is not only wrong as often as it's correct, it's also trivial to manipulate (with or without intent).

The number of variables between your eyes and a texture/object make it impossible to apply any meaning to the order things load, the speed at which things load, or things that simply don't load.

Even when an object or texture persistently, repeatably, fails to load. Such failures often have far more to do with other things in the scene than the item in question.

Well made content can easily be the last thing on your screen.

 

That a good point with the LI example, though the main purpose of showing that is not to show how well-built that item is, but rather to drive home the reason one should never purchase unless they can see or demo in-world; worn or attached items absolutely should be demo'd, not only for fit, but also for LOD because I am actually seeing people whose dresses are doing this as they wear the in public. When trying a demo (hair, clothing, etc.) people are focussed on the design and how it fits, most never think to check the LOD.

As for textures, I am referring to the entire room of 100 vendor images, ALL are rezzed nicely, yet there are 9 or 10 that are still solid gray or still defocussed and "salt-and-peppered" throughout the entire area. Are they not all coming from the same SL Servers? Are they not all coming through the same networking connection and gear that I use? I believe it is a lot more likely they are using highest-possible resolution for their advert images when a compressed 512 pixel version will do (to put a simplified point to it).

Edited September 1, 2019 by Alyona Su

[Selene Gregoire]

1 hour ago, Alyona Su said:

As for textures, I am referring to the entire room of 100 vendor images, ALL are rezzed nicely, yet there are 9 or 10 that are still solid gray or still defocussed and "salt-and-peppered" throughout the entire area. Are they not all coming from the same SL Servers? Are they not all coming through the same networking connection and gear that I use? I believe it is a lot more likely they are using highest-possible resolution for their advert images when a compressed 512 pixel version will do (to put a simplified point to it).

https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/http_fetching_issues

[Kiera Clutterbuck]

1 hour ago, Alyona Su said:

I believe it is a lot more likely they are using highest-possible resolution for their advert images when a compressed 512 pixel version will do (to put a simplified point to it).

Could be that but don't think it always is.  I've had textures that did super strange stuff.

[Coffee Pancake]

4 hours ago, Alyona Su said:

As for textures, I am referring to the entire room of 100 vendor images, ALL are rezzed nicely, yet there are 9 or 10 that are still solid gray or still defocussed and "salt-and-peppered" throughout the entire area.

That's just how it is. Has no relationship at all to the actual content. The viewer has just decided that based on your apparent focus, locality, nearby people and objects, camera, internet wind speed and local loop tube gradient, that those grey/partially rezzed textures just aren't important right now. As indicated, these could technically be the 'better' content as it is easy to make hacky bad content that jumps the queue. For all the variables, the texture load might as well be plain old dumb luck .. or sods law.

I tend to get dragged to shopping events with friends. We often end up waiting by a vendor that has failed to rez for just one person in the group, a few minutes later and we have to pause again for a different vendor and a different person.

Most TPV's have a texture refresh option someplace to help jolly things along.

[Alyona Su]

19 hours ago, Selene Gregoire said:

https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/http_fetching_issues

Not using Firestorm. (And I do find it annoying that Firestorm users presume it's the only viewer people use. - not you, specifically, but generally).

Edited September 2, 2019 by Alyona Su

[Alyona Su]

16 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

That's just how it is. Has no relationship at all to the actual content. The viewer has just decided that based on your apparent focus, locality, nearby people and objects, camera, internet wind speed and local loop tube gradient, that those grey/partially rezzed textures just aren't important right now. As indicated, these could technically be the 'better' content as it is easy to make hacky bad content that jumps the queue. For all the variables, the texture load might as well be plain old dumb luck .. or sods law.

I tend to get dragged to shopping events with friends. We often end up waiting by a vendor that has failed to rez for just one person in the group, a few minutes later and we have to pause again for a different vendor and a different person.

Most TPV's have a texture refresh option someplace to help jolly things along.

Yes, I use the Texture Refresh if I'm curious enough. At the web sites don't do it the way SL viewers do. LOL

[Aethelwine]

27 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

Not using Firestorm. (And I do find it annoying that Firestorm users presume it's the only viewer people use. - not you, specifically, but generally).

To be fair the guidance on the link applies pretty much equally to any viewer.

Poor Lod on clothes I could live with much better than losing my hair. 

[Alyona Su]

4 minutes ago, Aethelwine said:

To be fair the guidance on the link applies pretty much equally to any viewer.

Perhaps, though she could have actually *mentioned* this. Either way, there is nothing there of value for experienced SL users, it's written for newer SL users and amazingly ambiguous at best.

[Selene Gregoire]

4 hours ago, Alyona Su said:

Not using Firestorm. (And I do find it annoying that Firestorm users presume it's the only viewer people use. - not you, specifically, but generally).

FS wiki isn't just for FS. It has valuable info for everyone regardless of the viewer they use.

I never just assume someone is using FS. I just provide info. Deal with it. Or die from it.

[Selene Gregoire]

4 hours ago, Alyona Su said:

Perhaps, though she could have actually *mentioned* this. Either way, there is nothing there of value for experienced SL users, it's written for newer SL users and amazingly ambiguous at best.

Wrong. It was written for everyone to use. I was on the team when the wiki was made. From the demise of Emerald all the way through the first few years of FS.