False advertising

[ChinRey]

I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry but here's a detail from the standard poster of an MP merchant - no name given of course:

(To those who don't get the point, the very definition of strong LoD is that the LoD models are solid enough there's no need to lag down your viewer by increasing the LoD factor.)

Edited November 15, 2019 by ChinRey

[Alyona Su]

49 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry but here's a detail from the standrd poster of an MP merchant - no name given of course:

(To those who don't get the point, the very definition of strong LoD is that the LoD models are solid enough there's no need to lag down your viewer by icnreasing the LoD factor)

Ditto.

I just bought a mashie that included a notecard expelling how to beef LOD up (using the Advanced Menu DEBUG settings (!) and I have my Review Trigger Finger ready to rock out with "If the maximum for users is your minimum, U R DOING IT RONG" - but it turns out that mashie has better LOD than 99% of everything else in SL (Mine set to LOD 2 and can see it from a region-and-a-half away!)

I wish long-time creators would stiop passing around 2007 information. Ugh.

[Lillith Hapmouche]

4? That's low.

Certain quite popular brands expect you to set your LOD factor to 8, at the very least. As a service, the objects come with super handy notecard instructions explaining how to handle your debug settings for your full lagtastic... sorry, fantastic viewing pleasure.

 

EDIT: Hmm. Probably not the same creator as the one Alyona has in mind. My example did lack details with sensible settings.

Edited November 15, 2019 by Lillith Hapmouche

[ChinRey]

18 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

Ditto.

I just bought a mashie that included a notecard expelling how to beef LOD up (using the Advanced Menu DEBUG settings (!) and I have my Review Trigger Finger ready to rock out with "If the maximum for users is your minimum, U R DOING IT RONG" - but it turns out that mashie has better LOD than 99% of everything else in SL (Mine set to LOD 2 and can see it from a region-and-a-half away!)

You have a point there but I did check their inworld store and the items really have very poor LoD. Certainly not "very strong manual made LOD" as the item descriptions falsely claim. On top of that, everything in the inworld store is displayed in these very narrow rooms, so narrow that you have to derender walls if you want to see the meshes at realsitic view distances. This makes me think they are perfectly aware of what they are doing and are deliberately trying to mislead their customers.

 

Edited November 15, 2019 by ChinRey

[Pamela Galli]

Always::

 

Try the demo.  
 

No demo, no purchase.

[ChinRey]

1 minute ago, Pamela Galli said:

Always::

 

Try the demo.  
 

No demo, no purchase.

Good point. But this is a full perm mesh parts store and they don't traditionally offer demos.

[Pamela Galli]

1 minute ago, ChinRey said:

Good point. But this is a full perm mesh parts store and they don't traditionally offer demos.

Then..........

[Alyona Su]

24 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

You have a point there but I did check their inworld store and the items really have very poor LoD. Certainly not "very strong manual made LOD" as the item descriptions falsely claim. On top of that, everything in the inworld store is displayed in these very narrow rooms, so narrow that you have to derender walls if you want to see the meshes at realsitic view distances. This makes me think they are perfectly aware of what they are doing and are deliberately trying to mislead their customers.

 

Wow, - I agree: intentional charlatanism.

20 minutes ago, Pamela Galli said:

Always::

 

Try the demo.  
 

No demo, no purchase.

Precisely this.

17 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Good point. But this is a full perm mesh parts store and they don't traditionally offer demos.

Which is why other than clothing, I will only purchase if I can see it in world and test LOD. Just as you did.

Edit to add: though you also should always test LOD on clothing. I've seen a few Emperors with their new clothes at more than 15 meters away. LOL

Edited November 15, 2019 by Alyona Su

[ChinRey]

29 minutes ago, Pamela Galli said:

Then..........

I know, Pamela, but this isn't a new or unknown brand. This is one of the big old, well established, well known and well respected makers. Big enough that even thoguh I haven't mentioned any name, I have to expect reprisals from the "insiders" for posting this thread (as if that ever bothered me). I'm sure they they deserved the trust they gained from their customers back in the sculpt age when they started and it's both sad and annoying to see how they are abusing that trust today.

Edited November 15, 2019 by ChinRey

[Pamela Galli]

27 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

I know, Pamela, but this isn't a new or unknown brand. This is one of the big old, well established, well known and well respected makers. Big enough that even thoguh I haven't mentioned any name, I have to expect reprisals from the "insiders" for posting this thread (as if that ever bothered me). I'm sure they they deserved the trust they gained from their customers back in the sculpt age when they started and it's both sad and annoying to see how they are abusing that trust today.

I understand but for those who may not know, we just need to repeat the solution to the problem. God knows enough of them come here to complain about their experience after not investigating demos.

[animats]

We should have sales events where everyone is encouraged to set their LOD to zero.

I sometimes do this at sales events, and half the walls disappear.

Here's some of my stuff forced to lowest LOD at too close a distance. The escalators and the animesh still look like escalators and characters. The building in the background is mostly prim, so that just works. It's OK if the lowest LOD model is blocky. You don't see that at distance. It's not OK if it disappears.

The signs next to the escalators are an example of how to do it wrong. The big flat area of the sign blanks out, and parts of the frame remain. That's just wrong. For the little stuff, we need a mesh uploader that isn't brain-dead. There are better algorithms that maintain the area of coverage while reducing the number of triangles. In free code with a compatible license, even.

 

Normal Firestorm settings, for comparison.

 

[ChinRey]

23 minutes ago, animats said:

We should have sales events where everyone is encouraged to set their LOD to zero.

Not to zero. LoD factor 0 means that only the lowest LoD model is ever rendered so effectively you switch off the entire LoD system.

[animats]

39 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Not to zero. LoD factor 0 means that only the lowest LoD model is ever rendered so effectively you switch off the entire LoD system.

Right. It's only useful for testing. It is, though, useful for that. Especially when shopping.

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

On 11/15/2019 at 10:04 PM, ChinRey said:

Not to zero. LoD factor 0 means that only the lowest LoD model is ever rendered so effectively you switch off the entire LoD system.

Sometimes that's useful, like if you want to examine your lowest LoD up close without it switching or really stress test the shape and texture.

When I'm buying FP mesh, I always do a LoD 0 check too as it's easier than derendering walls. Anytime I want to quickly know how good the lowest LoD is, LoD 0 shows me right away.

[Penny Patton]

I usually have my LOD set to 2 or 2.5 when sim building. I've found that as long as an object holds up at those settings it's generally good enough. And if you can't make content with strong enough LOD to hold up at those settings, you're just not trying.

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Penny Patton said:

I usually have my LOD set to 2 or 2.5 when sim building. I've found that as long as an object holds up at those settings it's generally good enough.

I call that lack of ambition. All my meshes are made to look decent with LoD factor 1 at at least 30 m distance for indoors objects and 256 m for outdoors ones. There's no real need to lower the standards beyond that if you know how to manage your triangles and vertices properly and, as Patch once said in another thread a while ago, there are plenty of people in SL who are struggling to get their computers to handle even that,

That being said, I'm not at all against increasing the LoD factor to 2 or even 4 on principle. That number is rather arbitary anyway and  most any value would be fine as long as everything had been optimised for it and it was the default setting. But it isn't.

Oh well. Low lag and good LoD are hardly selling point in SL so this kind of false advertising doesn't really matter much. Even so, as one of the builders who actually care about such things, it's really annoying to see how less serious commercial actors can lie so blatantly about it and get away with it. In this particular case it's twice faked even, not only do they have this bogus claim on their posters, the product descriptions also go to great length bragging about the meshing skills they don't actually have.

[Penny Patton]

18 hours ago, ChinRey said:

All my meshes are made to look decent with LoD factor 1 at at least 30 m distance for indoors objects and 256 m for outdoors ones.

I'd be curious to see some examples, to get an idea on what we consider "decent". I try to retain the basic shape of an object at the lowest LOD, but it's fairly abstract as the lowest LOD isn't meant to be seen up close. For something like a milk can I'd have it be a box at the lowest LOD.

For something more complicated like this sci-fi street lamp I try and make it so from a distance you can still make out the shape, but up close its a clump of triangles arranged in vaguely lamp-like fashion.

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Penny Patton said:

I'd be curious to see some examples, to get an idea on what we consider "decent".

I posted one example here long ago but the pictures aren't in my attachments. I suppose it was before the forums migrated an we lost all the images.

How about this for a start?

It's a house, land impact is 1:

 

Seen at 512 m distance, Lod factor, not 1 but 0.5:

 

Edit: I should probably mention, the pictures were taken with graphics set to ultra except LoD factor turned down and draw distance turned up and with my own windlight, not quite as dull and harsh as the default. The house has tild textures all the way and the shading you see is all generated, nothing is baked. That's a point in itself. With content as efficient as this even my humble home computer can handle advanced shaders and high draw distances with decent shading - and dynamic shading too. (If only we could get rid of that pesky light shining through solid objects that is.) There's a lot of texture laod to save this way.

 

Edited November 21, 2019 by ChinRey

[ChinRey]

Here's another one. Sorry about the texturing, I haven't gotten to that yet so I just slapped one on in a hurry.

Triangle counts 1248 - 466 - 105 - 22. I'll probably add a bit more to the lowest LoD.

Pictures shown at the swap points with graphics set to standard medium on the official viewer:

High:

 

mid:

Low:

Lowest

 

The reason I'll probably strengthen the lowest LoD model is that although it looks perfectly ok at the view distances it was made for, there is a noticeable switch between low and lowest. Besides, the jar is still 1 LI scaled up 2.5x...

... and that may be a bit of an overkill.

Edited November 21, 2019 by ChinRey

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

2 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

I'd be curious to see some examples, to get an idea on what we consider "decent". I try to retain the basic shape of an object at the lowest LOD, but it's fairly abstract as the lowest LOD isn't meant to be seen up close. For something like a milk can I'd have it be a box at the lowest LOD.

 

Try it with a prism shape instead of a box. A basic box is 12 tris, prism is 8 (7 if you don't need to see the bottom and can ditch that). I think your 20 tri box could come in at 13 or 14. It won't be perfect from all sides, but will often be good enough from front and sides. How it holds up from the back depends on the texturing. Whether you see the back's lowest LoD at all depends on positioning in the build, and that's something you can use to your advantage.