A great sim experience?

[Zeotetra]

I was talking to a friend and we wondered what would make a good experience in a sim.
We know there are limitations in what can be done in sl, though there must be some ways to improve the sim too as well as what we can do for ourselves.

What would you do to make the sim a great experience for all??

 

[ChinRey]

• Context is first on the list. Start with one theme covering everything and only use items that fit the theme and blend in with the rest. Three of my personal pet peeves are oaks and palms side by side, waterfall springing out of nowhere and items with broken LoD models. Others may not react as badly to those specific flaws of course but it It only takes one fly in the ointment - one single item that clashes with the rest or doesn't look "right" - to ruin the overall effect.
• Load time is second. There are lots of tests how load time affects web sites and the results are quite stunning: 53% of the mobile visitors leave if a page takes more than 3(!) seconds. We can never achieve load times as low as that in SL of course but every second counts.
• Variety but not chaos. Don't try to put everything but the kitchen sink into a single build. Give every feature the space it needs to shine and a surrounding that suports it. But on the other hand, avoid monotony too. endless stretches of the same house repeated over and over again never look good.
• Organic landscapes. Pancake flat ground, ruler straight roads... Flaws like that make the sim seem dull, synthetic and lifeless.
• Movement. A few birds and/or butterflies that move around (preferably not too slow and not in too preictable a pattern) does wonders to a landscape. Maybe some simple particle flies too - they're easy to make and don't add much to the lag. In a city environment a few blinking or scrolling store signs can help. Don't overdo it though. This brings me to another of my pet peeves: animated trees and other plants. Don't get me wrong, I'm very much for them, but they tend to be more than a little bit overdone in SL. Tone thm down or soften the effect by blending in static trees and they can give a great positive effect.
• Lag. People who know me may think that is on top of my list but it isn't. It's is high on the list though. Consistency is more important than high frame rate though. Most people will adjust to a steady frame rate even as low as 10 fps or even less but once you start to get noticeable glitches and interruptions, your visitors get frustrated and start loosign their attention.

Edited August 30, 2020 by ChinRey

[Penny Patton]

On 8/30/2020 at 9:31 AM, Zeotetra said:

I was talking to a friend and we wondered what would make a good experience in a sim.
We know there are limitations in what can be done in sl, though there must be some ways to improve the sim too as well as what we can do for ourselves.

What would you do to make the sim a great experience for all??

 

1. Reduce the texture load wherever you can. This can help in several ways.

• It increases framerates for most users as once your VRAM is full fps takes a hit.
• It decreases load time. Less data to load means things load faster.
• It decreases bandwidth use which can help reduce lag.
• It can eliminate "texture thrashing". That's the nasty problem where textures constantly go blurry again after loading.

2. Limit your use of "blended" alpha textures. Too many of these can cause sharp fps decline. Instead, use masked alpha wherever possible.

3. Avoid using content with "gutted" LOD. Bad content creators will often get rid of all LOD levels except the highest and tell people to max out object detail "to see the content properly". A sure fire way to kill fps.

4. Use skyboxes for building interiors. This moves large swathes of content out of draw distance, greatly reducing the load on your video card. That's not to say you can't have the odd building here or there with the interior built right into it for immersion's sake, like an indoor/outdoor cafe or a small gas station, or the lobby of a larger building, just keep it reasonable.