Prim Equivalence Not Accurate in Upload Window

[Leviathan Flux]

I uploaded a model that said it would be 0.7 prim equiv, but in world when I rezzed it, said it was 7 prims.  I have been working to bring down the vertices for each LOD, and made a very basic physics model, but haven't been able to understand why there is a discrepency between the number in the upload window and what it actually ends up being.  Any thoughts?

[Leviathan Flux]

Oh, I just realized that scaling the model larger makes the prim equivalncy increase.  Any way to help with this?

[Gaia Clary]

That's the way it goes. Scaling up your model increases the PE. However there are some methods to get the PE down. I made a quick guide some weeks ago. maybe it still applies

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

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Leviathan Flux wrote:

Oh, I just realized that scaling the model larger makes the prim equivalncy increase.  Any way to help with this?

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It is that way by design.  Larger objects are seen at higher levels of detail (LOD) across a larger distance by more avatars.  That is extra load for the servers (to send the higher detail versions), and extra load for the PCs which see the increased detail (slower frames per second, more download lag).  So there is a cost penalty in prim equivalents when you make a mesh item larger.

The way to get that PE cost down for mesh is to efficiently reduce the triangle counts on the lower level of detail models.  Methods have been discussed on other threads in this forum.  In cases where you really need the extra detail at long view distances, you might find that sculpts are preferred.  Their cost (and those for basic prims) do not scale with size.  They ought to, but that would break existing content already out on the grid, so LL has chosen to "grandfather" the older object types when used on their own.  On the plus side, smaller mesh objects can have costs of less than one prim, so you can combine two or three and have them total only 1 PE (prim cost is rounded up to the nearest integer, so fractional prim objects by themselves still count as 1).