Kwakkelde Kwak

Luckily I haven't walked into any people wearing referee uniforms in all these years, not inworld anyway. I honestly don't know what I might do if it ever happens. So thank you for some potential tools...de-referee does have a nice ring to it. I do blame LL for allowing these objects/attachments. Even the drawweight doesn't really reflect the enormous lag some things create. A long time ago I calculated how many triangles can be worn by a single person, I think it was about two billion, go figure.... But by now that's what I expect from LL, they just offer the platform and let the bunch of us play around. That's a valid strategy, although it wouldn't be mine. What does tick me off slightly is people saying "if it doesn't lag me, why would I care". That is pretty selfish but above all very ignorant.

Plenty of discussions on the subject on these forums, or online in other places. It would help if you had some specific concerns or questions. It's a very difficult or at least broad subject so to kick off this thread you might want to post what you want to do or what has happened, what you want to sell, etc....

As long as I don't suspect anything being wrong with the internals of my black box, I won't test it. So no, I have never used any benchmark program. I do monitor temperatures, since, as I said, I lost a motherboard to SL and in the computer after that (my previous computer) a graphics card. Those were absolutely "stop whining, upgrade your system" cases. The only program I run that puts any load on the card is SL, besides 3ds max (especially when rendering through the gpu). That's really the only task that puts both gpu and cpu at a steady 100%. Of course fluctuations are to be expected, some even big as you show. But in such a synthetic test, we aren't dealing with one or two objects that remain on screen unless you teleport out. The fluctuation you describe is made by a sudden load, created on purpose. If that would be the case in SL, we would be dealing with griefers... I also didn't look into the RAM very well before buying, but it was 16GB of 1600 Kingston, as fast as the 3770k allows. If you're interested, the part nr is KHX1600C9D3/4GX.

Derek Torvalar wrote: And to be clear, if you are referring to simply a decrease in framerate as lag then of course I do get that. I was speaking about that lag that makes being inworld an impossibility as it makes the Av impossible to even move. Put that way, I don't experience any lag since 2007 I think, two computers ago. And even before that, I could move around at 5-10 fps as long as I set the graphics to low (in the end SL did fry the motherboard on that computer). I can live with 20 fps, but given the type of platform, I don't expect people to have to buy a $1500-$2500 desktop to at least have an acceptable experience. And if potent machines like ours get 20-40 fps under (stupid amounts of) load, I'm pretty sure lots of people will get rates far below 10. The "imposible to move" lag is probably not a framerate issue at all, but a network or server issue. We can thank telecommunications and LL for the performance gain there.

Bingo!

Derek Torvalar wrote: Comparatively speaking, in the real world I would rank my system low-mid range (4820K, HD7950 x 2 I disable the crossfire for SL). However, in SL I am pretty sure it is above average. I haven't experienced lag since 2010. I wonder what you consider "real world" SL is not real and (other) games are? People using those benchmarks to compare their system to "the average" most likely have a far above average system to begin with, put together especially for gaming or even bragging rights. So those comparisons are useless in that regard. I'm 99% sure your system, and mine for that matter, are far above average. If you're going to enter a dragrace, beauty pageant, marathon or whatever contest and assume if you end up in the middle you are performing "average", you overlook everyone who doesn't bother to enter, which is of course the vast majority. If you haven't experienced lag since 2010, you either haven't paid attention, have different standards, or are lucky enough not to have encountered some of those terrible objects. With the 20-25 fps I get when wearing that mesh body, I don't really "experience" lag, everything is still smooth, but a drop from 60+ fps I do call lag. According to gpuboss, the framerates for my GTX670 (which has a stock overclock of 980 instead of 915 MHz so should be a bit faster than the benchmark shows) are significantly higher than for a single HD7950 (in optimised games I have to add). The passmark score you refer to is a lot higher for my card aswell. Although mine is older, our CPU's offer about the same performance. This isn't a pissing contest, so my point is: if you don't experience lag, neither should I, according to the numbers.

You can look up the benchmarks for my cpu and gpu. Your conclusions from that should be the same as mine unless you consider a GTX960 an average gaming card. That card performs slightly higher overall but falls behind on texture rate and especially memory bandwidth. I certainly expect the 670 to outperform the 960 in SL. Anyway, the comparison shouldn't be one computer vs the other, it should be one SL object vs another. Or in case of the mesh body I am talking about, one object vs everything else on screen and then some. 1.4 million faces (taking up maybe 100 pixels on screen) affect my performance drastically on any graphic setting. It's simply a bad product. A couple of those on screen will cripple even the fastest, latest, most expensive video card. So yes, obviously I am getting the performance my computer allows, as does everyone else. But SL could look exactly the same with objects that allow better performance, for everyone. I'm not even 100% sure it's my hardware that can't keep up, with those laggy items on screen, my cpu and gpu cool and slow down, in other words, they are not doing a whole lot. It only makes sense that the average computer determines what the norm is, I can only agree to that. For a high fps game that will be a higher norm than for a social platform like SL. If you want an SL environment suited to your computer, get your own sim.

OREKIE wrote: How do I select the polygons in the viewer? Not sure if this is what you mean, but in 3ds max the separate materials within one object turn into submaterials in a multi/sub material which turn into seperate faces in SL. Do you mean how to select those in SL? If that's the case, you can select that option in the edit menu then click a face on the object, you can then apply the texture through the edit menu. Alternatively you can drag the texture you want to apply to a certain face from inventory onto your object (on the desired face of course).

Derek Torvalar wrote: The bottom line appears to be that SL is designed to meet the expectations of the lowest common denominator. Everybody else can GTFO! All but crippling a computer by using the amount of geometry in a single, small item as one would expect in two full sims is not exactly fitting to what you say, is it? One can't expect a $500 laptop to perform very well in SL, but one also can't expect everyone to buy a $2000 desktop every other year. An item that more than halves the framerate singlehandedly, is simply a bad item. My cpu is still in the range of the fastest out there and my gpu is still a lot faster than the average middle of the road gaming card. I think I should be able to expect more than reasonable performance in SL.

For me personally, no, since my machine still copes very well. You completely missed my point so I will clarify. My computer is probably two grades if not higher than that of the average user, so by wearing stuff that simply doesn't make sense, you'll spoil the experience for most people around you. I wear the mesh body I was talking about, but wouldn't do so in a crowded place. Imagine spoiling the experience of most people around you in a library by playing loud music. Imagine spoiling the experience of people around you by throwing paper balls at them continuously. Imagine spoiling the experience of people in traffic by tailgating. That is what you are doing in SL. Advising people to "buy a better computer" is the same as telling them to wear ear plugs, sit somewhere else or move out of the way. So you create a problem and expect others to either accept that or solve it for themselves. Not only are you ruining other people's experience, chances are people will get offended and will let you know, ruining your experience in return. If there is nothing too complain about, not to many people will complain right?

Bobbie Faulds wrote: Why should I have to dial back what I wear, which doesn't lag me out on my side, because others' computers need to be updated. My weight is reasonable but I'm not going to refrain from wearing my mesh body or mesh clothing/hair because someone else is lagging out. Well, it's not just people with older or underpowered computers. Although by now slightly aging, my i7-3770K with GTX670 is by no means slow but simply can't cope with one of the avatar meshes out there. With a body containing hundreds of thousands of triangles and hands with a whopping 1.4 million (!!! that is what I'd expect in about two full sims), my framerate drops from a capped 60fps (uncapped probably a LOT higher) to an acceptable, but just that, 20-25 fps. That's simply not acceptable if you're visiting places with a lot of people if you ask me, especially since a similair body can be made looking just as good with a couple of tens of thousands faces.

Madelaine McMasters wrote: Kwak, you're my first pick for "person to get trapped in a revolving door with"! The one with the ponies? Can I sit up front?

With some slight modifications I think this will suit you much better though....

Madelaine McMasters wrote: Those huge revolving doors are a challenge. I've got to think about what to do there. The first thing that comes to mind is to whine about the lack of ponies, but nobody will understand that. Sure they will.... or at least Peter Steiner does.

Drongle McMahon wrote: "As I said, I didn't read the entire thread .... No idea if there is a solution or workaround for that too." Naughty Kwak. That's not like you. I already gave two work-arounds for the bb problem. :matte-motes-wink: I know..so much to read, so little time.... EDIT...and not a lot of 3ds max users on the forum

As I said, I didn't read the entire thread, but if Gaia has a solution in Avastar, it's all a bit redundant. Editing the normals in the dae instead of the geometry would get rid of the bounding box issues, that's why I posted in the first place. No idea if there is a solution or workaround for that too. Of course for bigger (more geometry) objects or objects with non-orthogonal normals it would be pretty much unworkable.

Drongle, I haven't read the whole thread, just up to where you came with a workaround, editing the collada file. You edit out some geometry right? Can't you just as easily edit the vertex normals instead? There aren't that many in the object in question and as I understand all the vertex normals are listed in the collada file.

Medhue Simoni wrote: A commune could easily exist in an Ancap world. Wait...what?!

Could it be that the house was mesh and some parts were set to physics type "none"? When unlinked they can't have that setting. You can show physical shapes through the develop menu, render metadata -> physics shapes. They should light up as blue.

I wouldn't worry about alpha sorting with the orthogonal mesh. Masking instead of blending is perfect for that. The question is if the skirt will be a good enough fit to use without an alpha mask and whether the skirt has geometry on the inside which you can texture.

I wouldn't count on it. If you want to make sure it can't happen, make the two floor surfaces one object with seperate materials. In case of any drift, the pieces will move together then.

As I said the colours look like inverted normals, either produced by the low poly or high poly object while baking. I can't be of any help I'm afraid, without Blender. I wouldn't be surprised if it's something as simple as a baking setting. Good luck, I hope you'll get it figured out.

Since you use the term Multi-Sub, I assume you are using 3ds Max. Models from 3ds Max with a Multi-Sub material (up to 8 subs) will translate into objects in SL with multiple selectable faces (again up to 8). No extra steps needed. Could you post some more details on what you are doing? Preferrably with some pictures. (What does your object look like, how did you assign the materials, etc)

That was my first thought, but as I said, if the (cage of the) low poly model is completely outside of the high poly model, the first geometry a ray would hit would have a correct normal, facing outwards. If that's the case and Blender still picks the geometry behind it, there is a serious issue with the program I'd say. If it's not the case afterall, the only thing I can think of are tolerance settings like you pointed out. My first move would be to make sure the cage is really 100% outside of the high poly model.

You could try....