Rendering Complexity / Quick Graphics

[Baloo Uriza]

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ChinRey wrote:

No, they aren't.. You can add as many and as high resolution normal and specular maps as you like to an object and they don't change the calculated render weight in any way.

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Holy crap!  Too lazy to check the source code to confirm, but if true, that's a massively glaring omission in the calculation.

[ChinRey]

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Baloo Uriza wrote:

Holy crap!  Too lazy to check the source code to confirm, but if true, that's a massively glaring omission in the calculation.

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No need to check source code, just rez a prim, check render weight, add normal map, check render weight again. It hasn't changed.

That is the readout we get in the viewer of course but there is no indication that the servers use a different formula.

According to that formula:

• A heritage bump map adds 25% to the render cost, a normal map does not affect render cost at all
• Heritage shininess adds 60% to the render cost, a specular map has no impact on render cost
• A flexiprim is 25 times as laggy a a rigged mesh
• A particle emitter has an extra 100 render weight (actually it doesn't it's slightly less than 100 per particle but even so, try to stand in a cloud of 100 000 RW worth of particles and see if you can move at all)

I think the explanation why the formula is so outdated is that render weight hasn't had any practical function until now. It has just been a number and only of interest to those who are interested in the technical side of the SL software and to a few content creators who've been trying to keep their works as low lag as possible. That has changed now of course.

A quick revisit of Oz' post before I quit this thread:

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Oz Linden wrote

Personally, I usually run with my limit set to about 100,000 - good enough to display most avatars in the settings where I spend time, and keeps my lag under control even in substantial crowds.

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It is always possible to set the limit low enough to catch all the problems but did you ever consider the side effects? I'm sure I am not the only one who would prefer to see the avatars around me when I go to a crowded place. If some of them have to be derendered because they're too laggy, well I suppose that can be a necessary evil. But I certainly don't want it to derender more avatars than absolutely necessary, Quick Graphics' quality is not measured in how well it can handle too laggy avatars but by how well it can manage to leave all the other avatars alone. And for that you need a better measuring system than the old render weight.

And of course, now that render weight has become so important, many designers will tend to go for solutions with lower nominal render weight. If those solutions aren't also the ones with the lower actual render cost, we may well see an increase in the general render cost of avatars which again means everybody will have to turn their Quick Graphics level further down...

I'm quite sure you will have to reevaluate the render weight formula sooner or later, either that or come up with a completely different method for estimating render costs. The real question is, are you going to do it now while it's still relatively easy and uncontroversial or are you going to wait until the situation force you to do it?

[Baloo Uriza]

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ChinRey wrote:

It is always possible to set the limit low enough to catch all the problems but did you ever consider the side effects? I'm sure I am not the only one who would prefer to see the avatars around me when I go to a crowded place. If some of them have to be derendered because they're too laggy, well I suppose that can be a necessary evil.

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One option would be to render an impostor instead, since that would have a render weight of 1.  You'd at least see presence, then, even if not detail.

[Poenald Palen]

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Flame Swenholt wrote:

I am going to be logging in and checking it out, but so far from what I've read, you are giving avatar makers just another migraine to now deal with. I still remember the older ARC system and if that is anything to go by, I'm fearful as to how this will work. Rendering Complexity being a threshold for avatars to be seen can be detrimental to some communities, even if it is made as a toggable feature. If the client was smart about this and did proper calculations, then maybe. I'll know more when I actually try it.

As for rendering settings, I think it's cool, but let's be honest and address the elephant in the room: the client needs the rendering engine to be fixed. We have AAA games being made rendering more complex things at higher framerates, some even multiplatform and cross-operating system, and yet Second Life is chugging behind. OpenGL can be very powerful, and while I don't know what is making the client so under powered, it should seriously be looked into. Quick Graphics is just a reenactment of the Black Knight scene from The Holy Grail.

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to be honest, I remember being at a place with over 20 avatars a while back and so many didn't load forever it was pretty funny to see chat and no avatar in a place that is all about avatars. So, we already had failure (if you have slower net connections and hardware like I do) and if you are there for an event you just focus on the people and stuff you can see so no big deal.

And, yeah, way better games run with stuff looking better but I think the issue with SL isn't the rendering engines graphics it is all the checking it does for things, if people are rezzing things and so on. Not to mention the bottlenecks with network because of all the network activity.

Yeah, much in SL seems like a monty python joke at times lol. The hampsters running in the wheels inside of the servers have a sense of humor maybe? I can see them now laughing at us and doing silly walks in thier wheels!

[Babette Ultsch]

hello, is there any description on how the complexity is caculated, i cant find any hints yet and i am puzzled, i made 2 mesh bodies, which have the same polycount one script inside, one has render complexity of about 45000 the other one has 79000 while virtually nothing has changed between these 2.. Then i am wearing a mesh body of another brand and it has 20000 complexity, while using probably 4 times as much polygons..

[arton Rotaru]

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Babette Ultsch wrote:

hello, is there any description on how the complexity is caculated, i cant find any hints yet and i am puzzled, i made 2 mesh bodies, which have the same polycount one script inside, one has render complexity of about 45000 the other one has 79000 while virtually nothing has changed between these 2.. Then i am wearing a mesh body of another brand and it has 20000 complexity, while using probably 4 times as much polygons..

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http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Rendering_weight

If one mesh has lower poly counts in lower LOD meshes than the other, the render weight will be very different.

[Babette Ultsch]

ok great thanks one thing to start looking for

[SissyAlex Starship]

this Jelly Dolls idea is dumb if you ask me

this feature will cause more rendering issues and more complaints to support  channels

I certainly hope it will not be enabled by default

we have trouble rezzing our avatars as it is, and when teleporting is malfunctioning our avatars sometimes appear invisilbe to others and we still sometimes appear as orange mist

if someone told me I looked like jelly , I would be p*ssed off

people are generally lazy when it comes to vewer preference settings, and they will have to learn about the settings for this as well, and some may have to have multiple settings when it comes to htis jelly dolls feature

I hope you are looking at all the SL bugs and JIRAs before implementing new things, or are beginning to do so please ?

from Princess Alexis Hannah Greymyst (SL Name sissyalex starship)

[SissyAlex Starship]

also continuing my last text , sorry

some might get confused by this jelly baby rendering and think it is a bug rather than a new feature and if it happens to newbies when first entering SL they may get turned off by this and leave SL right then and there

 

 

[wherorangi]

i wouldnt fret about it to much myself personally

if somebody ever says me: o.m.g. you are made out of jelly !!

i will say: oooo! what flavour ? apple, banana or strawberry ?!

and they will go: strawberry !!

and I will go: \o/ mmmmmm! yummeee!! my fav. Glad im not a purple prune

(:

[Starheart McMasters]

Just installed updated Firestorm and not only are the jelly dolls absolutely horrible, they most definitely do NOT improve performance. I increased complexity all the way to no limits and avatars look fine, actually BETTER performance even on my antique computer with a mediocre graphics chip. I like SL for the visuals, and there's a reason we go to such trouble and expense to create a look we want. Why would anyone possibly want to render these flat horribly colored things? UGLY. Can I say again UGLY. I take lots of photos, it's my favorite thing to do (ok, after building), and I take pics of groups at lots of music venues. Love seeing the incredibly detailed and beautiful avatars people create. It's our sl personality made visual. I do NOT like or want any jelly anything. I'm on a garbage free diet. Just my two cents.



 

 



 

 

 

[Starheart McMasters]

ps. I don't understand all the technical stuff, and probably many users, especially newbies, don't either. I'm here to play, not do math. It's great that some people figure all this out, someone has to, but the average user sure won't. It's hard enough just to figure out the many complex settings as it is. This may well send many of your users running back to farmville.

[Baloo Uriza]

Today I learned Farmville and a virtual reality simulation sandbox are the same thing.

[Faery Starlight]

i'm so happy we have this feature now, it prevents me from crashing when griefers try to crash sims