1.20: Changing your mind about avatar lag
by Tateru Nino 
Apr 12th 2008 at 7:30AM
Filed under: Betas, Game mechanics, Second Life
One of the things that the new Second Life 1.20 release candidate viewer sports is a nifty new feature that busts some serious myths about avatar related lag. In short, by enabling the option, every avatar gets a number displayed over their heads showing how much work your PC needs to go through to render the avatar. This is the avatar rendering cost.
So far we have seen green numbers (low numbers, which are good), and red ones (high numbers, which are not so good). The amount of work that goes into rendering an avatar (now that we can easily measure it) isn't quite affected by things the way we thought it was.
A single article of clothing or a single attachment can send your avatar rendering cost through the roof. One volunteer subject we looked at had a single skirt that shot her avatar way into the red (and none of us would have expected that), but all of her complex avatars had lower costs than Ruth in that one prim skirt.
Another had a single necklace that had at least as high a rendering cost as this writer's avatar (including prim hair, rose, beating heart, prim shoes and other attachments) - even though the necklace itself was subtle, and hardly noticeable.
Here are two images - my avatar is runs around 400-500 normally. That's a comfortably low ARC (A distant avatar imposter is around 100-130 from empirical trials). The first is with full attachments, and the second with two removed. You can clearly see the drop in ARC.
The rose, while being a very high-prim attachment, actually has quite a low ARC and very little impact or lag on viewers. Removing both the heart and rose resulting in a drop of only 58 ARC.
Love 1.20 or hate it. You probably owe it to yourself to dive in and check the ARC of your common avatars, clothing and attachments.
Will we see products one day labeled like this? "Purse, scripted, 8 prims, 90ARC"
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Adz Childs said on 8:03AM 4-12-2008
I am sometimes a host at a club. I can imagine this becoming one of my duties. I could watch for red-labeled avatars, and infort them they are causing lag for everyone. I could help them figure out which attachments are the problem. On the other hand, everyone in the club my turn, point, and shout "ARC Hog!" before I have a chance to handle things civilly.
Good article. thanks.
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Tateru Nino said on 8:07AM 4-12-2008
I wonder if it will become common to have events that say "No avatars over 1000ARC" or "Maximum event capacity 20,000ARC"
Jay said on 8:13AM 4-12-2008
Interesting feature. I hope that they fix the other issues, like the double tap to run horror and the damped camera and bright colours that both cause headaches and eye strain.
I am sure they will fix these things. With the patches colour scheme it would have been usable if not for the camera issues.
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Cyn said on 8:16AM 4-12-2008
This is keen!
Did your testing look at the same avatar with different computers -- were the numbers the same across platforms?
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Tateru Nino said on 8:38AM 4-12-2008
Unfortunately, I wasn't exactly surrounded with people who were willing to run 1.20. However, one other test participant reported comparable numbers to the ones I was getting. There can be a little variation depending on camera position and whatnot - so it remains to be seen if the results are really consistent across systems and rendering settings.
Jay said on 8:30AM 4-12-2008
Ouch... 1952! I wonder why?
Looking in a populated area shows people from 110 to 3000+
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Jay said on 8:37AM 4-12-2008
I see a new game here... spot the av with the highest ARC... This one has almost 7000
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/9710/6648dh2.jpg
A host a popular and very busy Kid club
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KaraSpengler said on 12:51PM 4-12-2008
I see an ARC of 10,005 on one person!!!!!!!!
Nuclear Trefoil said on 8:49AM 4-12-2008
The meeting yesterday with Meta Linden touched on this. She stated that it was graphics card independant. She also said high costs were associated with Alpha textures on prims & Tortured prims. Be careful if you're blinged up to the max.
I noticed that my value was 1114 and that was almost all down to my hair. And I didn't think I had that impressive a hair style..
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Dale Innis said on 9:21AM 4-12-2008
It occurs to me on reading your passing mention that the same skirt was high-ARC on one person and low-ARC on others that there's a possibility that the ARC numbers (at least as displayed by the current 1.20) are actually bollocks. I hope we don't start lynching people for having a high number over their heads before we're sure that number isn't coming out of a random-number generator... :)
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Tateru Nino said on 9:22AM 4-12-2008
No, the skirt was high ARC on every avatar, though you wouldn't ordinarily think to look at it. Other, complex avatars had a lower ARC than the skirt.
Dale Innis said on 9:36AM 4-12-2008
ah, gotcha, misreading on my part. Point still stands, albeit unsupported; ARC reported by 1.20 *might* not correlate all that well with user-experience impact. Someone should do the rigorous experiments... :)
Tateru Nino said on 9:55AM 4-12-2008
Confirmed on two different systems - the Franimation 1.6 animation overrider adds about 888ARC to an avatar body (unless attached to the HUD instead) due to the animated textures and whatnot (even if it is transparent)
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Jessyka Richard said on 2:27PM 4-19-2008
Good thing I have mine on my HUD. I've been to lazy to drag the scripts into something less intricate.
Damien said on 11:42AM 4-12-2008
I had some fun with this feature on the Hairspray sim, it really highlights how laggy flexi hair is.
I recommend trying it out, you can often find counts of 4000+
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Uccello Poultry said on 11:22AM 4-12-2008
Thanks, Tateru! This is amazing! I found I'm a 164 with not attachments to clothes. Adding only my sub collar cranks the number to over 400. Dressed farily simply with and with my simplest neko bits tosses me over 1000. Clearly, I am my own worst enemy. I can hardly wait to play with some fun avies from Wyrms and Grendel's :D
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Nightbird Glineux said on 11:51AM 4-12-2008
@ Adz Childs 4-12-2008 @ 8:03AM:
Hmm.
I tend to tip quite a bit, and shop. As an avi I have quite a bit of discretionary income, so I consider myself a good customer for a club.
I'll have my own idea of what is an appropriate ARC number limit, and if it disagrees with yours (or your club's owner's) I'll take my business elsewhere.
Of course I'll have to consider the location overall. Phat Cats would need a different (lower count) outfit than most other clubs. Also, if I think that the build itself is making the sim (or is that the clients?) laggy, I'm not going to worry about what I'm wearing, assuming I stay at all.
@ Nuclear Trefoil 4-12-2008 @ 8:49AM:
"[Meta Linden] also said high costs were associated with Alpha textures on prims & Tortured prims."
Both of which can be on sims as well as on avis. So if I'm in a "discussion" about what I'm wearing, I should turn on "Highlight Transparent" to add to that "discussion"?
When are we going to get similar numbers for builds?
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Adz Childs said on 1:12AM 4-14-2008
@Nightbird Glineux 11:51AM
Hehe... feeling nervous?
Nightbird Glineux said on 3:09AM 4-14-2008
@ Adz Childs 4-14-2008 @ 1:12AM:
No, angry over the possibility of getting in an argument with some hypocrite lag-city club owner over a skirt or choker I'm wearing. If that owner is going to judge me on this number, I damn well better be able to see the ARC on his build.
Frans said on 12:00PM 4-12-2008
Wow this is great, tateru. I wouldn't mind seeing more snapshots of the attachments you tested.
A test area could be set up with a fixed camera position and pose stand.
Do you think a number like this could be made for linksets as well? Then we can really go into detail and optimize a sim.
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