Comments on: Bare Naked Or Lagged?

By: Faerie

Faerie — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:55:26 +0000

Hi Dande. I just reread your comment that:

…”What I would really like about that is quicker way to swithc graphics preferences.”…

I’ve started using the new Emerald viewer and it has a wonderful innovation – a little slider in the bottom right corner to change your draw distance. Why did this take so long? No more opening preferences, just nudge the slider. I’m finding I’m using it a lot AND it goes down to 24m! which is really useful in busy shops.

By: dandellion

dandellion — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:53:22 +0000

Basically, yes. higher drawing distandce one has, more data is asked from the server. Sure that is not visible if there are just couple of avies on the actual and surrounding sims, but with more avies it can grow significantly.

By: Peter Stindberg

Peter Stindberg — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:30:52 +0000

Of course I know this article, but it was not clear that draw distance affects others. So basically you/Dande/Gwyn says that if I have a large draw distance, the sim is affected because it has to send ME a lot of textures and this bandwidht is not available to others?

By: dandellion

dandellion — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:58:24 +0000

Thanks Faerie, I hope this helps.
I think I wrote about that in some post, long ago, but I cannot remember which one. (But I discovered that, for unknown reason, search is not working on the site.)

By: Faerie

Faerie — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:53:40 +0000

Hi Peter, the reasons are in here http://analutetia.com/blog/anatomy-of-lag/ but I'll try and copy the essential bits. But it's really worth taking the time to read that article - I keep coming back to it again and again because it makes a difficult subject approachable. The sim will keep an interest list on behalf of each avatar. This is mostly what is in the immediate neighbourhood of the avatar (other avatars and their attachments, prims, textures). So only these get sent — and it depends on the setting you have for Draw Distance on your SL client. The lower it is, the smaller the interest list. If someone drops in a sim with a Draw Distance of 256 m, it means that the interest list for that avatar will cover the whole sim (these days, with more and more advanced graphics cards, this setting is often the default — and most people don’t know, or don’t want, to change it). If there is nothing in front of the avatar, it means there will be no occlusion, and thus the SL client will request everything in sight — contributing to a huge spike in content transfer requests, and oh yes, these will lag the sim. high ARC does not create sim lag! Seriously! A prim is just a prim, 200 prims on the ground or attached to an avatar’s head take exactly the same time to rezz (actually, prim hair will rezz first, since all attachments have priority when downloading). So what’s the problem with high-ARC prim hair (or shoes)? To understand this, you will need to know that here is sim lag, and there is client lag. Sim lag happens on SL’s grid and affects everybody on the same sim. Client lag is what you experience on your own computer. and further down: But doesn’t it help? After all, if you’re not wearing 200-prim-hair, you will have less information to transmit, right? So it will surely help a bit? The short answer is no — the difference is almost impossible to measure. As said, 200-prim hair is usually just two or three textures to download. If your SL client doesn’t ever get them, that’s all right, they’ll just remain grey, but that doesn’t “lag” you. Remember that a sim with Time Dilation of 0.5 is two times slower than real time — and 0.10 is ten times slower. If the overall difference of having everybody wearing 200-prim-hair is 0.01 on time dilation (probably it will be far less), that is hardly important. The sim will not recover from lag even if everybody detach their hair, shoes, and HUDs. Avatars will still be requesting data; the physics engine will still be having a hard time to calculate where avatars are. No, the only way to deal with a sim crammed full of avatars — is to get rid of them. But that’s not an option!

By: Peter Stindberg

Peter Stindberg — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:35:21 +0000

I am not quite sure I can follow you (dande) on the drawing distance affecting others. Can you try to explain again?

By: dandellion

dandellion — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:37:32 +0000

Changing drawing distance depending on the circumstances seems to be only way to go at the moment. What I would really like about that is quicker way to swithc graphics preferences. Some kind of pesets, so I can define my settings for laggy environment, “normal” situations, taking photos….

By: London Spengler

London Spengler — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:14:09 +0000

*blushes and timidly raises her hand, with a 256m draw distance*.
I have never ranted about avie induced lag, even if many times the only way to walk around is to leave my dear (and private) laptop and switch to our powerful desktop computer. I don’t assist to events, so never worried too much about ARC thingies.
But now the drawing distance worries me a bit. Not at events, since the organizers should use closed boots to avoid huge texture loading, and anyway I don’t assist to them, but I enjoy visiting landscape sims and being able to look at them in a “natural” way, up to where my sight reachs; never thought that I would be lagging other people only because my system can take it.
It would be nice if there was something similar to avatar impostors for prims, for example not loading the textures of small prims as they grow far from you, but meanwhile I will have to change my drawing distance when visiting a busy sim :-p

By: dandellion

dandellion — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:44:31 +0000

Yes,m that happens all the time, people are harrasing others about ARC's and particles while wearing radars and having full draw distance. Draw ddistance is especially important. Not only that it lags you (which is kinda obvious, system need much more data to download, compute and render) but also everybody around you. Because if we are, let's say, 300m apart and I have full draw distance, then I request the servers for the data I don't need but that you do, filling up the bottleneck. I asked about that two times on plurk (here and here) and as I expected, so many people were not aware of that. Now, imagine how many people ion the grid are living happily rendering everything on the sim they're on and neighbouring sims, just because their computers and bandwidth can take it, and lagging everybody?

By: Faerie

Faerie — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:34:25 +0000

Hi Dandellion, have you read Gwyneth Llewelyn’s up to date explanantion of what causes lag? You can read it here: http://analutetia.com/blog/anatomy-of-lag/

It’s very interesting because most of the things the Hair Fair organisers wanted people to do wouldn’t make a real difference, and at the same time they didn’t ask people to do the things that really would help – like reducing your draw distance.

I went there naked though (PG, but naked) :)

Did you see the post on the SCD blog where they poke fun at people for wearing things “that cause lag” but the story was written by someone who had an enormous draw distance. Talk about arrogant and ignorant.