[sldev] visual muting

[Eric M. Tulla]

Mike Monkowski wrote:
> Dave Parks wrote:
>> I just finished visual muting for avatars using impostors (muting an 
>> avatar strips them of attachments and renders them as a solid grey 
>> silhouetted impostor that only updates every 16 frames).
>
> Why avatar impostors instead of LOD?  It looks like LOD processing is 
> already there and it's just a matter of tuning it.  Given the rather 
> ugly appearance of imposters, there must be some advantage.
>
> Mike

Using impostors for visual muting allows you to display a muted avatar 
using only 2 triangles (a billboard) with minimal pre-computation, while 
still preserving form.  Using LOD would require greater overhead for the 
actual muting and less of a performance gain, especially if you want to 
preserve shape (even with a really low LOD you'll still be drawing many, 
many more triangles per frame).