[sldev] Rendering Limits

[Stickman]

I've been attending school for production animation. Part of our
education is for how to create models for video games. This doesn't
make me an expert, but it does help me express an opinion.

Many next-gen game engines (which Second Life currently is not, though
I admit I'm impressed with how well it renders what's thrown at it
while maintaining reasonable framerates) will have the MAIN CHARACTER
of the main around 20,000 tris. Newer ones up that to as high as
80,000 tris, though generally those sorts of games tend not to have
excessively detailed environments.

I've looked many times, but have been unable to find a tri count for
different sorts of primitives in Second Life. Assuming 1024 tris on a
sculpty, the famous neckless in question is probably around 125,000
tris. But that's with a made up tri count. I'd need more info to make
a proper call.

My biggest beef with Second Life is that it does not educate content
creators on the standard limits of their engine, and what's considered
an acceptable build. So you get people creating excessively detailed
and beautiful items that an art director would fire you for.

I believe one of the fixes for this issue is for Second Life to
determine what their engine is capable of, and release some guidelines
for content creators about texture limits, primitive limits, shader
limits, and etc, and include some better tools to help them determine
how well content creators are fitting within these limits.

Yes, every computer is different. That's why this wouldn't be a law,
it would be a guildeline. Those that choose to follow it, may. Those
that choose to create 172 prim necklaces may continue to do so.
Because of the freeness of the camera in SL, a 172 prim necklace
actually has a point, where in most games it would be severe, severe
overkill.

What if SL made a "test app" that used SL's engine, and attempted to
render various polycounts, and submitted the stats and hardware back
to LL, which would give them some hard numbers to work from? Heck,
just a few special sims and an external tool that hooks into the
viewer and sends back hardware details and stuff would work. Whatever
is easiest on your end.

-Stickman