SL Firestorm Users Still Discovering Avatar Complexity "Jelly Doll" Feature

Here's a fun SL tutorial from Alicia Chenaux, explaining what "jelly dolls" are, why they're useful, and how to use them to decrease avatar rendering lag. The funny thing is, Linden Lab introduced this feature last May, but because most SLers don't use the company's official SL viewer, instead preferring a third party viewer like Firestorm, most users aren't even aware this feature exists:

In the newest default Viewer release, each time you change the appearance of your avatar, a small notice with your new complexity value will appear in the upper right of your display for a few seconds... There is also a new graphics preference you can use to limit the impact of high complexity avatars around you; it lets you set a maximum complexity for avatar rendering. Anyone you see that's over that limit is simplified to a "JellyDoll" - a solid color silhouette without attachments shown - saving you most of the cost that you would otherwise have had to draw that avatar and so increasing the performance of your viewer.

More on that here, and in this (incredibly complicated) official tutorial. It's a nifty and valuable feature, but once again points to the massive fail of encouraging the growth of third party Second Life viewers before the world had really gained a mass market. Now we're stuck with a world where about a third of the user base sees a community largely made of jelly, with the rest wondering WTF they're talking about -- all together, but still not seeing each other for who they want to be.

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Comments

[Iggy]

Don't go to a Big Box store at certain times of day. They can be full of Jellydolls.

Love that word. Sure to enter my vocabulary now!

[Amanda Dallin]

Jelly Dolls of Second Life sounds like either a the name of a band or a SL strip club

[Kitty Revolver]

I love this because I finally can go to events and not crash as often. Brilliant feature and so glad FS added this in.

[Adeon Writer]

One of the few good features LL has rolled out, it's started the competitive war of avatar optimization & content with low rendering impact.

[Carlos Loff]

Do they sting like the o es in the ocean ???

[kali]

how do i get good pparted mouth like u

[Shockwave yareach]

So SL is about 12 years old. Early days there were problems rendering avatrs well. So the solution of only rendering them once every six frames was employed, saying future tech would solve it.

Here we are many years later. We still have trouble rendering some avatars. And LL thinks they need not fix anything - we will just not render the avatars at all? Its atrocious how things have improved in high tech everywhere but SL

[Clara Seller]

I agree with Shockwave. Jelly Dolls isn't fixing anything. The avatar is a very important component of the SL experience. Erasing people who are too complicated is antisocial and regressive. It's also bad business. Now the challenge is to see how stripped down and conformed you can be? That's fun.

[Aimee Arcana]

Jellydolls are a bandaid on a bullet wound, the problems are far deeper than just complexity.. Sadly LL ether can't or wont fix the performance issues and just shift the blame to us.

[Zippy]

Having an good looking avatar does not mean having to go full on high poly mesh. My avatar is mesh and does not go over 12.000. I clocked someone shopping at soy and she clocked a whopping 50.000 on the scale. When I rendered her I saw nothing that fantastic or mind blowing either. So yes, poly costs are important to the grand scheme of things.I disagree with Clara's statement, this is exactly the same ideal as "I bought this high poly gacha item for X amount of linden $, i'm darn well going to display even though it bugs everyone out, is badly optimized and really not worth the amount I paid for it" (yes a lot of well known creators do this constantly). Just because it looks good does not mean its properly optimized for the grid and its performance limits. WE all need to be far more conscious of what we use as residents in SL, how much server resource we clock up. Its like being environmentally friendly.

Yes Linden Labs should be doing more to improve the performance levels of SL, but even if they did that people would "be given an inch and take a mile". Humping the servers with 2000 dpi textures for buildings There is no need for anyone to be over limit. Creators have to be far better to create items that are low poly and look good. with better optimized creations.