What you're looking at above is not a screengrab from Fallout 4 -- it's actually a fan-made tribute to Fallout-esque worlds, built in Second Life and photographed by veteran SL content creator and real life designer Penny Patton. And while you might think she shot it with the latest and greatest desktop gaming PC, she says no: "Did I mention my computer is 7 years old? My videocard is a GTX 960 with only 2GB of VRAM?" Despite that, she reports getting framerate speeds of 30-60 frames per second in this region -- quite good for high-end 3D games, and much better than typical framerates for Second Life, which are more like 10-20 FPS.
The reason this Fallout-ish region runs so well -- and the reason she took this pic -- is graphics optimization: "SL is an OpenGL videogame under the hood, you have to understand what works and what doesn't in a realtime game environment. You can't load everything up with insane amounts of high-res textures. You can't have an avatar with over 300MB worth of textures. You need to keep poly counts reasonable!"
More about this from a related Reddit thread below -- along with an actual screengrab from Fallout 4, for comparison:
Above: Actual Fallout 4
The poor framerates most people typically experience in SL and most of the lag is all caused by unoptimized content. Avatars with hundreds of MB worth of textures. Sims utilizing literally gigabytes of textures. High-poly mesh avatar attachments. All this stuff that just doesn't work well in realtime 3D rendering. Common sense information for anyone with game design or modding experience, but for a variety of reasons not common knowledge in SL so I feel it's worth pointing out so the community can develop a better understanding of how SL works, where the lag and other performance issues they experience come from, and how to improve that experience.
I've been talking quite a bit with Penny about optimization, and plan to write some follow-up posts soon. Much or even most of the poor performance people experience from Second Life is due not to lag or old hardware, but poor graphics optimization -- a problem Penny is passionate about. Meantime, here's a Penny tutorial on optimization.
We need a sim optimizing compiler. Like in the old days of game creation.
Posted by: cyberserenity | Wednesday, January 10, 2018 at 01:43 AM
Ooooh sweet! Another "expert" here to show us dumb content creators the way lmfao. SL is beyond repair, you will never get any sort of production level standards in sl. The platform has gone on far too long with its own shortcomings, you cant really put it all on the content creators. How about LL continuing to let "experts" circumvent the mesh upload with sculpmaps! And how about the sims that are 10 years old and full of this junk. It doesnt take an expert to build a sim that can hold a decent avatar count and still produce 45fps. These nice fallout-esque sims would crumble if more than 20 avatars show up and i can tell you that just from looking at the hundreds of mbs of textures in your structures, decor, and all the other non essential crap you have there. Looks great as a ghost town and thats just what it will be... a ghost town. Gday "expert"
Posted by: Nunya | Wednesday, January 10, 2018 at 01:50 PM
While I agree that SL does have a issue with people using HUGE 1024x1024 textures for everything and high poly counts on items that shouldn't have it Nunya also has a point as well LL's really should impliment ways to prevent users from uploading things that are that high impact to began with. Though I know Penny's said that very thing in the past. SL is also using an old graphics engine and has a lot of issues that come with that. SL needs a graphics engine upgrade as well as measure put in to stop people from uploading stupidly high textured high poly items.
That's said it's a bit misleading to act like Penny's computer is entirely made of parts that are 7 years old. The GTX 960 is a fairly modern card that was released in 2015. That's only 3 years ago. While I don't know all her computers specs the fact that it has a 960 in it says to me it's a low end gaming computer. Thing is that a lot people are accessing second life from computers less powerful then that even. So those people might render this plot a little better then some areas lets say (and you can't argue they won't appreciate that) They'd still be running it on low so it wouldn't look quite like that.
Posted by: Madeline Blackbart | Thursday, January 11, 2018 at 04:01 AM
Games have made a point of using 2048-4096 textures. But they have been coded and engineered to use them. And they achieve high performing frame-rates. Content creators and general users are not responsible for the software engineering. And texture memory is one of the lower impacting factors for well coded applications. Higher impacting factors tend to be in the post production code and the chosen resolution.
Something second life is extremely weak in, is handling resolution. Fullscreen support went into regression for a time in the v2 era, which some tpv's worked to enforce as still an option. Problem with that is no one teaches general users what kind of strain they might be putting on their system with SL. Given that SL is a window'd application that exists in the desktop chosen resolution. And Window's typically advises the highest possible. Which often may not relate to a native gaming performance.
On top of that, content is built around the software engineered constraints. It is an old case of you (The Lab) reap what you (The Lab) sow. There is little point in expecting users to dumb down content and creativity to legitimise the state of the engine.
It will only serve to maintain the engine in an ancient state as there would be no reason to improve it. In order for second life to grow as a virtual world, it must meet the needs of a virtual world.
If you can't have an avatar with 300mb of textures, but have a card that can handle several of them at the same time - then there is clearly something wrong with the codes execution. Because you can actually have several of them in memory without a problem. It is more about how it is being used by code, not the users.
Posted by: NaomiLocket | Friday, January 12, 2018 at 07:55 PM
@naomi Yes some people with higher end computer can run games with huge textures and it's true that the game engine second life runs on is old as the hill in videogame terms. Still the texture sizes people user and poly count is ridiculous. Even high end AAA games are not devoting a full 1024x1024 sized texture just to 1 fingernail or one button on an avatar. Also those 2048-4096 size textures are used for LARGE areas. Many MANY creators ARE using texture sizes incorrectly and ARE also uploading things with to high a poly count. Most modern games actually have proper low end LODS unlike a lot of the stuff in SL which has one triangle as the lowest LOD which is why things shatter into triangles when you walk away from them. Most AAA titles are not using ALL 1024 or higher textures for EVERYTHING.
On top of that some of these creators consumers are people on low end computers. Creators owe it to those customers to provide them with items that have proper LODS and textures that can reasonably load for them. If I'm honest most of the people complaining the MOST about the poor loading due to high textures ARE these customers and yes the creators should be expected to provide products that work for people who have their graphics set to low.
So while yes, LLs should update their graphics engine, to say the creators are not responsible for some of the issues people experience is just ridiculous because they are.
Posted by: madeline blackbart | Monday, January 15, 2018 at 01:09 AM