Visit a Place in Second Life That Looks Great & Has Little Lag, Even On An Old Computer -- If You Follow Some Important Steps First

Last Tuesday we talked about how Second Life, when properly optimized, can look and perform as well as a AAA game, even on older computers. This weekend, you can log in and experience this first-hand, in a small place called Nar Shaddaa - Red Light District.

It was created by Penny Patton, the graphics expert and SL's most passionate optimization advocate,

"The theme is a Star Wars planet of the same name," she explains. "Kind of a Star Wars version of Las Vegas meets Amsterdam. Part of a network of Star Wars RP sims in SL."

Penny just visited it with her near-10 year old desktop computer to take these pics, and as she designed it to be, performance was still excellent: "I was getting a solid 35-45 frames per second. When people talk about FPS in SL they tend to ignore things like stuttering, where SL freezes up for a second or two as you turn the camera. I got none of that even on my aging desktop."

Before visiting, however, you'll need to tweak some settings to get the full effect:

• Use a default avatar, or a new baked on mesh avatar, or another well-optimized avatar.
• Remove any poorly optimized attachments with lots of triangles.
• Keep draw distance low, between 80-100m. ("Some of the neighboring skyboxes are not so well-optimized.")
• Now click here to visit.

These steps are necessary, because while Penny optimized the built itself, most other SL creators do not devote as much time to optimizing their own creations.

"It's not just the mesh bodies," as she puts it, "it's the cumulative effect of all the high poly and texture heavy attachments so many people tend to wear. If your avatar is otherwise low impact you can probably get away with most mesh bodies, though there's a couple brands that are particularly bad. I don't want to name names, though." [Edit: However, this NWN post does.] "Safest bet, though, would be a default or BOM avatar."

Next week we'll get Penny's tips and tutorials for making this possible, but for now, here's a chance to experience the Second Life that's possible, if optimization were better enforced.

Once again, click here to see for yourself. And please share pics and video of your visit in Comments!

Comments

[Chic Aeon]

I so look forward to seeing the comments here.

Meanwhile, good to warn folks this is an EXPERIENCE in an ADULT region .

I don't partake in experiences so I didn't finish my journey.

That being said, I think a FAR MORE FAIR test would be to have folks go "as they always do" in what attire they normally wear (for me that is under 50,000 almost always but the idea is to compare to people's norm, not make whole new rules which leads to the "apples" and "oranges" problem.

I agree that mesh and textures are often way too heavy (and getting worse instead of better), just not so sure this is a fair "test" as presented :D.

Will be watching.

[Pulsar]

Great job! :) Sometimes I wished Linden Lab pointed at Penny's blog. I'm very glad to see her back and active here.

@Chic: yes, but I think the purpose here is to see the difference that makes an optimized place. If you have avatars that hit your performances significantly already, your testing will be masked and biased by that and you won't be able to compare the difference accurately. Especially if there are many avatars around that do the same. If you are alone, maybe the impact won't be huge, but still...
It's like you want to weight a basket of apples, but someone keeps adding oranges over them.
The advice to keep the drawing distance low enough, in order to not be affected by unoptimized skyboxes around there, has a similar reasons.
Still you could test it with both: a legacy avatar and then our pretty pile of attachments, textures and tris :D

[NiranV]

This. THIS is exactly what i'm talking about.

I went there to see it myself and i was getting 40 FPS minimum everywhere i went, deferred, shadows, ssao, volumetric lighting, ssr, everything on and with an almost 9 year old AMD FX now. That is pretty respectable. The place also looks very nice and even with quite a bunch of animesh around i've never seen my framerate hitch at all. I've made some quick pictures there too and checked wireframe as well.

The place doesn't look like any of the latest triple A titles but it really doesn't have to. It looks quite nice and unlike most of SL doesn't look like 2007 garbage cobbled together. The lighing is decent, lots of material usage, the texture usage was decently low and it was perfectly used to mask all the super low poly models around.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/487540359925334028/620299635293945877/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/487540359925334028/620300088236965898/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/487540359925334028/620300517209538590/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/487540359925334028/620300895787417630/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/487540359925334028/620302626793455622/unknown.png

Wireframe:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/487540359925334028/620301327695609866/unknown.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/487540359925334028/620302703196635167/unknown.png

I'm quite happy with what i saw and i wish this would be more common. SL could be so much faster and look nicer too.