One new little feature of the RC viewer is that we can check our Avatar Rendering Cost, or ARC. The ARC is basically how much work your computer has to do to render your avatar, and the avatars around you. The lower your number, the less work your computer has to do, and you pretty much get less lag. The higher the number, usually the higher the lag you're going to have.
The brilliant Mr. Paine is the one who first let me know about the fun that is checking ARC numbers. I'm pretty much addicted to it now. :-p It's the only thing that keeps me from screaming about the bright blue of the RC viewer. [Which actually doesn't bother me much anymore.]
In the privacy of my home, I stripped down to watch the number drop. Hair, shoes, skirt - gone, gone, gone. I dumped every attachment I had on including my beloved AO. Basically I was one bald, naked, sad little avatar. But my ARC was 1. 1!! As I put things back on, it crept up, but I remained just under 1100 as an ARC, which appears to be fairly average. If I'm just in jeans and my favorite-of-the-moment Chandra hair from ETD, the number is around 800. That's pretty good.
Today I was digging in my inventory and I noticed I had a lot of demos of hair from Cake. I put one on and... Holy cow! My ARC shot through the roof to over 2500! What the heck?? How could a simple, sleek hairstyle do that? The flexi on the hair is just too intense, I guess. Crazy! I tried on a bunch of the demos I had and wow, it's just nuts how much of an ARC hog the hair from Cake is. If the price wasn't enough to keep me from really shopping there, the rendering cost is far higher. :-p
When you have the ARC meter turned on, you can also see the ARC of other avatars. That's pretty fun because when you see some blingtard walking your way with a red ARC on their head, you should TOTALLY scream at them for lagging the sim. :-D And, you know, for having bad fashion sense.
If you want to read a much better article about ARC, checking out Tateru Nino's post at Massively.com. As for me, I'm going out to see who I can yell at for lagging me down.
2 comments:
I was only able to run the RC for a short time (RC0 didn't work with my mighty mouse, RC1 worked great! but RC2 from today crashes me immediately on logging in! fun fun!
but in that short time I also became addicted to the ARC. I'm pretty sure my HUD-attached AO didn't add anything to the ARC FYI. BUT in that short time I think I found the biggest single violator EVAR!
Let's just say...*bp Big Bomb Hair lives up to it's name...if I remember correctly that hair and totally nakies was something just above 5000!!!!!
Ok now you have to try it and tell me as I can't run the RC now to re-check this! (if you have that hair of course)
OMG i know what you mean. i've been flipping back and forth between the RC viewer and the regular one. when i saw you the other night I couldn't see ARC so i had no idea that the little flowers i was wearing on my head were about 5000 arc by themselves !!! and it's annoying me because almost all of my precious lolita skirts are too high by far. SO the conclusion i've come to is that it has a lot to do with texture. i too have the big bomb hair and its redonk, but its a buttload of alpha textures. same goes for the lace layers on all of my loli skirts. same for the hair at cake (btw they have NO RIGHT to charge so much for that) so i think prim usage is something, but texture and specifically alpha textures have a lot to do with it.
i've about decided i'm not going to let it bother me so much. i've got a few thousand linden in cute clothes and i'm not going to not wear them, or only wear them at home. i'll try to use a little discretion, especially at a huge event, but I was already doing that, duh.
Aisuru Reiko
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