Content creation - Lag reduction 101

Opensimulator: Content Creators: General information and advice: Lag reduction 101

Here are a few of the most basic and easiest ways to reduce lag.

Invisible (100% transparent) faces

The most efficient way to make a face invisible is to apply a texture used elsewhere in the smae object and set it to 100% transparency. The second most efficient way is to use the default transparent texture.

Some content creators use the default plywood texture set to 100% transparency, others use their own transparent texture with a lwoer reaolution than the default. These methods are perfectly ok, not quite as efficient as the two mentioned above but the difference is never big enough to be noticeable.

Monochrome faces

Never use a custom texture with a single color. Use the default blank and add tint instead.

Prims vs mesh

One common mistake many content creators make is to convert prim builds to mesh to reduce the tri count. This isn't always wrong but prims are by nature far more render efficient than mesh so you need a huge reduction to gain anything from it. How much depends on the build but as a rule of thumb you need more than 95%(!) reduction of the tri count to make a mesh more render efficient than prims.

Oversampled sculpt maps

Although sculpts are generally laggier than both prims and mesh and should usually be avoided, they can still have a place in a low lag environment. However, oversampled sculpt maps (that is maps with more than 4096 pixels) should always be avoided. They add a lot of unnecessary work to the viewer.