Update the viewer's Quality Slider
needs info
Dyna Mole
The average user does not have the patience or technical background to optimize the viewer for his/her own computer. Instead, the viewer's Quality slider lets a user select preset values for Low, Medium, High, and Ultra --- an easy one-click starting point or default selection that works reasonably well for many people. The problem is that those preset values are now apparently out of date, given the advent of PBR and other recent changes. I suggest that we should have a review of the UI settings that should yield optimum performance at Low, Medium, High, and Ultra. Especially since LL's settings seem to be the basis for TPVs' own sliders, this should help improve the default experience for many non-technical users.
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Ziel Omizu
Since no one has replied to this in a while and I have no longer forgot about it (nor been too busy to follow up) - I do now see that the advanced settings are effected by the graphics preferences slider.
I DO however, still see places for improvement - what I said previously where I can get better performance by using specific settings for certain circumstances still holds true, and the average SL user does not know how to alter their settings to their own needs anymore.
EG: The "Low" setting is possibly good for a shopping or busy club setting where you still want to see other avatars, but isn't the lowest you could possibly go -- it gives you 3 non-imposters and 35k complexity on those 3 avatars you can see. And for certain popular activities - you really don't need to see any avatars at all, but you PROBABLY need to see more than 64m of objects in front of you (driving as the main example).
The average SL user I run into on the regular barely knows how to touch that graphics preset slider, let alone set up their own special graphics settings. Sure, we should still encourage learning -- but SL is a steep STEEP learning curve for new users who are more use to app-style programs compared to back when I joined over a decade ago. (And even then, I was still a nerd.)
Having more presets under the Graphics Preferences set up for specific uses as I described could easily be done by a handful of testers, and then provided to users within the dropdown from the get-go. Having specific settings for "Clubbing", "Shopping", "Driving / Boating", "Racing", "Group Trails", "Live Performance", etc. that are easy to find a button for would be far simpler for the general user to understand and utilize.
And yeah -- I totally DO have a notecard I pass around to folks in the SL horse community for the graphics settings that I've found the most beneficial to use for various circumstances over the years. There's a LOT of tutorials on how to set up your graphics for specific needs -- Fantasy Faire is a great example of having one! -- but I definitely wish there was an easier way to get our best settings into the hands of the masses.
cutey4u Resident
Agreed
Dana Enyo
I'm agreeing and voting for this. But a lot would be solved if avs were more aware of the PRESET Save/Load function that's been in that window for years. If you do find a combo of settings that work, it's really easy to save them for the future with a meaningful name.
(One idea: if you make changes and click OK, a little box would pop up asking "Would you like to Save your settings?" Saying YES would open the Save window and let you do that. After the first few times, you would probably check the DON'T SHOW THIS AGAIN box and not be bothered by it, but you'd know about it. I ignored that feature for 15 years, but it's priceless now.)
Spidey Linden
needs info
Can you please provide more details about specific functionality you would like to see updated? Thanks!
Woolfyy Resident
it would be smart to also add a button for "club" use working like a switch in between the custom user configuration and an optimized one as most users spend their time with problems in crowded areas that they don't know how to solve (i-e usually club = 64m or less / imposter except for friends / no mirror / no particles)
BTW it is also lacking a tool within the viewer to audit an avatar and really tell what to remove (useless huds, too much scripted items worn, useless high resolution textures etc.).
PS: The useful thing would be to have such optimization tools taking into account the user's configuration. Anyway consider that an avatar who barely knows how to use a rezzer has been for sure till now having a badly configured viewer ... just setting quality to low to solve a problem which leads to a bad display quality though it could be much better if optimization was better done.
Ziel Omizu
Hard agree! I am vaguely more technically apt for SL graphics, but I am able to get massive changes in my performance simply by using the "advanced" settings hidden by default in the viewers - because the default presets don't utilize these options.
I am on vacay right now or I'd double check which specifically are hidden behind the "advanced" button, but I know I frequently use the number of non-imposter avatars and LOD limits to increase my performance. Alchemy's quick settings has both as sliders but I think they're considered "advanced"? Which seems ridiculous to me considering their effect on performance. Meanwhile, I tend to find very little benefit to the Draw Distance setting despite its use in the presets - I sit at 125m distance usually as this is my sweet spot for visibility VS framerate since I frequently use vehicles.
TL;DR - Agreed that the graphics presets for general users need to be re-evaluated. Especially after PBR has now been released.