Educating users and encouraging content creators to advertise ARC scores on their items will be good for Second Life, but the detrimental side of this being used to point fingers could very well undermine the sense of community.

It also needs some reprogramming. The value fluctuates while doing nothing. If it's purely a mathematical counting, then this should not be possible. Either that or it is working different to what has been described.

And just a personal comment: As it stands the ARC will soon be accused of being a Linden Tool to attempt to put certain hair manufacturers out of business.

P2

I think it's useful to be able to see who is causing lag problems in a given situation. A reasonable compromise might be to only allow land owners (or group members of group-owned land) to see the figures for others on the land. Of course, sim owners and managers should be able to see the scores for anyone on their sim. This doesn't cover all cases though, since avatars on neighboring land or sims can contribute to client lag.

I can see how ARC can affect a machine that is not as strong, but until ARC relates to the true load if the individuals machine, it is not an accurate measurement.

@Kokoro, that is a big limitation but assuming that you're in a public place it doesn't really matter since the arc would have to be based on the lowest system spec of avatar's present so unless you want a system that adjusts itself each time you're near a different av with a different computer spec it's unworkable, actually that's unworkable too but it would be a nice idea.

I have been in several areas (including today) when lag was really bad. The event host politely requested that everyone remove any high-prim items/listening devices, etc. so that we could all enjoy the class. (A similar request was made at a dance club a year ago during a particularly laggy time.)

In both instances people responded positively, lag was reduced, and the event proceeded normally.

I, for one, don't want to see self-proclaimed lag monitors roaming the grid.

And what I was saying is that the ARC needs to show you YOUR score only, and it needs to be based on the ability of your computer. Currently it is based on some arbitrary numbers which do not related to actual video card performance.

As it is based now, you will get many people causing disruptions in a mis guided attempt to combat poor video card performance, disrupting the event more than those who are supposedly causing lag.

Remember, lag at any grouping of people is caused by many factors, not just video card performance or lack thereof. So this tool is flawed in several factors, since it does not address all the various types of lag production.

I have a friend with really laggy hair. My frame rate would drop by half anytime my camera was facing him, yet his newer machine saw no such effects from his hair. Should he have to change his avatar because my computer had an older video card in it? No way. I would joke about his hair from time to time, but never once did I tell him he must remove it.

Avatar script load, IMO, is more of a problem that I would support a scoring tool for it in an instant. This current tool on the other hand is just an attempt to pass the blame onto others because certain computers just don't measure up. Please remove the ability to see other users ARC score.

It shouldn't take into accout your computer's ability, because your behavior affects everyone. Therefore, the ARC score should reflect the impact your behavior has on everyone.

For people who don't care what affect they have on others, fine: just ignore people who complain when you're being rude by sporting an arc of 10K in a popular area.

ARC represents the main cause of lag in any area where there is little lag with nobody present, but lots of lag with lots of people present. As such, it's a good first-order estimate.

Most people who complain about laggy scripts don't realize that in the vast majority of cases, scripts only lag other scripts. They do not affect client frame rate other than by bling or by making inworld changes (changing textures, moving objects, etc.) In general, they do not affect sim frame rate, other than the gross number of scripts increasing memory requirements (causing more memory paging), and making in-world changes (e.g., moving objects). This is true because when a sim is busy, scripts get a fixed slice of CPU time, so additional script processing does not decrease sim physics frame rate.

People who don't care that they're degrading other people's experience of SL simply because those other people don't have a late model high-end system are simply being inconsiderate. However, they do have the right to be inconsiderate (except on the land of someone who chooses to eject them for it, though I wouldn't encourage such behavior).

This is a good tool to see who is abusing SL. Sure, the tool will be abused too; in that case, vote with your feet and move on.

I am already hearing about customers being banned and harassed for their ARC rating by ignorant people who think it is some kind of new griefer detecter.

----- (notecard) -----
The ARC of Evil - (version 1.01) - How to avoid being an ARC Bully.

Pastrami Linden blogged that ARC was designed as a "experimental feature ... [to] educating Residents about how 3D art should be made". Pastrami Linden also noted that "... these weightings, and their resultant totals, are not a perfect measure of your cost(1)"

Pastrami Linden suggested that showing the ARC value to other people will "Let social and group dynamics take effect(1)". However it seems the effect is people are being bullied based on their ARC, by people who missed the fact that ARC is "experimental" and "not perfect".

People are not bothering to check if their Frames Per Second (FPS) is REALLY being impacted by people with a high ARC. This has resulted in a culture of harassing people with a high ARC. They are being blamed for all types of LAG in the region, even script lag which is totaly unrelated to the ARC number. (2)

We need to educate people that the ARC number is a builders tool, and not some new way of detecting griefers. I have included this notecard so you can hand it to anyone who is being hostile towards you based on your ARC rating.

You can use the ctrl-alt-1 statistics window to see that putting on and taking off some high ARC items has no effect on viewer lag. FPS (Frames per second) is the measure of how well your viewer is running. The higher the FPS number, the better. Many high ARC items do not effect your FPS because their high ARC value is an error.

Appendix A - What is ARC
----------------------------
ARC (Avatar Rendering Cost) is a function you can turn on that will show a number over the heads of other people.

This number is designed as a guide to how hard your graphics card has to work to draw those people. The number is not perfect, and in practice is often wrong.

ARC is currently a function of the RC viewer and as such is deemed to be in testing. (Function that are still in testing often have mistakes in them)

Appendix B - ARC facts
----------------------------

• ARC does not caculate how much script lag an avatar is making.
• ARC does not represent how much load an avatar is putting on a region.
• ARC is not a griefer detecter.
• ARC should not be used as an excuse to ban, abuse, or bully someone.
• ARC should not be an excuse to tell someone to take off their clothing or change their appearance.
• ARC will only show a "guess" at how hard the graphics card in your own computer "might" be working to display that person.
• ARC is a builders tool to help creaters make attachments that will render (draw) faster.
• ARC is a tool to help you choose which attachments you want to use.

References:-
----------------
(1) http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/05/01/who-me-yes-you-couldnt-be-then-who-introducing-avatar-rendering-cost/

(2) https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-7182

If someone chooses to mute that avatar to spare their graphics card (and eyes and brain and soul), that is their right as well.

If someone wishes to eject, ban, or teleport home a user from land that they own, for ANY reason, that is their unquestionable right under the Terms of Service. There are nude beaches in SL that prohibit all clothing, is this discriminatory?

My point is that I disagree with this ticket very strongly. It appears to ask for the right to deny people access to information regarding the extent to which certain avatars are taxing their graphics rendering performance, in the name of preserving the rights of people to wear objects that might degrade some users' graphics rendering performance.

Look, everyone has the right to wear whatever they want to wear in SL. All that te ARC scores do is allow users to have their client calculate a number that represents the amount of resources each avatar on their screen consumes. It allows people not only to make informed judgements regarding what they will wear, but to make informed judgements about whether client-side lag that they are experiencing is caused by a nearby avatar (in which case they might wish to mute them, or move away), or whether it is due to some other cause (such as a nearby object that has lots of particle effects). Depending on the situation, being able to see other people's ARC scores can actually prevent many of the scenarios that people are envisioning here.

That being said, is there some reason why I should not be allowed to see the rendering cost for nearby avatars? Certainly it's not a privacy issue, since it's my client calculating things based on what it is being told to draw. Even if LL were to remove it, I'd expect most 3rd party clients would keep it.

And why should I not be allowed to mute an avatar if I feel that their ARC score is massively high? Residents have the right to mute any other resident for any reason. I could just as easily mute you because I don't like what you're saying, is that somehow discriminatory, or an abridgement of freedom of speech? If someone mutes you because you have too high of an ARC score, then just accept that you probably wouldn't have wanted to talk to them anyways and move on. If someone bans you from their land because of your ARC score, it's their land, they can do what they want. Would you rather that people muted or banned others based upon perceived laggyness? At least now there is a quantifiable measurement, albeit one that probably needs a bit of tweaking.

That being said, I really would like to see the additional option of seeing the total IPS output of an individual's scripted attachments. That would be far more useful as it would show the level of sim resources that an individual is using, and measures something that does in fact affect everyone equally. Contrary to what was stated above, scripts can cause overall sim lag. Script time contributes to overall frame time, increasing the likelyhood that the frame time will go over 22.2ms and thus lead to a drop in sim FPS (note that this is NOT the same as client FPS) and resultant time dilation. Similarly, sudden sharp spikes in sim IPS will also cause a concomitant drop in sim time dilation.

In closing, if there are errors in how ARC is calculated (and I believe that there probably are), then they should be fixed. If people engage in truly harassing behavior based on someone's ARC score (abusive language, orbiting or other use of griefing tools, etc), then an Abuse Report should be filed. Darling makes some good points about what ARC is and is not, and better education is probably the key here.

At the same time, I really don't see where the huge problem is, though. This ticket really strikes me as being, in summation: "oh noes, ppl wuz hatin on me cuz of my cool 'bling, plz make them stop!!!" Right-click, MUTE. It's that simple.

If someone chooses to mute that avatar to spare their graphics card (and eyes and brain and soul), that is their right as well.

If someone wishes to eject, ban, or teleport home a user from land that they own, for ANY reason, that is their unquestionable right under the Terms of Service. There are nude beaches in SL that prohibit all clothing, is this discriminatory?

My point is that I disagree with this ticket very strongly. It appears to ask for the right to deny people access to information regarding the extent to which certain avatars are taxing their graphics rendering performance, in the name of preserving the rights of people to wear objects that might degrade some users' graphics rendering performance.

Look, everyone has the right to wear whatever they want to wear in SL. All that te ARC scores do is allow users to have their client calculate a number that represents the amount of resources each avatar on their screen consumes. It allows people not only to make informed judgements regarding what they will wear, but to make informed judgements about whether client-side lag that they are experiencing is caused by a nearby avatar (in which case they might wish to mute them, or move away), or whether it is due to some other cause (such as a nearby object that has lots of particle effects). Depending on the situation, being able to see other people's ARC scores can actually prevent many of the scenarios that people are envisioning here.

That being said, is there some reason why I should not be allowed to see the rendering cost for nearby avatars? Certainly it's not a privacy issue, since it's my client calculating things based on what it is being told to draw. Even if LL were to remove it, I'd expect most 3rd party clients would keep it.

And why should I not be allowed to mute an avatar if I feel that their ARC score is massively high? Residents have the right to mute any other resident for any reason. I could just as easily mute you because I don't like what you're saying, is that somehow discriminatory, or an abridgement of freedom of speech? If someone mutes you because you have too high of an ARC score, then just accept that you probably wouldn't have wanted to talk to them anyways and move on. If someone bans you from their land because of your ARC score, it's their land, they can do what they want. Would you rather that people muted or banned others based upon perceived laggyness? At least now there is a quantifiable measurement, albeit one that probably needs a bit of tweaking.

That being said, I really would like to see the additional option of seeing the total IPS output of an individual's scripted attachments. That would be far more useful as it would show the level of sim resources that an individual is using, and measures something that does in fact affect everyone equally. Contrary to what was stated above, scripts can cause overall sim lag. Script time contributes to overall frame time, increasing the likelyhood that the frame time will go over 22.2ms and thus lead to a drop in sim FPS (note that this is NOT the same as client FPS) and resultant time dilation. Similarly, sudden sharp spikes in sim IPS will also cause a concomitant drop in sim time dilation.

In closing, if there are errors in how ARC is calculated (and I believe that there probably are), then they should be fixed. If people engage in truly harassing behavior based on someone's ARC score (abusive language, orbiting or other use of griefing tools, etc), then an Abuse Report should be filed. Darling makes some good points about what ARC is and is not, and better education is probably the key here.

At the same time, I really don't see where the huge problem is, though. This ticket really strikes me as being, in summation: "oh noes, ppl wuz hatin on me cuz of my cool 'bling, plz make them stop!!!" Right-click, MUTE. It's that simple.