How would you like the feature to work?

A simple expansion of the maximum size of a particle produced by llParticleSystem and llLinkParticleSystem from 4m², to at least 10m².

Why is this feature important to you? How would it benefit the community?

With the expansion of prim size caps, link distance caps, and other things, the 4m² size cap of particles seems increasingly arbitrary. Worse, it hamstrings effects for larger projects, forcing the use of more particles to compensate for lack of volume, impacting the performance cost of those effects, while often making them look terrible anyway, due to the small constituent particle sizes in the smoke/fog/whatever giving it a blotchy or grainy appearance.

Larger particle sizes would allow creators to use less particles for any given effect, as lack of volume would no longer need to be compensated for by numbers of particles produced.  In addition, the visual effect of those particle effects would be better, as they could be made to scatter wider, while still maintaining overlap (such as in a smoke plume). 

Raising the maximum usable range for particle size in llParticleSystem and llLinkParticleSystem to at least 10m² will allow creators to produce better looking products that are, at the same time, more efficient with particles, and thereby less laggy.

Attachments

• Snapshot_252 (2).png 2023-02-21 13:43:08

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  'Build Id': 'unset',
  'Business Unit': ['Platform'],
  'Date of First Response': '2023-02-22T13:48:20.025-0600',
  'How would you like the feature to work?': 'A simple expansion of the maximum size of a particle from 4m², to at least 10m².',
  'ReOpened Count': 0.0,
  'Severity': 'Unset',
  'Target Viewer Version': 'viewer-development',
  'Why is this feature important to you? How would it benefit the community?': 'With the expansion of prim size caps, link distance caps, and other things, the 4m² size cap of particles seems increasingly arbitrary.  Worse, it hamstrings effects for larger projects, forcing the use of more particles to compensate for lack of volume, impacting the performance cost of those effects, while often making them look terrible anyway, due to the small constituent particle sizes in the smoke/fog/whatever giving it a blotchy or grainy appearance.',
}