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Pathfinder


I am over at Chou Chou (places) with a new dress I picked up at Plastik on the Summer Harvest Hunt (hunts) even though it says it is made by someone not connected with Plastik. Anyway the dress is great and both classy and sexy. I had stopped by Plastik when the hunt was about to start to find no prize yet, so returned this eve. This is lovely whoever made it!

OK. Fashion out of the way *wink*, this is what I really want to talk about (comment) -- Pathfinder, the new addition to our world by The Labs.

How's your framerate been lately? Are textures slow to load? I can't be alone in this as I find myself standing around forever at venues like 50 Linden Friday or a hunt (only three people there so we can't blame it on lag) and we are all waiting --- waiting --- waiting.

I have been doing some testing over the last few days. Sims with Pathfinder as apposed to those without and my regular framerate. I may be a bit more aware of this than many of you as framerate is VERY important in filming. With a low framerate, you can't do "nothin'".

My personal and unofficial tests reveal that sims where I had been getting 40 - 60 frames per second with shadows et al on are now in the 15 to 20 range. I tested SO many places all with the same hit on the framerate. Sims where Pathfinder hasn't been installed are great, right up there in the 60s or so. This was before the "long weekend" so we can't blame it on that.

If you are a sim owner there are ways to turn pathfinder off. If you have no control? Well you have no control. You can opt to move to a sim with Pathfinder off of course. I watched the cool things that Pathfinder can do -- a video put out by Linden Labs. It is impressive. But at what cost? My machine is a year and a half old but when it was NEW it was a top of the line gaming machine and cost a pretty penny. So, I am still OK. But what about all the folks with "regular" computers. They are pretty much out of luck.

There have been lots of complaints and "what is going on" posts on Second Life Answers which I contribute to from time to time. It seems like the techies have won with their new futuristic additions. It may turn out to be a great thing. But I fear we will lose a lot of folks along the way. If you have a choice, and you would like your framerate to be over 8 (honestly it is that in lots of places these days), check out the option of turning Pathfinder off :D. Your customers will thank you I am betting.

Later update:  I read on the Second Life Answers board that it might not be Pathfinder that is the  problem but some other issues that rolled out WITH Pathfinder. SVC-8155 and 8124 were the jiras noted.  I read those and they didn't seem to be "my" issue. Further research has garnered no answers. I took possession of my LEA20 sim last night. Pathfinder was happily off :D.

Pose by: Diesel Works

Comments

Indigo Alecto said…
Thank you for posting about this. This is the first I've heard about Pathfinder. I thought the problem was on my end...I could not figure out why I would go somewhere and just have to go afk and let my avatar stand there for quite some time before textures would even start to load. My computer and internet were always good enough for SL but it's becoming a lot less fun.

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