On Thursday Pastrami Linden happily announced (seriously, check the way that the article is written, seems like Pastrami was on the special glee-inducing pills!) an interesting concept which *potentially* could have really unpleasant repercussions for avatars and businesses alike. You can now activate a feature that allows you to see your ‘Avatar Rendering Cost’ and I think this has the potential to open up a HUGE can of worms. Without going into too much detail ( check the blog for that) the more complex your av, the attachments you carry and prims that you use on your person have a numeric value. This is your rendering cost and obviously if it’s high then you *could* be having a detrimental effect on your environs. The onus will therefore fall on us to ensure that our avatars carry as little ARC as possible. Now initially my thoughts were that I can see the point in this, and it may prove to be a useful function-for as a virtual community surely we should do as much as possible to decrease the Linden lag-fests that we are so often forced to endure and spend most of our time whining about? But, then I thought again, and I must admit I’m starting to think this ARC idea could be used to stifle creativity. OK, there’s nothing wrong with prim-efficiency, but it’s a given that some of the most beautiful designs of avatars and clothing in our world are going to carry a lot of weight prim-wise. So this leads me to wonder if we are going to see situations where people are ejected from sims because their ARC count is too high. Discrimination could rear it’s ugly prim-heavy head in our virtual utopia..Of course there’s the other side to consider. We know we have amazing designers and talent in-world who will probably see ARC as a challenge that can be successfully met head-on. Low ARC could even become a selling point. But there’s a danger here..Second Life is what it is because of it’s complexity and because of the amazing creations therein. I don’t want it to take a backward step and become dull and formulaic because someone doesn’t want to exceed a set ARC. I want it to be beautiful and visually challenging and prim heavy if that’s what it takes…But am I alone in thinking that this is Linden Labs issue that they should be dealing with, rather than trying to make us sort it out? Am I being melodramatic here? Actually I don’t think I am…a pessimist might argue that we’re being thrown improvements like these to create such disharmony in-world that Second Life will eventually fizzle out, leaving Linden Labs free to move onto other projects. No wonder Phil Linden bailed….Anyway, enough with the grumpy kitty.I’m interested to know what you think so please leave a comment below. I also recommend that you check out the original article and the response on the Second Life Blog: http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/05/01/who-me-yes-you-couldnt-be-then-who-introducing-avatar-rendering-cost/#more-1960
Kittywitchin' 
I’m really fascinated how they’re laying the blame for everything slowing down on us, the users, the people who make SL what it is…
Personally, I think LL should focus more effort on making things more stable, sorting out the asset server problems, fixing the myriad of flaws in the Havok4 engine which is causing chaos everywhere and maybe even do something about the biggest gripe of them all, the 25 group limit.
Then, when they’ve fixed all of that lot, THEN they can turn around and start pointing the fingers elsewhere.
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ARC doesn’t affect the speed of servers. Only viewers. 1 ARC or 12,000 ARC – the sim doesn’t notice the difference. As far is a sim is concerned, all ARCs are the same. It only affects the performance of someone else’s PC (well, and your own, of course).
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