Surfing 101 - Sim and Surfboard Graphics (Textures)

Mick Lunasea is a long time surf instructor (editors note: See High on a Wave, SurfWatch March 17, 2009), former SLSA Director, and owner of Pacific Coast Hwy sims and SurfCrazy surf shops. Mick will be periodically sharing his knowledge with the readers of SurfWatch. Click on the PCH logo on the sponsor logo section to the right to link to the Pacific Coast Highway blog.

Second Life (SL) lag issues affect SL surfing, either surfing alone or in contests. I'm no sim expert, but i do know a little about graphics (texture artwork) and graphic display performance.

Notice when arriving at a sim, the viewer draw speed of your surroundings. Some stuff draws fast.  Other things take time displaying the 256 RGB (Red, Green, Blue) color pallet. No matter what graphics card you're running, you can see this. A 1024MB or 512MB graphics card loads art faster than a 256MB or one sharing memory resources with the motherboard.

Larger art files, although highly ,display slower than smaller files. A 1024 x 1024 pixtle image loads slower than a 512 x 512 a 256 x 256 256 2/3 faster and a 128 x 128 image a full four times faster.

When building a sim, the artwork involved should be taken into consideration. If lower detail is acceptable, a smaller image will do the job. (Love those palm trees but 4 x 1024 - damn they load slow). If you need to see that fly on the wall, then bigger is better.

So whats that gotta do with surfboard art? Not a giant amount of difference, but if your board's decorated with a 128 x 128 swatch instead of a 1024 x 512 image, the sims CPU and your viewer is gonna display it faster.  (smiles)  Damn, maybe I coulda made that turn instead of bellying.

HAPPY HOLLOWDAYS! GO SURFING!

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