Washing my hair

One of the latest features of the Second Life Release Candidate allows you to see how much rendering cost each avatar around you will slow down your system. The colors range from green, to yellow, to red. The higher the number, the more costly your avatar is. It’s ok for getting a ball park figure, but it isn’t perfect. One of the things that I’ve noticed most of all is that hair makes a big impact. I thought my hair was pretty simple. Non-flexi, 53 prims and the same hair texture all around. I even went so far as to make a lot of the ends alpha since no one would see them anyway. I thought it may help the client ignore rendering those faces. Unfortunately, this added performance penalties.