While mesh is a great step forward for realism and creativity while lowering prim counts, the default viewer settings may not give you the best-looking result, or you may run into occasional problems with visibility. Here are a collection of frequently asked questions and answers on how to get the absolute best mesh experience. Please note that modifying your options may result in lower FPS or visible lag in some situations – you may have to reduce your visibility settings in busy or crowded areas for optimal performance.
Q. Part of the mesh product is invisible
A. This is generally due to a cache issue. If right-clicking the area where the mesh should be doesn’t force it into view, just clear your cache and relog (cache clearing is under your Preferences). This will fix almost any mesh (or graphics in general) visibility issue.
Q. Instead of seeing mesh, all I see is a yellow triangle
A. This is a cache corruption issue. First, try clearing your cache (under Preferences > Graphics) and then relog. If the problem persists, you may need to try a clean uninstall/reinstall of your SL client – this involves not only uninstalling the program via your Control Panel, but also deleting any existing program folders left over by the uninstall process before you install a fresh copy of the program. The applicable folders are located in your AppData folder (check online for the location for your operating system) – you can try deleting the texture and object cache files in this location first, as they might have reached a size of several GB.
Q. I sometimes don’t see mesh clearly from far away, or areas with lots of mesh won’t fully load for me.
A. There are several ways to address this:
First, try increasing your “Objects & Sculpts LOD” (under Preferences > Graphics) to the maximum setting.
Next, if you want to see mesh items at their best from even further away, you can change a setting in the Debug menu as follows:
1. Open Advanced menu by going to Preferences > Advanced > check the “Show Advanced Menu” box
2. Go to Advanced > Debug Settings
3. In the Debug Settings window, choose “RenderVolumeLODFactor” from the drop down menu.
4. Change the value from the current number to 4.
5. Relog for best results.
If you consistantly have problems seeing mesh objects, you may want to consider raising the number of mesh objects you can view at once by changing a setting in the Debug menu. Warning: this may cause performance or frame rate issues depending on your system, so be prepared to lower the value if necessary.
1. Open Advanced menu by going to Preferences > Advanced > check the “Show Advanced Menu” box
2. Go to Advanced > Debug Settings
3. In the Debug Settings window, choose “MeshMaxConcurrentRequests” from the drop down menu.
4. Change the value from the current number to 100.
5. Relog for best results.
You should now instantly be able to see any missing mesh items. This setting persists through logins but may reset when you install an update to your viewer.
