WorldViz User Forum - Maximum Number of Avatars?

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Maximum Number of Avatars?

I'm doing some research into some upcoming projects, and trying to answer some questions...such as:
1. What is the maximum number of avatars that Vizard can support?

2. If there isn't a limit in the software, what level of hardware capability would be needed to run 100 avatars?

3. What problems might we expect to encounter at this level?

4. What could we do to streamline or reduce the impact of this many avatars?

5. How complex of behaviors could we achieve without causing a large amount of lag?

The CPU limiting factor with avatars is recomputing their mesh for each frame of animation. So to reduce this load:
>Use lower polygon avatars.
>Decrease the number of times the avatar's animation is recomputed with the avatar.updaterate() function.

Its best to use these two options on avatars that are further from the viewer.

You could also set avatar's updaterate to 0 when they are out of view. The viz.MainWindow.isCulled(avatar) returns True if the avater is out of view.

Don't know what it takes to get 100 animating avatars, but upgrading the CPU should improve performance.

Thanks, that should be pretty helpful.

-MJ

Dance party test

Here is an avatar stress test script. Sliders control the number of avatars and the update rate.

Code:

import viz

import vizact

viz.go()



MAX_AVATARS = 100

START_COUNT = 10



viz.MainView.setPosition([0, 1.5, -5])

viz.window.framerate(viz.NICE)



#dance beat

music = viz.add('carousel.wav',volume=0.15,loop=1)

music.play()



avatars = []

updateRate = 0

def addAvatar():

        a = viz.add('vcc_female.cfg')

        a.state(5)

        a.setPosition([.5*len(avatars), 0, 0])

        a.updaterate(updateRate)

        avatars.append(a)



for i in range(START_COUNT):

        addAvatar()

        

def removeAvatar():

        avatars.pop().remove()

        

        

import vizinfo

info = vizinfo.add('')

avatarSlider = info.add(viz.SLIDER, 'avatar count  '+str(START_COUNT))

updateRateSlider = info.add(viz.SLIDER, 'update rate 0   ')



def onAvatarSlider(pos):

        targetCount = int(pos * MAX_AVATARS)

        avatarSlider.label.message('avatar count: ' + str(targetCount))

        countDiff = targetCount - len(avatars)

        if countDiff > 0:

                #add avatars

                for i in range(countDiff):

                        addAvatar()

        else:

                #subtract avatars

                for i in range(-countDiff):

                        removeAvatar()

        

vizact.onslider(avatarSlider, onAvatarSlider)





def setUpdateRate(rate):

        global updateRate

        updateRate = rate * .2

        updateRateSlider.label.message('update rate' + str(round(updateRate, 3)))

        for a in avatars:

                a.updaterate(updateRate)

vizact.onslider(updateRateSlider, setUpdateRate)