Gen Tab ‐ General Rendering - ApertureViewer/Aperture-Viewer GitHub Wiki

The General Tab (labeled "Gen") in the Aperture Phototools Suite (APS) houses a wide array of fundamental rendering settings, controls for graphics quality and performance, and various interface aids to customize your viewing experience.

Graphics Presets

• Graphics Presets:
  • Function: A combobox to select one of Aperture Viewer's built-in graphics quality presets.
  • Levels:
    1. Essential Features
    2. Basic HDR & Effects
    3. Shadows
    4. Ambient Occlusion
    5. Depth of Field
    6. Screen Space Reflections
    7. Mirrors
    8. Eye Candy - without Mirrors
    9. Eye Candy - with Mirrors
    • (A future "Ice Cream" / "Chocolate" level for maximum possible settings is planned).
  • Philosophy: These presets are feature-driven. Each level incrementally enables significant visual features (like Shadows, AO, DOF, SSR, Mirrors) while generally maintaining consistent underlying quality settings for already enabled features. The "Eye Candy" levels then increase these quality settings across the board.
  • For a detailed explanation of this system and how it differs from default viewer presets, please see the Aperture Graphics Presets page.

[!IMPORTANT] At the bottom of the APS window, you'll find "Graphic Presets: Save/Load/Delete" buttons. These allow you to save your entire current visual configuration (all settings across all APS tabs, including Post-Processing) as a custom, comprehensive preset, not just the pre-defined levels in this combobox.

General Render Settings - Checkboxes

This section contains toggle switches for various rendering features and optimizations.

• Enable FPS Limit:
  • Function: When checked, activates the frame rate limiter, capping your FPS to the value set in the "Max FPS" slider below.
• Enable Draw Distance:
  • Function: When checked, the viewer will respect the "Draw Dist" slider setting below, limiting how far you can see. Unchecking this attempts to render to the maximum possible distance allowed by the sim/region.
• Enable Dynamic LOD:
  • Function: When checked, allows the viewer to automatically adjust the Level of Detail (LOD) for objects and terrain based on distance, using the "Object Detail" and "Terrain Qual" sliders below. Unchecking this attempts to force the highest LOD for all objects within draw distance (can be performance-intensive).

[!NOTE] Aperture Viewer sets "Object Detail" to a higher default (8) in its graphics presets compared to other viewers. This is to prevent common issues like small avatar accessories (jewelry, glasses) deforming or disappearing at relatively close distances.

• Enable Fullbright Textures:
  • Function: When checked, textures with the "fullbright" property will render at their maximum brightness, ignoring scene lighting. Unchecking this attempts to make fullbright textures respond to scene lighting (though their appearance may still differ from non-fullbright textures).
• Enable Occlusion Culling:
  • Function: When checked, the viewer attempts to not render objects that are hidden from view by other objects (occluded).
  • Purpose: Can improve performance in complex scenes by reducing the number of objects the GPU needs to process.
• Enable Anisotropic Filtering:
  • Function: When checked, improves texture clarity and reduces blurriness on surfaces viewed at oblique angles.
• Enable Transparent Water:
  • Function: When checked, water surfaces are rendered with transparency, allowing you to see through them to some extent. Unchecking this can make water opaque.

General Render Settings - Sliders

These sliders offer granular control over various performance and quality aspects.

• Max FPS:
  • Function: Sets the maximum frames per second (FPS) the viewer will attempt to render, provided "Enable FPS Limit" is checked.
  • Range: 0 to 120 FPS (slider optimized; spinner allows higher).
  • Default Reset Button (D): Resets to the value defined by the current Aperture Graphics Preset.

[!NOTE] Aperture defaults this to 30 FPS in many presets, aiming for smooth, consistent performance and reduced system load. VSync is also generally enabled in Aperture presets. These choices are partly to mitigate a potential upstream performance issue where users might experience unexpectedly low frame rates.

• Draw Dist (Draw Distance):
  • Function: Defines the maximum distance (in meters) at which objects and terrain are rendered, provided "Enable Draw Distance" is checked.
  • Range: 1 to 2048 meters (slider optimized; spinner allows up to 4096).
  • Default Reset Button (D): Resets to the value defined by the current Aperture Graphics Preset.
• Object Detail:
  • Function: Controls the Level of Detail (LOD) factor for non-terrain objects, provided "Enable Dynamic LOD" is checked. Higher values force higher detail models to be shown at greater distances.
  • Range: 1.0 to 8.0.
  • Default Reset Button (D): Resets to the value defined by the current Aperture Graphics Preset (typically 8.0 in Aperture to prevent accessory deformation).
• Terrain Qual (Terrain Quality):
  • Function: Fine-tunes the terrain's Level of Detail (LOD) or morphing behavior, provided "Enable Dynamic LOD" is checked. Higher values attempt to maintain more detailed terrain geometry at greater distances.
  • Range: 0.0 to 8.0.
  • Default Reset Button (D): Resets to the value defined by the current Aperture Graphics Preset (often 4.0).
• Particle Cnt (Particle Count):
  • Function: Adjusts the maximum number of particles visible at once in the scene.
  • Range: 0 to 8192.
  • Default Reset Button (D): Resets to the value defined by the current Aperture Graphics Preset (often 1024 in Aperture, chosen to support common particle-based accessories like ropes/chains).

[!CAUTION] Very high particle counts can significantly impact CPU performance.

• Terrain Scale:
  • Function: Modifies the detail level or morphing distance for terrain patch rendering.
  • Range: 0 to 24.
  • Default Reset Button (D): Resets to the value defined by the current Aperture Graphics Preset.
• Sky Detail:
  • Function: Determines the rendering complexity and detail level of the sky dome (number of slices).
  • Range: 8 to 180.
  • Default Reset Button (D): Resets to the value defined by the current Aperture Graphics Preset.

[!NOTE] Aperture Viewer utilizes the full coded range (up to 180) for this setting, whereas some viewers might cap it lower (e.g., 120).

General Render Settings - Comboboxes

• Antialiasing Type (Restart):
  • Function: Selects the method used to smooth jagged edges on geometry.
    • Disabled: No screen-based antialiasing.
    • FXAA (Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing): A fast post-processing AA.
    • SMAA (Subpixel Morphological Anti-Aliasing): Often provides better quality than FXAA, potentially with a slightly higher performance cost.

[!NOTE] While labeled "(Restart)", changes to antialiasing type may apply immediately or after a graphics reset in some cases, though a full restart is the most reliable way to ensure changes take effect. Aperture enables AA in its "Candy" graphics presets.

• Antialiasing Quality:
  • Function: Chooses the quality level for the selected Antialiasing method (FXAA or SMAA).
    • Low, Medium, High, Ultra.
• Texture Bumpiness:
  • Function: Controls the intensity and perceived depth of normal maps and bump maps on textures, affecting how "bumpy" or "3D" surfaces appear.
    • Options range from Very fine (less pronounced bump) to Rougher (more pronounced bump). Normal is a balanced default.
• Max Texture Resolution:
  • Function: Sets the maximum resolution the viewer will attempt to load for any single texture.
    • Options: 512 px, 1024 px, 2048 px.
  • Purpose: Can help manage video memory usage, especially on systems with limited VRAM. Setting this lower means high-resolution textures will be downscaled upon loading. Default for most viewers is 1024 px.

Interface Aids

These settings provide various on-screen helpers and UI adjustments.

• Highlight Transparent Objects in Red:
  • Function: When checked, objects with alpha transparency will be highlighted with a red overlay.
  • Purpose: Useful for identifying transparent surfaces, which can sometimes cause rendering order issues or be hard to see.
• Show RGB-I Color Values Under Cursor:
  • Function: When checked, displays the Red, Green, Blue, and Intensity (I) color values of the pixel directly under your mouse cursor as an on-screen overlay.
  • Purpose: Useful for color picking, analyzing scene lighting, or fine-tuning colors.
• Enable Hover Tips:
  • Function: Toggles the display of small informational pop-ups when hovering over certain UI elements or objects in-world (e.g., land parcel information).
• Enable Tooltips:
  • Function: Toggles the main tooltips that appear when hovering over buttons and controls within the viewer's UI, including those in APS.

[!TIP] Aperture Viewer has added tooltips to the main APS tabs themselves to explain their general purpose.

• Enable Top-Right Group Notifications (Restart Req.):
  • Function: When checked, group notices will appear as pop-ups in the top-right corner of the screen. Unchecking this may revert to a different notification style (e.g., near-chat pop-ups), depending on other settings. Requires a viewer restart.
• UI Scaling:
  • Function: Adjusts the overall size of the user interface elements (text, buttons, windows).
  • Range: 0.75 to 3.0 (relative scale).
  • Default Reset Button (D): Resets to the system-determined default (often 1.0).
• Name Tag Display:
  • Function: A combobox controlling how avatar name tags are displayed.
    • Off: Name tags are hidden.
    • On: Name tags are always visible.
    • Show Briefly: Name tags appear temporarily when mousing over an avatar or when they speak.

[!NOTE] This "Name Tag Display" option is planned to be moved to the Avatar (Ava) tab in a future update for better logical organization. The space it currently occupies on the General tab may be repurposed, for instance, to provide options for choosing the screen location of script dialogs.