Diagnostics Toolbar

The diagnostics toolbar is a utility for displaying information about the performance of Sansar. It is useful for measuring graphical performance, which can help you make informed decisions about how to improve performance in your scenes.

To enable the diagnostics toolbar while editing or visiting a scene, select More Options > Diagnostics from the App Launcher on the right side of the screen. While editing a scene, you may also choose Tools > Diagnostics from the toolbar at the top of the screen.

Enable the diagnostics toolbar by selecting More Options > Diagnostics.

Statistics

The diagnostics toolbar displays the following statistics at all times:

  • Rate - The current frame rate, measured in frames per second. Higher values are better.

  • Time - The amount of time elapsed in milliseconds for the last sampled frame. Lower values are better.

  • Draws - The number of draws required to render the current view. Larger numbers of draws have a larger negative impact on performance. This number changes as the number of visible objects enter and exit the viewable area. Each material on a model counts as one draw. If a material uses an emissive layer, it incurs another draw. Shadows also increase the number of draws.

  • Prims - The number of triangles (also known as primitives) currently being drawn. When visiting a scene, occlusion culling reduces the number of triangles, but occlusion culling is not performed while editing a scene so this number remains fixed. The larger the number of triangles, the bigger the negative impact on performance.

Rendering metadata modes

The diagnostics toolbar can toggle several viewing modes to help you identify performance issues in your scene.

Hide Rendering Metadata

No rendering metadata is displayed. This is the default view.

Hide rendering metadata selected.

Triangle Density

This rendering metadata mode provides information regarding the number of triangles on screen. Objects with a low triangle density glow dark purple. Objects with high triangle density glow bright yellow-orange. The higher an object's triangle density, the larger its negative impact on performance.

Triangle Density selected.

There are two modes, which are accessible through the gear icon on the Diagnostics toolbar:

Triangle density modes.

  • Screen space - Calculates triangle density per pixel. Objects that are further away from the camera (and therefore smaller on the screen) have the appearance of higher triangle density, since there are more triangles within a smaller rendered area. World space - Calculates triangle density relative to the size of the world. This mode is not dependent on the camera, which allows for easier identification of higher density objects in the scene.

Viewing triangle density of and avatar in a scene, with Lighting set low and Sensitivity set to default. Areas of low triangle density appear purple, and areas of higher triangle density are highlighted more brightly.

Overdraw Complexity

This mode provides information regarding the number of objects in the scene that are being drawn in the same space on the screen, or "drawn on top of each other". Overdraw occurs when objects are drawn in the same line of sight, but are separated by space. Objects with low overdraw complexity glow dark purple, and objects with high overdraw complexity glow bright yellow-orange. Areas of high overdraw complexity have a negative impact on performance as processing time is required to render objects that are ultimately hidden by objects closer to the camera.

Overdraw Complexity selected.

Viewing overdraw complexity in a scene, with Lighting set low and Sensitivity set to maximum. Areas of higher overdraw (where the objects obscure others behind them) are highlighted more brightly.

Wireframe

This rendering metadata mode outlines all visible triangles in the scene. This directly correlates with the scene's Prims statistic. You can use this mode to identify geometry that can be simplified in order to reduce primitive count and triangle density in the scene.

Wireframe selected.

Viewing the scene in Wireframe mode with the lighting reduced to 0. Note the density of the triangles on the avatar compared to a simple cube.

Lighting complexity

This rendering metadata mode provides information regarding the number of lights illuminating the same area in the scene (in other words, "overlapping lights"). This information is only displayed for point lights and spot lights. Areas with a low lighting complexity appear as dark purple. Objects with a high lighting complexity appear a bright yellow/orange. Areas of high lighting complexity have a negative impact on performance since processing time is required to calculate the effect of each light illuminating the area.

Lighting complexity selected.

Three point lights illuminating an overlapping area. Note that areas where the light overlaps are shown in a brighter color.

Lighting complexity mode

You can use Lighting complexity mode to filter which lights are displayed by the Lighting complexity rendering metadata mode. Lighting complexity mode can filter the following kinds of lights:

  • All lights - Includes all spot lights and point lights.

  • Shadow casters only - Only includes lights that can cast shadows.

  • Active shadow casters only - Includes only lights that cast shadows that are currently being updated, or "active". Shadow casters are active when an object in the light’s region of influence moves.

Lighting complexity mode options.

Rendering metadata settings

You can temporarily adjust the lighting in your scene to provide additional contrast and visibility while using the rendering metadata modes.

Lighting

This setting adjusts how much of the normal scene lighting is visible. You can turn this down to help the glowing metadata highlights stand out, making it easier to identify "hot spots" of triangle density or overdraw. Turn it back up again to help navigate the scene and identify the underlying models.

The lighting setting.

Sensitivity

Adjusts the brightness of the glow from the rendering metadata modes. At low sensitivity, only the most dense or complex areas are highlighted. At high sensitivity, dense and complex areas glow very brightly, but even lower complexity areas become visible.

The Sensitivity setting.

Last updated