This will be the 6th Hair Fair I have attended and while that does not make me an expert, it does help me understand how to approach Hair Fair for maximum enjoyment.

1. Enjoy the creativity of the store interiors. This is not just about picking up some new styles from favorite hair makers, but it’s about the experience. Many store owners have decorated and personalized their stores and created wonderful sets that are worth seeing. There’s everything from shark attacks to upscale salons to a display that is ready for MOMA. Don’t deprive yourself of all the ingenuity and creativity. It’s part of the show. 
2. Check out the new-to-you hair stylists. Hair Fair gives you an unequalled opportunity to find new favorites among the old.
3. Check out old stores that may have new tricks. Some stores may have not made hair to your liking, but skills improve in a year. Folks develop new hair textures. Some are more inspired by mesh than they were by sculpts. There’s always a change from year to year.
4. Buy some bandanas. The last day of Hair Fair is always the day we take off our hair and don bandanas in order to honor and stand in solidarity with the kids who are at the heart of this event. I made three bandanas this year with the collected plurkings of my cat providing the text for the texture. 
5. Remember why Hair Fair exists. This is not just about selling hair. It is about supporting the charity Wigs For Kids that helps restore the confidence of kids who have lost hair due to cancer treatment or other medical conditions.
6. Join the Hair Fair Demo Group: Enter secondlife:///app/group/2e30d166-f3e5-e2de-ff72-b3da2d06ded2/about into your chat in-world and click and join so you can look at the demos in the peace and laglessness of your home. Also, since scripts are turned off, you can evaluate the huds at home, but not at the Fair.
7. Follow the Road: The road through Hair Fair will take you by every store. You should give them all a once over, making your list of wants and then use the specific store slurls below for when you go back with your list of needs.
8. Dress for Success. Drop your fancy scripted buds, they won’t work anyway. De-prim and de-stress with some low-impact clothing. You can pick up free outfits from DCNY at Hair Fair if you don’t have a low-lag event outfit stored in your Outfits folder already.
9. Reduce lag by ignoring other avatars. Once upon a time I focused so much on reducing my avatar rendering cost that I would feel frustrated and roll my eyes at some primstrosity with a 18,000 ARC walking by, but if you don’t render those folks in the first place, the only people they will be lagging is themselves. What you can do is go to the Debug Settings in the Advanced Menu (ctl-alt-D) and type in RenderAvatarMaxVisible and reduce it to a reasonable number like 3 to 5 people and let the rest just be invisible or white eggs.
10. Reduce lag with your graphics settings. Click the graphics tab in Preferences and hit the advanced button. Turn quality to low. Lower your draw distance to 64, enough to see what’s in front of you but not everything in the distance. Turn particles down to 0, you don’t need bling. Turn off atmospheric shaders and water reflections. Select Avatar Imposters so even the avatars you do see won’t be fully loaded.
11. Keep the detail you need. Keep the mesh detail high so you can evaluate the hair.  Continue reading →