General questions

Does everyone in my raid need to have AVR?

Anyone who wants to see any AVR markings in the world needs to have AVR installed. For the most part AVR works fine with only you having it. Even the boss encounter addons that use AVR only need AVR installed on your computer. If you wish to explain boss tactics and send your markings for others with this in mind then others need to have AVR installed or they won't see your markings.

How do I get boss encounter warnings to appear?

Get one of the boss encounter addons that supports AVR. In addition to this you also need to install AVR separately. Currently there are two boss encounter addons supporting AVR:

• AVR Encounters adds AVR warnings for various boss abilities. It does not require any other boss encounter addon to work. It is not a replacement for traditional boss encounter addons as it does not do ability timers, sound warnings etc. It can be used with any traditional boss encounter addon such as BigWigs, DBM or DXE.
• Raid Watch 2 is a full boss encounter addon much like BigWigs, DBM or DXE. It has built-in support for AVR and also does timer bars and other kinds of warnings.

What's the difference between AVR and AVRE (AVR Encounters)?

AVR is the core 3D drawing addon. It also does manual creation of scenes and sharing of scenes. Other addons can utilize the 3D drawing functionality in AVR.

AVR Encounters uses AVR for 3D drawing and automatically displays various alerts and markers in many raid boss encounters. AVR Encounters requires AVR to work, AVR however can be used alone without AVR Encounters. Note that AVR and AVR Encounters have different authors so try to direct your question in the right place to get the best possible answer.

Why don't the markings stay accurately on the ground?

There are some limitations to what information is available to addons. Things affecting AVR the most are lack of any information about the Z-coordinates of units (the elevation), and lack of precise camera position.

Everything is drawn as if it was on level floor at the same height as your feet. When you move up stairs, start flying, jump or move vertically in any other way you'll see the markings move with you.

Similar thing happens when the camera bumps into a wall, ceiling, floor or some other obstacle. AVR only gets information where the camera should be and draws all markings according to that. If the camera bumbs into any obstacles then it will automatically move into a different position. AVR can't detect this and so it draws markings in wrong positions.

You shouldn't expect for these things to get fixed over time. The information needed to fix them simply isn't available for addons. Naturally Blizzard could make this information available in a future patch but that seems unlikely.

How much memory/CPU time does AVR use?

AVR uses quite a bit of both memory and CPU. CPU time is the more significant of these as using a lot of memory doesn't in itself really affect game performance all that much. Also this depends very much on the complexity of currently visible markings.

One thing to note about CPU usage is that AVR uses the more CPU the higher your frame rate is. If your normal frame rate is 120 then you might very well see a significant drop, maybe upto 10 or 20 fps less. If your normal frame rate is 20 then you'll see a much smaller drop, probably not even 1 fps less.

How much network bandwidth does AVR use?

During combat, nothing at all. Only time AVR sends anything over the network is when you click the send button to share a scene with others. Even the boss encounter addons don't send any significant amount of data over the network, if they send anything at all. Sharing complex scenes may send somewhere around 10 KB of data. But since this is usually done outside combat it shouldn't have any effect on game performance.

Isn't using AVR cheating?

That's up to everyone to decide for themselves. All addons ease some aspect of the game in some way. If you think AVR somehow crosses the line between acceptable and cheating then just don't use it.

Is this against Blizzard's Terms of Service?

Update: Blizzard has announced that it will break AVR in patch 3.3.5 see this thread. As far as I'm aware, AVR still isn't against ToS but it just won't work soon.

A common misconception is that AVR somehow edits WoW models or textures. AVR does nothing of the like. AVR also does not inject into the process or do anything else that's forbidden by the Terms of service. AVR is completely written in lua and operates only in the WoW addon environment. Of course Blizzard has the right to ban any addon they want, but until they do, AVR doesn't violate the Terms of Service or the addon development policy in any way.

After installing AVR my camera auto follow doesn't work anymore.

There seems to be a bug with auto follow which causes it to never automatically adjust regardless of what you select in interface options. I'm not sure what's causing this, AVR shouldn't touch that option at all. However I've had a couple of people say that AVR breaks it. I've also myself tested and ran AVR with auto follow enabled and working fine. So I'm not sure what exactly triggers the bug.

Your auto follow may work initially but after you reload ui or relog it might stop working. This may persist uninstalling AVR or even resetting Interface and wtf folders completely. To fix it run "/script SetView(3); ResetView(3)".

Can AVR do _?

Before any specific questions, some general information about how AVR works. To display a range circle or some other kind of marker on something AVR needs to know the position of that something relative to player. Most often this means that AVR needs map coordinates for that something. Map coordinates are available in outside world and Wrath of the Lich King instances but not for everything. Open your map, if you can see some kind of marker in the default UI, then coordinates for it probably are available, otherwise not. This means yourself and players in your raid, group or battleground. Also battleground flags, buildings in Wintergrasp and quest tracker locations. In some rare cases an addon could work out the location using other means. Player facing direction can only be determined for yourself, not for people in your group or party.

For boss encounters, keep in mind that not all information is available from combatlog even if location for a spell target would otherwise be known. For example, on Professor Putricide, only one Malleable Goo target can be determined even though he throws several blobs of goo.

Also keep in mind that AVR is meant to be an addon for the core 3D drawing and not much else. Most specialized functions would belong in a separate addon that uses AVR for drawing.

Can AVR mark pets?

No, pet map locations are not available.

Can AVR mark totems?

Yes if an addon keeps track of totem positions when you drop them. TotemRadius now has AVR support and does this.

Can AVR mark NPCs?

No, map locations are not available for them. Some boss encounters may have static NPCs which never move (like Yogg-Saron) and location for such can be worked out beforehand.

Does AVR work in arenas?

No, arenas don't have maps and thus no map coordinates even for people in your group. Things that don't require map coordinates still work. This means that you can add range circles around yourself and yourself only. Not much else useful can be done with AVR in arenas.

Does AVR work in instances released before the Wrath of the Lich King?

No, there are no instance maps for those and thus no map coordinates. See question above for arenas.

Can AVR mark locations of mining or herb nodes?

If the locations for those are available then yes. They are not available normally but there are addons that keep track of their locations. Such addons could use AVR to mark them. However, remember that elevation of items (the Z-coordinate) isn't available for anything at all. So if for example you were flying looking for things to mine, markers for known vein locations would be in the air directly above the veins at the same altitude as yourself.