type of server influencing performance?

[Proxima Saenz]

Hello hello,

 

On a RP sim that i love to RP and spend my time on, I am lagging -a lot-

Whenever I want to RP there, I have to switch to a 3rd party viewer, turn my graphics to LOW and try not to zoom around too much.

I was told, this had to do with the type of server the sim runs on. There are a few, Le Tigre, Bluesteel and another one. Depending on which one the sim is based, decides how much lag the user experiences. The sim currently runs on the ''older'' one, which affects performance dramatically, yet not the sim's price...

Is this true? Is it even possible that there is such a big difference between the servers?

 

Friendly greetings ;)

 

Proxima

[Qie Niangao]

Extremely unlikely, for if there were ever a dramatic difference in performance among the sim software versions, the weekly deploy thread (currently here) would echo with wailing and gnashing of teeth.

There are different classes of server hardware, and if a sim is (temporarily?) hosted on a lesser-than-needed server, presumably performance would suffer, but that doesn't seem to happen much.

Or, just maybe, this particular sim is actually a Homestead sim? Seems unlikely for a RP sim, however, because they have strict avatar-count limits, among others.

Finally, if the lag improves when you switch to a TPV and adjust your graphics settings, then it's not the sim itself that's lagging, but rather it's content on the sim that's lagging your viewer.

(Theoretically, there could be something sim-version-specific that's causing extra content to be delivered to viewers, or delivered extra slowly, or in the wrong order, etc., etc., but that would trigger the aforementioned wailing and gnashing of teeth.)

[Ayesha Askham]

Proxima

While what Qie says is largely true, what I have found is that certain sim servers are better than others, and some really do seem to struggle with the latest SSA code updates from LL.

It is widely held that the Mainland servers are older and less able than the latest class of server used for private island estates, while Homesteads can end up on a range of classes, some of which are faster than others.

This tends to result in poorer (slower and less reliable) script performance on certain servers.  I can speak from personal experience that restarting my homestead sim on some occasions has markedly improved operational lag.

It also seems that some updates to server software work better than others for some classes of script.  Why that should be I do not know, but I have seen and experienced that.

After some rolls it has been a case of "whoops, time for a restart" or just "grit your teeth and bear it, it will get better", dependent on what aspect of server-function the new software addresses.

Now my homestead is not running pathfinding code, nor is it heavily scripted, so if either of those points are true your issues will be greater.  It is simply true that homesteads do not have the memory available to run a large number of script events simultaneously and the queue can be problematic as scripts wait their turn to fire.

That is my "take" on the sim-server issue; don't take my word as gospel, I do not know that much, all I can repeat is that my views come from experience.

What I WOULD say is that the Server, ie Main Server or Release Candidate (Bluesteel, LeTigre or Magnum), is not an arbiter of the sim-server quality, but the software running may be more or less good.  Some RC code never makes it to Main Server after all.

 

[Perrie Juran]

---

Ayesha Askham wrote:

Proxima

While what Qie says is largely true, what I have found is that certain sim servers are better than others, and some really do seem to struggle with the latest SSA code updates from LL.

It is widely held that the Mainland servers are older and less able than the latest class of server used for private island estates, while Homesteads can end up on a range of classes, some of which are faster than others.

<snip>

---

By servers here are you referring to the Hardware?

Because perusing Tyche Sheperd's Grid Status Survey, all the Mainland SIMs I checked were on Class 801 servers.  Random browsing I was finding Estates on 701, 702 & 801.  

http://www.gridsurvey.com/index.php

[Ayesha Askham]

Perrie

Fair enough, my info was clearly out of date...I hadn't seen the most recent survey data.  The observations I have made remain true, so I can ony assume that the code being run affects region performance, though of course it depends mightily on what other regions are being "served".

It is also true to say that many TPVs are not optimised for any new code that LL might deploy until they release it to the TPV devs, so they (TPVs) are often several stages behind in optimisation.  That can also have a large bearing on script to viewer communication via the region.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Ayesha Askham wrote:

Perrie

Fair enough, my info was clearly out of date...I hadn't seen the most recent survey data.  The observations I have made remain true, so I can ony assume that the code being run affects region performance, though of course it depends mightily on what other regions are being "served".

It is also true to say that many TPVs are not optimised for any new code that LL might deploy until they release it to the TPV devs, so they (TPVs) are often several stages behind in optimisation.  That can also have a large bearing on script to viewer communication via the region.

---

My knowledge is really only cursory.  I don't know a whole lot.

Some things are almost inexplicable.  When mesh first went live I tried four different Viewers.  On the Official Viewer I was getting 1/4 of the frame rate that I was getting on a TPV.  One Fourth!

There could be a bug in the code on the OP's SIM.  Maybe there is something wrong with the hardware.

Two years ago had a problem with my SIM.  It kept going off line.   The Linden who responded to the support ticket said they did some optimizations which also included changing it from LeTigre to Main Channel. 

As much as we'd like to think this has all got to be simple it really is a heck of a lot of data with ton's of variables that is being dealt with.

I know from your posts you've had more than your fair share of problems.   And I really do hope that some one finds the magic bullet that fixes yours.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

Just a quick thought, is the sim you RP on a scriptastic lag fest for anyone else? Most RP sims have more scripts running than carter has little yellow liver pills.

[Qie Niangao]

---

Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

Just a quick thought, is the sim you RP on a scriptastic lag fest for anyone else? Most RP sims have more scripts running than carter has little yellow liver pills.

---

Yeah, but two things: It's hard to lag a sim with scripts. Not impossible, but surprisingly difficult, especially these days. Even in super-laggy sims, you'll often find spare time in the frame, which means that there's even more time that could be spent on scripts (and anything else). And in those cases, the sim itself is not lagging, but rather its content is causing viewers to lag.

And that's the second thing: The OP reports that cutting back graphics preferences and using a TPV somewhat improves the situation. That simply wouldn't matter at all if the lag were sim-side.

God knows there are still overscripted RP sims, especially when infested by meter- and other attachment-crazed RP avatars... but there are even more RP sims full of high-resolution textures and hyper-complex object geometry that downloads slowly and lags rendering on all but the fastest GPUs. That's what I strongly suspect is happening in this case -- and might be confirmed by a little on-site snooping with the statistics bar open.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

---

Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

Just a quick thought, is the sim you RP on a scriptastic lag fest for anyone else? Most RP sims have more scripts running than carter has little yellow liver pills.

---

Yeah, but two things: It's hard to lag a sim with scripts. Not impossible, but surprisingly difficult, especially these days. Even in super-laggy sims, you'll often find spare time in the frame, which means that there's even more time that could be spent on scripts (and anything else). And in those cases, the sim itself is not lagging, but rather its

content

is causing

viewers

to lag.

And that's the second thing: The OP reports that cutting back graphics preferences and using a TPV somewhat improves the situation. That simply wouldn't matter at all if the lag were sim-side.

God knows there are still overscripted RP sims, especially when infested by meter- and other attachment-crazed RP avatars... but there are even more RP sims full of high-resolution textures and hyper-complex object geometry that downloads slowly and lags rendering on all but the fastest GPUs. That's what I strongly suspect is happening in this case -- and might be confirmed by a little on-site snooping with the statistics bar open.

---

Ibet there are a ton of over scripted lag monster weapon and hud bearing people running around. When i say sim side i mean thing on the sim that will lag each person differently. I have been in laggy sims that had no affect on my enjoyment but others could barely move.

[Qie Niangao]

---

Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

Ibet there are a ton of over scripted lag monster weapon and hud bearing people running around. When i say sim side i mean thing on the sim that will lag each person differently. I have been in laggy sims that had no affect on my enjoyment but others could barely move.

---

But then those laggy sims weren't laggy because of scripts; scripts necessarily affect everybody the same because they're affecting the sim itself.

That's slightly overstating the case, and the exceptions are informative: Scripts can affect different users differently if the scripts' effects are differentially laggy on different viewers. That is, they're not lagging the sim itself any differently between users (that's not even meaningful), but rather those scripts are doing stuff like causing object updates that may lag some viewers more than others, because of different network latencies, graphics processing capacity, memory availability, etc., etc.

That's typically not the problem with combat meters and sim damage systems; those things just add to overall sim script demand without affecting different users any differently. On the other hand, if the sim has a lot of animated textures, particles, smooth-rotating objects (set by scripts that may not even be present anymore but still demanding a lot of rendering effort), or pathfinding and other keyframed motion (requiring scripts but using very little script time -- and sending tons of object updates), the sim may have spare time to burn and yet users with limited capacity can be swamped compared to others with better machines or network connections. Same with downloading lots of fat textures and other building practices.

[Proxima Saenz]

Greetings everyone.

 

Thank you for the replies. Its helped a lot already.

For information's sake:

* I appear to be the only one that lags a -lot- on the sim. Perhaps there are a few others. Someone from that sim told me once the lag is caused because of the outdated server the sim is running on

* Lag comes in after about a minute or 5 on the sim.

* Sliding the graphics down helps for about 10 mins.. then the sim lags the same amount as it did on high graphics.

* Its a full sim.

* I want to stress that on -other- sims I don't lag.

 

It could be that due the higher population the -avatars- on that sim cause the lag?

[Drake1 Nightfire]

Do us a favor?

Log on.. go to Help>about Second life/Firestorm/whatever and copy paste that info here?

It would give us the specs of your machine and SL settings.

[Proxima Saenz]

Firestorm 4.6.1 (40478) Mar 10 2014 05:38:17 (Firestorm-Releasex64) with OpenSimulator support
Release Notes

CPU: AMD FX-4170 Quad-Core Processor             (4214.13 MHz)
Memory: 4043 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-bit  (Build 9600)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 560 Ti/PCIe/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 9.18.0013.3523
OpenGL Version: 4.4.0

RestrainedLove API: (disabled)
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.24.0 OpenSSL/1.0.1e zlib/1.2.6 c-ares/1.10.0
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.3.2
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Ex 4.44.26
Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded)
Voice Server Version: Not Connected
Settings mode: Firestorm
Viewer Skin: Firestorm (Grey)
Font Used: Deja Vu (96)
Draw distance: 128
Bandwidth: 500
LOD factor: 2
Render quality: High (5/7)
Texture memory: 512 MB (1)
Built with MSVC version 1600

[Qie Niangao]

---

It could be that due the higher population the -avatars- on that sim cause the lag?

---

Yeah, it sure could, but again that should affect everybody else more or less the same. Well, you'd want "Avatar imposters" enabled in your graphics preferences, and probably "Hardware skinning", but they probably already are; without them, yeah, you'd get more avatar-rendering lag than others who had those options enabled. (I'd be very surprised, however, if that's the problem here.)

This does seem worth pursuing further because your PC configuration looks pretty good to me; I'm sure not seeing any obvious reason why you should be experiencing disproportionate lag. It may be that a site visit would give some clues (not to pry)... or, I wonder, have you compared actual viewer framerates with others who claim not to be experiencing the extreme lag on that sim?

[Perrie Juran]

---

Proxima Saenz wrote:

Firestorm 4.6.1 (40478) Mar 10 2014 05:38:17 (Firestorm-Releasex64) with

OpenSimulator support

Release Notes

</SNIP>

---

Ummmmm, are you logging into SL with the OPEN SIM version?

Or are you asking us about problems you are having on OpenSim locations? 

Was that what the original "different servers" question was about?

(Can one even log into SL with the Open Sim version?)

 

[Proxima Saenz]

It's the -latest- firestorm viewer that I only just downloaded (today).

The lag I experience was when I was using the previous version of firstorm. With the new version I haven't tested yet if lag got worse or not.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Proxima Saenz wrote:

It's the -latest- firestorm viewer that I only just downloaded (today).

The lag I experience was when I was using the previous version of firstorm. With the new version I haven't tested yet if lag got worse or not.

---

OK.  That's the wrong version for SL. 

Should be:  Firestorm 4.6.1 (40478) Mar 10 2014 02:44:13 (Firestorm-Release) with Havok support

Edit:  Message struck out....see Coby's reply below.  My bad.

[Coby Foden]

---

Perrie Juran wrote:

 

OK.  That's the wrong version for SL. 

Should be:  Firestorm 4.6.1 (40478) Mar 10 2014 02:44:13 (Firestorm-Release) with

Havok support

---

The 64 bit version is not a wrong version for SL. It can be used both in SL and in Open sim grids. I have been using the 64 bit version in SL since it was released and it works great. Lots of others do the same.

 

As the the 64 bit version does not have Havok support yet, there are two things to note when using it in SL:

from: http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/fs_firestorm-64-bit

• you will be unable to edit a region's navmesh

• you cannot specify physics properties for mesh uploads

This version therefore is an OpenSim version; it can be used both in SL and in other non-SL grids.

[End of quote]

 

[Proxima Saenz]

That's what I thought.. the 64 bit version is as stable as the new 32 bit version.

I will be testing the new 64 bit version in the sim that I experience this massive lag and come back to you all with my findings.

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Proxima Saenz wrote:

That's what I thought.. the 64 bit version is as stable as the new 32 bit version.

I will be testing the new 64 bit version in the sim that I experience this massive lag and come back to you all with my findings.

---

Under certain circumstances of hardware, location, etc, the 64 bit version of Firestorm can perform much worse as far as framerate than the 32 bit version. See if you get the same lag with the 32-bit version.

Firestorm JIRA: http://jira.phoenixviewer.com/browse/FIRE-12001