Can Project Interesting is causing a bad scene render?

[RedDaemons]

Hello people,

I know the Project Interesting was a good initiative to allow people with modest computers had a chance to use Second Life with a minimum of quality, but after Project Interesting started to run, I am having problems with bad downstream.

In direct words: I had a very good, excelent, scene render. Fast, reliable, complete. After Project Interesting, now, its a pain. Things not download completely or download and continue grey, especially when fly helicopters, because we need a good render. Actually, most of the scenes in where I usually fly are grey.

I found these two topics talking about Project Interesting, but they are not conclusive.

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Viewer/The-Interesting-Viewer-by-LL-Much-Faster/td-p/2329689/page/4

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/Avatar-not-capable-of-usual-speeds-since-the-Rolling-Restarts-on/td-p/2492017

I already tried a lot of things, adjust the bandwidth, network cache, clear cache, port forwarding, adjust a lot of draw distance experiencies, a lot of things. Nothing could bring me my excelent old rendering again.

So, my last chance is ask here if someone know something we can improve the scene rendering after Project Interesting.

Thank you in advance.

[irihapeti]

if can afford the bandwidth then the counterintuitive way is to reduce cache size to the minimum. Basically it forces pretty much all assets to download everytime

this defeats the intent of the Interest list + cache. assets you dont have but should have and never get without a relog when the interest list+cache thingy borks

bork is what happens when never get anything dl and your screen is full of grey people and people nekkid with alpha holes in them and no hair

[Qie Niangao]

Just to be clear about the Project Interesting objectives, they were not limited to improving the SL experience on "modest computers", and I think most SL users have gotten big benefits from the changes. (One example was finally fixing the rendering error of objects appearing to be "stranded" when they cross into another region while the viewer wasn't looking directly at them as the crossing happened. It is so good to have that fixed after so many years!)

But yeah, there are problems that seem to have cropped-up coincident with one or another phase of Project Interesting deployment, and they're easy to find with a jira search. A couple of the more notorious recent ones:

"Rendering problems with Project Interesting viewer", and

"SCENES WILL NEVER LOAD COMPLETELY IF CHANGING ACTIVE GROUP TAG TO A DIFFERENT GROUP WHILE A SCENE IS LOADING"

Actually, that second one is surely irrelevant to the OP's problems in this thread, but it's just so weird (as with much of the magical effects of changing Active Group) -- and so commonly triggered by well-meaning merchants who offer a group invite to new arrivals -- and inadvertantly cause anybody accepting it to never want to return!

[SaraCarena]

---

irihapeti wrote:

 

bork is what happens when never get anything dl and your screen is full of grey people and people nekkid with alpha holes in them and no hair

---

That problem was in jira before interesting was deployed.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-5414

I noticed it early 2014 but didn`t jira til March, guessing that the current meshfetch (viewer requests mesh from sim which requests mesh from asset server) just can`t cope with many mesh hungry av`s hassling it. The new CDN (content delivery network) being tested on a few regions takes the sim out of the meshfetch loop so fingers crossed might be a fix for that. I`ll know when the sim where I test gets on cdn.

Personally I think interesting works well for the way I use sl, that is walking around malls and stores on a fairly low dd (50-100 meters) , better than pre interesting but out of curiosity I was doing some av flying the other day on max dd (1024 meters in firestorm) on a region (brocade)  crammed with stuff and surrounded by 6 regions crammed with stuff with the texture console open purposley spinning the camera to see how many textures got into the texture management system (num 13 on the texture console http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Texture_Console) It maxed at 45000! with the number of outstanding texture fetch requests (num 14) maxing at 5500. Ok, so 1024 meters is an ott draw distance but even slow av flying on 256meters can throw a lot of textures into the system, whether interesting deals with those textures better or worse, don`t know, just sayin.

 

@ Qie:

Do you happen to know what percentage of interesting was viewer side and what server side coz I`ve read different stories on that and RLV viewer is a pre interesting viewer that`s still out there if OP wants to check for differences (Second Life 3.7.1 (30482) Feb 14 2014 19:15:19 (RestrainedLove viewer v2.08.05.10 (3.7.0.30481))

@ RedDaemons

http pipeline viewer should be out soon, might help with your flying, oh and if you`d like a co-pilot to share a few thoughts IM me in world, I`d love a copter ride:smileyhappy:

[Qie Niangao]

---

SaraCarena wrote:

@ Qie:

Do you happen to know what percentage of interesting was viewer side and what server side coz I`ve read different stories on that and RLV viewer is a pre interesting viewer that`s still out there if OP wants to check for differences (Second Life 3.7.1 (30482) Feb 14 2014 19:15:19 (RestrainedLove viewer v2.08.05.10 (3.7.0.30481))

---

As I recall, the project started out mostly server-side, and Andrew spent a lot of time on it. I was under the impression at the time that he was spearheading the whole initiative, and that viewer changes came later, to take fuller advantage of the server-side changes. This, however, is vague recollections from my notoriously unreliable memory, so that's not terribly helpful, I realize.

[SaraCarena]

Was helpful :smileyhappy: so a pre interesting viewer would just ignore interesting server code? Seems to be like that when I used it yesterday.

[Oz Linden]

You didn't mention what viewer and version you're using... without at least that much, it's hard to offer advice.

The first step is going to be to figure out what's different in how you're accessing SL, since as far as we can tell after the Interesting changes were deployed (some time ago), things got better not worse.

 

[Perrie Juran]

 

TEXTURE BLUR AFTER ALLOWING TWO MINUTES FOR EVERYTHING TO REZ

 

Second Life 3.7.15 (293376) Aug 26 2014 15:07:00 (Second Life Release)
Release Notes

You are at 131.3, 42.4, 32.5 in tempura island located at sim10307.agni.lindenlab.com (216.82.50.29:13012)
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/tempura%20island/131/42/32
(global coordinates 281,987.0, 230,442.0, 32.5)
Second Life Server 14.09.19.294400
Retrieving...

CPU: AMD Processor model unknown (3000.17 MHz)
Memory: 3584 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 32-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 650 Ti/PCIe/SSE2/3DNOW!

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 9.18.0013.4052
OpenGL Version: 4.4.0

libcurl Version: libcurl/7.37.0 OpenSSL/1.0.1h zlib/1.2.8
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.0
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Ex 4.44.31
Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded)
Voice Server Version: Not Connected
Built with MSVC version 1600
Packets Lost: 0/6 (0.0%)

 

Compared with what I used to see:

 see below for additional images

 

What is most noticeable is the difference when I cam in from a distance (3rd picture each set)

I know, I haven't filed a JIRA, but that is because I mainly use Firestorm.

[Perrie Juran]

Somehow my second set of images did not post:

[Perrie Juran]

[SaraCarena]

Tp`d to that place, dd150, alm, full shadows, 57 av`s, slightly inferior gfx to yours. Very pretty sim and rezzed nicely, little bit of blur here an there but sometimes just needs to cam in or out to refresh the scene.

Think I`d ask 2 questions. Draw distance  and texture memory setting?.  Know you have that annoying texture discard problem from your previous posts. If you use the texture console and look at numb 14: fetch.... well TMB (texture memory buffer) has a big effect there. Set it low and fetch is sluggish.....set it high and not so. Reading back on the texture memory discard issue just makes me think it`s a memory management issue but that`s just intuitive I`m not techy enough to say why. If I were you I would jira texture discard crash on 32 bit os rather than project interesting. Sooo stifling your vram (on a decent gfx card) by lowering TMB is curing the symptoms not the disease.

 

Edit adds specs

CPU: Intel® Core i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz (3310.83 MHz) Memory: 8169 MB OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601) Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 650/PCIe/SSE2

Draw distance: 144 Bandwidth: 3000 LOD factor: 2 Render quality: Ultra (7/7) Texture memory: 512 MB (1)

[RedDaemons]

@Oz Linden

Here, we have my configuration

Firestorm 4.6.7 (42398) Aug 12 2014 02:06:18 (Firestorm-Releasex64) with OpenSimulator support

CPU: Intel® Core i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30GHz (3300.05 MHz)
Memory: 7887 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: Intel
Graphics Card: Intel® HD Graphics 2500

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 9.17.0010.2828
OpenGL Version: 4.0.0 - Build 9.17.10.2828

RestrainedLove API: RLV v2.8.0 / RLVa v1.4.10a
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.24.0 OpenSSL/1.0.1h zlib/1.2.6 c-ares/1.10.0
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.4
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Ex 4.44.32
Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded)
Voice Server Version: Vivox 4.6.0009.20030

Settings mode: Firestorm
Viewer Skin: AnsaStorm (Bright Blue)
Font Used: Deja Vu (96)
Draw distance: 512
Bandwidth: 1500
LOD factor: 4
Render quality: Medium-Low (2/7)
Texture memory: 512 MB (1)
VFS (cache) creation time (UTC): 2014-9-27T3:49:51
Built with MSVC version 1600
Packets Lost: 2/167,346 (0.0%)

[RedDaemons]

@Qie Niangao:

Really thank you for the explanation and the links. I can follow this theme more close now. I am really satisfied, in general, with Project Interesting, but I have to say that now I can't render scenes as before. But I understand that this new technology is coming and request adjustments. By my side, i am trying to do all I can to improve my Second Life experience again.

[RedDaemons]

@SaraCarena:

Thank you for the information abou Pipeline. I will check it close. But, different of you, I fly. And fly a lot! And sail a lot too. Usually, I set my draw distance to 512m when travelling crossing borders with Medium Graphics. When I am racing bikes in a single region, I set my graphics to LOW and draw to 1024m. I can´t confirm if draw has any importance in this issue, because I already tryied a lot of sets and situations.

 

[RedDaemons]

A common situation in the past:

I am flying to West, at 100mts, over Blake Sea area. My draw is 512m and I am in the middle of a region. Usually, in the past, I can see the objects rezzing ahead perfectly. Of course, I am flying a small bird, a slow helicopter, and I can see everything rezzing perfectly. Nothing is grey. If I stop over a region, I can see everything perfectly 100m below me. It was beautiful.

The situation now:

The same behavior described above, but now I can't see anything beyond 256/365m... 50% of the scene is grey under my helicopter and, if I stop, waitting to rezz completely, nothing happens. I wait, wait for a complete download, but still grey. Tired, I decided to fall back, turning the helicopter 180 degrees... bad idea. The scene that was behind me now is rezzing again, because I changed my point of view in it direction. The travel is a very annoying journey of half grey, half landscapes.

 

 

 

 

[SaraCarena]

I don`t vehicle travel a lot but quite often av fly up and set draw distance high to admire a view, having read your post though I did get hot air balloon and did a bit of flying round Blake Sea regions and agree it`s a very beautiful part of sl.

One thing that I noticed is that a substantial number of Blake Sea regions are on the RC snack channel which means they are fetching textures via the CDN. You can set firestorm to notify you what RC channel you are on and it will alert you in chat if you change channels when crossing from one region to another. Preferences > move & view > notify if the simulator changes when changing the region.

CDN basically means that wherever you are in the world you should now have a large sl texture cache nearer to you than before so you will fetch textures from there instead of the sim servers in the US. Nalates explains it better on her blog;

http://blog.nalates.net/2014/08/22/second-life-news-2014-34-2/

One drawback with CDN that I have`nt seen blogged anywhere but that Oz mentioned in a recent TPV meeting (which is on youtube) is that the first person using that cache in any particular part of the world may experience slower fetching than usual, it`s sort of priming the cache I think, but subsequent users will get the benefit of better performance after that.

Looking at the timing of your op and the number of Blake Sea regions now on CDN I`m guessing that you may have been the unlucky one who primed the CDN cache in your part of the world. I`ve noticed some regions have rendered slowly for me while others have rendered very quick on draw distance around 600 meters. There`s more info on the upcoming performance improvements here.

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Tools-and-Technology/An-Update-on-Several-Improvements-to-Second-Life/ba-p/2833734

Happy flying :smileyhappy:

 Edit: You can check that you`re connected to the CDN when you`re in RC snack region by typing "ping asset-cdn.agni.lindenlab.com" in cmd.exe. I got a 12ms ping :smileylol:

[Nalates Urriah]

When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. Get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. Help->About... provides all the version numbers we need.  To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post.

It also helps to know if you are using a laptop or a desktop and a wired or wireless connection between the computer and gateway and/or between the gateway and ISP. T-Mobile and other ISP’s use a wireless system to connect to you.

Without information all we can do is guess. That means you have to try all our bad guesses and eliminate them one by one. This is easier for all of us, if you give us good information to start with.

---------------

Project Interesting has helped most people achive a faster more relaible render. So, the chance of the Interesting Project being the source of your problem is unlikely. The likely problem is either the viewer or the connection. The render proces in some TPV's differs from the SL Viewer.

The basic troubleshooting steps start with trying a different viewer. At some point the SL Viewer has to be tried to provide a baseline test. If the problem is the same in all brands of viewer, or the two you try, then look at your connection.

A good Internet connection does NOT mean you have a good connection to the SL servers. Also, look in your help to see if your region is running in the Snack server channel. If it is, the word Snack will appear and the server version info. If you are in Snack, you may be having a problem with CDN, in which case file a JIRA as the Linens will be highly interested in your problem. But, you have to be able to give them good information or they move on.

Chek your connection to be sure your connection to SL is working well. See: http://blog.nalates.net/2011/10/26/troubleshoot-your-sl-connection/

If you find a problem or it is intermitant, consider this prossibility: http://blog.nalates.net/2014/08/18/512k-internet-slow-down/ We started seeing this problem in late August 2014.

Once you have information from taking these steps we can move on to providing more specific help.

[Nalates Urriah]

The card: Graphics Card: Intel® HD Graphics 2500

This is not a gaming card and is going to be a problem for you. See System Requirements for SL. The chip is not supported.

You should be able to install a video card and override the built-in chip. If you can, the problem will likely vanish.

 

[SaraCarena]

I have seen the bad scene render you describe under those conditions both in latest firestorm windows viewer and sl windows viewer, it`s not connection related and clearing cache will make it worse not better. I`m thinking about whether to report in jira or query on the forums. I have dual boot system with windows 7.1 and linux mint 17, firestorm linux and sl linux render very nicely under the conditions you describe as does an old viewer based on Second Life 3.7.1 (30482).

I`ll post a link to jira or forum query here when I get round to it.

In the meantime if you have access to linux machine or feel comfortable trying it on your system go ahead and see the difference. You can try mint 17 on a usb stick without even installing it :matte-motes-nerdy:

 

EDIT: coz I always forget stuff, that`s on these specs

Second Life 3.7.18 (295372) Oct 10 2014 15:37:42 (Second Life Release)
Release Notes

CPU: Intel® Core i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz (3310.85 MHz)
Memory: 8169 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 650/PCIe/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 9.18.0013.4411
OpenGL Version: 4.4.0 NVIDIA 344.11

@ Nalates, agree that OP`s gfx is weak but  he`s also commented that his system has rendered scenes more efficiently in the past.

[SaraCarena]

Well I jira`d and was politely asked to try the default release sl viewer, which does render nicely.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-7545

Though the slow render does reproduce for me on current firestorm x64 release.

 

Edit: and a recently accepted bug on interesting,

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-7547

[SaraCarena]

Take a look at SceneLoadRearMaxRadiusFraction in the debug settings in the advanced menu. To enable, go to Me>Preferences, Advanced tab, and check "Show Advanced Menu".

By default it`s set to 75, experiment with lower numbers. I have it set to 1 for now.

If you see a lot of grey, before you suspect your system, open the texture console (ctrl+shift+3).

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Texture_Console

Look at FETCH and CRE, a high number in CRE =  grey objects, a high number in Fetch = blurred textures. You can either wait for these numbers to tick down and the scene should render (could take a long time with weak gfx), or just drop draw distance to the minimum for a minute and then gradually raise it.

Also cache hit rate has an effect on scene rendering low= slower, high = faster. You can check cache hit rate with the statistics bar ctrl+shift+1

 

@ Perrie,

I`d guess ther blur in the pics you posted is because bias is being applied. You can see bias in the texture console. Ideally it should be 0. For me bias rises when a lot of detailed textures are crammed into a scene at short range and results in blur.

Lowering the texture memory slider will result in bias being applied more often. You can see it in action by having the texture console open and lowering the slider from 512 to 96. Bias shoots up and scene renders badly.

Some sims/stores/avatars are so heavily textured that camming over them forces bias to be applied even on 512 setting.