High Bandwidth on Ultra

[Buttacwup Float]

I am noticing that with the LL Beta viewer (and most recetn Dolphin and Exodus) that if I leave my graphics set on high my bandwidth in the stats floater is what I would call normal. However, if I swap to Ultra it pegs up to the 1800 - 2500 kbps range and stays there. This happens even in an empty region on a skyplatform at 1800m. I have let it sit for about 6 minutes and the bandwidth never drops, until you switch off of Ultra and it is back down to "normal" again.

Anyone else seeing this? Has it always been this way or is this something new?

 

--sean

[Theresa Tennyson]

SOMETHING is causing certain areas in SL to constantly spam messages that are using up a lot of bandwidth. "Ultra" increases your draw distance and the higher the draw distance the higher the odds one of these "hot spots" are going to end up in the area your viewer is tracking. Here's a JIRA about it...

 

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-8124

[Baloo Uriza]

That said, I don't think that's a bug so much as "working as designed."  The area you're trying to download can be calculated the same way as finding the sector area of an arc.  By default, the field of view is 60°, and in Ultra, the draw distance is 256m (or slightly beyond a quarter of a kilometer!).

60/360 = 0.166666... (what we'll need to multiply by later to get the area of the wedge instead of the whole circle, this is the wedge)

π256² = 205887.416146m²  (this gives us the area of the full circle without taking into account the field of view)

0.166666 * 205887.416146m² = 34314.4320994m²

So as we can see here, with the default settings on Ultra, you're attempting to download and render almost 3.5 hectares of area, assuming a two-dimensional plane.  I could get into calculations that takes into account the vertical field of view, since Second Life is a three-dimensional environment, but this is enough to get the idea:  long draw distances cause you to render a lot of stuff.

This is awesome for photography (and depending on the view, might fall short of a full scene if you're trying to photograph a full valley or something).  But for every day use, moving much shorter will use less bandwidth and render faster.  96m is plenty of draw distance for driving most vehicles, 128 is good for flight.  For walking or clubbing, 32-64 is plenty.  This brings that rendered area down to an extremely manageable 536m² at a 32m draw distance (or about 1/64th the detail you're trying to suck down), and 8,578m² at 128m (or about 1/4 the detail).

That alone will save you a lot of bandwidth right off the bat without having to change any other setting.  Bring in that draw distance to avoid downloading background detail.