Do I Pay For Grey Avatars?

[Rudy Schwartzman]

Seriously... Everywhere I go, I see grey people. If there are a very few around, they eventually recover their proper appearance, but when there's a group (like six or more?) it never changes.

It's not much of an experience like this.

I've been in SL over six years and generally keep up with upgrades and have up-to-date, high-performance hardware and a good internet connection.

At first I thought this was a Firestorm 4.4 issue, so I backed up to 4.3, but it's the same.

Also, I've seen a great increase in non-avatar rendering failures. Large chunks of buildings and landscape objects never rez (remain invisible or transparent).

What gives? Oh, and... I do have a paid account and own (and rent) land.

 

Rudy

[Peggy Paperdoll]

"...

I've been in SL over six years and generally keep up with upgrades and have up-to-date, high-performance hardware and a good internet connection.

..."

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

The 6 years is irrelevant but I will say something ain't quite right somewhere in either the performance end, the updated upgrades or the Internet connection.  Slow to rezz avatars is a pretty sure sign of texture lag.  Texture lag is caused by less than adequate hardware or hardware that is not properly updated or an Internet connection that is less than capable of delivering the information necessary for proper avatar rezzing.  The tip of is the part that eventually avatars rezz.......unless there are 6 or more.

System specs are extremely important for anyone to give a guess on what might be the problem.  Up-to-date high performance hardware and a good Internet connection is not specifications........not any that are useful anyway.

 

[Jewel Laurasia]

I recently went to a store that would simply not rez textures. In fact, most of the sim was covered in gray. I went back yesterday and it rezzed fine. No clue what made the difference.

 

LL is testing Server Side Baking, which may or may not help in a laggy situation with more than just a few avatars. But I'm crossing my fingers!

 

Here's a link about it: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Tools-and-Technology/Project-Shining-to-Improve-Avatar-and-Object-Streaming-Speeds/ba-p/1583465

[Rudy Schwartzman]

I'm aware of server-side baking, but since the previous version of Firestorm, 4.3.x, had the same problem and since the server side of server-side baking has not been enabled by Linden Labs, it seems irrelevant.

 

RS

[Rudy Schwartzman]

The fact that I have had a long experience in which this symptom did not previously occur is irrelevant? I do not agree.

My hardware is not "less than adequate." My Internet connection is (much) more than adequate. Even if it were less than adequate, one would expect that eventually the grey avatars would resolve. But after many minutes (a half hour and more) they remain.

If your assertion is that the problem is with my computer and / or graphics hardware or with my Internet connection (latency or bandwidth), there is no evidence that this is so.

 

RS

[Jewel Laurasia]

Well since everything on your side seems infallible, I guess it certainly must be a SL problem.

 

Solution found!

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Since you have this "long experience" (to which I'm very much less than impressed........we could add your years and my years and have almost 14 years experience and it would all still be irrelevant) why not prove your system is up the task of rendering more than 6 avatars (your system being your computer, it's hardware, and your connection to the Internet).  It's easy to give specs........just launch the viewer (log in or not, makes no difference) and under the "Help" menu click on "About Second Life".  You'll see the basic specs.  Copy those and paste back here. 

Had you done that little bitty thing when you first posted your issue you just might have a solution by now.  That is if you really wanted a solution.  Me thinks you just want to complain.  If that's the case, I'm done...........I wanted to help but now I think maybe I don't want to anymore.  But someone else might be along soon.......and boy would specs help them help you.

[Nyll Bergbahn]

I can understand your frustration but you must ask yourself the hard question, why are you experiencing this yet the Forums and Answers are not overwhelmed by residents with similar complaints that everyone is grey and never rez in places with more than a few avatars. The fact is, they're not.

Prims not rezzing with invisible parts of buildings is a known glitch from Linden Lab's new serverside baking coming fully online soon. There are a few threads on this issue. It happens maybe one in fify logins/teleports for me at my home, not elsewhere far as I can tell, and a simple right click fixes it. I'm told turning on wireframe mode for a few seconds or toggling atmospheric shaders on and off a few times sorts the issue as well but I haven't tried those myself.

Peggy is absolutely right. We can't help without some basic information such as computer specifications and network details.

I've just run a quick test. Logged in, teleported to Dance Island, a very busy sim with a landing point in the middle of the shopping area and well away from the club itself. Textures in my draw area fully rezzed within 20 seconds, no noticeable invisible building parts. No textures were previously in my cache. I quickly flew to the club where there were 15 avatars and all rezzed fully within 15 seconds of arriving. Not a grey person in sight. FPS in Ultra with Deferred Rendering enabled was 37, about 60 disabled. Ping time was 170ms.

The other night, at a fashion sim Fameshed, which was absolutely packed (over 20 avatars I think) those avatars wearing mesh took longer to rez than those wearing system/prim clothing but all rezzed within a minute or so. Buildings and vendors rezzed fine. At my usual club, maybe 5 to 10 people, everything and everybody rezzes within a few seconds.

I'm in SL just over six years too and running a three-year old computer that has not been upgraded. It was a good system when I bought it (cost about €1750) but very average now. Here are my details:

Nirans Viewer 3.4.7 (2600) Mar 31 2013 06:59:36 (Nirans Viewer - Reboot) Release Notes

You are at 187,570.0, 263,756.0, 28.2 in Irish Casablanca Blvd located at sim10362.agni.lindenlab.com (216.82.51.12:13007) Second Life RC BlueSteel 13.04.26.274926 Error fetching server release notes URL.

CPU: Intel® Core i5 CPU 750  @ 2.67GHz (3911 MHz) (overclocked) Memory: 4087 MB OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601) Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc. Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series (5850)

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0010.1151 OpenGL Version: 4.2.11931 Compatibility Profile Context

libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8q zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1 J2C Decoder Version: OpenJPEG: 1.5.1, Runtime: 1.5.1 Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000 Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded) Voice Server Version: Not Connected Built with MSVC version 1600 Packets Lost: 281/58,009 (0.5%)

I have an 8MB broadband connection but only get between 5 and 6MB and upload speed is around 0.5MB. Not too good as you can see. I am also over 8,000 kilometres from San Francisco with a ping time of 170 to 190 ms.

Now, if you keep up with upgrades and have up-to-date, high performance hardware and a good internet connection, why are you seeing grey people everywhere and I'm not? If you could post your specifications and network details, I'm sure you will get some helpful suggestions on how to improve your SL experience.

[Paul Hexem]

If you can't render more than 6 avatars, your Internet or your computer is junk. Fix your system.

 

You don't have high end hardware or you'd have posted the specs already.

[Ciaran Laval]

---

Rudy Schwartzman wrote:

Also, I've seen a great increase in non-avatar rendering failures. Large chunks of buildings and landscape objects never rez (remain invisible or transparent).

 

---

If you know where the invisible objects should be, try right clicking them, if they appear then it's a known issue and is believed to be a viewer bug, lots of people are experiencing this issue and it's an issue for the official viewer as well as third party viewers.

As for the grey people, have you tried completely uninstalling a viewer and then installing it again?

[Rudy Schwartzman]

Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68 Deluxe/Gen3

CPU: Intel i7 2600K Quad Core w/ HyperThreading; 3.4 GHz

RAM: 16 GB

Video card: EVGA nVidia GeForce GTX 680; PCIe 3.0; 2 GB GDDR5 RAM

Internet: DSL; Inbound rate: > 800 KBytes / sec sustained.

System disk: PCI-attached SSD card (OCZ RevoDrive x2)

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

Rudy Schwartzman wrote:

Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68 Deluxe/Gen3

CPU: Intel i7 2600K Quad Core w/ HyperThreading; 3.4 GHz

RAM: 16 GB

Video card: EVGA nVidia GeForce GTX 680; PCIe 3.0; 2 GB GDDR5 RAM

Internet: DSL; Inbound rate: > 800 KBytes / sec sustained.

---

Rudy, that's just... slow. Sorry. That's a touch faster than when I got my first broadband connection over four years ago and went with the cheapest possible option. I've lived between a rural party store and a cornfield and I had a faster connection there. Right now I live in an apartment complex where the owner apparently reads Popular Mechanix and decided to provide us with free cable internet and my connection's twice as fast here and it still ain't that great.

And you probably got a really cheap router with it too. SL viewers using HTTP try to open a lot of connections simultaneously and some routers choke on that.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

To add just a little bit to Theresa's post.  The speed of your connection, I believe, you made an error.  Bandwidth speed is not measured in bytes.  It's measured in bits.  A big difference since there are 8 bits per byte.  But bandwidth meters measure bits because that is what is actually being sent to and from your computer/system.800,000 bits per second is pretty slow if you are using SL with any settings above about mid-range........and if you have voice enabled, or media enabled, or you have a third party IM program running, or maybe you have the forums open while trying to use SL it's not "pretty slow", it's very slow. 

The rest of your system seems to be plenty healthy enough to run SL at high (even ultra settings with some lag).  The fastest computer in existence will lag if that system is not receiving the data fast enough to use all that speed.  I have a feeling that, since you have a good GPU, CPU and plenty of system RAM that you are running your SL at ultra (or, at least, at high) settings.  With that connection, you might as well have a low end HP off shelf office computer.

[Nalates Urriah]

For someone that has been in SL for 6 years, you seem to be missing a lot of information. Only 4 posts in the forum in 6 years? Next time you are discussing a tech issue paste in the Viewer's Help->About... at the start.

Since you are on a slow connection and have a new machine with lots of disk space, bump the cache up to max, 10gb. That will take as much load off the connection as possible. You will wait for fewer textures to download. That will help with the region renders. It won't do much for avatar textures.

Set your max bandwidth for less than your connection's max download speed, like half to 75%. There are viewer problems such that most of the third party viewer developers set their own max bandwidth to a max of 1500kbps even if they can max connect at 30mbps. Setting it higher creates problems with the UDP protocol the viewer uses.

Get an IP address from the Viewer's Help->About... while logged in.

Do a Geo-locate on that IP address. See where you are having to connect to. Then run a speedtest.net measurement to a server in that city. See what you get for up and down. That will be a general performance evaluation. Next run a tracert to the SL IP you got and see how they compare. Ping to the SL IP with your system PING not the viewer's. See how that compares to your PING in the viewer. They should be close. If not, the region is likely adding to your lag. There is nothing to be done about a laggy server by try another region. But, odd readings in these areas could start to pooint to a problem.

The trace route will show you where the time in route is being spent. If all the rout times are good, you may have an ISP that is throttling the connection.

----

On the SL side server side baking is going to change things. You will see less bake FAIL when it rolls out. But you will still be downloading avatar textures from SL. That is not going to change. So, just from the new baking you may not see a performance difference.

The HTTP connections are being changed. The Lab is modernizing how they use the HTTP protocol. That SHOULD make a difference in how we all see render performance and download time. The Interest List processing on the server side is changing too, which is likely why you are seeing a change now. As that improves it should reduce the demand on your connection. BUT... if your gateway/modem/router is weak the multiplicity of HTTP connections the viewer needs is likely to cause you problems.

If you are connecting wirelessly, you may have additional problems. The older G protocols have a hard time with SL. The newer N protocols seem to be doing better. So, people are getting decent connections with wireless. Your newer computer should be N protocol capable, but check. If you have an older gateway/modem/router it may not be. New gateways, modems, and routers are US$100 for pretty good ones. I just added a Cisco/Linksys dual band for $90.

[Rudy Schwartzman]

You cannot set the player's bandwidth control to a value over 3000 Kbits per second, or approximately 350 KBytes per second.

 

[Rudy Schwartzman]

For the record, my cache was set to 4 GB. (I've now increased it to 8 GB.)

Every one seems fixated on the my network capacity, but since my connection has more than 2x what the SL viewer will allow itself to use (and I do have it set at its maximum limit, 3000 Kbits per second), that does not explain the symptom.

I should make clear that this is a very new phenomenon in my experience, beginning only in the past few weeks.

When I posted that it was because I was extremely frustrated at being in a social setting with almost entirely grey avatars for a protracted time.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Try setting your bandwidth in preferences at 600 kbps (that's 75% of 800).  Overwhelming your system's ability to render and all the other stuff involved with the SL environment that you might find yourself in when in-world causes problems that interfere with what can and cannot be rezzed in a timely manner.  It also usually causes packet loss at your network and that is a whole new set of problems (including disconnects from the servers and crashes of the viewer).

Obviously you don't understand that setting the bandwidth beyond what your connection can handle will lag your textures (and other things too).  Over loading your network will cause problems......not may cause problems, but it will cause you problems. You don't need to understand it.......but it's true.  You have a slow connection using a fairly high end rig.  You asked for help and received some very good suggestions and advice.......but your fighting it.  I don't have a problem like yours, neither does Nalates (nor others who have tried to help you).  You have this problem and your connections appears to be at the root of the problem.  Fix it or live with it.  Complaining and explaining that you don't believe it is not going to make your avatars rezz  any quicker.  Do something constructive instead.

[Rudy Schwartzman]

There is no setting in the SL viewer beyond my network connection's capacity.

 

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Go here and run a test then post the results back here.  My bet is you will test at something less than 800 kbps (or maybe right at 800 kbps).  800 kbps per second is 300 kbps above the SL viewer's default setting of 500 kbps.  The SL viewer will go much higher than that (I believe somewhere around 3000 kbps but I haven't bothered to set my bandwidth that high even though my connection can handle up to 8000 kbps.........just no need since I rezz quickly in SL).  You're confusing bytes with bits.  The bandwidth speed is given in bits.......not bytes.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

I forgot to post the link to the test site

http://www.speedtest.net/

Distractions in RL..........sorry about that.

[Kelli May]

If you want this grey avatar, they expect you to pay.

[Duckie Dickins]

From what I understand, there are issues with firestorm 4.4 and textures remaining grey. One solution that worked for me was disabling HTTP textures. I had no issue until 4.4 and that fixed things for me. The solutions were posted recently on a blog and the firestorm viewer site recently provided a link to that helpful blog article.

[Theresa Tennyson]

It sounds like there are two basic possibilities:

1) You are getting not 800 kiloBYTES per second but 800 kiloBITS per second, and you have a not-very-good router. This is what I'd expect to see with DSL.

2) You actually HAVE upgraded your DSL to the point that you actually can GET the 6400 kilobits per second you say you're getting but you have a HORRIBLE router, at least in how it handles multiple HTTP connections..

If you're consistently seeing avatars not having their textures loading that's a connection issue plain and simple. Last night I was at a club with over 40 avatars and my Popular Mechanix sub-2000 kbps cable connection and $69 Wal-Mart cable modem rendered everyone in a few minutes. Turning off HTTP textures may help in the short term but more and more things are moving over to HTTP so you should try to get the problems it sounds like you're having with HTTP textures addressed.

[Syo Emerald]

Also...speaking of paying for something...playing that card is lame. You can do that other games, where you are actually forced to pay to play...but premium membership doesn't include any magical promise that third party viewer (!) and your own internet connection will bring up great results, especially in an invironment made by users.

[Rudy Schwartzman]

I know what I'm talking about and I know the difference between kilobytes per second and kilobits per second and my network connection gives me a reliable, sustained 800+ KBytes per second end-to-end.

My in-house network from the DSL modem to the computer on which I run Firestorm is cabled gigabit Ethernet.

I've used the speed test sites (several of them) many times. Just now it reports 7.06 Mbps.

 

Now can we dispense with the suggestion that this is a network capacity problem at my end?