Extreme lag for the past year?

[Cory Toll]

UPDATE: Earlier to day, I switched to a 3rd party viewer adn that seemed to resolve my lag issue completely. Thank you everyone for your input (even those of you who were upset with me for some reason). I'm not sure why the official viewer caused me to have major FPS drops when around other people even at the lowest graphic settings though. As I've mentioned, it started happening about a year or less ago and my hardware and connection haven't changed but the viewer has, so I assume that it's ultimately the viewer. Maybe it's not compatible with my specific graphics card and the 3rd party viewer I switched to is? No idea.

 

Thanks again for the help and input everyone. I hope the official viewer becomes more stable in future.

 

 

I'm not really here to complain about the lag or ask LL to fix it, I'm just wondering if anyone else has extreme lag and if they had any luck reducing it. I'm not talking about connection issues or rubberband lag, but rather the kind that makes SL go at 0.3 frames per second to 1 frame per second. I've been in SL for nearly 7 years now and have the best PC I've ever had. It was built (by me with parts from new egg) for gaming in 2012.

 

When I'm not near anyone in SL the game runs extrememly smooth. I set the setting on ultra and have a grand time looking at the cool and realistic shading effects and such. However, if I'm near 4 or 5+ people and they're on the my screen, it's super laggy. If I'm in a store that uses an ungodly amount of mesh with a few people, it's super laggy as well.

 

 

The short version of my specs are GeForce GTX 570 gfx crad, 8gb ram, i5 intel.

I wasthinking about getting 8gb more ram for a total of 16, but I'm not sure if that would help anything. I can already run skyrim at high setting with HD textures installed and graphics enhances and such with no problems among many other games. But SL takes a big toll (no pun intended) on my computer.

 

Even at the very lowest of settings I lag. what's weird is if I turn my camera away from people or mesh objects, I stop lagging, but if they come into view again, it's lag-city.

 

So I'm pretty mcuh asking, if you don't lag like crazy around other people and other people's mesh items, what are your PC specs that allows you to not lag this much? Or maybe it's some kind of magical SL setting that's hidden somewhere? Or maybe you're using a 3rd party viewer that's more stable than the current SL. Maybe it has something to do with my specific graphics card? It's been like this for me for about a year now. I havent seen anyone else complain about this. People either say they just lag all the time people or not or they dont mention anything else at all.

[Cory Toll]

UPDATE: Earlier to day, I switched to a 3rd party viewer adn that seemed to resolve my lag issue completely. Thank you everyone for your input (even those of you who were upset with me for some reason). I'm not sure why the official viewer caused me to have major FPS drops when around other people even at the lowest graphic settings though. As I've mentioned, it started happening about a year or less ago and my hardware and connection haven't changed but the viewer has, so I assume that it's ultimately the viewer. Maybe it's not compatible with my specific graphics card and the 3rd party viewer I switched to is? No idea.

 

Thanks again for the help and input everyone. I hope the official viewer becomes more stable in future.

 

 

I'm not really here to complain about the lag or ask LL to fix it, I'm just wondering if anyone else has extreme lag and if they had any luck reducing it. I'm not talking about connection issues or rubberband lag, but rather the kind that makes SL go at 0.3 frames per second to 1 frame per second. I've been in SL for nearly 7 years now and have the best PC I've ever had. It was built (by me with parts from new egg) for gaming in 2012.

 

When I'm not near anyone in SL the game runs extrememly smooth. I set the setting on ultra and have a grand time looking at the cool and realistic shading effects and such. However, if I'm near 4 or 5+ people and they're on the my screen, it's super laggy. If I'm in a store that uses an ungodly amount of mesh with a few people, it's super laggy as well.

 

 

The short version of my specs are GeForce GTX 570 gfx crad, 8gb ram, i5 intel.

I wasthinking about getting 8gb more ram for a total of 16, but I'm not sure if that would help anything. I can already run skyrim at high setting with HD textures installed and graphics enhances and such with no problems among many other games. But SL takes a big toll (no pun intended) on my computer.

 

Even at the very lowest of settings I lag. what's weird is if I turn my camera away from people or mesh objects, I stop lagging, but if they come into view again, it's lag-city.

 

So I'm pretty mcuh asking, if you don't lag like crazy around other people and other people's mesh items, what are your PC specs that allows you to not lag this much? Or maybe it's some kind of magical SL setting that's hidden somewhere? Or maybe you're using a 3rd party viewer that's more stable than the current SL. Maybe it has something to do with my specific graphics card? It's been like this for me for about a year now. I havent seen anyone else complain about this. People either say they just lag all the time people or not or they dont mention anything else at all.

[Fairyyyy]

Just joined the game a few days ago. And im surpised at the amount of lag too. I thought i was just me.

[Freya Mokusei]

It's pretty telling that you don't mention anything about your network or connection speed. SL relies on this more than your graphical power (at least, WRT modern tech).

Drawing equivilence with Skyrim is redundant.

Suggest you learn more about SL and how it works. This is the only real way to help diagnose and resolve latency issues. Include any or all details about your LAN, operating environment and network-affecting systems if you're hoping for suggestions for improvement.

[TheG0t]

I am a CCNP and been for a decade, SL has lag.... bottom line...

I have the best of every thing and always do , my net speed is at business level not residential, I am US based not far from a Second life data center in IRL location ...I get more then 4 or 5 people around me I have lag like crazy...

I do know think mesh as much to do with it, this was going before mesh was even in beta (this is a alt account, 7 year player)

Here the bottom line, it is what it is and about the only way to fix it would be outside the company best interest in investment .

If you look at the numbers of lost private sim counts per year and climbing as well as the lack of any kind of 1/4 reports made public. My friends this is on a time table of being a good memory , enjoy what you have while it is here.

[Malanya]

Sending you a PM

 

[Orca Flotta]

I am a CCNP

 

Impressive.

.... err, what is it?

[Perrie Juran]

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TheG0t wrote:

 

I have the best of every thing and always do ,

my net speed is at business level not residential, I am US based not far from a Second life data center in IRL location ...I get more then 4 or 5 people around me I have lag like crazy...

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My bolding above.

Sometimes it is just a system fluke.  I went through that.  When Mesh went "live," any and all mesh enabled viewers brought my computer to a crawl.  Many people tried to help me including one of the Linden Devs who went as far as getting the same GPU I had but could not duplicate the problem.

We tried A,B,C,D all the way through Z trying to solve it.

I dealt with it for six months.

One day I decided to finally take the plunge and upgrade from Win XP to Win 7.

The moment I did all my problems went away.

Had a similar problem with one of my family.  Morrowind would not run on their computer.  Had a top of the line GPU and others with the same GPU had no problems.  Everything else ran perfect.  She traded it in for a different GPU and Morrowind ran just fine. 

So yes, crazy stuff like that happens, even if you have 'the best of everything.'

[Finneli Felwitch]

The problem must have to do with network or servers. What internet company do you use? any bandwidth limits set on the service? have you tried using Speedtest pointed at San Fransisco? 

When logged into Second Life, open up the statistics menu and monitor the connections. 

The past two weeks, my internet connection has been terrible but nobody else around me in SL has the issue. I contacted my network techs and they said they were in the process of reworking their firewall settings, turns out they were severly limiting file-sharing services and Second Life uses this.

[Conifer Dada]

I've been in SL nearly 7 years too, and there have been times when SL has worked well, with minimal lag.  

But quite recently SL loading of avatars was so slow it was hardly worth logging in.  Then Linden Lab introduced server-side baking, which was supposed to make rezzing much quicker - and it did!...... to start with, for a day or two.  It was amazing - instantaneous rezzing of everything - even in busy places, plus good frame rate and movement.  But after a couple of days performance for me started to deteroirate and now it's nearly as bad as before SSB.  I can't see how the problem could be my computer or internet connection, since SL worked so perfectly for a short time.

[Sassy Romano]

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Freya Mokusei wrote:

It's pretty telling that you don't mention anything about your network or connection speed. SL relies on this more than your graphical power (at least, WRT modern tech).

 

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No, network speed would be an impact on the speed at which objects, texture data etc. is downloaded, it would NOT affect frame rate of items that are already downloaded.

I experience a similar described issue.  I can be running at a very nice frame rate on ultra, even in busy places, then someone or something arrives and my frame rate can drop to 3 to 5 fps from say 25 to 30.  If I change my camera view slightly, immediately back up, go back to the other view even slightly to introduce whatever it was and straight back down to stupidly low figures.  It's not all the time, just now and again when I encounter "the something" that I haven't identified, it's too painful at that point to even attempt to bother, I just change camera angle or leave.

For reference, my PC is an i7 hex core @  3.2 to 3.8GHz, 24gig of RAM, SSD's with a GTX 680 on the end of a 120Mbps internet connection.  It is most certainly not my hardware or connection!  (Same result with all viewers tested)

[Czari Zenovka]

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Conifer Dada wrote:

I've been in SL nearly 7 years too, and there have been times when SL has worked well, with minimal lag.  

But quite recently SL loading of avatars was so slow it was hardly worth logging in.  Then Linden Lab introduced server-side baking, which was supposed to make rezzing much quicker -

and it did!......

to start with, for a day or two.  It was amazing - instantaneous rezzing of everything - even in busy places, plus good frame rate and movement.  But after a couple of days performance for me started to deteroirate and now it's nearly as bad as before SSB.  I can't see how the problem could be my computer or internet connection, since SL worked so perfectly for a short time.

---

I've experienced this as well re: SSB.  In crowded places, running a 10-year-old PC that could not run mesh viewers, XP OS, and only able to have 64m draw distance, avatars actually loaded faster & better than my brand new PC.  Oh, same internet connection, ISP, I use wired, etc.  Everything else in SL is amazing on the new PC but avatars loading more slowly since SSB than previously on my 10-yr.-old PC?   *Scratches my head*

[Cory Toll]

Wow, sorry I upset you with my post, Freya Mokusei

 

I used Time Warner cable. The same internet provider I've been using for the last decade+ including when SL ran really well with no lag with the conditions I listed. As far as I'm aware though, fram rate lag isn't connection related which is why I didn't list it.

 

 

As for everyone else, thanks for the replies, I'm just glad I'm not the only one. I know a few friends who can play SL like normal with no reduced frame rate and they have PCs about the same range as mine. The only thing I can guess is that our specific gfx cards aren't optimized for SL? I don't have enough knowledge to say though. I mean, everything render well, with other people come by, the framerate has a hissy fit.

[Perrie Juran]

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Cory Toll wrote:

Wow, sorry I upset you with my post, Freya Mokusei

 

I used Time Warner cable. The same internet provider I've been using for the last decade+ including when SL ran really well with no lag with the conditions I listed. As far as I'm aware though, fram rate lag isn't connection related which is why I didn't list it.

 

 

As for everyone else, thanks for the replies, I'm just glad I'm not the only one. I know a few friends who can play SL like normal with no reduced frame rate and they have PCs about the same range as mine. The only thing I can guess is that our specific gfx cards aren't optimized for SL? I don't have enough knowledge to say though. I mean, everything render well, with other people come by, the framerate has a hissy fit.

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When I had my problems a lot was way above my head technically.  I did get quite an education from it.

If you can get a few of your friends to help you isolate if there is a specific cause that could be helpful in filing a Bug Report.  In my case we were able to isolate the cause (flexi prims).  It could be something really specific that is bogging down your rendering pipe line.  Start with your friends butt naked and have them add specific things and see if it makes a difference.

It only took me about ten minutes to isolate the cause.  And it's posssible that there is a solution out there for you if the cause can be nailed down.

 

[PeterCanessa Oh]

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Cory Toll wrote:

...So I'm pretty mcuh asking, if you don't lag like crazy around other people and other people's mesh items, what are your PC specs that allows you to not lag this much?...

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My machine's performance isn't spectacular, but it's a lot better than that.  Approx 20fps at moderate graphics settings, 128m view range.  Drops to 5/6 fps on rare occassions.  It's an old machine with 4GB RAM and an nVidia 8300 GS.  Connection is currently wifi but stable.  Packet loss 0% and ping circa 200ms (from the UK).

So it's not specs - yours beats mine in every department.  It must be magic after all.

Oddly enough the only real problem I have is that I can't get into Kuula sim most of the time; it's just too busy.

[MoiselleErin Teardrop]

LL keeps adding more and more weird stuff to SL.

They keep "upgrading" viewers, adding stuff like mesh, pathfinding, sunshine rezzing (or whatever) and God knows what else. It is kind of sad that one cannot go into SL and just enjoy it without being a computer diagnostician to figure out the problems then having to avoid a bunch of stuff, reducing graphic levels etc.

Thing is, it is just gonna keep getting worse. When people who own gaming computers are having a lot of problems, there is a serious issue.

I have not been in SL for more than a few minutes since about a year ago. When I log on and textures keep turning black and dialog boxes are blank, I pretty much gave up. That and my SL best friend gave up too.

[Czari Zenovka]

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MoiselleErin Teardrop wrote:

LL keeps adding more and more weird stuff to SL.

They keep "upgrading" viewers, adding stuff like mesh, pathfinding, sunshine rezzing (or whatever) and God knows what else. It is kind of sad that one cannot go into SL and just enjoy it without being a computer diagnostician to figure out the problems then having to avoid a bunch of stuff, reducing graphic levels etc.

 

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Word.

[jwenting]

If SL is so bad, why are you kids still here? Just leave those of us who enjoy the experience alone and go elsewhere.

Of course there you'd no doubt also whine and complain ceaselessly, because that's the only reason you're anywhere at all, to whine and complain...

[Sassy Romano]

When an anomaly in performance is experienced, it's quite normal to seek the views of others to help determine if it's a local issue or something wider. I don't see whining at all but a growing consensus of opinion that there may be an issue with nvidia or core LL viewer code in an area of the render pipeline.

 

 

[Freya Mokusei]

Not at all upset, but not at all surprised.

Poor frame rates can definitely be a result of connection latency. With the latest SL viewers, everything is tied together. Connection bandwidth is a strong decider of the quality of your SL experience - slow responses, high packet loss, transfer corruption all affect FPS. The SL viewer has chokes and timeouts that will degrade your performance dramatically if everything it wants isn't available on time.

Not aware of any issues that only affect framerates when other avatars are in the scene - your PC always has to render at least one avatar, adding a second doesn't increase this load by much at all.

I could spend all day talking about the set-up I use for SL, but it wouldn't help you any.

[Freya Mokusei]

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MoiselleErin Teardrop wrote:

LL keeps adding more and more weird stuff to SL.

They keep "upgrading" viewers, adding stuff like mesh, pathfinding, sunshine rezzing (or whatever) and God knows what else. It is kind of sad that one cannot go into SL and just enjoy it without being a computer diagnostician to figure out the problems then having to avoid a bunch of stuff, reducing graphic levels etc.

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Not sure who Jwenting's question was addressed to, but this is sorta my answer

People who say stuff like that above confuse the hell out of me. What did you think you were gonna get? When did SL ever do anything different? Why should anyone else (especially LL) slow down for you?

Those who come to SL expecting stagnation and stability will be disappointed, no-one ever promises such things and this is great. SL has always been an evolving world - the day it stops is the day it dies. I hope things keep changing, that SL gets better and better. I've spent a long time working my way through the intricacies of SL, it's made me a far more capable Internet user. I'm sure I started out - back in 2006 - with a lot of the same level of sense as some in this thread.

[Phil Deakins]

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Sassy Romano wrote:

When an anomaly in performance is experienced, it's quite normal to seek the views of others to help determine if it's a local issue or something wider. I don't see whining at all but a growing consensus of opinion that there may be an issue with nvidia or core LL viewer code in an area of the render pipeline.

 

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Don't worry about it. It's jwenting who is whining. It's what he does in the forum.

[Qie Niangao]

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Cory Toll wrote:

However, if I'm near 4 or 5+ people and they're on the my screen, it's super laggy. If I'm in a store that uses an ungodly amount of mesh with a few people, it's super laggy as well.

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Depending on the avatars in view and what attachments they're wearing, that may be expected behavior. The viewer is not very smart (at all) about forcing imposters to replace dynamically complex avatars.

There's a thread across the street that is now exploring the lag impact of animated tails (as for furries, nekos, etc.) and just how dreadful that impact can be, especially for current products in that category.

One thing worth noting about that particular example (which could apply broadly) is the fact that the worst lag for that case is actually network, not viewer nor sim, and continues as long as the attachment is in view -- long after all the textures and static geometry is downloaded.

(Also, yeah, something still goes dreadfully wrong with Mesh rendering occasionally -- and not only attached / rigged Mesh. I'll lag and crash several times a day in high-intensity Mesh areas, and certain popular Mesh products will repeatedly crash my viewer if in sight while I'm moving the cam around. But that Mesh lag and those Mesh crashes probably aren't terribly relevant to the  avatar-count-specific problem of the OP.)

[Freya Mokusei]

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Sassy Romano wrote:

I experience a similar described issue.  I can be running at a very nice frame rate on ultra, even in busy places, then someone or something arrives and my frame rate can drop to 3 to 5 fps from say 25 to 30.

For reference, my PC is an i7 hex core @  3.2 to 3.8GHz, 24gig of RAM, SSD's with a GTX 680 on the end of a 120Mbps internet connection.  It is most certainly not my hardware or connection!  (Same result with all viewers tested)

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Sorry for not replying sooner, today is a busy one.

I have no intention of splitting hairs, I will assume that our experience doesn't align on this issue. I don't think it is as clearly cut as you say; there are many more reasons for FPS reduction than you seem to imagine - just this week I have observed users who lose more than half of their FPS simply by using 'Enhanced' view while using CHUI (which, I hope you can agree, shouldn't happen). There are many reasons a system can become unstable while operating Second Life, and this will have the end result of sapping frames.

What does concern me though, is that you say you only get 25-30FPS under normal circumstances? Apologies if I am reading your post incorrectly, but given your set-up I would say this sounds like you have underlying issues. My hardware (including my connection) is some way below yours, and I run liquid-smooth, never dropping below 50FPS (screen resolution 1080p, 60Hz) on ultra, and surrounded by mesh (touch wood ). I can visit some of the busiest and most complex sims on the grid. It is possible though, that heavy situations are simply affecting your machine or viewer in difficult or unpredictable ways much like those experiences with CHUI. It is not my intent to gloat (I hope this doesn't read that way), I just hope to demonstrate there are things other than the viewer that can result in poor experiences.

If I am mistaken I rarely mind, and I kinda wish I was wrong on this. There is no reason for SL to be quite as demanding as it seems to be with certain set-ups.

[Perrie Juran]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

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Cory Toll wrote:

However, if I'm near 4 or 5+ people and they're on the my screen, it's super laggy. If I'm in a store that uses an ungodly amount of mesh with a few people, it's super laggy as well.

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Depending on the avatars in view and what attachments they're wearing, that may be expected behavior.

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I know that this is really an "editorial comment" I am making here.  Herein is one of the big problems with SL and LL.  EXPECTED BEHAVIOR does not always equal DESIRABLE BEHAVIOR.  And this is something that LL seems to have a very hard time wrapping their heads around when introducing new features and improvements.

All the work they are doing on improving performance will be of little benefit if they don't invest in educating people as to best practices.  A concerted effort by LL to better educate could prove less expensive and more productive than all the other resources they are investing in improving performance.

I know from these Forums that many (I do wish I could say all) scripters work very hard on optimizing their scripts.  But then you get to the "hard goods providers."

A new Merchant recently asked, "How do I find the prim count for the clothes I'm uploading (link)?"

Consider one of the answers,

"And you are not forced to tell the prim count, since clothing creators rarely do... clothes are worn, so even if they have, indeed, an impact on the lag anyway, they doesnt count on the prim allowance of the land. So its not an info customers usually ask for."

I personally had a brief convo recently with a Merchant who was still using a resize script that was eating up 3,000kb.  Her response was, "Well, people can delete it if it causes problems."  I wonder how many people delete these script as a matter of practice anyways when they are done resizing.

Maybe it would be a good thing if LL required that Merchants listed the ARC for clothing and other attachments.