Textures won't load, or won't stay loaded?

[MiuKitten]

I've been having this trouble a lot where the textures of objects and other avatars either never load properly, or only for a few seconds. Often if I run my cursor back and forth rapidly over the item, it will swim into focus for a few seconds, then blur again. Avatars and items look blurry or formless. 

I have used SL for over 6 years total, so not a notice. I have tried setting graphics from ultra to low, which is no problem for my Asus gaming computer with Nvidia graphics cards.

I have tried Catznip, Niran's and the default viewer. My internet is pretty good, never less than 10mbs upload/download, often in the 50mbs range down and 8-15mbs upload. ( http://www.speedtest.net/result/3332714654.png ). I have tried clearing cache, restarting the viewers, restarting the whole computer, doing a clear uninstall including all app data...still having the issue. 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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MiuKitten wrote:

I've been having this trouble a lot where the textures of objects and other avatars either never load properly, or only for a few seconds. Often if I run my cursor back and forth rapidly over the item, it will swim into focus for a few seconds, then blur again. Avatars and items look blurry or formless. 

I have used SL for over 6 years total, so not a notice. I have tried setting graphics from ultra to low, which is no problem for my Asus gaming computer with Nvidia graphics cards.

I have tried Catznip, Niran's and the default viewer. My internet is pretty good, never less than 10mbs upload/download, often in the 50mbs range down and 8-15mbs upload. ( 

http://www.speedtest.net/result/3332714654.png

). I have tried clearing cache, restarting the viewers, restarting the whole computer, doing a clear uninstall including all app data...still having the issue. 

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What is your graphics card?

You need to do a speetest to one of THESE locations. Getting the test results from the server down the road isnt accurate.

DO NOT CLEAR CACHE!!!

Go to the Nvidia website and manually update the drivers.

[Theresa Tennyson]

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MiuKitten wrote:

I've been having this trouble a lot where the textures of objects and other avatars either never load properly, or only for a few seconds. Often if I run my cursor back and forth rapidly over the item, it will swim into focus for a few seconds, then blur again. Avatars and items look blurry or formless. 

I have used SL for over 6 years total, so not a notice. I have tried setting graphics from ultra to low, which is no problem for my Asus gaming computer with Nvidia graphics cards.

I have tried Catznip, Niran's and the default viewer. My internet is pretty good, never less than 10mbs upload/download, often in the 50mbs range down and 8-15mbs upload. ( 

http://www.speedtest.net/result/3332714654.png

). I have tried clearing cache, restarting the viewers, restarting the whole computer, doing a clear uninstall including all app data...still having the issue. 

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Do you use a Toddledoo or similar mesh avatar and keep the clothing HUD attached at all times? Sometimes HUD's like this can have so many textures loaded into them that they use up all the graphic memory that SL allocates and there's no room for the viewer to load scenery textures. Only keep the HUD attached when you want to change clothes, etc.

[Nalates Urriah]

When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. If the viewer will at least show the login screen, 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.

Without that 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.

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There is a problem labeled Texture Trashing that sounds like your issue. Texture thrashing is a video card problem. There was a viewer issue on the Mac side. But, that has been fixed in recent releases.

Thrashing is when your video card loads a texture and you see it render completely. You'll see it go through the usual render process. But, just as it becomes sharp and crisp, it disappers and the process starts over. This can happen for any number of textures in your field ov view.

If it is texture thrashing what is happening is there are more textures than you have video memory. So, the video system is paging out textures. It simply cannot render all of them. So, it tries to do it in stages and cycles through them.

There was a setting that needed to be changed on Mac's. But, that should not be necessary now.

The only possible fix I know of now is to turn your draw distance down.

With the addition of materials there is a greater load on video cards. Also novice virtual world builders tend to over do texture use. So, we are seeing an  increase in texture size and number.

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Clearing cache... this is an absolute last step in trouble shooting, after all else has failed. Clearing the cache for the reasons most people have is counter productive, it aggrevates the problems more often than not. In general it makes your computer and the SL system work harder than it needs to and slows everything down. Clearing cache is old advice from the days before the cache was updated to use an indexed system and the switch to HTTP protocol for texture download. Getting a corrupt texture is now a very very rare thing.

Your connection is going to have little if anything to do with this problem. If you really want to check out your connection to SL read: http://blog.nalates.net/2011/10/26/troubleshoot-your-sl-connection/

Another possibility, check eBay for a video card with more video memory.