Inventory and Lag - Myths or not?

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Is it true that some of our lag is caused by our Inventory, and how it is organized or not organized?

Lag is killing me.  Is any of it related to Inventory?

I had heard once, that having a massive number of items in the Objects folder, without organizing them, and sending them to their own folders would create lag for you.  True or not?

Some people say to put all the items into boxes, and store them that way.  Does that reduce lag?  True or not?

Full inventory has not loaded for weeks - it's always short about 3k items - the most recent ones, which are the ones I need most.  What's up with that?  What's that about?

What about the number of folders?  What if you have a massive amount of folders?

If the above is true, in causing lag....what would fix it....create an av for storage only....and send the bulk of it to another av who just sits, and doesn't need to walk around?  Is there some other kind of storage solution?

Thank you 

Signed,

Disgruntled in Lagland.

[Faubio Alter]

My guess is you've made up your mind on this is but  for what it's worth .................. The number one thing you can do to improve your performance is reduce your graphics settings.

Others can be found here (See the combat stuff.):

http://dango517.blogspot.com/

A word about those combat tweaks. They are extreme tweaks. Those tweaks were created for the "Average Joe" to compete against high-end PCs in $3,000.00, $ 7,000.00+. price range. Combat competition in SL are not bracketed for hardware and connectivity these are suggested to level the playing field for users with average PCs. They are not pretty but they can make an average PC much better in combat. See the disclaimer on the website.

[Faubio Alter]

Are you sure about that processor, a Pentium III? That processor barely squeezes by conforming to the minimum requirement to run SL. Most new PCs have dual core processors at least. I would suggest you find a helper with that lag problem. Someone inworld to help you. See "Device Manager" in Windows PCs for your PC hardware.

 

This graphics card may not run on a PC with a Pentium III processor, Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 260/PCI/SSE2

 

Your right it should run better with lots less trouble but that's computing in 2010.

[Faubio Alter]

Too many AVs on a SIM can lag it. Each server type has a limit to the number of AVs, objects and scripts that can be run. Exceed these limits and the SIM lags. This is over usage. The SIM owner is to blame when this occurs.

Removing AV flexi items can improve performance, not because they are flexi because they are made of too many objects. Remove AO and HUDs can also improve performance. "Music breaks" are a connectivity issue sourceyet  unknown but more then likely because of packet loss.

Do with these suggestions as you will.

[Doris Haller]

Kokoro.Fasching schrieb:

What is your internet connection?  Are you connectd via ethernet (wired), or wireless?

It's a blue cable going thru the whole flat to a white box where a white cable goes to a grey box from where a black cable goes to the wall. The boxes they call router and splitter.

The speedtest says I have 5867,51 kBit/s (716.25 kBytes/s) down and 624,53 kBit/s (76.24 kBytes/s) upoad.

Nothing explains why the sims are mainly grey (it got worse since a few days), except that one of the boxes with the cables is grey too.. but I guess it's a coincidence.

 

Do I get used to it? No, I don't log in so much any more

[Doris Haller]

Faubio.Alter schrieb:

 

Are you sure about that processor, a Pentium III? That processor barely squeezes by conforming to the minimum requirement to run SL. Most new PCs have dual core processors at least. I would suggest you find a helper with that lag problem. Someone inworld to help you. See "Device Manager" in Windows PCs for your PC hardware.

 

This graphics card may not run on a PC with a Pentium III processor, Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 260/PCI/SSE2

 

Your right it should run better with lots less trouble but that's computing in 2010.

Nooo.. it's what that stupid SL viewer is guessing.. How could windows rate a Pentium III with 7.4. out of 7.9 points?!

Windows call it "Intel® Core i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz" and the Graphic Card runs very well.. specially on grey colors.

You're right, I will ask a friend in-world.

Thank you

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Well, the only thing I've made up my mind about is that I need to tweak something, or pop 1200 bucks before I go nuts.  But I will still crusade for the average computer user that wants to enjoy SL!

I don't mind recording all that statistical stuff for a few days, to see what works.  I'll record for a few days as is - then do the tweaking, as suggested above.  I've got 20k in my inventory and I'll use an alt that has 2k - but sounds like it's not an inventory problem - might make a difference if I trash all calling cards and landmarks.

What's important on that Statistical report?  Today I recorded FPS - Bandwidth - sim fps - what else on that chart is important?  What is the bandwidth reading?  In one spot that was jumping from 9 to 330.

[Faubio Alter]

The top two FPS (frames per second) and bandwidth. These are your computer the client side of the connection. There are three parts involved in making a connection. the client side your computer; the connection itself (a large system of connections call the web) and server side. The SL equipment.

This is what you need to do:

Open the statistics bar (view > statistics bar) and the network  preferences (edit > preferences > network > maximum  bandwidth slider) Tp to a SIM while the SIM is rezzing set the Bandwidth  slide bar for the  maximum kbps you can achieve in the statistics bar. This  location should be near the maximum speed of your ISP service. You will need to find out your connection speed.

 

You can  check your connection speed here:

 

http://www.speedtest.net/

 

 

 

You said:

What is the bandwidth reading?  In one spot that was jumping from 9 to 330.

 

Your maximimum connection speed is 330 kbps. This is very low, too low, adjust the slider to get a better or the best speed possible this should be near your connection speed (see speed test). Typical connection speeds are 768 kbps, 1 MB, 3 MB, and 10 MB (10 MB is cable all others are DSL). Extremely fast  speeds are T1 and T3 both are business connections.

Your inventory is stored on the server side of the connection. Throw out some stuff. What 20k of stuff will do is slow down your log on time a bit but not much. So little you might not notice the difference between 10000 and 20000 objects, both seeming about the same speed to load.

I said:

Use these suggestions at your own risk

[Doris Haller]

Faubio.Alter schrieb:

This is what you need to do:

Open the statistics bar (view > statistics bar) and the network  preferences (edit > preferences > network > maximum  bandwidth slider) Tp to a SIM while the SIM is rezzing set the Bandwidth  slide bar for the  maximum kbps you can achieve in the statistics bar. This  location should be near the maximum speed of your ISP service. You will need to find out your connection speed.

This is very interesting. I tried it with the EMERALD viewer and here is what I observed:

Bandwidth jumps up to 700 - 900 kbps, then sometimes goes back to 0 for some (1-2) seconds, then jumping up again to 700

Meanwhile, more things appear and grey things get colors.

At some point, it goes down to 40-100 kbps. In the "Advanced" section of the statistics, I can see in the group network that "Texture" (which was taking up most the bandwidth until now) went back to zero.

I think that would be ok, if all textures had been loaded.. but still many things are still grey!

After some time (minutes), the texture starts again going up to 20 - 100 kbps. Now I am in the sim for minutes and I guess that's it - things that are grey now will stay grey.

Then I did the same with the SL viewer (1.23) with no significant difference.

• Even though some things (walls, floors) are still missing, there is no bandwidth (for objects 9-18 kbps, textures 0) that indicates they are loading. As if they were forgotten.

• The SL-viewer maximum of the bandwith ruler is 1000 (for Emerald 5000). Anyway I never got bandwith close to the 5000 kbps of my ISP.I think the maximum for both is 1000.
• The LAG meter stays green-green-green all the time. I think you can just forget this thing.
• There is no packet loss at all.

 

What can I do to force the forgotten things to load (I already cleared the cache)? Why are they forgotten?

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Thanks for the info, Faubio....working my way through all this info, so bear with me.  I checked my own computer specs, based on your instructions, and I'm operating on a 502mb laptop....and minimum requirements are 512.....that's probably the whole problem there.  Not sure if it is worth going through a tweaking process, but hope that some others are using these links to help performance.

I discarded 200 calling cards and 100 LMs last night....and I had been alternating between me, and my 20k inventory, and my alt with a 2k inventory, and I do believe that the 2k inventory alt gets around a wee bit better - but I don't think it's really significant.

I'm not sure if fps is what you ultimately use to guage performance....but last night around 7:30 pm SL time....I was at .7 in a location that was at 2.5 around 3pm ...and in the past have noticed that it operates better at certain times of the day than others.  Not sure if that is my own connection, or if it has to do with number of people inworld.

After removing all the calling cards and Lms....and then adding a cooling pad....was at 1.0 for the next few hours....and this morning, am approaching 3.5 at times.  And walking around and typing is much easier this morning, but it generally is easier in the mornings anway.  Again - not sure if any of this makes a difference, and not sure if the inventory clean-up was a factor.  Just tossing it out there.  I'll try some other things, today.

[Mickey Vandeverre]

May I make a suggestion?   Would you volunteer to be another guinea pig, Doris?

I think that the original topic - on Inventory and performance has been answered - that perhaps the performance issues are not related much to Inventory.  There's some valuable information being tossed about here....that maybe some people trying to tweak performance need to read, and they would most likely be in the Technology section.

I could organize it from the beginning, and title it the Ultimate Performance Tweaking Process for the Technologically Clueless on POS Computers, and drop it in the Technology section.  I spent some time in the Wiki last night, and finally have a grip on some of the terms being tossed about.  And thinking that if I can be a guinea pig with a substandard laptop (which I thought was average)....and make a few things work better....and if Doris joins in with a legitimate computer....it might give an example of a step-by-step process from start to finish.

ETA:  looks like it needs to go in Technical, Technology section is for the Lindens....but the Technical section looks strictly QandA, and this would be a running tweak session....so might drop it into the General Discussion area.  Dang, I miss the old forums.

[Yichard Muni]

This is a recurrent question, and as far as I know, it is not true.

Lag happens in the viewer and into the transfers between the world and the viewers. The inventory is still in the database, and it is not involved in this. Especially I hardly see how the way it is organized may affect lag.

Mains sources of lag are:

-Windows scraping the hard drive (and other "background tasks which pass before the main task, such as anti-virus scan, defragmentation, etc.)

-quantity of prims in sight. SL has severe limitations in prims for landscapes, but we must be aware that some outfits have hundreds, see thousands of prims, so that one character bring more lag than a whole landscape

-scripts. Recently a new form of script lag was found, when some outfit has size adaptation scripts: thousands od scripts may then be working simultaneously. Alway disallow size adapters when unused.

-Internet congestion, slow internet link, etc. which slow the interaction between the keyboard and the character.

-various issues and bottlenecks into the communication protocol, internal SL systems, etc.

The only case where a bloated inventory may cause a slower reaction is when you display it, or do searches in it, because at this moment, and at this moment only, you provoke a database request, which will take longer if there are many items. Butt his is a matter of milliseconds.

Also putting your items in boxes will just make your inventory less practical.  

[Faubio Alter]

Hmmm, so you can run it at 50 kbps all the time or occasionally at 500 (500s is an arbitrary number)  kbps when it surges. Did you notice it loads faster during the surges?  Did you consider the tweak has nothing to do with the surges that maybe that's the way it works. I agree it could run smoother. The choice is yours. Run it at 50 kbps all the time or improve performance with the spikes. For me I consider my time valuable and want to wait as little as possible.

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Faubio - I followed your instructions on the bandwidth thing, and when tping to a new sim, it was generally around 330 at highest, so adjusted bandwidth slider to 300.

While I was in that box, I cleared cache again.....logged back in, and pretty good performance right now.  The bandwidth was generally about 13 or 14, and now at 20 to 24. (this is while standing still - when moving, up to 140)   and I have no idea what any of that means - lol.  fps is up to 4.5, which is much better than it usually is.  and loaded pretty fast (for me) - the rest of you would have a fit.

On the clearing cache, usually do that once a week, and had done it several days ago....but I use 5 avs and run them all about.  Do they all contribute to one cache?  It was mentioned that tp-ing around a lot adds to your cache....so if you do it with several avs.....you need to clear it out like every other day?

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Thanks for your explanations, Yichard.  Yes, from running two different avs and tweaking a few things....doesn't look like inventory count is making much of a difference.

And sorry I ran out of gold stars - I need a dozen more.

[Doris Haller]

I like that idea.

I hope it will really work out! (Althouh I have some doubts)

 

Anyway, I will try and help.. what should I do?

[Mickey Vandeverre]

I'll try to get the sequence organized.  And toss it out.

I've still got some more things to do, and I think that the true test will be when I log in tonight - night time is when it's bad - - but for right now, after doing these things:

cleaning out calling cards and LMs and adding a cooling pad (helped)

adjusting the bandwidth slider and clearing cache (even after it had been cleared a few days ago) - helped a lot.  I'm at maximum performance now - 4.5 fps!  laugh your asses off.  But makes a huge difference when you were dealing with half that.  I can walk and type!

Thanks for all the input, and I marked this as answered, concerning the Inventory question.

Doris, I looked back up at your computer specs, and they are way better than mine - - but I'm functioning - - so please do not give up.  Let's find an answer.

[Eternus Soulstar]

Mickey what video card do you have?  i looked through there but didn't see it anywhere.

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Mobile Intel 945 GM Express Chipset Family

A friend helped me find that, and he's telling me this isn't good.

[Faubio Alter]

Well that was a surprise, I got the kudos. TY

[Faubio Alter]

I run the cashe off a second hard drive this also improves it's performance. I'm a traveler too. Find and old hard drive or a cheap one but a fast one.

These are examples only:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150014%201035507776%20103530096&name=18GB%20-%2080GB

[Corvus Drake]

And I only have bad sex in SL.

 

Doris......thank you for reminding me why I still bother posting.     This was comedy gold.