Textures Rendering Problem

[Tytia Atheria]

Hi, since the last update of SecondLife Viewer my textures don't seem to be loading properly? I thought with the new update today it would have fixed that problem but it didn't. 

I tried the HTTP Get Textures on/off to no avail, also tried clearing my cache still same results.My video card is an Nvidia GEforce GTX 560 and the drivers are up to date. 

The textures load and when I turn my avi around everthing has disappeared and needs to reload again. It never did this before. Is there a tweak to fix this? I even tried adjusting my draw distance but get the same result.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated?

[SaraCarena]

As it`s only started happening over the last 2 updates I think I would try a clean install first.

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/How-to-uninstall-and-reinstall-Second-Life/ta-p/1375231#Windows_7

Good luck :smileyhappy:

[Ayesha Askham]

Tytia

I may be wrong but I suspect what you are seeing is the result of the "Project Interesting" updates.  I doubt that it was intended to work like this but both the latest LL viewers and the latest Firestorm are showing this issue, which seems to have sometining to do with texture caching.

I suspect that the recent changes in server-side code may have triggered this problem.  Expect news from the Lab "soon"!

But don't hold your breath! :smileyfrustrated:

[Nalates Urriah]

Avoid clearing your cache until after everyting else fails. Unless you know you have a cache corruption problem, clearing the cache generally makes things worse.

I use a GTX560 too and SL Viewer 3.7.16. I don't have the problem.

The problem can be a connection issue. Having a good Internet connection does not mean you have a good connection to SL. But, that is probably not the cause of your problem.

I suspect the viewer is dropping textures to make room for the textures you are looking at. This means something is using up a lot of texture space. It can either be things in the location/region or HUD's.

Try a sparesly built region to see if it has the problem. If it does, you may be carrying the problem with you.

If you have HUD's, try removing all your HUD's. Some are notorious for causing this problem. Add them back one at a time and visit some shopping malls. You may find adding one particular HUD cause the problem to occur. Or a combination of HUD's causes it.

 

[Tytia Atheria]

Okay thank you everyone for your insight. I've tried removing my hud and it is still happening even in a sparsely textured area. I've checked my connection and it is good as well. 

Like I said it was never an issue before the updates so I guess I'll just have to ride it out and see if the next update remedies the problem.

I will try a full clean re-install of SL viewer. Thanks again.

[Ardy Lay]

Behold the Texture Console:  http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Texture_Console

Item 5, Discard Bias, will indicate if portions of textures are being discarded to make room for others.  The result of this discard would be "blurry textures" on objects instead of un-textured, thus "50% gray" objects.  Turning around and finding things that were textured very recently have lost their textures and become gray would indicate that the Second Life Viewer dropped them due to Interest Level processing.

Please do check Preferences > Graphics > Hardware to ensure that the control for memory is as high as the Viewer will allow you to set it.  This usually should be 512MB.  It's a bum display though.  It's hard to explain what the viewer does with this number without boring people.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Ardy Lay wrote:

Behold the Texture Console: 

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Texture_Console

Item 5, Discard Bias, will indicate if portions of textures are being discarded to make room for others.  The result of this discard would be "blurry textures" on objects instead of un-textured, thus "50% gray" objects.  Turning around and finding things that were textured very recently have lost their textures and become gray would indicate that the Second Life Viewer dropped them due to Interest Level processing.

Please do check Preferences > Graphics > Hardware to ensure that the control for memory is as high as the Viewer will allow you to set it.  This usually should be 512MB.  It's a bum display though.  It's hard to explain what the viewer does with this number without boring people.

---

Bore us please.  Seriously.

Because for some of us that is a catch-22.

Based in part on Bao Linden's comments that they might actualy need to set that number lower, many of us who suffer from the "textures discarded due to insufficient memory" crashes, we have that turned down trying to alleviate the problem.

See here for more info and links to even more info if you want to follow the rabbit down the hole.

http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/fs_textures_discarded

Because I am afflicted by this problem and follow it closely I am of the opinion that this may be the number one cause of crashes in SL.

[SaraCarena]

 I`m no expert on the texture console, or how viewers manage memory and textures, but use it often enough to have filed a jira on it when the display got messed up a few months back now.

Think I read it a little different,

5. Bias. Texture detail multiplier. > 1 indicates that texture detail is being decreased to fit into memory

This kicks in when your video memory (or your setting for viewer texture memory buffer ) is near to or has been exceeded and relates to,

2. Amount of texture data currently bound by OpenGL / Threshold at which we decrease texture detail

The second figure in 2 being the amount of vram on a card or the setting in graphics > prefs > viewer texture memory buffer 512 being the max whatever your actual physical vram is.

Discard, I think is dealt with elsewhere,

25. DDis(Req). Desired Discard Level (see Discard definition) which is a function of area on screen and importance / Requested Discard Level. This is the client's record of the last discard level requested to the server. This is usually the same as Desired Discard Level, but may be larger if we have stopped requesting the texture because it is out of view (no area) or we have all of its data.

and,

33. (Dis). Actual Discarded level. This should eventually (after textures are downloaded and decoded) be the same as Desired Discard Level (DDis).

The discard definition being,

Discard Level - A discard level of 0 means the highest available detail version of the texture. Discard level 1 means the second highest detail version, which is 1/2 the size in each dimension (and thus 1/4 the memory footprint in memory)

Anyways bias and discard both seem, to me, a way of taking the load off of a stressed out graphics card and in some ways similar to LOD. But I`m always happy to learn something new :smileyhappy:

[Josy82]

Hello,

 

i have a Problem with rendering too using SecondLife Linux Client  3.7.16 i don't know what to do anymore try all possible graphics Settings but this don't help rendering is very slow.

[Josy82]

i have a Problem with rendering too using SecondLife Linux Client  3.7.16 i don't know what to do anymore try all possible graphics Settings but this don't help rendering is very slow.

[SaraCarena]

News from the latest TPV meeting was that the http pipeline viewer will be released next week (hopefully Monday) It will be on this page when it`s released.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Alternate_Viewers

I`d hang on and see how that works for you, it`s supposedly very fast at texture fetching.

There`s also some regions using the CDN for texture fetch now which is also quick. See the link to Nalates blog on her post up there ^ for a list of them. Brasil rio is a good place to test coz it`s an island region, so no surrounding sims that are not using CDN. :smileyhappy:

[Starry Questi]

I got this message on log in screen.  I am having problems with some things not showing on my screen.  Firestorm has detected a possible issue with your settings
The settings control TextureDiscardLevel should be at 0.  Reason:  This might cause textures to look blury and scullpties might  fail to load properly  current setting 3

So i did find how to set it to 0 and made sure am at 512Mb.  Still same thing, same objects not showing up.  Reading the WIKI now, it says for those who are having same problem here- 

• If you have a 64-bit system and more than 4 GB of memory (RAM), you can try one of the 64-bit Firestorm versions. These are less subject to this kind of crashing.

• Preferences → Graphics -> Hardware Settings → Viewer Texture Memory Buffer - reduce by 128.
  ie, if it is current at 512, reduce to 384; if it is at 384, reduce to 256; if at 256, reduce to 128.
  Do not set below 128.

• Reduce your normal draw distance

• Preferences → Graphics → Hardware Settings → Enable OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects - Disable this.

• Reduce your inventory size by boxing up items, clearing your trash and/or deleting old stuff. Also, do not open multiple inventory floaters unless you really have to.

• IMPORTANT: Do NOT do the following if you are using a 64 bit operating system!
  If you don't have the Advanced menu enabled, enable it with Ctrl-Alt-D. Then, Advanced → Debug Settings. Type in FSDestroyGLTexturesImmediately and set to TRUE.
  This is likely to use more bandwidth and mean textures that have previously loaded will go grey quickly when you look away, but it should reduce the frequency of crashes.

Edited February 8, 2018 by Starry Questi
more info

[Whirly Fizzle]

16 hours ago, Starry Questi said:

I got this message on log in screen.  I am having problems with some things not showing on my screen.  Firestorm has detected a possible issue with your settings
The settings control TextureDiscardLevel should be at 0.  Reason:  This might cause textures to look blury and scullpties might  fail to load properly  current setting 3

Activate the Advanced menu in the top menu bar of the viewer using CTRL+ALT+D.
Advanced -> Show debug settings -> Find the setting TextureDiscardLevel and set it to zero, or click the "Reset to default" button.
Relog.

The other steps you quoted from the wiki will not help invisible objects, those steps are for helping to reduce memory use by the viewer if you are using a 32bit viewer & therefore prone to out of memory crashes.

There are many reasons that objects may be invisible & it's hard to say what the cause is without more information.
Are the invisible objects only on one region or do you see this probably everywhere?
Is it only mesh objects that you have problems seeing?
Do the invisible objects render eventually but just take a really long time to load?
Is it only specific objects that never rez for you?