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Textures blurring and reloading


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I don't have this problem on firestorm, but firestorm has a different problem and keeps deciding to stop loading textures after a while. So for example when exploring a new area of a sim often only half the scene will load, or I go to a shop and after a while, it stops loading textures until I restart the viewer.

So I decided to try UKando (SLViewer has no parcel boundaries on the minimap so is useless to me), and immeditately I notice the problem I have had with Singularity and otrher viewers. where object go blurry, they resolve, and look ok, you turn around and look back and they are blurry again. So everything is always going blurry and reloading all the time. I looked up a solution and found that setting debug settings "TextureLoadFullRes" to True, fixes the problem.

But it also means when sailing around things load even slower and I end up sailing through gray half resolved rivers, when on firestorm they might be a bit blurry but you can generally make out what it is you are passing and can pause if something takes your interest.

I know others have had this problem, it seems quite common. Are there any alternative solutions than the "TextureLoadFullRes" one that would have less of an impact when exploring?

I doubt it makes much difference but my PC:

Intel i7-4770 CPU @ 3.4GHz. 16 GB Memory, 64 bit Win 8.1, GeForce GTX 745

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Aethelwine wrote:

I looked up a solution and found that setting debug settings "TextureLoadFullRes" to True, fixes the problem.

You really should never set TextureLoadFullRes to TRUE.

That advice gets given out a lot on "help" notecards & it's very bad advice.  Setting TextureLoadFullRes to TRUE effectively simulates a memory leak, will slow the viewer to a crawl even on a good system & you will likely crash very soon from out of memory. Any viewer you changed that setting on, you should revert it.

The constant blurring & sharpening of textures you are seeing sounds like "texture thrashing".

This happens usually because the viewer runs out of texture memory and the textures will then constantly unload and reload - blur/sharpen/blur/sharpen. The textures will usually load and stay sharp while your mouse is hovering over them.
This has been a problem for a long time with SL viewers that only allow up to 512MB of texture memory, which can quickly run out in texture rich areas.

There is no real workaround for this problem apart from switching to a viewer that allows more then 512MB texture memory and even then the problem can still be triggered by certain scenes with a silly number of large sized textures and how much milage you get from a viewer that allows more the 512MB texture memory depends on your graphics card.

This is probably why you don't get the problem on Firestorm - Firestorm 64bit allows you to set texture memory up to 1024MB, Preferences -> Graphics -> Hardware Settings -> Video texture memory buffer.

Some things to try that may help:

  •  Certain HUDs are known to cause almost instant texture thrashing because of the large number of 1024 sized textures they use - for example The Shops style HUD, The Shops shopping HUD, the Toddleedoo avatar HUD and the WowMeh mesh avatar HUD - pretty much all the HUDs that come with mesh bodies will cause a texture thrashing problem when worn.
    If you are wearing one of these HUDs, remove it and relog and the problem should be much better.
    Only wear the mesh body HUDs when you need to use them.
    See BUG-6242 for a discussion about these HUDs.
  • The texture thrashing may be being exacerbated by an another texture heavy attachment you are wearing, not necessarily a HUD.
    Test this by resetting to the default avatar and relogging and see if the texture thrashing stops. If it does, add back your attachements one at a time to see if you can find the culpret. Usually its mesh attachments that can worsen this problem.
    To set back to the default avatar, activate the Develop menu in the top menu of the viewer with CTRL+ALT+Q, then Develop -> Avatar -> Character Tests -> Test female/male.
  • Make sure you are on the latest graphics driver version. Some old drivers (especially for Intel & AMD cards)  will cause texture thrashing to happen more frequently.
  • Go to Me -> Preferences -> Graphics -> Hardware -> Texture Memory slider.
    If the slider isn't set to 512MB, set it to 512MB if the viewer will let you (this depends on your graphics card if you can set the 512 max value here).
    The lower the value here, the more quickly you will run out of texture memory and the faster texture thrashing will start.
  • Enable the texture compression setting.
    Preferences -> Graphics -> Hardware -> Enable Texture Compression (needs a restart). Enabling texture compression may ease the texture thrashing but beware - it's lossy texture compression, very lossy, and you will very likely see a noticeable pixelation on many textures.

  • it will help to close down all active group chats. The avatar profile icons can eat up precious texture memory. You have to close the group chat window. It doesn't matter if you do not have the group chat window actually visible on screen, the profile textures will load into memory as soon as the group chat opens.
    If you have a few group chats open with a large chatters list, those profile icons can eat up at least 200MB of texture memory.

For a discussion about this texture thrashing problem, see this thread on Torley's profile feed: https://my.secondlife.com/torley.linden/posts/5440cf6176286532390000ad

Also see the comments on issue BUG-2514


Aethelwine wrote:

I don't have this problem on firestorm, but firestorm has a different problem and keeps deciding to stop loading textures after a while. So for example when exploring a new area of a sim often only half the scene will load, or I go to a shop and after a while, it stops loading textures until I restart the viewer.

That shouldn't happen.

To get that problem looked at, best thing to do is to file a Firestorm JIRA issue so we can get your system information, viewer logs and settings files. I suspect a settings problem there, seeing as you have already changed TextureLoadFullRes to TRUE. Whatever is going wrong there should be fixable because it isn't normal.

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Thanks Whirly. I will take a look at your post and go through it later and respond.

I am pretty sure I have the texture memory size maxed and I was getting the constant blurring in a skybox, so there is perhaps more going on than the obvious. I will check it out in more detail when I have time later.

Edit just checked and video card memory was maxed. Turning it down has maybe fixed the problem. I have a 2Gb card but setting the hardware to 1Gb seems to fix it.

----update----

I was wondering all day if I had been short changed on my graphics card when I sent it in for repair and got a 1Gb card back, but Speccy and NVidea's only information seems to indicate it has 4Gb of memory onboard. The texture thrashing occurs when I set Ukando on max of 2Gb, it seems ok on less than that, but since Firestorm's max is 1024mb I will leave UKando's at that for now.

Replicating the Firestorm issue is not so easy. I will come back to that I am sure after Xmas, (I will be on Lumiya for a week from tomorrow) and when I do I will investigate further and if necessary do a JIRA bug report. It is most noticeable on group rides where 20 or so of us explore a biking sim on bikes.

Ps I didn't adjust that setting in Firestorm. If I have changed any Debug settings in Firestorm it will just be for the camera view. (The Computer got wiped several times before the shop replaced the graphics card. The Firestorm install is only a month or so old)

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  • 2 years later...
On 12/21/2015 at 6:45 AM, Whirly Fizzle said:

 Certain HUDs are known to cause almost instant texture thrashing because of the large number of 1024 sized textures they use - for example The Shops style HUD, The Shops shopping HUD, the Toddleedoo avatar HUD and the WowMeh mesh avatar HUD - pretty much all the HUDs that come with mesh bodies will cause a texture thrashing problem when worn.
If you are wearing one of these HUDs, remove it and relog and the problem should be much better.
Only wear the mesh body HUDs when you need to use them.
See BUG-6242 for a discussion about these HUDs.

This totally solved my issue!  Thank you!

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On a sidenote, on viewers that allow you to set your texture memory higher, setting it too high will cause trashing too.

The texture memory setting in the viewer is ONLY for textures, other things (meshs for example) are also loaded in vram but are not  counted here.

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