Why do things keep blurring?

[lockettaway88]

Okay so I just bought my first house and rented some land yesterday. All of a sudden today when I logged in, I notice that the floors and the couch and chandelier (the only two pieces of furniture I have in there right now) will randomly become very blurry and then go back to normal after a few seconds. It's been happening all day and it was not happening last night when I bought the house and the land.

Here are things I've tried (I use the latest Firestorm Viewer):

1. taking down the house, deleting it entirely from my inventory, and getting a redelivery

2. Undoing all my settings

3. Manually clearing my cache

4. Restarting my computer

Additional info:

I have an MSI GE72 gaming laptop with a GTX970M graphics card

My house is the only place I'm having this issue. I've been to a few stores and on a few sims today and have had no issues.

I notice that just before it happens I can hear my laptop fan start to get louder and speed up and when it stops my fan slows down and gets quieter

It does not happen on the land outside around my house 

I had a friend over today and I asked if he could see it happening on his end and he said no 

 

Can anyone help? I've attached an image of the problem too. 

 

 

Edited March 28, 2017 by lockettaway88

[Whirly Fizzle]

If the problem only happens when you are inside your house then the house itself or some furniture you have rezzed in it are likely to be textured with a silly number of 1024x1024 textures, which will cause the texture memory to run out & textures will start unloading & reloading, causing a constant blurring then sharpening.

If you are using the 64bit version of Firestorm, you can set the texture memory up to 1024MB.
Preferences -> Graphics -> Hardware Settings -> Viewer texture memory buffer.
What setting did you have this on & does setting it to 1024MB help?

If you remove the furniture from the house temporarily, does the problem stop?

[Nalates Urriah]

What you are seeing is called "Texture Thrashing". Whirly is pointing out it is video memory related.

Thrashing is caused by your viewer needing to render more textures than your video card/memory can hold. So, it discards rendered textures to load textures it has yet to render. When the viewer renders the next frame the discarded textures have to be reloaded. Textures first load at low-resolution then progress to higher-rez. So, you see blurry, then nice and crisp, then blurry, crisp, blurry, crisp... That load, discard sequence is the thrash.

A couple of things can eat up video memory, large textures (as Whirly said), lots of textures, limited video memory (HD Graphics infamous), and having a lot of groups open while using the tiny profile pictures... if that is the cause, a relog will stop the thrashing. Eventually it starts up again and another relog will fix it for a time. The relog empties video memory.

Some HUD's will trigger the problem because they use a number of large textures. Take off your HUD's and see if it makes a difference. You may find one HUD that pushes you over the edge and starts thrashing.

If you are on a newer operating system, Win 7, 8, 10... you likely are 64-bit. If you have a video card (not HD Graphics) a change to the 64-bit viewer will likely eliminate thrashing.

With HD Graphics adding more system memory can reduce the problem. In desktops upgrading the video card can reduce the problem. I have a GTX 1060 with 6GB of dedicated VRAM and there are places where I'll see it start thrashing. In a world where people make stuff without understanding the tech we will probably never eliminate the problem. But, you can manage it.

 

[lockettaway88]

1 hour ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

If the problem only happens when you are inside your house then the house itself or some furniture you have rezzed in it are likely to be textured with a silly number of 1024x1024 textures, which will cause the texture memory to run out & textures will start unloading & reloading, causing a constant blurring then sharpening.

If you are using the 64bit version of Firestorm, you can set the texture memory up to 1024MB.
Preferences -> Graphics -> Hardware Settings -> Viewer texture memory buffer.
What setting did you have this on & does setting it to 1024MB help?

If you remove the furniture from the house temporarily, does the problem stop?

I'm using the 32bit version so the texture memory only goes up to 512 and that's what it's on

I removed all the furniture and it still happens but not very often. I put the couch back and realized that whenever I sit on the couch, it gets really bad. 

[lockettaway88]

5 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

What you are seeing is called "Texture Thrashing". Whirly is pointing out it is video memory related.

Thrashing is caused by your viewer needing to render more textures than your video card/memory can hold. So, it discards rendered textures to load textures it has yet to render. When the viewer renders the next frame the discarded textures have to be reloaded. Textures first load at low-resolution then progress to higher-rez. So, you see blurry, then nice and crisp, then blurry, crisp, blurry, crisp... That load, discard sequence is the thrash.

A couple of things can eat up video memory, large textures (as Whirly said), lots of textures, limited video memory (HD Graphics infamous), and having a lot of groups open while using the tiny profile pictures... if that is the cause, a relog will stop the thrashing. Eventually it starts up again and another relog will fix it for a time. The relog empties video memory.

Some HUD's will trigger the problem because they use a number of large textures. Take off your HUD's and see if it makes a difference. You may find one HUD that pushes you over the edge and starts thrashing.

If you are on a newer operating system, Win 7, 8, 10... you likely are 64-bit. If you have a video card (not HD Graphics) a change to the 64-bit viewer will likely eliminate thrashing.

With HD Graphics adding more system memory can reduce the problem. In desktops upgrading the video card can reduce the problem. I have a GTX 1060 with 6GB of dedicated VRAM and there are places where I'll see it start thrashing. In a world where people make stuff without understanding the tech we will probably never eliminate the problem. But, you can manage it.

 

I usually keep two huds on, one for my Maitreya body and one for my Lelutka head. I detached both of them and relogged and still had the problem. I am going to try using the 64bit instead and I'll check back in in a little bit

[lockettaway88]

So switching to the 64bit has totally eliminated the issue! When I installed it, by default it had my texture memory set to the max of 2048. Should I leave it there or should it be lowered?

[Whirly Fizzle]

11 hours ago, lockettaway88 said:

So switching to the 64bit has totally eliminated the issue! When I installed it, by default it had my texture memory set to the max of 2048. Should I leave it there or should it be lowered?

Yep yep, leave the texture memory set at 2048.  The 64bit viewer will attempt to set the texture memory to the correct level for the detected card.
Glad that fixed the problem.

[Nalates Urriah]

I suspect both of those HUD's are pretty well made, at least texture-wise.

I do find that my Slink body and hands HUD's add a lot of scripts. So, I tend to remove them until I need them. So, I have links to them in an easy to access folder.

[lockettaway88]

Thank you both so much for all your help! 

[Martinejj]

The answer from Whirly Fizzle about Viewer texture memory buffer also helped me.

I had a similar problem where the background and surroundings were getting blurry, and then "something" went bonkers and updated the textures once a second.

This happened all over SL, my house, different sim's etc, even my self and skin/tattoo, was affected.

Incredibly frustrating and annoying to have that flickering in the background constantly. Strangely enough this did not happen with my alt in the same room/place, with the exact same settings and at the same time. I increased it to 1024 and all calmed down.

I tried it all, clearing cashes, changing graphic settings, re-installing Firestorm, nothing helped.

Thank you Whirly, i can now enjoy my SL again.

[Lexi Oppewall]

I'm having this problem now  

I'm using Firestorm-Releasex64 on Windows 7.

The Fix that was working for you guys doesn't give me that option. My Viewer Texture Memory Buffer only goes up to 768. Any ideas on how I can increase that number?

[Whirly Fizzle]

@Lexi Oppewall
What graphics card do you have and how much memory is on the card?
The 64bit version of Firestorm will only allow you to set the texture memory as high as the graphics card memory - actually a little bit lower to avoid the problem of reduced viewer performance when texture memory gets full. I suspect your card has 1 gig memory if the viewer is clamping you to 768MB.

[Lexi Oppewall]

@Whirly Fizzle

If I'm interpreting the directx diagnostics correctly... I have ATI Radeon HD 4650 vid card with total memory of 4081 MB

could that be my problem? 

boourns. SL used to work well on this machine. 4 years ago.

Edited April 7, 2017 by Lexi Oppewall

[Rolig Loon]

That's definitely not a top of the line graphics card, and AMD is really optimized for DirectX, not for the OpenGL environment that SL operates in.

https://gyazo.com/89641b2213f8ab8dc75ed8c26565cc50

[Lexi Oppewall]

oh wow... how easy is it to change one's graphics card?

edit: I looked up the top graphics card in that infograpic there. seems it's for notebooks. what should I get for a desktop PC?

edit 2: eep! expensivo. would be willing to spend around $150. here are the rest of my computer's specs: https://support.hp.com/ca-en/document/c01896260

If anyone can help, I'd be super grateful. 

Edited April 8, 2017 by Lexi Oppewall

[Nalates Urriah]

Changing video cards is relatively easy. Also, most places like Best Buy and Fry's can be talking into installing the card if you buy from them.

New is always good, but there are some great near new buys on eBay if you go DIY.

NVIDIA is the choice for SL. So, you need to know how NVIDIA model numbers work. They are in the form of XXxx, like 980 or 1060. The 80 and 60 (xx) are power ratings, sort of. The 80 is better than the 60. The 9 and 10 (XX) are generation numbers. The 10 is newer than the 9. So, 10 has features the 9, 8, 7, etc. don't have, which generally makes them faster for SL use. You can look up benchmarks to see how much better one is than the other.

The 7 0r 700 series is adequate for SL on near Ultra settings if the rest of the computer is good. Good being a 4th generation Intel CPU or newer. The 900 series do VERY well for now. These you can buy at eBay for great prices. The 10 series is the newest. My GTX 1060 gives me frame rates between 50 and 100 most of the time. Also, the 1060 is the first series with features for VR, which may be a consideration.

The 1060 was the best performance for the dollar  in October 2016 when I was buying.

I write about hardware for use with Second Life. See: http://blog.nalates.net/category/hardware/

So, if you want performance and detailed explanations... check out my articles. You will have to page back to find the articles about video cards.

[Lexi Oppewall]

Nalates! Thank you so much for this, sorry I missed it at the time. I will definitely check out your blog