Firestorm is one hell of a memory hog

[ChibiDragon007]

So I've been using the latest version of the Firestorm viewer for Second Life since I got back into playing the game. However, I noticed as of late that it has been hogging a pretty hefty chunk of my system memory. A whopping six out of the eight total gb of RAM in my laptop. Before you all scream at me "Get a PC!" I do play on a Macbook Pro, which are not obviously meant for gaming but SL Is the one game I play on it for the most part. I use a late-2016 Macbook Pro w/Touch Bar specifically. 

I don't understand why Firestorm is making my computer use so much of its resources even when I have settings as low as humanly possible for them to go. Only things I have enabled are hardware skinning and avatar cloth so at least my  avatar doesn't look like a blob lmao. 

So what is the solution? Do I change to a different viewer? I've tried a few; Alchemy, the default LL viewer... but  all of them cause heating issues with my laptop and I don't want to risk  frying my system for the sake of being able to play a game. Any  other SL people that use Mac have any advice? I'd much  appreciate it. 

[Whirly Fizzle]

Do the other viewers you've tried use as much memory too?

6GB is pretty high, but the amount of memory the viewer uses depends on a lot of things.
Having lots of stupidly high poly mesh in the scene WILL bloat the memory use for example.

How long do you need to be online for the memory use to reach 6GB?

Do you have a crazy large inventory?
Each item in your inventory will eat up ~7kb memory.  That can mount up when the inventory is really large.

Edited October 4, 2018 by Whirly Fizzle

[ChibiDragon007]

9 minutes ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

Do the other viewers you've tried use as much memory too?

6GB is pretty high, but the amount of memory the viewer uses depends on a lot of things.
Having lots of stupidly high poly mesh in the scene WILL bloat the memory use for example.

How long do you need to be online for the memory use to reach 6GB?

Do you have a crazy large inventory?
Each item in your inventory will eat up ~7kb memory.  That can mount up when the inventory is really large.

I'm online for less than an hour and the memory use jumps. Mind you I also dance at a club that is elaborate looking so that may contribute to it a lot. 

My inventory isn't super huge, I think last I checked it's around 4k perhaps? I may try reducing that and see if it helps at all. I have a habit of keeping objects from items I've opened (i.e when you get an object it comes in a box and you can re-open that to get a new copy of an object if you lose it or something) and may need to break said habit lmao. 

At present when I used Firestorm I had the graphic  settings bar pulled to the lowest it could go. I have hardware skinning and avatar cloth enabled. All else is turned down as low as possible, and my laptop still heats up like crazy. 

[Whirly Fizzle]

A 4k inventory is tiny. That's not contributing much to memory use.

Can you give a SLURL to the club?
It's most likely the attachments on other avatars at the cl;ub that are bloating memory more then anything.

[ChibiDragon007]

3 minutes ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

A 4k inventory is tiny. That's not contributing much to memory use.

Can you give a SLURL to the club?
It's most likely the attachments on other avatars at the cl;ub that are bloating memory more then anything.

One moment...

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Yorkdale/127/189/66/

There it is! It's a super fun club by the by. 

[Alyona Su]

I could just cross-post, but better to point to my reply on another, similar thread:

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

15 hours ago, ChibiDragon007 said:

At present when I used Firestorm I had the graphic  settings bar pulled to the lowest it could go. I have hardware skinning and avatar cloth enabled. All else is turned down as low as possible, and my laptop still heats up like crazy. 

"Avatar cloth" has been essentially useless for over five years. What it does is ruffle system clothing on the avatar body as if it was cloth. 

What's your RenderVolumeLOD factor set at? I used to have frequent out-of-memory crashes so I kept an eye on memory use. Using the frequently-recommended elevated LOD factor settings will make memory use balloon. Those notecards tell you "it won't cause lag" but they don't say boo about memory use.

[Love Zhaoying]

12 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

I could just cross-post, but better to point to my reply on another, similar thread:

 

I find it most useful to post on all threads, less confusing that way!

[Alyona Su]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I find it most useful to post on all threads, less confusing that way!

I agree, though I'm not sure what the rules are (Some forums forbid it with a wrath, others do not LOL)

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Alyona Su said:

I agree, though I'm not sure what the rules are (Some forums forbid it with a wrath, others do not LOL)

Then there’s the chaotic possibility of merging threads..

[ChibiDragon007]

2 hours ago, Alyona Su said:

I could just cross-post, but better to point to my reply on another, similar thread:

 

Thing is, I've tried  other viewers. Alchemy, and now I'm giving Singularity a try as it's supposed to be lighter weight than Firestorm. I  love the UI of Firestorm compared to the default viewer (dear god the default viewer gives me C O N N I P T I O N S).

Edited October 5, 2018 by ChibiDragon007

[ChibiDragon007]

2 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

"Avatar cloth" has been essentially useless for over five years. What it does is ruffle system clothing on the avatar body as if it was cloth. 

What's your RenderVolumeLOD factor set at? I used to have frequent out-of-memory crashes so I kept an eye on memory use. Using the frequently-recommended elevated LOD factor settings will make memory use balloon. Those notecards tell you "it won't cause lag" but they don't say boo about memory use.

I've kept the RenderVolumeLOD at the default, but I think on the lowest settings which I have enabled it automatically is put as low as it can go

[chibiusa Ling]

I agree with you. Its especially bad for me and a few friends. I use both a MacBook and a modern gaming PC and Firestorm on both uses up way more memory and over 100% of my cpu at the best of times. Yet if I load the default LL viewer its a totally different story. Faster, sleeker, smoother, more efficient, doesn't use up anywhere near the amount of memory or cpu that firestorm does etc etc. The firestorm viewer even performs worse than the LL viewer when it comes to high complexity regions. I tested both a while ago and went to a variety of high complexity regions and found that the LL viewer provided a much better, smoother experience than Firestorm did. I could even have my graphics settings higher on the LL viewer in the same region than on FS and with higher graphics the LL viewer even provided a higher frame rate with the smoother experience.

I did try submitting a ticket to Firestorm a few years back regarding how much of a resource hog their viewer is, especially on a Mac, and their response can be honestly and truthfully summed up by "It does happen, we are aware of it, we aren't going to fix it". So I gave up and moved to the Alchemy Viewer which has the above benefits of the SL viewer with a lot of the functionality offered by Firestorm.

Edited October 6, 2018 by chibiusa Ling

[ChibiDragon007]

6 hours ago, chibiusa Ling said:

I agree with you. Its especially bad for me and a few friends. I use both a MacBook and a modern gaming PC and Firestorm on both uses up way more memory and over 100% of my cpu at the best of times. Yet if I load the default LL viewer its a totally different story. Faster, sleeker, smoother, more efficient, doesn't use up anywhere near the amount of memory or cpu that firestorm does etc etc. The firestorm viewer even performs worse than the LL viewer when it comes to high complexity regions. I tested both a while ago and went to a variety of high complexity regions and found that the LL viewer provided a much better, smoother experience than Firestorm did. I could even have my graphics settings higher on the LL viewer in the same region than on FS and with higher graphics the LL viewer even provided a higher frame rate with the smoother experience.

I did try submitting a ticket to Firestorm a few years back regarding how much of a resource hog their viewer is, especially on a Mac, and their response can be honestly and truthfully summed up by "It does happen, we are aware of it, we aren't going to fix it". So I gave up and moved to the Alchemy Viewer which has the above benefits of the SL viewer with a lot of the functionality offered by Firestorm.

I tried installing Alchemy viewer last night but it won't open on my MacBook. I updated to OS X Mojave, could that be why it won't work now?

[chibiusa Ling]

23 minutes ago, ChibiDragon007 said:

I tried installing Alchemy viewer last night but it won't open on my MacBook. I updated to OS X Mojave, could that be why it won't work now?

Possibly. There are quite a few people having issues with Mojav and trying to run SL. Sadly Alchemy doesnt update anywhere near enough, its been a year next month since its last release. Hopefully they will fix it soon. Im refusing to go past high sierra for the minute

[Whirly Fizzle]

Any viewer that doesn't include this fix will not start on Mojave.

BUG-216393 - Second Life crashes on launch on MacOS 10.14 Beta

[ChibiDragon007]

4 hours ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

Any viewer that doesn't include this fix will not start on Mojave.

BUG-216393 - Second Life crashes on launch on MacOS 10.14 Beta

Alchemy clearly hasn't had that fix then. Firestorm apparently does, and the main SL viewer works fine. 

[Morwen Blaisdale]

On 10/4/2018 at 2:51 PM, ChibiDragon007 said:

So I've been using the latest version of the Firestorm viewer for Second Life since I got back into playing the game. However, I noticed as of late that it has been hogging a pretty hefty chunk of my system memory. A whopping six out of the eight total gb of RAM in my laptop. Before you all scream at me "Get a PC!" I do play on a Macbook Pro, which are not obviously meant for gaming but SL Is the one game I play on it for the most part. I use a late-2016 Macbook Pro w/Touch Bar specifically. 

I don't understand why Firestorm is making my computer use so much of its resources even when I have settings as low as humanly possible for them to go. Only things I have enabled are hardware skinning and avatar cloth so at least my  avatar doesn't look like a blob lmao. 

So what is the solution? Do I change to a different viewer? I've tried a few; Alchemy, the default LL viewer... but  all of them cause heating issues with my laptop and I don't want to risk  frying my system for the sake of being able to play a game. Any  other SL people that use Mac have any advice? I'd much  appreciate it. 

I am finding precisely the same thing & I've gone back to using the LL viewer. LL viewer will crash out if it gets overloaded-an then I just reload the viewer. Which I much prefer to having it hang up in lag-limbo while my fan burns. I will be using a mac for another couple years anyway. People in the developed world buying new computers every year contributes to ecological problems, child slavery and a lot of othe bad things. All that Irridium comes from somewhere.

[Sandy Schnook]

I like FS, but since the last update or two something hasn't been right and I'm switching between it and Catznip depending on what I need to do.  I can have FS go from a quite livable FPS to 4FPS in a couple seconds, without having done a thing on my end, just standing in my studio.  It has functions I like for building and sorting so I use FS for that, but if I'm going to be out and exploring or heading to events, I switch to Catznip.

[ChibiDragon007]

On 10/7/2018 at 9:17 AM, Morwen Blaisdale said:

I am finding precisely the same thing & I've gone back to using the LL viewer. LL viewer will crash out if it gets overloaded-an then I just reload the viewer. Which I much prefer to having it hang up in lag-limbo while my fan burns. I will be using a mac for another couple years anyway. People in the developed world buying new computers every year contributes to ecological problems, child slavery and a lot of othe bad things. All that Irridium comes from somewhere.

I can use Firestorm incredibly well on my mom's iMac (I tested it for the hell of it) and I can run it near perfect on mid-high settings. But on my MacBook Pro? not a chance. Everyone screeches at me to get a PC but I do most of my gaming on console to begin with, and my MacBook is used a lot for video work in iMovie as well, which I use for AMVs because I'm a huge dork. I do want a desktop iMac at some point though because that screen omg. 

[LennoxGregor]

It sounds like there is a memory leak issue. There is no reason for Firestorm to use that much memory or hog the CPU. The developers should take a look at this, or maybe it's a setting issue everybody's overlooking.

I gave up on trying to use other viewers unless I find something that works well. I want something that isn't outdated or at least something that won't explode my PC. A friend of mine just registered on SL and her computer and Internet connection are awesome but she still has lag (I believe it's server-side though, once everything loads it's fine). We're both using the LL viewer for now.

I recall reading that some viewers had problems on Macintosh, but that was years ago.

Edited October 23, 2018 by LennoxGregor

[Alyona Su]

18 hours ago, LennoxGregor said:

It sounds like there is a memory leak issue. There is no reason for Firestorm to use that much memory or hog the CPU.

This has always been my theory... over the last few versions, even. That or MS Windows isn't able to manage the memory it uses and slowly allows it to go corrupt. Because it's not only how much memory FS uses, it also almost always requires a restart after a couple of hours (or crash) on Windows.

When I run it my MacBook it's a lot more stable, but also seems to suck up lotsa RAM, so I close out all other apps, except Safari (which can also suck up a lot of RAM the more tabs you have open LOL)

[ChibiDragon007]

On 10/23/2018 at 3:24 PM, LennoxGregor said:

It sounds like there is a memory leak issue. There is no reason for Firestorm to use that much memory or hog the CPU. The developers should take a look at this, or maybe it's a setting issue everybody's overlooking.

I gave up on trying to use other viewers unless I find something that works well. I want something that isn't outdated or at least something that won't explode my PC. A friend of mine just registered on SL and her computer and Internet connection are awesome but she still has lag (I believe it's server-side though, once everything loads it's fine). We're both using the LL viewer for now.

I recall reading that some viewers had problems on Macintosh, but that was years ago.

Perhaps someone needs to inform Firestorm about this. How do you file a bug report/error like this? 

[LittleMe Jewell]

On 11/22/2018 at 9:17 AM, ChibiDragon007 said:

Perhaps someone needs to inform Firestorm about this. How do you file a bug report/error like this? 

Firestorm has an awesome inworld support team - paste this into your chat window to get a clickable link for joining:
  secondlife:///app/group/3a1be8d4-01f3-bc1a-2703-442f0cc8f2dd/about

Here is the JIRA page, but you are going to need to supply more info than just "my viewer is using tons of memory" (and you'll likely need to request an account to add JIRA items).
https://jira.phoenixviewer.com/secure/Dashboard.jspa

Edited November 25, 2018 by LittleMe Jewell

[ChibiDragon007]

On 11/25/2018 at 12:23 PM, LittleMe Jewell said:

Firestorm has an awesome inworld support team - paste this into your chat window to get a clickable link for joining:
  secondlife:///app/group/3a1be8d4-01f3-bc1a-2703-442f0cc8f2dd/about

Here is the JIRA page, but you are going to need to supply more info than just "my viewer is using tons of memory" (and you'll likely need to request an account to add JIRA items).
https://jira.phoenixviewer.com/secure/Dashboard.jspa

I filed a report on the JIRA page with screenshots from my computer. The in-world support group is of zero help, the support people according to what I was told can't handle viewer related issues like that. So I have to wait however long it is for a dev to answer my JIRA report. However in the FS Support Group, I'm apparantly not alone with the rampant memory leak issue. According to some other users I spoke to, they also are experiencing high memory usage on both Mac and Windows 10.