World's a blur - are we there yet? Textures

[Chic Aeon]

The last few days especially I have noticed textures rezzing MUCH slower. This even if I just teleport away and come right back to my original spot. Textures should be in cache but I can watch them loading and sometimes it takes almost a minute. The blur is not sim specific. Even on LEA6 with optimized mesh and textures -- it holds true.  

NO changes in my system or software. I use Firestorm but not the just out version, so the December release. 

My only thinking is that it is a "movement to the cloud" issue and that Oz was incorrect when he said we wouldn't notice (or more correctly that he hoped we wouldn't notice :D).  

I have no idea if that is happening now though. Anyone else noticed this recent change with no real explanation?  

Edited February 20, 2019 by Chic Aeon

[So Whimsy]

I have 51 Mbps download speed, a bit higher ping than you and use likely the same Firestorm version as you

That said, I have noticed the very same thing starting about 2-3 days ago. Textures rez slower, tping to my parcel downloads ALL the textures again even though I have been there for hours each day every day and this has hardly ever happened before, for the past days its been the norm. At times a single texture will refuse to rez entirely and stay grey even after forcing a tex refresh.

I have no idea about the technicalities (sp?) behind all that, but to me it feels like the textures are flushed from memory when I leave a place and downloaded anew when I return instead of being pulled from memory.

[Chic Aeon]

Just now, Syn Anatine said:

I have 51 Mbps download speed, a bit higher ping than you and use likely the same Firestorm version as you

That said, I have noticed the very same thing starting about 2-3 days ago. Textures rez slower, tping to my parcel downloads ALL the textures again even though I have been there for hours each day every day and this has hardly ever happened before, for the past days its been the norm. At times a single texture will refuse to rez entirely and stay grey even after forcing a tex refresh.

I have no idea about the technicalities (sp?) behind all that, but to me it feels like the textures are flushed from memory when I leave a place and downloaded anew when I return instead of being pulled from memory.

TY!!!! appreciate the input. I didn't think it was "me" but computers are sometimes mysterious things. 

[Chic Aeon]

To add to this, I just went back to my Firestorm window where the textures HAD loaded fully to find them loading again. They weren't completely gray but definitely one step up from the one color entrance norm.  I am going to guess this is "growing pains" and that it will get fixed. Very frustrating and probably worse for folks who normally have to wait for textures to load the FIRST time LOL.    

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

This isn't new, I posted on this subject a few weeks ago. At the time, I was using Singularity and was thinking the 2048 cache limit just wasn't enough for the mesh-heavier region I was going to and coming back from, but I have noticed this on the official LL viewer as well recently.

 

ETA

Posted December 14, 2018 (edited)

I have been observing something like this over the past few weeks; when I first log in, rezzing is quite slow, well over 30 seconds and sometimes over 60 seconds, even though everything such as textures is in my cache. I think the time taken for the texture details to arrive from the server might be the delay. (I am on the opposite side of the big pond to where the servers are).

I get the idea that each texture to be loaded is first queried with the LL server(s) to see if the cached version is now outdated? What I do not know is if the server sends a checksum or date which can be compared against the texture stored in my cache. I would hope that this is so, because other wise the whole texture is being sent and then compared against the cache, in which case I can't see the point of actually having the cache, (unless this checking is an essential startup condition).

I suppose the test here is to time the login to full textures, then clear cache, login and time again. I will try this later and report back.

 

So, the results of experimenting, unsurprisingly, is that the cache does significantly reduce rezz time when first logging in, and also that I can't honestly say SL seemed annoyingly slow.

Edited February 21, 2019 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[Chic Aeon]

11 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

This isn't new, I posted on this subject a few weeks ago.

I don't think this is exactly the same issue, mostly because as you can see by our reports Syn and I both noticed it (and apparently had no issues before that time- I certainly didn't) at the same time (so Monday ish).  Also I have NEVER had any issues just opening the viewer IN THE SAME EXACT SPOT where I closed it and have textures reloading  -- and slowly.  

Also, on Firestorm they specifically tell you not to turn your cache up beyond 1500 and mine has been set that way for years. So not a cache size thing.  

So, again, for ME it is completely new. No issues before this week and I am on every day most of the day :D.  Thanks for the input though. 

[Chic Aeon]

I had another thought about @Profaitchikenz Haiku 's comment.   Both my properties are on the main server channel. Perhaps other channels had this happening earlier. Perhaps Syn is also on the main server channel ^^. Either way fingers crossed for improvements as this is not the least bit a step forward at the moment :D. 

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

6 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Also, on Firestorm they specifically tell you not to turn your cache up beyond 1500 and mine has been set that way for years. So not a cache size thing.  

That's interesting, is it perhaps having too large a cache causes delays searching through for textures? I'll try cutting mine back and see if there's any change.

I am also on the main server channel, BTW. I can't say for certain that I saw any significant change after the weekend.

[Chic Aeon]

3 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

That's interesting, is it perhaps having too large a cache causes delays searching through for textures? I'll try cutting mine back and see if there's any change.

I am also on the main server channel, BTW. I can't say for certain that I saw any significant change after the weekend.

Ah, OK. Well maybe lowering your cache will help some. There are DEFINITELY changes recently. My world (checked several places but all were apparently on the main channel so can't really tell if that is important) is loading each and every time I teleport or even open my browser (focus) from the toolbar.   Firestorm and server link says a new update (for checking not changes apparently) is coming out tomorrow. I hope the devs can see the issues in the statistics. 

[Whirly Fizzle]

8 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Also, on Firestorm they specifically tell you not to turn your cache up beyond 1500 and mine has been set that way for years. So not a cache size thing.  

No one on the Firestorm team should have told you not to raise the viewer cache size beyond 1500.
Bigger cache is always better unless you are low on drive space.
I suspect you are getting mixed up with Maximum Bandwidth setting.

[Whirly Fizzle]

2 hours ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

That's interesting, is it perhaps having too large a cache causes delays searching through for textures?

I guess it could if your hard drive speed is super slow.
The most common cause of already cached textures taking an age to rez is antivirus software doing real time scans on the cache folder.
White list your cache folder with your antivirus & see if it helps.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

I don't have AV running continuously, just a once-a-day scan, that won't be the cause of it. What I see is what Chic describes, at login or return from the nearby sim where I pay the tier, grey or blurred textures in a place I spend all my time at and therefore should have all the textures cached.

I could understand it if on restart days all the textures had to be re-downloaded, but it's each time I log in. There's no sign of disk-thrashing (and the caches and chat logs are on a different disk to the exes, not just a different partition.) When the textures in front of me have finally become sharp, if I turn around I find the same problem, grey or blurred textures. 

However, this is a problem I have seen for several weeks now and have grown accustomed to, it's only when I see a post from somebody I get reminded it wasn't always like this.

I don't know but assume there is some communication between the server and the the client which goess something like "texture UUID is size blah or date blah or checksum blah in the cache", server agrees - show what you've got, server disagrees, download new texture, but it's out of my ability to experiment with that, apart from playing with the bandwidth setting, which so far has made no difference.

Edited February 21, 2019 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

No one on the Firestorm team should have told you not to raise the viewer cache size beyond 1500.
Bigger cache is always better unless you are low on drive space.
I suspect you are getting mixed up with Maximum Bandwidth setting.

Yes you are correct. Sorry.

That of course has nothing really to do with the problem, since my settings are the same as they were two years ago and I haven't had these issues until the beginning of the week.   I don't have the Linden Viewer currently installed but it seems from at least one other post here that this is NOT viewer specific. 

 

 

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

I guess it could if your hard drive speed is super slow.
The most common cause of already cached textures taking an age to rez is antivirus software doing real time scans on the cache folder.
White list your cache folder with your antivirus & see if it helps.

OK. This might be it?    

I had a friend on another computer (and other virus software) log in to the same spot I have been testing. Things loaded reasonably fast with no blurriness on download -- so basically gray to clear.  He TPed over to Horizons Glytch area and then back a bit later. Everything was crystal clear and other things around the sim loaded fast and clear as he turned a corner. 

SO I am VERY happy to hear that.  

I use AVAST.   I white listed C:\Users\Chic\AppData\Local\Firestorm_x64\ and we'll see if that fixes it.   Avast updates itself without my knowledge on my desktop computer so I have no idea if they did a change at the beginning of the week.

Will report if this fixes things. Thanks.

[Chic Aeon]

Reporting that this did help. I can still see textures loading but they are doing the gray then clear method so considerably better than the forever loading blurry textures.  

I needed to clear my cache in order to see any results. I also rebooted the computer. So hopefully that will also solve (or help) problems others are having.  

Sometimes software wants to protect us just a tad bit too much :D.  

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

I can't try the white-listing approach because I don't have realtime AV running, but I thought I could at least see if wired was any better then wireless, so I stuck the LAN lead in and did a TP away to a site I haven't visited in many months. The textures there rezzed rapidly and quickly. I then TP-ed back home, and had not only the blurred textures slow to rezz, but large chunks of the buildings around me weren't even textured at all. I could see right through them, but when I tried to move through the spaces the prims were there, blocking me. I right-clicked on an area where I knew there was a wall intending to do a texture reload, and had an instant re-rezz of all the missing textures.

5 hours ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

I guess it could if your hard drive speed is super slow.

I'm using a Hybrid SSD on the desktop, but of course I have no control over what gets put into the fast-memory, I suspect Windows grabs all of that. The laptop is a pair of SATA's. Both machines have regular disk cleanup and defrag sessions. One machine runs Windows 7, the other Windows 10, so that rules out a specific OS issue.

Any thoughts on the merits of having a small (1G) cache and loading it to/from a RamDisk? 

[Chic Aeon]

25 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

I can't try the white-listing approach because I don't have realtime AV running, but I thought I could at least see if wired was any better then wireless, so I stuck the LAN lead in and did a TP away to a site I haven't visited in many months. The textures there rezzed rapidly and quickly. I then TP-ed back home, and had not only the blurred textures slow to rezz, but large chunks of the buildings around me weren't even textured at all. I could see right through them, but when I tried to move through the spaces the prims were there, blocking me. I right-clicked on an area where I knew there was a wall intending to do a texture reload, and had an instant re-rezz of all the missing textures.

I'm using a Hybrid SSD on the desktop, but of course I have no control over what gets put into the fast-memory, I suspect Windows grabs all of that. The laptop is a pair of SATA's. Both machines have regular disk cleanup and defrag sessions. One machine runs Windows 7, the other Windows 10, so that rules out a specific OS issue.

Any thoughts on the merits of having a small (1G) cache and loading it to/from a RamDisk? 

While I haven't tested LATELY :D, I can say that when I gave up wireless and paid for a new (closer) router set up my general fps went up by about 25%. I can't really remember anything about texture loading -- LONG ago (like eight years maybe). 

Your latest escapades sound VERY odd. Maybe a bit more testing would be good, not just the one TP away and back. Now I know we aren't supposed to clear cache often and I rarely do (like once every few months) but this might be a time to try that since the textures rezzed fine on the other sim. Might also be good  to restart your computer? Doesn't say that you did either, but maybe you did. 

My issues seem to be fixed (fingers crossed). 

 

EDIT: I have all my programs as well as the cache on my SSD -- data on another drive. There were some threads lately here on folks putting ONLY cache on their SSD. That didn't make much sense to me but I am not a hardware expert in ANY sense of the word :D.  

Edited February 22, 2019 by Chic Aeon

[LittleMe Jewell]

39 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

I don't have realtime AV running

Is that only while logged into SL or always?  If always, that's sure not something that I'd recommend.

 

When I had first installed Firestorm on my new computer, it was the 32-bit version, so the cache folder that I whitelisted was appdata/local/FIrestorm.  When I installed the 64 bit version, even though I knew it was installing to a new directory under Program Files, it didn't dawn on me that the appdata location might be different also.  With that new install, I  increased my cache from 1-2 gb to 10 gb and soon after started having texture rezzing issues.  However, since the cache size increase was done at the same time as the new version install, I initially assumed it was the new version of the viewer or some other setting.  Then the Firestorm support folks asked me to double-check the directories I had white listed against the actual name of the appdata locations.  Bingo - fixed that and no more texture rezzing issues.

[Chic Aeon]

Here is where to find the path for those who want to try the white listing "fix" :D. 

[Chic Aeon]

Came back to note that while this DID fix things for awhile, they are back to the same reloading of texture thing. My cache is still whitelisted in Avast but I am guessing that it is an Avast update that did this again.

So for others having this issue, that's my input. As long as I know it is mostly "me" (and maybe others with overzealous virust checkers) I will live with it. Don't see another choice anyway :D.

 

 

[animats]

On 2/21/2019 at 4:24 PM, Chic Aeon said:

EDIT: I have all my programs as well as the cache on my SSD -- data on another drive. There were some threads lately here on folks putting ONLY cache on their SSD. That didn't make much sense to me but I am not a hardware expert in ANY sense of the word :D.  

I have nothing but SL's cache on an SSD. Once Firestorm has loaded, there's almost no disk I/O to anything but the cache. Works quite well. I'm on Linux, though; Windows may have different issues.

I've never looked deeply into texture loading issues, but I occasionally see 404 errors for texture requests in the Firestorm log. Not sure what causes those. Is the URL really bad, or did something go wrong in the chain between the viewer, Akamai cache, and AWS content servers?

Edited February 25, 2019 by animats

[Chic Aeon]

No clue and this last week is the first time I have seen this (or maybe the first in a few years who knows) and I haven't changed anything or installed anything new on my machine. Odd that Syn had the same time frame of things suddenly going wrong. Maybe it will fix itself. I had some issues on my notebook and seemed to have no virus guard on there (only play some games and read books so not much risk). I couldn't figure out what was wrong and had no viruses or malware. Eventually the virus checker just appeared again as usual. 

A mystery at times. As long as it is only MY problem, its' OK.    Will keep fingers crossed that something changes back while I am soundly sleeping.  

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

I spent some time this weekend going around to different sims, some of which I hadn't been to for many months. I got varying results, and when I came back to where I spend most of my time I still had the grey-to-blurred-to-sharp display issue. The thing I noticed is that different sims had this issue in varying degrees, some took ages to load, some flashed up immediately, and in one place everything slowed to a crawl.

It seems impossible to get any objective testing of this, however. I tried timing how long it took for everything visible in front of the avatar to fully rezz, then how long again after a 180-degree turn, but on three repeat visits to the same place I got three differing sets of figures. All I can conclude is that there are network and server response components to this issue that produce delays even when the textures are cached and no longer need to be transmitted, and this can only be when the texture UUIDs are sent to the client coupled with the cache-check to see if the texture then needs to be requested.

Should we perhaps be raising a petition to the Lab asking them to address this issue?

[Whirly Fizzle]

3 hours ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

I spent some time this weekend going around to different sims, some of which I hadn't been to for many months. I got varying results, and when I came back to where I spend most of my time I still had the grey-to-blurred-to-sharp display issue. The thing I noticed is that different sims had this issue in varying degrees, some took ages to load, some flashed up immediately, and in one place everything slowed to a crawl.

It seems impossible to get any objective testing of this, however. I tried timing how long it took for everything visible in front of the avatar to fully rezz, then how long again after a 180-degree turn, but on three repeat visits to the same place I got three differing sets of figures. All I can conclude is that there are network and server response components to this issue that produce delays even when the textures are cached and no longer need to be transmitted, and this can only be when the texture UUIDs are sent to the client coupled with the cache-check to see if the texture then needs to be requested.

Should we perhaps be raising a petition to the Lab asking them to address this issue?

The best region to test texture loading is TextureTest2
You can also use LagLand region, which is a clone of TextureTest2
You need to set draw distance to 512m before teleporting in to render the furthest away texture boards.
Both regions only allow a single avatar to enter & have a fixed landing point on an observation deck.

[Chic Aeon]

I went over to TextureTest2 set at 512 (I usually am at 120ish) and here is what it looked like after two or three minutes (I didn't set my timer :D).

 

Someone in RL mentioned to me yesterday that it may have been the cache clearing and not the white listing that helped.  I had thought of that but didn't test.

 Going to TextureTest2 at 512 meters definitely fills your cache up and so TPing back I saw my blurry textures again (a couple of items in view on my building pad with three 1024 textures on them total).  Going down to the ground all the textures needed to reload  -- naturally. 

Going back to my building pad, the three 1024 textures reloaded again.  Off to my friends spot above my shop (landform - single tree - couple of chairs - very simple). Mesh loaded slowly there but textures OK. Back to building pad, those three textures still had to reload. 

Isn't making much sense to me.