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

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

8 hours ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

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.

Veni, Vidi, Discombobulati

 

I logged in at my usual place, everything finally rezzed nicely, so I took a trip to TextureTest2. I arrived with my Draw Distance still at 128,. and cranked it up to 512 so I could see the farthest boards. It took perhaps 60 seconds for everything to come clear or finish popping up, because I got the impression there was an intentional slow sequence of filling up the boards. 

I dropped the draw distance back to 128 and returned to my usual spot. Everything was grey, and I mean Everything. Even the terrain. My avatar was the only coloured object within visible range.

The terrain returned in patches first, the nearest bits to me went green, but further away the sides of the valley were still grey. The building in front of me took over 60 seconds to go fuzzy, and almost two minutes to go clear. The steam engine and carriage that runs to and fro was grey for a long time, although the sculpts were fine, as were the sculpted railings.

It took close to three minutes until the scene around me. all of which had to have been in cache, became properly textured.

I still think this is something to do with the server-client communications: "here's a list of texture UUID's these objects require, go look them up and ask me for any you don't have in your cache" Ok Guv, I'll get right on it? OOh gosh crikey mate, that's an elluva list, gonna 'ave ter fink abaht it

Edited February 25, 2019 by Profaitchikenz Haiku
missed a K, FFS

[Chic Aeon]

It appears that "Huston - we have a problem" --- at least some of us and just recently for some of those. 

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

Ok, after further testing, I think this is a server to server handover issue.

In my home parcel, I start out at the ground. textures are grey and blurred, and take time to rezz. 

Once rezzed, I go up to a sky platform above the draw distance range. Again, textures take time to rezz.

Once rezzed, I go back to the ground, This time all the textures are there immediately, though the sculpts take a little while to shape up.

I go up to a much higher platform. Textures are grey and blurry. 

Once rezzed, I revisit the other two places, textures are there at once. I go through all three places in different orders, always getting the textures there, just having the distorted sculpts for a brief period.

I go to another sim. Textures are grey and blurred and take time to rezz.

I return to my parcel where I had been flitting to and fro, and once again, the textures are grey and blurred. I then have to revisit each of the two platforms before all three platforms are once again showing instant textures when I revisit them.

So, the texture cache works, while I stay in my parcel, but as soon as I visit a different sim and return, it is as if the textures had not been cached and have to be refreshed somehow before they are immediately available when changing locations. Similarly, when first logging in, all locations in the parcel have to be visited and the textures allowed to (whatever is happening between the server and the client) before I can go from location to location with rapid refresh of the textures in the cache.

Edited February 25, 2019 by Profaitchikenz Haiku
Bath time interrupted first posting

[Beq Janus]

While the conversation has moved on quite a bit one of the initial questions asked was 

"Is this to do with the move to cloud?"

The simple answer is no. The primary reason being that none of that work has hit the grid properly yet.

The less simple answer is that your textures have not come from Linden Lab servers for a number of years, they went to "the cloud" quite some time ago, but it is a different use of cloud than what is being played with at the moment. Assets are served by a Content Delivery Network (CDN), these are services that are designed to manage (and optimise) bandwidth use on the internet and are typically much closer to you than Linden Lab servers are (of course for a small number of people that is not necessarily true, Arizona residents specifically). A CDN has the assets uploaded and replicated globally, typically across its major data centre, it then has smaller edge nodes that provide localised caching nearer to you.

The use of a CDN gives you faster access and takes the load away from the sims. In the past assets were delivered by UDP from the sim, but this changed to HTTP distribution some time ago. There are certain asset types that can still use UDP but even they will be disabled this week and at that point, all content will come via the CDN.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_RC_Magnum/19#19.02.21.524633

 

 

 

[Love Zhaoying]

In my ignorance, I don’t see why increasing cache size doesn’t help with the problems. Confused Lion is confused.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

I am also puzzled about the cache question, I don;t know if there is a trade-off between time to search the cache versus just downloading it anyway, but I am still puzzled over the initial greyness when I log in again at my parcel. Without seeing any viewer code I can only make stabs in the dark, such as textures being buffered for the graphics card when you first log in or change sims. From previous experiments the cache does help, so the point of delay has to be where the client is given the list of textures by the server. If those textures have to be fetched from another server I could understand the wait, but when they're already on the hard disk waiting to be thrown at the graphics card I find the delay very puzzling.

Beq's answer suggests that the actual delivery of the textures isn't the main culprit, but all I can think of trying is to put the cache on ram-disk (as I tried back in 2010) to see if it speeds up texturing.

[Chic Aeon]

And while we now know it isn't a "cloud" issue (thanks) there is definitely some kind of problem  going on and for some of us it started last week. The "virus software" idea which seemed like a viable one -- wasn't it all all. The SIM isn't the issue and the number of mesh textures isn't the issue. Have talked to some fairly techie RL folks and they are puzzled also. 

So we are narrowing it down -- or what it ISN'T anyway .  I am going to guess that there is nothing at all that "I" can do about the problem and wait for it hopefully to be fixed by someone who CAN fix it.   Puzzled though that some folks (with less powerful computers) have no problems. Again, "I" didn't make any changes to my system other than what Win10 or my virus software (both automatic) may have made. 

[animats]

So I logged into Texture Test 2, and it worked OK. About 80% of the texture squares loaded in the first 10 seconds. Then there was a delay of about 10 seconds, and then the rest of them came in.

Went to my home sim of Vallone. Everything loaded in about 5 seconds.

Back to Texture Test 2. All the textures loaded rapidly.

I have my Firestorm cache on a small solid-state disk, and nothing else is on that disk. That may be helping. Texture operations have been much faster since I got an SSD for the cache.

Checked the Firestorm (6.0.2) log. No unexpected errors. Lots of

2019-03-01T08:01:53Z WARNING #Inventory#  newview/llinventorymodel.cpp(1978) LLInventoryModel::addItem : Got unknown asset type for item [ name: Nacon's Sweet Morning type: 56 inv-type: 255 ].
2019-03-01T08:01:53Z WARNING #Inventory#  newview/llinventorymodel.cpp(1978) LLInventoryModel::addItem : Got unknown asset type for item [ name: Nacon's Morning2 type: 56 inv-type: 255 ].

which probably reflects a non-EEP viewer being sent EEP environment descriptions.

Also, all this is on Linux, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

Edited March 1, 2019 by animats

[Rachel1206]

I also wonder, my home - all cached ( and graphic card 1060 6 GB ), some days log in and several objects grayed out .

As I have asked somewhere else here, I wonder if SL got more sensitive to high ping times. [ Lately problems manifesting them self last months: CAM view lost /not kicking in on sit and on SIM crossings; boats got slower sailing with sails; script delays/slow functions ]

[Chic Aeon]

Just adding to this thread -- no answers, just observations.

Things are just as bad as they were and I am also having MAJOR FPS issues (all sims I have tested so not sim dependent). My building pad is at 80fps and used to be close to 200 (and I have seen it over that number in the past). Down on the ground my friend (see below) is at 37fps and I am between 11 and 20 (NOT the norm at all). 

I am not all that techie on hardware but my computer seems to be doing OK. Of the background programs in the long list most all are at 0.

I installed the new Firestorm viewer today with no change (except that I noticed the FPS drop but that may have been around awhile as I have mostly been on my building pad which is pretty empty).  

My friend (another computer, same ISP but a dedicated line (sorry tired and forgot the correct term) also installed the new Firestorm.   He sees much higher framerated than I do and he is on an ancient computer (same basic download speed) and using my old video card (1G). 

HE however is on Win7.  I looked up the updates that took place and right when the texture problem started there was a Win10 update.  I can't think of anything else it can be. So putting that in the thread in case it helps someone. 

I have had no new Win10 updates since then.  

 

[Whirly Fizzle]

You have 3 instances of Firestorm running in your top image.

[Chic Aeon]

7 hours ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

You have 3 instances of Firestorm running in your top image.

Noted. That has been my practice for years.  Has nothing to do with current problems. I actually USUALLY have more programs running than shown here.  I AM careful about not having the same avatar on Agni and Aditi at the same time. That is mostly because of some bad inventory issues in the past. 

 

 As noted way up top in this thread (pretty sure I wrote that anyway) . I have had the exact same issues with ONE avatar and a reboot and a cache clearing and whitelisting.  NONE of that seems to matter.  It is actually worse now that it was before. Again, it appears to be only some of us but what we have in common (other than possibly the Win10Pro update, I know not. 

 

EDIT: To be crystal clear (not just for Whirly)---- things have been running perfectly for as long as I can remember. Textures have loaded instantly --- almost instantly if I am at a brand new place. This with three avatars plus many other programs open including Sansar the last few months and it is a power guzzler.

I have a pretty hefty computer, a 4G video card and a oversized power supply.  I don't use wifi.  

So SOMETHING has changed. If I could figure out what I might be able to get back to my personal "norm".  

Edited March 11, 2019 by Chic Aeon

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

Chic,

just to try and eliminate one of the many unknowns, I have both a Windows 10 and a Windows 7 machine, and the texture issue is the same on both of them.  Unless I had an identical windows update on both the 7 and the 10 machine I can;t see that it's a windows issue

[Chic Aeon]

43 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

Chic,

just to try and eliminate one of the many unknowns, I have both a Windows 10 and a Windows 7 machine, and the texture issue is the same on both of them.  Unless I had an identical windows update on both the 7 and the 10 machine I can;t see that it's a windows issue

OK. Thanks.  IF the Flash update went out to lots of folks that might be it -- maybe. I am hesitant to role back the update.  My notebook has Win10Home but also very little power so testing on that won't really tell me anything as I can barely move (and likely can no longer get in with the new Firestorm update). I keep it in case I need to log into Opensim.  Appreciate the reply.  I will ask my friend if he had that Flash update.

 

OK. Checked with friend.   He has NO Flash Player updates listed on his Win 7 machine even though he has Flash installed. I don't have Flash installed (at least it isn't in my program list -0- will check more on that). So IF you have a security update for Flash that could be it. 

It seems unlikely that he wouldn't have a Flash security update and you would, but who knows. I frequently get updates WAY after other folks :D. 

 

 

[Jennifer Boyle]

I logged onto the forums with the intention of posting a question about this issue, but I found this thread. I agree that this is a recent issue, an something outside my control has changed.

I spend 90+ percent of my time on one or the other of two sims, and my cache is the maximum allowed size and is on an SSD. I have been observing the statistics bar. When I logon to one of the sims where I spend a lot of time, during the first several seconds, the cache hit rate may drop below 10%, but then it gradually rises to 100% . After it gets to 100%, I'm still looking at blurry or gray things for some time, which seems strange. My computer is plenty powerful (Ryzen Threadripper 2950X, GTX 2080Ti), so it isn't the problem.

I just hope LL fixes this soon.

Edited March 15, 2019 by Jennifer Boyle

[Chic Aeon]

21 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

I logged onto the forums with the intention of posting a question about this issue, but I found this thread. I agree that this is a recent issue, an something outside my control has changed.

I spend 90+ percent of my time on one or the other of two sims, and my cache is the maximum allowed size and is on an SSD. I have been observing the statistics bar. When I logon to one of the sims where I spend a lot of time, during the first several seconds, the cache hit rate may drop below 10%, but then it gradually rises to 100% . After it gets to 100%, I'm still looking at blurry or gray things for some time, which seems strange. My computer is plenty powerful (Ryzen Threadripper 2950X, GTX 2080Ti), so it isn't the problem.

I just hope LL fixes this soon.

Came in to update the thread for the future. 

My experience is much like yours although your card is way heftier  (which doesn't seem to help the issue at all LOL)

 

So thanks for your input.  Here is what I discovered last night. 

It was indeed AVAST virus. 

However, white-listing did no good at all. 

I disabled the Avast temporarily and logged into to my usual spots and tested. MUCH better. Not as good as my "norm" which of course is no longer my norm, but very little gray and textures loaded faster.  After a lot more testing I uninstalled Avast so that I could use Windows Defender.   MUCH better.  

 

Note that testing both Firestorm and SL viewer with and without white-listing on  both AVAST and WINDOWS DEFENDER -- all results were the same.  White-listing didn't work at all and has no affect (for me).  

Currently framerates are better (although again not as good as historically) and textures are loading better and faster. 

Something is still OFF, but that may be completely beyond my control to fix. Along with the Avast issue there may be a new Win10 (I have pro) conflict for some of us.  

So that's the scoop. I hope it helps some folks down the road. 

[Chic Aeon]

Hopefully the end of the story.

Got up this morning to find the computer off (I restart and let it do its thing in the night in case of updates so I am not bothered).

To recap aside from blurry and GRAY FOREVER textures I had horrible FPS (down to 5 or 6 some places and even lower on occasion).  Framerates on the ground at LEA6 were about 17. After taking off Avast and switching to Defender FPS in same location went up to 35 (what my friend had been getting when testing) and NOW ---- even though there is no log entry on Windows updates, I am getting 88 fps and better in the same spot -- like the pre issue days. 

 

So it seems like my suspicion about Win10 being a part of the issue is likely; probably no way to ever REALLY know.  It is Sunday here and I doubt LL did anything in the wee small hours (lag and textures were horrible last night when taking photos). 

 

Poking @Syn Anatine

[LittleMe Jewell]

Interesting that it seems to have cleared for you today.  I've had absolutely horrid texture and object rendering today, no matter where I've gone - and that is very much unlike my normal SL experience.

[So Whimsy]

46 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Hopefully the end of the story.

Got up this morning to find the computer off (I restart and let it do its thing in the night in case of updates so I am not bothered).

To recap aside from blurry and GRAY FOREVER textures I had horrible FPS (down to 5 or 6 some places and even lower on occasion).  Framerates on the ground at LEA6 were about 17. After taking off Avast and switching to Defender FPS in same location went up to 35 (what my friend had been getting when testing) and NOW ---- even though there is no log entry on Windows updates, I am getting 88 fps and better in the same spot -- like the pre issue days. 

 

So it seems like my suspicion about Win10 being a part of the issue is likely; probably no way to ever REALLY know.  It is Sunday here and I doubt LL did anything in the wee small hours (lag and textures were horrible last night when taking photos). 

 

Poking @Syn Anatine

Heh, not only am I using Avast but also Windows 10.

What is the exact name of the anti-vir you switched to? I might look into it. Having started a little pet project of mine I am usually on two clients now and its more annoying than ever even though it shouldn't be considering my connection and specs. Might bite the bullet and switch anti-vir x3

[Chic Aeon]

46 minutes ago, Syn Anatine said:

Heh, not only am I using Avast but also Windows 10.

What is the exact name of the anti-vir you switched to? I might look into it. Having started a little pet project of mine I am usually on two clients now and its more annoying than ever even though it shouldn't be considering my connection and specs. Might bite the bullet and switch anti-vir x3

I am just using Windows Defender now -- comes with Win10. Taking off Avast was a big first step toward recovery.  I don't know if it is possible (not that techie) BUT I do know that for awhile Avast was updating "seemingly" though the Windows Update on Win10 Home (my notebook - I never saw any signs of that on my desktop as it updates at night).  Then "it appeared" like Win10Home blocked that piggieback ability and I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to fix Avast which was "there" but not working - not even opening from the icon.  I didn't have any issues (did a few other scans via online sites and checked malware and all OK) so just decided to let it see if it would fix itself. 

About a week or so later Avast came back on my notebook and it appears to be working fine. It DOES seem like there is some odd things going on with Avast and Win10.  So there MIGHT be a possibility that AVAST came in and cleaned up some files even though I had uninstalled it.  Not sure if that is possible, but I know that a lot more is possible than most of us think about LOL. All I know is SOMEONE came in the night and updated something and turned off my computer. 

Hopefully this is the end of my drama.  It was a long couple of weeks. 

 I am just using the security that comes with Windows 10, Defender.  I may online scan now and then also.   I lead a pretty sheltered Internet browsing life LOL so not at any great risk -- and Defender is supposed to be much better than previous Windows protection. 

Hope you get your issues worked out. An easy first step would be to temporarily turn off Avast (right click the icon in the tray and choose a time). Then JUST do SL stuff and see if things improve. 

[Chic Aeon]

Later note:   

A few days after my last post the gray and blurry returned again. No changes by me or new programs added.

I can only assume that it is something in the Win10 (pro) update that is causing the issue.  Good luck to other folks; hopefully it will get fixed in the future. Meanwhile I am trying to embrace the nostalgia of grayness and loading textures,

[Gabriele Graves]

For the last two nights I have also been seeing these texture problems on Firestorm (latest 64 bit) whilst using Windows 7 with only Windows Defender and cache area whitelisted.  Going to reboot back into Linux tonight and test there.  Clearing texture cache did not help, only lowering draw distance to 32m helped the resolved the grey textures.

My computer has Nvidia GTX 1080Ti, 32Gb RAM, 1Tb Samsung SSD and my internet is gigabit speeds ~800-900 Mbps.
No software changes or updates as I don't use FS in Windows 7 very much anymore - only when I don't want to look at mesh broken into triangles by the alpha bug.

So not limited to Win10 it seems.

[Chic Aeon]

I logged in this morning to find my framerates (store, home and LEA) all back to their norms --- double what I had been getting since I made this post long ago. Whether it was the recent Network adjustments or a Windows security update (the 15th) or a combo I know not. 

Seems more likely that it was the Network tweaking since I didn't notice an improvement until today. But either way it seems like NONE of the things I tried on my end were the problem.  Textures still loading and blurry (actually got worse for awhile doing the Network fixes with them reloading and reloading while I watched) but I am getting use to that. Happy to have my framerates back!

 

Edited May 17, 2019 by Chic Aeon
spelling