Why is Second Life so laggy now compared to the past?

[kiramanell]

3 hours ago, KanryDrago said:

Normally when people show pictures of their "Optimised content" here I have found that I look it at and shrug because while it doesn't look much different to the "unoptimised" version it is not of a quality that I would consider worthy of rezzing. So forgive me when I take that opinion with a pinch of salt. In fact I think Chin Rey did earlier in this very thread and it was exactly the comment I made

 

I would agree with Kyrah (who said that?!), that some content can certainly be optimized. Like not every face, on every smal surface, needs 1024 textures per se. I recently bought a brand new beach residence. It uses some 1024 baked textures. Those are absolutely needed for that build, as they're applied on entire sections of the living room.

So, yes, I'm still very much for 'prettiest'. And that LL should try and keep up. Doesn't mean I think creators should waste resources, though (even though my words have been misconstrued that way). I'm for 'prettiest', where it's needed. Aka, where using lower-res textures would spell a clear diminishment.

N.B. 1024 textures aren't always bad per se. Some mesh objects use like a single 1024 texture, to be 'wrapped' around all faces. Arguably, you actually win on the deal that way, instead of using separate textures for each individual face.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

30 minutes ago, kiramanell said:

Which, of course, tells me you have no real rebuttal against why the LL viewer oddly limits texture memory to only 768 MB.

I tend to assume that there is a good reason behind a limit that has been put in place by programmers that are a lot smarter than I will ever be. But I'll ask around and see if i can get a definitive answer on the matter.

11 minutes ago, kiramanell said:

N.B. 1024 textures aren't always bad per se. Some mesh objects use like a single 1024 texture, to be 'wrapped' around all faces. Arguably, you actually win on the deal that way, instead of using separate textures for each individual face.

If course they aren't always bad. They exist for a reason.

As for your example: It depends.

26 minutes ago, KanryDrago said:

It is the element of coercion I object to where for you to have the experience you want I have to be forced to accept my experience might change.

Oh absolutely! We are gonna take all your toys away and there is nothing you can do to prevent it!

Seriously tho, voluntary solutions have all failed because the market doesn't care about things that don't lower costs and increase income. It doesn't care about ecology, safety or ethics in the real world, why would it care about a smooth SecondLife??

Edited August 11, 2019 by Kyrah Abattoir

[kiramanell]

2 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

I tend to assume that there is a good reason behind a limit that has been put in place by programmers that are a lot smarter than I will ever be. But I'll ask around and see if i can get a definitive answer on the matter.

 

Fair enough.  And when you get an answer, please do share, as I'd genuinely like to know why SL is the only 'game' I play that imposes such a small limit. If memory serves me well, last card I had that was kinda vram limited (768 MB) was my GTX 8800, over like 13 years ago.

[Penny Patton]

24 minutes ago, kiramanell said:

the LL viewer oddly limits texture memory to only 768 MB.

I believe this is due to an issue where if you give the viewer any more texture memory it becomes unstable. This is something LL is currently working to fix. (Although they've been working on it for at least a year since I heard this, so don't hold your breath waiting for the fix to come.)

27 minutes ago, kiramanell said:

Another fine strawman. Nobody said computers are 'limitess'. Nor did I hear anyone say creators should waste recourses  ...  It baffles me why such an obvious observation stirs so much anger in you.

I think it's not because of what you said so much as how the conversation regarding this topic has played out over the years. There are people in SL who truly believe textures don't impact performance and they should be able to use as much as they like. I saw one guy literally saying textures are never held in VRAM, that your videocard reads them directly off your hard drive to display them.

[KanryDrago]

11 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

 

Oh absolutely! We are gonna take all your toys away and there is nothing you can do to prevent us!

So given that creator's are going to do what they do now because its the easy option why do you not agree that there won't of necessity have to be a coercive element to make them toe the line? You obviously think there won't need to be but I would bet on human nature taking its course and most just shrugging and ignoring it

[Kyrah Abattoir]

3 minutes ago, KanryDrago said:

So given that creator's are going to do what they do now because its the easy option why do you not agree that there won't of necessity have to be a coercive element to make them toe the line? You obviously think there won't need to be but I would bet on human nature taking its course and most just shrugging and ignoring it

Electricity also takes the path of least resistance. That's why we invented resistors.

 

Unfortunately shame doesn't work otherwise solving the problem would be easy.

Edited August 11, 2019 by Kyrah Abattoir

[kiramanell]

10 minutes ago, Penny Patton said:

I believe this is due to an issue where if you give the viewer any more texture memory it becomes unstable. This is something LL is currently working to fix. (Although they've been working on it for at least a year since I heard this, so don't hold your breath waiting for the fix to come.)

I think it's not because of what you said so much as how the conversation regarding this topic has played out over the years. There are people in SL who truly believe textures don't impact performance and they should be able to use as much as they like. I saw one guy literally saying textures are never held in VRAM, that your videocard reads them directly off your hard drive to display them.

 

I can see instability occur with the 32-bit viewer, where 768 MB is already a lot. DirectX (via their spec) requires a program to keep an equally large buffer in memory. SL uses OpenGL, of course, which, iirc, doesn't have that requirement (still, it stands to reason comparable size regular RAM buffers are being used). So then 2x 768 MB is already getting dangerously close to the 2G program limit on Win 32 (risking heap overflows and such). But on a 64-bit viewer? I would love to learn what the instability could cause there (not being sarcastic, btw). But maybe, on the LL viewer, it's just to keep their texture memory limit the same as on their 32-bit viewer? Who knows.

Edited August 11, 2019 by kiramanell

[Cackle Amore]

57 minutes ago, KanryDrago said:

I can find plenty of stuff at a quality that I find acceptable so not my issue, if however you insist SL items must be restricted because you want to run it on a pc that could of been found on the ark then you are trying to make your problem (not wanting to get a reasonable pc) into my problem. I find SL runs just fine as is, it is others asking for that to be changed because they don't want to spend any money bringing their pc into the 21st century yet somehow I am the selfish one for saying I prefer things as they are.

The problem with all the things suggested is that to work they can't be voluntary. If I can go on buying what I like and find good regardless of optimisation then its not going to help you at all. I don't in the least object to things being optimised, I will buy them if they are good enough, if not I will buy the unoptimised stuff. It is the element of coercion I object to where for you to have the experience you want I have to be forced to accept my experience might change.

If you play SL it's a hobby , if you take up golf you expect to spend money on the equipement needed to pursue your hobby. If you don't want to spend the money then perhaps not the hobby for you and you don't need to spend much compared at least to a reasonable set of golf clubs. Maybe 600$ would get you a pc more than adequate enough to handle most of sl.

I got a decently high end game computer that can easily handle most high/ultra settings on games today, but SL still staggers behind when I wander into sims full of people, fullsims using nearly every inch of LI space, and/or even the main lands. I can normally run on mainly ultra settings just fine in less crowded sims, sometimes I'll even forget I have shadows still on until I stumble back out into a heavily crowded place. 

Also you talk of your experience being "forced" to changed or accept, but why should that not count for older computers? There's no reason they should be forced to upgrade to top of the line hardware for a 15 year old game on a regular basis.

And stuff can still easily be made to look good without having to slap a couple layers of subdivide on the model, there's a lot of it that's simply a trick of the eye, I love to explore video game worlds and just kind of look over random models laying around in the setting, try to see if I can get a rough idea of how it was made. 

Fact of the matter is, if we want SL to run better, it's mostly up to us to help by making the content everyone uses better. LL can only do so much to cover for our mistakes.

Edited August 11, 2019 by Digit Gears

[ChinRey]

12 hours ago, TiaShaw said:

Test your PC https://www.userbenchmark.com/Software

Thanks a lot! That seems to be a really good test!

 

1 hour ago, Digit Gears said:

["Is SL a video game?!" topics aside, at it's core, it's a video game, running on decade old game engine]

As far as the computer is concerned, it's pretty much the same as a game. Whether the human at the keyboard uses is a completely different question and although it's quite an itneresting one, it's not really relevant in the context of this thread.

I'd like to eaxmine this from a slightly different point of view. Linden Lab (or at least their marketing department) wants Second Life to be seen as a virtual world for the general public. Many users - and possibly a few Lindens too - have a different opinion, they want SL to focus on the "high end" market of people who have access to powerful game/graphics computers and high speed internet connections. Both views have their points and in the end I think we just have to agree to disagee, respect (hopefully) each others' opinions and recognise that there is considerable conflict of interest between the two.

But let's be clear about it. Here's a question to everybody. Feel free to explain if you like but before you do, answer with a simple "Yes", "No" or "Not sure".

Should Second Life try to focus on the "high end" market rather than try to aim for a wider user base?

My own answer is of course:

Not sure.

I know what I want personally. I want to meet lots of intersting people, i want to travel freely through big landscapes and I want my builds here to correlate with the works of others. So I want a Second Life that is open and welcoming to the widest possible audience. But I'm not saying that's the best for Second Life and I'm sure it can do fine without me.  What I do resent though, is the dishonesty. For the tech savvyy people, here are the official system requirements. How realistic are those minimums? Linden Lab is misleading people and they fail to adress in a timely manner the issues that would have to be fixed if SL was to become what they try to sell it as. That is not good no matter how you look at it.

Edited August 11, 2019 by ChinRey

[kiramanell]

10 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

I know what I want personally. I want to meet lots of intersting people, i want to travel freely through big landscapes and I want my builds here to correlate with the works of others. So I want a Second Life that is open and welcoming to the widest possible audience. But I'm not saying that's the best for Second Life and I'm sure it can do fine without me.  What I do resent though, is the dishonesty. For the tech savvyy people, here are the official system requirements. How realistic are those minimums? Linden Lab is misleading people and they fail to adress in a timely manner the issues that would have to be fixed if SL was to become what they try to sell it as. That is not good no matter how you look at it.

 

LOL @ Those official specs.

[Rob Huntsman]

1 hour ago, Digit Gears said:

 

["Is SL a video game?!" topics aside, at it's core, it's a video game, running on decade old game engine]

 

I play decade old video games. Old video games actually run better then SL. However I think Linden Labs could actually benefit alot if they only hired a few Video Game Designers. To understand how video game engines work, and how they need to be compatible with graphic cards using its CORES. For example weaker graphic cards tend to have 700 cores, whereas stronger graphic cards have 4k.. Nasa creating a new graphics card using 8k cores. Linden Labs needs to not be using our rams or processors to generate the graphics or it overheats the PC's.  

[KanryDrago]

11 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Thanks a lot! That seems to be a really good test!

 

 

Just took the test to see how my pc performs, interestingly it gives component costs on the output and totting up my component costs my pc is just over 800. However 320 of that comes from a graphics card I put in a couple of weeks ago when my gtx 980 bit the dust which I picked up second hand for 200.

so for about 700£ you could have a pc not much different to mine which runs sl perfectly adequately which shows all the people going on about 2000 to 3000 gaming rigs being necessary isnt at all true.

ratings were

Gaming Nuclear submarine

Desktop Aircraft Carrier

Workstation Battle ship

[Cackle Amore]

59 minutes ago, kiramanell said:

 

I would agree with Kyrah (who said that?!), that some content can certainly be optimized. Like not every face, on every smal surface, needs 1024 textures per se. I recently bought a brand new beach residence. It uses some 1024 baked textures. Those are absolutely needed for that build, as they're applied on entire sections of the living room.

So, yes, I'm still very much for 'prettiest'. And that LL should try and keep up. Doesn't mean I think creators should waste resources, though (even though my words have been misconstrued that way). I'm for 'prettiest', where it's needed. Aka, where using lower-res textures would spell a clear diminishment.

N.B. 1024 textures aren't always bad per se. Some mesh objects use like a single 1024 texture, to be 'wrapped' around all faces. Arguably, you actually win on the deal that way, instead of using separate textures for each individual face.

Oh ya, large structures are certainly among those that can reasonably get away with 1024x textures, it's often mainly the smaller things that should aim for 512 and below. That's where I feel like a main issue of texture sizes is at. Now course, even buildings can get out of hand if they have too many large textures, like say if it gets up to 5-10 textures for one building, probably some of it that could be reduced in size.

Basically, save the bigger textures for the  "star of the show" so to say, for sim decor, that would probably be like the main central building, for avatars, that would be the body, and maaaaayybe the face as well, it's kind of a grey spot for me.

For myself, I'd do like one whole full body as 1024x, and the head as 512x.

Or just 512/512/512x as is the case of the SL body template being in three parts.

Edited August 11, 2019 by Digit Gears

[ChinRey]

10 minutes ago, kiramanell said:

LOL @ Those official specs.

Yes but official they are.

And it's something everybody who criticise others for expecting SL to run on computers that aren't anywhere near powerful enough. They expect it to work because LL told them it would.

Edited August 11, 2019 by ChinRey

[kiramanell]

1 minute ago, Haselden said:

I play decade old video games. Old video games actually run better then SL. However I think Linden Labs could actually benefit alot if they only hired a few Video Game Designers. To understand how video game engines work, and how they need to be compatible with graphic cards using its CORES. For example weaker graphic cards tend to have 700 cores, whereas stronger graphic cards have 4k.. Nasa creating a new graphics card using 8k cores. Linden Labs needs to not be using our rams or processors to generate the graphics or it overheats the PC's.  

 

The bolded part I didn't quite understand. What did you mean? Apart from handling drawcalls, I doubt there's much video-stuff going on our CPU. Let alone actual rendering.  On a VM, just for lolz, I installed Intel's OpenCL emulator once, to be run on your CPU. It was literally like a hundred times slower than what graphics card can do with true OpenCL support. 😍 

[Cackle Amore]

9 minutes ago, Haselden said:

However I think Linden Labs could actually benefit alot if they only hired a few Video Game Designers. To understand how video game engines work, and how they need to be compatible with graphic cards using its CORES. 

I have heard they're looking graphic engineers, but not much luck with the marketing appeal for it by the sounds of it.

[kiramanell]

3 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Yes but official they are.

And it's something everybody who criticise others for expecting SL to run on computers that aren't anywhere near powerful enough. They expect it to work because LL told them it would.

 

I agree. LL is being rather disingenuous with their specs there. Not outright lying, cuz I'm sure SL will run on a GTX 295 (I had that card actually), but not comfortably, of course (like you would expect from 'recommended' hardware). Heck, even my old 980 GTX was struggling. And even my current GTX 1080 Ti can't be pushed much beyond 3.2 shadow quality. So, yeah.

[Rob Huntsman]

9 minutes ago, kiramanell said:

 

The bolded part I didn't quite understand. What did you mean? Apart from handling drawcalls, I doubt there's much video-stuff going on our CPU. Let alone actual rendering.  On a VM, just for lolz, I installed Intel's OpenCL emulator once, to be run on your CPU. It was literally like a hundred times slower than what graphics card can do with true OpenCL support. 😍 

SL requires alot of ram to run, For example if you got around 5-8k ram you wont rez stuff as frequently on your viewer and could resort to crashing. Normally if you wanna PVP in SL you need atleast two sticks of ram and be around 16k, or you're gonna have issues moving.

The thing with processors for SL you need to have it also current which is odd. For example, I got another buddy that can play Fortnite, and Battlefield. However, when it comes to gaming on SL his processor strangely can't handle it because its old. 

Edited August 11, 2019 by Haselden

[kiramanell]

1 minute ago, Haselden said:

SL requires alot of ram to run, For example if you got around 5-8k ram you wont rez stuff as frequently on your viewer and could resort to crashing. Normally if you wanna PVP in SL you need atleast two sticks of ram and be around 16k, or you're gonna have issues moving.

 

5-8K ram?! Kilobytes? Sorry, I completely lost you here.😕

[Rob Huntsman]

6 minutes ago, kiramanell said:

 

5-8K ram?! Kilobytes? Sorry, I completely lost you here.😕

Memory. Like you can you can use two 8 Gigabyte cards to get 16k memory. Or just use a 16 gigabyte.

Edited August 11, 2019 by Haselden

[kiramanell]

16 minutes ago, Digit Gears said:

Oh ya, large structures are certainly among those that can reasonably get away with 1024x textures, it's often mainly the smaller things that should aim for 512 and below. That's where I feel like a main issue of texture sizes is at. Now course, even buildings can get out of hand if they have too many large textures, like say if it gets up to 5-10 textures for one building, probably some of it that could be reduced in size.

Basically, save the bigger textures for the  "star of the show" so to say, for sim decor, that would probably be like the main central building, for avatars, that would be the body, and maaaaayybe the face as well, it's kind of a grey spot for me.

For myself, I'd do like one whole full body as 1024x, and the head as 512x.

Or just 512/512/512x as is the case of the SL body template being in three parts.

 

^^ Couldn't agree more.  Slapping 1024 textures on surfaces that absolutely don't need up, is just wasteful. And yes, textures on avis is another thing. And yesterday I heard the Maitreya body, for example, has a very high poly count. I'm sure things like that don't help either (I love my Maitreya body, though *g*).

[Cackle Amore]

4 minutes ago, kiramanell said:

 

^^ Couldn't agree more.  Slapping 1024 textures on surfaces that absolutely don't need up, is just wasteful. And yes, textures on avis is another thing. And yesterday I heard the Maitreya body, for example, has a very high poly count. I'm sure things like that don't help either (I love my Maitreya body, though *g*).

And while polygons aren't quite as a big of an issue these days, it's still poor practice to make em so absurdly high, specially when there's going to be like 10-20+ of em bunched up together, each with a multiple 1k textures covering em. And then trying to right click on em causes a brief big of lag, even if you got the selection highlights turned off.

Edited August 11, 2019 by Digit Gears

[Cackle Amore]

Also, to add on to stuff about how things can still look good if not better with optimized styles. If someone made a Male/Female body on SL like this, it could easily rival the current main ones in style and quality.

[KanryDrago]

6 minutes ago, Digit Gears said:

Also, to add on to stuff about how things can still look good if not better with optimized styles. If someone made a Male/Female body on SL like this, it could easily rival the current main ones in style and quality.

You are kidding right, that is far far below the standard of current mesh bodies its a freaking cartoon

See this is exactly why those of opposed to these "lets bring in optimisations you won't know the difference" crowd are dubious when someone can tout this monstrosity as anywhere near the standard of current mesh

Edited August 11, 2019 by KanryDrago

[Cackle Amore]

And most wouldn't notice the difference if it had a slight more realistic style to the shape, It could still look better, made better, less taxing on the systems, and possibly even easier to make stuff for. Mostly just talking about the body, the head is certainly more toon style, but most human bodies don't come with heads.

----

And I suppose we'll just have to simple agree to disagree on what we consider the "standard of current mesh"

Also social experiences don't have to be photo realistic, plenty of em doing well enough for their markets with toonier styles

I was mostly trying to show that well made shapely models are still possible without needing 100x tricount.

Edited August 12, 2019 by Digit Gears