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

[Rohan Dockal]

20 hours ago, chibiusa Ling said:

Now you would think "Yes but my card is a 940m, surely my card is better than your card". Nope...only slightly and at the same time not, if you check this link out : https://www.game-debate.com/gpu/index.php?gid=2802&gid2=2702&compare=geforce-940m-2gb-vs-geforce-gt-650m-v2 you will find that we actually get comparatively similar scores on everything and the cards come out roughly equal on most things with my card even beating your card on certain other things. Yet your card was released in 2015....mine 2012 or before. So thats probably one possible factor.

All I can suggest to you is this..

 

Trust me, I don't need any tips on tweaking my settings or selecting my graphics card. I have tried EVERYTHING. 
And even though my graphics card is from 2015, that doesn't tell the whole story - SL ran better for me back in 2009, and I was obviously using a much more low powered machine back then. 
 

[Rohan Dockal]

13 hours ago, Alyona Su said:

This. Turn off Advanced Lighting and your frame rate will double instantly. 

@Rohan Dockal - here's something I haven't seen mentioned, yet: have you tried a different viewer?

The newest Catznip was just released last week and I am seeing such a performance boost that I am able to literally double my graphics setting for the same performance as I get with Firestorm. It's not my intent to evangelize Catzip or harp on firestorm (I am with the belief that most of the viewers, including the official LL viewer, are great viewers). They cost nothing but a little time and experimentation. Try them: Catznip, Kokua, etc.

Yes, I've turned off advanced lighting. As I said, when I'm at clubs I turn down to the absolute lowest setting, and it's still laggy. 

Using a different viewer is a new suggestion - I'll try that. 

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

On 2/24/2019 at 9:08 PM, janetosilio said:

well. gosh that is helpful.

 

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

2 hours ago, Rohan Dockal said:

Yes, I've turned off advanced lighting. As I said, when I'm at clubs I turn down to the absolute lowest setting, and it's still laggy. 

Using a different viewer is a new suggestion - I'll try that. 

Do you realize how many user profiles you have violated by turning off advanced lighting!! You will not see them as they wish you to see them!!! You MUST enable all the bells and whistles so you can see these people's avatars properly!

[Qie Niangao]

On 2/24/2019 at 8:27 PM, Rohan Dockal said:

For example, as I type this, I'm in the Fogbound club (a popular place every night). Even with my graphics preferences on the absolute lowest settings, I'm getting a FR of only 2 (TWO!!!) if my camera is in the direction of the dance floor. So in other words, if I actually want to look at people, all I can see are some glimpses of movement, and mesh body parts floating around the room. Even typing in IM is laggy. If the camera is on myself only, no other people, then the FR goes up to 11. If I stare at the brick wall only, then it goes up to 50.

WTF? Seriously. I have a pretty rubbish old computer, complain a lot about lag, and yet I can't get it anywhere nearly that bad at that location no matter how hard I try. Even with an absurd 4.0 RenderVolumeLODFactor, no complexity limits and no imposters at all (which combined halves the framerate for me in this busy location), with a dancefloor full of avatars in scene, I still get about 10 FPS, and with my usual settings about 20. Granted, it takes FOREVER to load all those avatars, with as you say "mesh body parts floating around the room" FOR AGES, but once they finally load, there's nothing all that special about this location, as busy venues go.

I hate to say it, but something is very, very wrong with your setup. Is there any possible way your laptop is using the on-board graphics rather than the GPU? Or somehow your GPU is... basically disabled in its control panel? You're right, a 940M isn't that great, but it shouldn't be doing anything remotely as bad as what you're seeing at that location.

[chibiusa Ling]

7 hours ago, Rohan Dockal said:

Trust me, I don't need any tips on tweaking my settings or selecting my graphics card. I have tried EVERYTHING. 
And even though my graphics card is from 2015, that doesn't tell the whole story - SL ran better for me back in 2009, and I was obviously using a much more low powered machine back then. 
 

Yeah but, thats already been answered. In 2009 we didn't have mesh. In 2009 most buildings were still made out of prim. In 2009 we were still rocking the system body with occasional sculpted extras. Back then a potato could run Second Life without too much issue.

Since mesh has been introduced we now have to deal with avatars all around us wearing full outfits of highly complex, un optimised mesh clothing and accessories from hair to bodies to jewellery to those ridiculous Catwa heads that take an hour to render and appear. We also have to deal with mesh trees, mesh buildings, mesh terrain, mesh roads etc etc. Second Life is now much more taxing on a system, especially given that 60-70% of the mesh in world isn't optimised at all.

Comparing SL 2009 to SL 2019 is asinine as they were in a sense two different worlds. 

[Selene Gregoire]

21 minutes ago, chibiusa Ling said:

We also have to deal with mesh trees, mesh buildings, mesh terrain, mesh roads etc etc

We have mesh flooding the grid to the rafters!  

[Coby Foden]

9 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

That's very interesting, because I have a faster CPU, more RAM, and the same graphics card...and ALM off does make a big difference for me.

Do you perhaps have shadows on too when you have ALM on?

When I have shadows on then the frame rate will drop, more or less depending on the scene.
ALM can be used with shadows off too. When shadows are off then I see no difference in frame rates between ALM off and ALM on.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

Yeah but with shadows on you don't have to get those houses with 150Mb of pre-shadowed textures.

[So Whimsy]

Funny, because for me it's gotten better over the years!

I still remember my first SL day when I rezzed in world for the first time about 11 years and 8 month ago. I was lagging so badly I could barely move. A friend took me to a store to show me how to get a skin and hair and it was the singlemost frustrating experience I had had till them as far as the internet was concerned and mind you, I've started with a 56k dial up AOL modem that made the noises when you connected that are *still* ever present in my head.

I think I stayed online for like an hour and then signed off and stayed offling for a long time after until I decided to give it a try. Nowadays I only have that type of lag if I am at the arcade with bad settings. And no, I am not made of money, my comp is average at best.

[Alyona Su]

11 hours ago, Rohan Dockal said:

Yes, I've turned off advanced lighting. As I said, when I'm at clubs I turn down to the absolute lowest setting, and it's still laggy. 

I do this, too. It's a must, no matter which viewer you're using. Turning off "Sounds from other avatars" and "sounds from Gestures"  is a must also!

2 hours ago, Coby Foden said:

Do you perhaps have shadows on too when you have ALM on?

When I have shadows on then the frame rate will drop, more or less depending on the scene.
ALM can be used with shadows off too. When shadows are off then I see no difference in frame rates between ALM off and ALM on.

According to the release notes, there was some kind of major tweak in this in the new Catznip. I don't know what all was done, but it worked. I used to have four different presents: Maximum - which was Ultra with everything except the defocus, main - which was without shadows and lower draw distance, and "Crowds" which even had "Basic Shaders" turned off. LOL (Try THAT one - turning off basic shaders (A.K.A. Windlight) will get your frame rate up by a factor of 10 Hahahaha). But with new Catznip I'm on permanent Ultra with 128 Draw.

And again, though I am championing Catznip, my point is simply that the viewer you use also contributes to the perceived performance you experience. So it's a big mix of your hardware, your software, your network connection, and all those computers between you and SL servers in between. All of it held together with Scotch Tape. LOL

[Paul Hexem]

Running an i7-7700, overclocked GTX970, with the cache on an M.2 drive, I can see FPS as high as 120 even on the mainland.

If you can afford it, just use pure horsepower to overcome SL's crappy content. Build the computer yourself, buy parts on sale or when the next gen is being released. You can get great hardware cheap if you take the time. 

If you're running a laptop with any series mobile card, you're simply not going to have a whole lot of fun in SL without LL making drastic changes to content limitations. 

[Qie Niangao]

52 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

But with new Catznip I'm on permanent Ultra with 128 Draw.

Oops. I forgot that I was using the new Catznip when I visited that venue, so I just went back using Firestorm, and it's a whole lot different: 2.5 FPS where I was getting 9 to 11 with Catznip, both with settings pretty max'd out. With my "normal" settings (mostly imposters, complexity limited to about 100K), Firestorm still gives me about 19 FPS where Catznip was maybe only a little better. Anyway, the OP has already tried nerfing the settings and still gets 2 FPS, so that's still scary.

[Lindal Kidd]

4 hours ago, Coby Foden said:

Do you perhaps have shadows on too when you have ALM on?

When I have shadows on then the frame rate will drop, more or less depending on the scene.
ALM can be used with shadows off too. When shadows are off then I see no difference in frame rates between ALM off and ALM on.

I do indeed have shadows on.

[Coby Foden]

1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I do indeed have shadows on.

 

On 2/25/2019 at 1:38 PM, Lindal Kidd said:

One of the biggest frame rate hogs around is the Advanced Lighting Model (ALM)

So, the "biggest frame rate hog" actually is the combination of ALM on + Shadows on. It's not the ALM on without shadows.

[yumabloom]

It's not. Like everything else, SL has become more. In this case more demanding on rigs. Invest in a good gaming PC and you'll be fine. 

[Theresa Tennyson]

16 hours ago, Rohan Dockal said:

Yes, I've turned off advanced lighting. As I said, when I'm at clubs I turn down to the absolute lowest setting, and it's still laggy. 

Using a different viewer is a new suggestion - I'll try that. 

Open your preferences, go to "Graphics" and the "Advanced" screen, and take a screenshot and post it.

The "absolute lowest setting" may not be the best performing setting for your graphics card. The extremely low settings are for very old/limited cards and for moderate cards like yours they may be turning off settings that will actually help your card. I'm thinking of basic shaders, etc.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

13 hours ago, Tarina Sewell said:

Do you realize how many user profiles you have violated by turning off advanced lighting!! You will not see them as they wish you to see them!!! You MUST enable all the bells and whistles so you can see these people's avatars properly!

What I find funny is avatars that state in their profiles that one must activate a particular windlight setting to see them "properly"

Like seriously? You think I care?

[BilliJo Aldrin]

4 hours ago, Gadget Portal said:

Running an i7-7700, overclocked GTX970, with the cache on an M.2 drive, I can see FPS as high as 120 even on the mainland.

If you can afford it, just use pure horsepower to overcome SL's crappy content. Build the computer yourself, buy parts on sale or when the next gen is being released. You can get great hardware cheap if you take the time. 

If you're running a laptop with any series mobile card, you're simply not going to have a whole lot of fun in SL without LL making drastic changes to content limitations. 

It could be worse, they could be running Lumiya on a tablet.

[Lindal Kidd]

3 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

What I find funny is avatars that state in their profiles that one must activate a particular windlight setting to see them "properly"

Like seriously? You think I care?

Actually, I kind of do care.  I like to see people the way they think they look best.  (Sometimes, they are hilariously wrong!)

[Selene Gregoire]

37 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Actually, I kind of do care.  I like to see people the way they think they look best.  (Sometimes, they are hilariously wrong!)

Even the skin makers of yore that included notecards with windlight settings sometimes got it wrong. Sometimes hilariously, sometimes hideously. 

[Rohan Dockal]

10 hours ago, Gadget Portal said:

Running an i7-7700, overclocked GTX970, with the cache on an M.2 drive, I can see FPS as high as 120 even on the mainland.

If you can afford it, just use pure horsepower to overcome SL's crappy content. Build the computer yourself, buy parts on sale or when the next gen is being released. You can get great hardware cheap if you take the time. 

If you're running a laptop with any series mobile card, you're simply not going to have a whole lot of fun in SL without LL making drastic changes to content limitations. 

I guess that's my only real option, but I wonder how many times do I need to upgrade? I wonder if Sansar will be better.  

I do have to point out that your 120 FPS doesn't really exist. At least I've been told by people that the highest SL supports is 45, so anything above that is superfluous. 

I did try Catznip viewer and here's the weird thing - it did noticeably improve my FR at the clubs. However, back at my house, it was slightly worse then Firestorm! However on balance, it performs better. Only problem is I'm used to running Firestorm with the Old Phoenix interface and Catznip confuses the hell out of me...

 

[Paul Hexem]

2 hours ago, Rohan Dockal said:

I do have to point out that your 120 FPS doesn't really exist. At least I've been told by people that the highest SL supports is 45, so anything above that is superfluous. 

This is incorrect. 

The 45 FPS SL cap you're referencing is server physics FPS. It's unrelated to client side FPS, which is capped by your monitor. My monitor supports 144. Higher than that would be superfluous. 

[Killer Perhaps]

I don't agree.. it was laggier in the past in my opinion. Computers have come a long way, so has SL. I remember barely being able to move way back in its earlier days, clubs were also a lot more laggy to the average computer. If you have a decent PC and connection, it's not too bad with the exception of a sim full of bad scripts.

[Rohan Dockal]

11 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

The "absolute lowest setting" may not be the best performing setting for your graphics card. The extremely low settings are for very old/limited cards and for moderate cards like yours they may be turning off settings that will actually help your card. I'm thinking of basic shaders, etc.

Thank you, I think that's it!! I did some serious testing today and found out that the middle graphics setting got me a better frame rate than the lowest setting. I think that's why catznip seemed to work better initially. And thats not all -

Today I extensively tested Firestorm and Catznip viewer at 4 locations. Both graphic settings were identical (set to mid) and the network settings were identical too. In each case I gave it several minutes to settle down so everything could load after teleporting to that location. 

1. Inside a small box 2000m in the air: Firestorm: 80 fps, Catznip 100fps

2. On the ground, looking at these waves hitting my beach: Firestorm: 44 fps, Catznip 15fps 

3. At a public store (Truth Hair), with 3 people in my field of vision: Firestorm: 28 fps, Catznip 28fps 

4. At a club (Fogbound) looking at the dance floor, at least 20 people: Firestorm: 15 fps, Catznip 15fps 

 

Overall there was no real difference except for the beach at my house. That result was so bizarre I tested it twice, and still same results.