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

[Theresa Tennyson]

11 hours ago, KanryDrago said:

As far as I can tell my mesh body responds to all the sliders perfectly well. The fact that some mesh bodies may not is down to the creators

Mesh bodies do respond to most of the sliders, but they're not as responsive over a wide range than the system body. You can't make any single mesh body go from looking like a child to looking like an obese adult, which you can with the system body. Also, the most popular mesh bodies have a more limited range of "looks" other than "commercially attractive young adult."

[Blush Bravin]

1 hour ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Also, the most popular mesh bodies have a more limited range of "looks" other than "commercially attractive young adult."

Knowing that the possibilities with a Maitreya body are nearly limitless, I decided to give this a go.

Disregard the face as that wasn't the purpose of this experiment. Though with the proper shape and skin I'm rather certain I could get this mesh head to look very youthful. Also, to be fair I decided to use the same clothing for both shapes. If I had used a top that didn't have the shading for boobs the chest would look much flatter. There are a few creators who do make flat chest versions of their mesh tops/dresses. The biggest issue I had with getting the body to look childlike was the size of the feet.

Now for that obese adult shape.

My standard shape

Please note the furniture in the pic for comparison.

Personally I think the reason we don't see more variety with the mesh bodies is because people don't push the limits or perhaps people prefer a rather similar shape.  

To bring this back on topic, I think the best way to optimize mesh bodies is in removing the need to use onion layers. Unfortunately, Bakes on Mesh could have been the answer to that problem but since it will not work with appliers or accommodate materials, I see little incentive for the mesh body makers to remove any of those onion layers. I also think it's a fool's errand to think that this Jeanie can be put back in the bottle by updating the system body. 

 

Edited August 4, 2019 by Blush Bravin

[Theresa Tennyson]

3 hours ago, Blush Bravin said:

Personally I think the reason we don't see more variety with the mesh bodies is because people don't push the limits or perhaps people prefer a rather similar shape. 

Or possibly those who have tried realized that the breasts will never smoothly transition into the body no matter how small, actually becoming flat plates or craters at very small sizes, and that body fat with that body can't be set over 24 or it will be impossible to match it to a head.

[Chic Aeon]

On 2/24/2019 at 5:27 PM, Rohan Dockal said:

 

 

mesh is causing this problem. But mesh is less prim heavy, so it seems the opposite would be true. But if it is, then was introducing mesh bodies really worth it?

Is there some other reason this is happening? 

 

I have a slightly better computer than yours but not by tons. It is desktop and I connect directly.  What I  CAN say is that not long ago and for several months, my fps dropped by half and textures took minutes to load. I was back in the GRAY days of old.  I tried all sorts of fixes (it had nothing to do with viewers as I tested that). I uninstalled some software, yada yada and tried all the suggestions people gave me.  It turned out --- or at least it certainly seemed so -- that it was a network connection issue from the SL servers. Once they did their network shifting, all was back as it had been for years. Apparently I was on a "declining server".  

 

So it may not have ANYTHING TO DO with your settings or your system or your viewer.   Time and luck may be the only way you can fix it. 

 

And so far as mesh is concerned, land impact has very little to do with the stress on your computer.   Small items especially can have 1 land impact and be SO HEAVY in the mesh department that putting a few of them together and turning your camera to see them can be instant "lag".   It isn't getting better; it is getting worse.   I am not sure WHY really but it seems like a lot of creators are making their mesh MORE dense than in the past -- and with more textures.  This depresses me a lot but I can't do anything about it except be SURE and inspect an item before I buy.   I was looking at a lovely home and garden creation a couple of days ago at a new round of a top event.  I really LIKED the item. It was beautifully crafted and textured. THEN I looked at the triangle count.  I was well over HALF A MILLION TRIANGLES.  

 

I sighed and walked away.   

 

That item could have been MUCH lighter mesh-wise with no noticeable difference.   Anyone that could MAKE that item should definitely know how to make it closer to "game asset" status.  No one is talking streamlined mesh here -- but really I could make a whole city -- well at least a highly detailed street -- with over half a million triangles.   

 

Good luck finding your fix.  It may just "fix itself" eventually like mine did.   

[Blush Bravin]

21 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Or possibly those who have tried realized that the breasts will never smoothly transition into the body no matter how small, actually becoming flat plates or craters at very small sizes, and that body fat with that body can't be set over 24 or it will be impossible to match it to a head.

If a super flat chest is desired there is an add-on that does that very well. If using a mesh head and mesh body you can set the fat to anything you like as long as you select the same neck size on the body and head HUDs. In my case I set the Mait body neck to 5 as that matches the Lelutka head exactly. The fat slider was way past 24 in my example of the plump adult shape.

[Coffee Pancake]

5 hours ago, Blush Bravin said:

Knowing that the possibilities with a Maitreya body are nearly limitless, I decided to give this a go.

Very far from it .. all the mesh bodies are good for about 20% deviation from the base rigging before you start to get weirdness, how far past this you go before it becomes unacceptable is entirely personal preference. There are a whole lot of possible shapes with a Venus or Freya that just don't come close on Maitreya.

Body fat slider has particularly poor support, even a small adjustment is enough to cause clipping on close fitting garments where removing sections of the body is not possible.

If you're after curvy .. then you're shopping for a new butt.

Edited August 4, 2019 by CoffeeDujour

[Blush Bravin]

3 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Very far from it .. all the mesh bodies are good for about 20% deviation from the base rigging before you start to get weirdness, how far past this you go before it becomes unacceptable is entirely personal preference. There are a whole lot of possible shapes with a Venus or Freya that just don't come close on Maitreya.

Body fat slider has particularly poor support, even a small adjustment is enough to cause clipping on close fitting garments where removing sections of the body is not possible.

If you're after curvy .. then you're shopping for a new butt.

I was not suggesting that the Maitreya body can be as curvy as some of the curvier bodies. But the suggestion that the system body responds better than mesh was what I was responding to. If you want mesh and whatever type body shape you like it's available with one mesh body or the other. That's all I was suggesting as well as the fact that the Maitreya can get pretty curvy or small if the shape is modified. 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

7 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Very far from it .. all the mesh bodies are good for about 20% deviation from the base rigging before you start to get weirdness, how far past this you go before it becomes unacceptable is entirely personal preference. There are a whole lot of possible shapes with a Venus or Freya that just don't come close on Maitreya.

Body fat slider has particularly poor support, even a small adjustment is enough to cause clipping on close fitting garments where removing sections of the body is not possible.

If you're after curvy .. then you're shopping for a new butt.

Indeed. There is a reason why people consciously choose Hourglass or Isis over Lara sometimes. To use another example, my alt uses an Altamura body. I'm not overly fond of it, tbh, but it does have a distinct and quite attractive breast shape that you most definitely can not replicate on Lara (or on Physique, which I also use).

1 minute ago, Blush Bravin said:

But the suggestion that the system body responds better than mesh was what I was responding to. If you want mesh and whatever type body shape you like it's available with one mesh body or the other.

Were LL to produce their own new mesh system avatar, I think it would need to include new sliders for this very reason. You'd need more fine control than we currently have to be able to replicate the wide range of body shapes that you can achieve through different commercially available mesh bodies.

[ChinRey]

32 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Were LL to produce their own new mesh system avatar, I think it would need to include new sliders for this very reason. You'd need more fine control than we currently have to be able to replicate the wide range of body shapes that you can achieve through different commercially available mesh bodies.

You mean were LL to produce an upgraded system body, right? I don't see any reason how making an "official LL mesh body" can make any sense.

The current system avatar actually has far more possible variations than what is available. All parameters are eight bit values, each with 256 steps. Even the gender "switch" has 256 different options from male to female. For some unknown reason LL decided to nerf the UI so we only have access to less than half the options. They did the same to prims to but at least we can access the whole range of prim parameters with scripts. Body parts can't be scripted of course.

I do agree that the avatar ciould do with more modifiable parameters btw. I mentioned three obvious ones in an earlier post but I'm sure there are more.

But anway, as Blush said, nothing's going to happen. Maybe it's time to stop flogging the dead horse.

Edited August 4, 2019 by ChinRey

[Scylla Rhiadra]

8 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

You mean were LL to produce an upgraded system body, right? I don't see any reason how making an "official LL mesh body" can make any sense.

Yes, sorry. I meant a new system avatar using better mesh standards. Or more triangles. Or however one might express BETTER in technical terms!

😉

[Rob Huntsman]

I wouldn't entirely blame mesh avatars, after all most games have animated skeletons. I'd more blame LL not supporting 4k resolution, or updating their graphics engine. Letting their creators improve the graphics for their game.  For example, I know a great variety of creators releasing quality textures that the game isn't even designed for. So when you look at these textures you're gonna lag. 

It's honestly getting to the point LL might as well make a Second life 2 or  just wait until SL becomes unplayable with our computers.

Edited August 4, 2019 by Haselden

[Cackle Amore]

On 8/2/2019 at 12:58 AM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

What I'm sort of suggesting, though . . . although, as I say, I'm kind of playing devil's advocate . . . is that it was actually a good thing that they did. Because it created an enormously important industry in Second Life that otherwise would simply not have existed.

In fact, is it not possible that one of the reasons they don't directly take the initiative on things like this is because they understand that leaving it to SL creators is, in the long run, more profitable (if much less technically efficient)

I do wonder at times how often that thought might come up when they're thinking of new idea's. "Will this be seen as competing with the userbase?"

Quote

@Haselden I'd more blame LL not supporting 4k resolution, or updating their graphics engine.

While 4k would be handy for optimization, we both know that will not be how it'd get used. I don't want to be forced to download a bunch of crummy 4k eyeball textures.

Also, they have been trying to look for some graphic engineers, but sounds like they haven't had much luck at selling a "Graphic Engineer for old social MMO-lite game" role

Edited August 5, 2019 by Digit Gears

[Extrude Ragu]

The thing is, if we just made the same prim builds we made out of mesh today, with the same level of detail, the efficiency improvement is 10 fold, as mesh is far more efficient in terms of performance to detail than prims.

It's not the technology, it's the economics.

Commercial creators are heavily incentivized to cram as much detail as possible, into as low an LI as possible. They do this by 'cheating' the Level of Detail System by supplying a single tri to Medium, Low and Lowest Models(A mesh has different levels of detail based on zoom level) to get lower LI, whilst still having poorly optimized highest model and demanding users set their LoD factor up to max or even changing debug settings in their viewer.

With the right economics, mesh is less laggy than Prims

Take for example, my simulator, Kokoro Academy. I own the sim, and I create everything in it. I'm not trying to sell the content to anyone, I just want people to enjoy themselves, because of this, it's in my interest to create highly optimized models, proper LoD models, using alpha blending, large textures very sparingly, etc. Users in my sim regularly tell me that they are confused why their computer runs smoother in my sim than another sim that has the same apparent amount of detail.

What needs to be done is we need to find a tangible way to incentivize commercially motivated creators to optimize their products. The average consumer generally does not consider efficiency in their purchase, only how good the product looks. Personally I'm not 100% sure what we could do, but I know this is the area that needs solving.

[Janet Voxel]

It really comes down to education. If the most complete tutorials for secondlife creation contain shortcuts and bad practices, guess what most people that learn from them are going to do? The same thing.

A good start is going to be a good comprehensive series of tutorials that break all of this stuff down. Talking about it on message board is great, but at the end of the day, not as many people read message boards like they used to. 

The message has to be put out there in a way that people are most likely to access it. Somebody has to put themselves out there to do it that way.

[ChinRey]

7 hours ago, Extrude Ragu said:

The thing is, if we just made the same prim builds we made out of mesh today, with the same level of detail, the efficiency improvement is 10 fold, as mesh is far more efficient in terms of performance to detail than prims.

That's a truth with modifications to put it mildly. It is true that well optimised mesh usually is less gpu heavy than an identical build made with prims but if it's a reasonably well made prim build there isn't that much difference. And how much of the mesh in SL is well optimised anyway?

Besides, the gpu is only one part of the rendering chain. Cpu load matters too. The pirm handling code was included in the SL software right from the start at a time when the LL developers were very concious about performance. The mesh code is an add on, much of it hastily modified prim code, added to the software at a time when LL's quality standards were much lower.

Then there is dowload. It takes up quite a bit of cpu time and of course also keeps the connection busy. As a rule of thumb, expect 1 LI worth of mesh to take up the same amount of bandwidth as 15-25 prims.

I posted an article about the pros and cons of various buiding materials in my blog a while ago for those who want to look at the issue in more details.

[Coffee Pancake]

11 hours ago, Extrude Ragu said:

It's not the technology, it's the economics.

A million times this.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

11 hours ago, janetosilio said:

It really comes down to education. If the most complete tutorials for secondlife creation contain shortcuts and bad practices, guess what most people that learn from them are going to do? The same thing.

A good start is going to be a good comprehensive series of tutorials that break all of this stuff down. Talking about it on message board is great, but at the end of the day, not as many people read message boards like they used to. 

The message has to be put out there in a way that people are most likely to access it. Somebody has to put themselves out there to do it that way.

This!

Where's Torley when we need him?

(Yes yes, I know. He's over at Sansar.)

[Janet Voxel]

6 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

This!

Where's Torley when we need him?

(Yes yes, I know. He's over at Sansar.)

Yes, content creation needs a Torley!

[Jackson Redstar]

I have often wondered, not knowing anything about the coding behind SL, if perhaps the code that makes it all run hasn't kept up with the times, Back in 2003 I mean alot werre still even on dial  up or maybe 10-20 mbs at best broadband and can graphic cards and computer memory much much less

I find myself wondering why he heck I have a 100mbs download, 4 gig Graphic card and 32 gig o system memory and a core i7 processor and yet it seems like I'm downloading SL at times on a Commodore 64! 

I mean OK even if mesh avies  eat up alot of resources,  it still shouldn't  take that much for a modern computer to handle.I guess i still don't understand why a sim with 30 avies, once rendered continues to operate so slow. just 32 gig of ram should be enough to keep the entire scene  in memory. watching the network on the windows task manager it certainly isn't overloading the download speed and dont even take that long for the initial render to be completed 

[Kyrah Abattoir]

1 hour ago, Jackson Redstar said:

I have often wondered, not knowing anything about the coding behind SL, if perhaps the code that makes it all run hasn't kept up with the times, Back in 2003 I mean alot werre still even on dial  up or maybe 10-20 mbs at best broadband and can graphic cards and computer memory much much less

I find myself wondering why he heck I have a 100mbs download, 4 gig Graphic card and 32 gig o system memory and a core i7 processor and yet it seems like I'm downloading SL at times on a Commodore 64! 

I mean OK even if mesh avies  eat up alot of resources,  it still shouldn't  take that much for a modern computer to handle.I guess i still don't understand why a sim with 30 avies, once rendered continues to operate so slow. just 32 gig of ram should be enough to keep the entire scene  in memory. watching the network on the windows task manager it certainly isn't overloading the download speed and dont even take that long for the initial render to be completed 

You grossly overestimate modern computers. Sure the viewer is probably not the finest piece of code out there, but the sourcecode is available for anyone who cares about fixing those performance issues.

Improvements do get rolled out fairly reguarly, the viewer from 2004 would be completely unable to cope with the SL content of 2019.

But there is only so much that the client can do in a world that has to be assumed 100% dynamic. Most games that aren't minecraft use prepared assets and careful ressource management to run properly.

The N°1 killer with SL is ressource misuse, it doesn't matter if you have 32gigs and an I7, performance cost on data structures doesn't scale in a linear fashion.

If you study next gen 3D models from games and compare them to SL ones you will see that there is a massive difference between the two, they typically achieve a much better aspect with only a fraction of the texture/mesh use. They also have multiple versions of models, cutscenes vs game sections for example (halflife 2 has this extremely detailed version of the gman for the opening cutscene that's used only for that)

[TiaShaw]

On 2/25/2019 at 7:15 AM, RaniStonesoul said:

Ok so I know little about computers and especially computers working with SL.  If I wanted to upgrade something in my computer to make SL run smoother, would it be more memory or and upgrade to the graphics card.   I have 8 GB of RAM now and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 8GB graphics card right now.  

Gtx 960 is a 2gb card some were made as 4gb vram by asus turbo model 

[TiaShaw]

On 8/4/2019 at 2:08 PM, Haselden said:

I wouldn't entirely blame mesh avatars, after all most games have animated skeletons. I'd more blame LL not supporting 4k resolution, or updating their graphics engine. Letting their creators improve the graphics for their game.  For example, I know a great variety of creators releasing quality textures that the game isn't even designed for. So when you look at these textures you're gonna lag. 

It's honestly getting to the point LL might as well make a Second life 2 or  just wait until SL becomes unplayable with our computers.

Edited August 6, 2019 by TiaShaw
Retracted truth

[Kweopi]

1 hour ago, Jackson Redstar said:

I have often wondered, not knowing anything about the coding behind SL, if perhaps the code that makes it all run hasn't kept up with the times, Back in 2003 I mean alot werre still even on dial  up or maybe 10-20 mbs at best broadband and can graphic cards and computer memory much much less

I find myself wondering why he heck I have a 100mbs download, 4 gig Graphic card and 32 gig o system memory and a core i7 processor and yet it seems like I'm downloading SL at times on a Commodore 64! 

I mean OK even if mesh avies  eat up alot of resources,  it still shouldn't  take that much for a modern computer to handle.I guess i still don't understand why a sim with 30 avies, once rendered continues to operate so slow. just 32 gig of ram should be enough to keep the entire scene  in memory. watching the network on the windows task manager it certainly isn't overloading the download speed and dont even take that long for the initial render to be completed 

From Firestorm help pages: "One aspect of SL that is often underestimated is the importance of your network bandwidth setting. Having this too high or too low can lead to all kinds of problems, from simple TP failure to being disconnected - among other things. So it is advisable to not rely on the bandwidth stated by your provider, but to check for yourself.

SpeedTest will give some indication of the quality of your connection. But another very useful indication is ping and packet loss.You can determine these from within the viewer by accessing the statistics bar (press Shift-Ctrl-1). Look for Packet Loss and Ping SIM. Ideally, these should be 0.0% and under 150ms, respectively. The stats bar gives data based on your present location in the SL grid.1)Why the location matters. Second Life has data centers in Phoenix, Arizona, USA. This is why you need to select that city when measuring your bandwidth. If you live far away and do the default test, it will be to a city close to you, which will not give a good indication of your connection to Second Life servers.2)NOTE: The city recommended is not exactly where SL has servers, but is close enough to serve as a guide in determining a good value for bandwidth."

i posted that in other section too : i have a lousy i3 with 2gb vram and 8 gb ram. Constantly i got 100 fps or more ( around 150 in totaly empty sims - like animesh test ones, and  around 20 in crowded events. it might not be the only thing who save the day net helps a lot

[TiaShaw]

29 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

You grossly overestimate modern computers. Sure the viewer is probably not the finest piece of code out there, but the sourcecode is available for anyone who cares about fixing those performance issues.

Improvements do get rolled out fairly reguarly, the viewer from 2004 would be completely unable to cope with the SL content of 2019.

But there is only so much that the client can do in a world that has to be assumed 100% dynamic. Most games that aren't minecraft use prepared assets and careful ressource management to run properly.

The N°1 killer with SL is ressource misuse, it doesn't matter if you have 32gigs and an I7, performance cost on data structures doesn't scale in a linear fashion.

If you study next gen 3D models from games and compare them to SL ones you will see that there is a massive difference between the two, they typically achieve a much better aspect with only a fraction of the texture/mesh use. They also have multiple versions of models, cutscenes vs game sections for example (halflife 2 has this extremely detailed version of the gman for the opening cutscene that's used only for that)

4gb graphics Vram is barely enough even at 720p... 32gb ram only helps IF you log multiple accounts at the same time. 4.2gb per instance of firestorm. I have tested probably more than i have actually just ran around and explored.a Gtx1060 6gb is the bare minimum i would suggest to anyone. For 1080p  for a good result.  Just my opinion. I bought and tested everything in graphics from  gtx 570 up to my twin gtx1080ti’s (2nd card is dedicated stream encoder) with a intel I9-9900k locked at 5ghz. I have spent alot of money in the wrong places. Sl doesnt care if you have more than 4cores but the faster the better. 

[Kyrah Abattoir]

26 minutes ago, TiaShaw said:

4k is here and ppl need to upgrade their computers. Respectfully. The reality is 75% of lag at a minimum is operator error and or refusal to upgrade cpu gpu ram. Sl has advanced mesh, bento, etc. you cant expect to run sl 100fps minimum 24/7 4k resolution on ultra with 14 instances of firestorm running at the same time unless you have $7k 

We have a situation where people can't even run ALM with shadows off, which every GPU of the last decade supports. But in SL clients already choke under texture and polygon bloat.

On 8/4/2019 at 10:08 PM, Haselden said:

I wouldn't entirely blame mesh avatars, after all most games have animated skeletons. I'd more blame LL not supporting 4k resolution, or updating their graphics engine. Letting their creators improve the graphics for their game.  For example, I know a great variety of creators releasing quality textures that the game isn't even designed for. So when you look at these textures you're gonna lag. 

Optimizing games, specifically games where many characters made of many different parts (your typical mmo) are visible at any given time is worth an entire book on the subject. Draw call reduction, texture sharing, shader optimization. SL Is a generic platform, there is no specific optimization that avatar attachments can be boiled down to that will just "work".

Avatars in SL are absolute behemoths compared to what games typically have to handle. Games typically get around this by fusing meshs together on avatars and condensing materials and textures to reduce the number of passes required. But hey, SL avatars can change in many many ways, at will and many times per second if needed (I'm looking at you stop motion pets!). Avatars in SL most likely take a good hundred draw call each, (and that's being very conservative)

Your optimization/caching system has to overall take less time than the time the stuff you are trying to optimize is taking. This is not one of those cases.

Edited August 6, 2019 by Kyrah Abattoir