Lag in Bellisseria *Advice*

[Kathlen Onyx]

I did a search and did not find anything on this. I apologize if it's been discussed at length!

I was so happy to finally get a camper in Bellisseria.  My neighbor even said hi and the Bellisseria Citizens Group is great. 

Started to move around to get ready to unpack and move in.  It too five minutes to even rez things and I could hardly move.  Now I realize with so many people in Bellisseria, on different regions, there will be an increase in lag but this makes it almost not worth it to even live there.  I gave up after an hour and TP'd back to my mainland skybox and no lag at all. Went to a club, no lag at all so I know it's not my computer.

What I like is some help on what to set in my viewer (Firestorm) to help reduce lag.  If anyone has ideas please post.

 

[PrudenceAnton]

Not sure if you landed on one of the newly released regions or not.  Sometimes new regions can be a bit laggy for the first month as new residents set up their places and there is more traffic on the region.  I don't have the greatest computer, but I usually do rather well all over Bellisseria.  I do find it takes me longer to rez in on the region my house boat is on, but after I'm rezzed in I do fine.  I try to keep my draw distance 120m or lower though, so my performance is smooth.

There is one setting on Firestorm I have adjusted and I've found it does help me to run better in regions with more scripts, objects to rez and lag, which is try to push your bandwidth up higher.  I know it states it may cause more lag, but that has never been the case for myself and others that do this, it has actually increased our performance in SL locations.

btw I normally run on high settings in Firestorm, not Ultra and sometimes I have advanced lighting on, sometimes I turn it off if I feel my performance dragging.

[Rolig Loon]

There are a lot of textures to rez in most Bellisseria regions -- lots of trees and bushes, walls, and the houses themselves.  Prudence is right that it makes sense to keep your draw distance rather low.  If you're on the ground, and certainly if you are in your home, you aren't going to be looking at things much over 75-100 meters away anyway.  

[Nika Talaj]

Nearly all paralyzing lag that one encounters in SL is client-side, caused mostly by either an immense variety of large textures in a scene, or inadequate networking.  But the way I read your "five minutes to rez things" is that you couldn't rez new objects?  Which sounds more like server-side lag.  As others have referenced above, the period just after a release generally involves a whole lot of households simultaneously TPing people in, rezzing stuff, deleting stuff, and moving stuff around.  Those operations are difficult for simulators. Often the best solution is to just wait until the region traffic lessens.  If you still have trouble rezzing objects when the region is only normally busy, I would report it via Live Chat.  If enough people complain, LL can restart the region, which often clears things up.

For client side lag, we haven't mentioned a couple of very useful controls.  Avatars are a huge source of client lag, so if I'm in a busy region but trying to keep my head down and DO something, I hit "Show Friends Only" in the world menu.  It is much more effective at decreasing lag than lowering complexity.

Also, be sure that your LOD setting is pretty low, around 2 works well.  You can basically see at even lower settings.

[LittleMe Jewell]

If you use Firestorm, create yourself a graphics setting that is pretty toned down and save it to use most of the time at your Bellisseria home(s).   Turn the draw distance way down and turn down or turn off many of the nifty nice graphic extras.  Have another setting saved that has everything cranked for when you want to shoot a picture or two.  Then have your normal one for when you are out and about, away from Bellisseria.

[Anna Nova]

8 hours ago, KateaSL said:

I did a search and did not find anything on this. I apologize if it's been discussed at length!

I was so happy to finally get a camper in Bellisseria.  My neighbor even said hi and the Bellisseria Citizens Group is great. 

Started to move around to get ready to unpack and move in.  It too five minutes to even rez things and I could hardly move.  Now I realize with so many people in Bellisseria, on different regions, there will be an increase in lag but this makes it almost not worth it to even live there.  I gave up after an hour and TP'd back to my mainland skybox and no lag at all. Went to a club, no lag at all so I know it's not my computer.

What I like is some help on what to set in my viewer (Firestorm) to help reduce lag.  If anyone has ideas please post.

 

I don't call it Lagisseria for nothing.

My mainland parcel I get 60+fps.  My Houseboat in Lagisseria, lucky to get 20, even when I am alone on the sim.  I blame 1024 textures applied to everything, real thick (not me, I build my own stuff and it is all low LOD and small efficient textures.)

[Aethelwine]

Contrary to earlier advice I have found turning bandwidth down improves things a lot for me. Turning the bandwidth slider up constricts the remaining bandwidth that is used for http fetching, ie all the textures. On a decent Internet connection the numbers you are restricting are tiny, but on a 2 Meg connection like mine I find 200kbs bandwidth network setting about optimum. 

[Aethelwine]

The easiest way to reduce lag is to turn draw distance down, or other graphics settings. You can have a sky box on Bellisseria, it can be a good option for setting as your home so you body rezzes and assembles quickly after logging in. 

[Chuckey Jigsaw]

I don't experience lag at all in Bellisseria... But maybe it's because I have a high-end computer and a speedy internet connection. 🤷‍♀️
Keeping the draw distance low is a good advice, tho. I usually have mine set around 120, LOD is at 2 - You really don't need to set it higher. 

[Eowyn Southmoor]

Just to add that any time you arrive somewhere new, your viewer needs to download all the relevant textures and objects and cache them. So to start with, things tend to be laggy until your viewer has the ability to pull everything direct from the cache. 

I drive, fly, and sail round Belli every day, and I get no lag at all, even with my very average internet connection.  The fact that I travel round so much means my viewer doesn't need to be constantly downloading new textures all the time, so basically, get out there and get exploring  

[Anna Nova]

The big thing everyone misses is the latency of the connection.  If you are like me, in rural Europe, a kilometer down old copper wires, before the fibre, and then the transatlantic cable, then the routing about the USA to finally get to the SL server...  you will get lag.  No ISP in my neck-of-the-woods offers fibre-to-the-(rural)-house yet (but you should see my mountain view.)

I too have a high-end gaming desktop, and my line speed is great, but I can't do anything about being in the next universe to California.

I honestly don't know why I pay for it!  Must be you lot - I'm just addicted to SLites.

[Alyona Su]

12 hours ago, KateaSL said:

I did a search and did not find anything on this. I apologize if it's been discussed at length!

I was so happy to finally get a camper in Bellisseria.  My neighbor even said hi and the Bellisseria Citizens Group is great. 

Started to move around to get ready to unpack and move in.  It too five minutes to even rez things and I could hardly move.  Now I realize with so many people in Bellisseria, on different regions, there will be an increase in lag but this makes it almost not worth it to even live there.  I gave up after an hour and TP'd back to my mainland skybox and no lag at all. Went to a club, no lag at all so I know it's not my computer.

What I like is some help on what to set in my viewer (Firestorm) to help reduce lag.  If anyone has ideas please post.

 

Try different viewers, each has pros and cons against each other and you very much can see performance differences between them in places like Bellisseria. Most popular does not mean best (those two options tend to be opposed to one another, like two sides of a single coin). You should also set your LOD (or Objects Detail) setting to the middle of the slider. That alone can slog your computer way down when added to other high settings. Also see my comments below:

4 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

Contrary to earlier advice I have found turning bandwidth down improves things a lot for me. Turning the bandwidth slider up constricts the remaining bandwidth that is used for http fetching, ie all the textures. On a decent Internet connection the numbers you are restricting are tiny, but on a 2 Meg connection like mine I find 200kbs bandwidth network setting about optimum. 

This is true. I have my own set to 1024 - for some reason I get faster texture-rezzing at this setting than at 1500 or higher. I'm not saying it's what you should go with, but rather I'm saying you should experiment with this. All settings work best in a different way for each person based on far too many variables.

4 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

The easiest way to reduce lag is to turn draw distance down, or other graphics settings. You can have a sky box on Bellisseria, it can be a good option for setting as your home so you body rezzes and assembles quickly after logging in. 

THIS, this, and a helluvalot more THIS. As was described by @LittleMe Jewell - you should create different graphics Presets (and all viewers support that, not just Firestorm). My "everyday" settings are in almost-Ultra mode (because I can) with Draw Distance set to 128 (there really is no reason to go any higher, except in certain situations like flying or sailing and you need to see a region or two ahead.) I have a presets from full ultra with maximum settings and 256 distance, all the way down to my "Events" preset with minimum everything, including "Basic Shaders" turned off and LOD set to maximum. It does wonders - great frame rate, able to move like a knife through butter at jam-packed events.

4 hours ago, Chuckey Jigsaw said:

I don't experience lag at all in Bellisseria... But maybe it's because I have a high-end computer and a speedy internet connection. 🤷‍♀️
Keeping the draw distance low is a good advice, tho. I usually have mine set around 120, LOD is at 2 - You really don't need to set it higher. 

This is good for you. I have the same. Now we both feel better for being superior to 75% of the rest of the SL population and rubbing it into their faces, right? Just saying.

Edited November 8, 2019 by Alyona Su

[Raspberry Crystal]

22 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

there really is no reason to go any higher

Unless you live on a hill and like looking out of the window!  

 

[Claireschen Hesten]

I've found low draw distance works well at reducing lag inside my Bellisseria home if i want to explore having draw distance set to where i normally have it creates less lag than keeping the low draw distance 

[Kathlen Onyx]

Thanks everyone.  I"m assuming it was the region because I found a house in Wells Springs and I have no issues at all.  I did reduce my draw distance and the other suggestions here but that did not make any difference at all.  I'm glad now that I moved.  I wonder if other people in Sparkle Bottoms are having the same issues?

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, KateaSL said:

Thanks everyone.  I"m assuming it was the region because I found a house in Wells Springs and I have no issues at all.  I did reduce my draw distance and the other suggestions here but that did not make any difference at all.  I'm glad now that I moved.  I wonder if other people in Sparkle Bottoms are having the same issues?

While it could be a region issue, it is just as likely (or more I would guess) that your lag came from your neighbors. Heavy mesh and textures and lots of scripts will slow a sim down tremendously. When I was doing my tours of Bellisseria whe it was fairly new, there were some areas where the framerates were horrible and others where they were great. Mine (only nine house and on the water so fewer neighbors in neighboring sims) is about in the middle. I have some very classy neighbors but some of them have some pretty heavy furniture and decor items.  

 

 Since your new place is working well for you, you know it isn't "you".  Be prepared though to have lag again should the folks living around you change and you get someone who doesn't pay attention to the REASONS we have lag :D.  Glad you did well.    

[Chuckey Jigsaw]

On 11/8/2019 at 1:15 PM, Alyona Su said:

This is good for you. I have the same. Now we both feel better for being superior to 75% of the rest of the SL population and rubbing it into their faces, right? Just saying.

Wow.. Just wow.
Not my fault you maybe had some bad pancakes for breakfast. 

[Pussycat Catnap]

On 11/8/2019 at 12:06 AM, Eowyn Southmoor said:

Just to add that any time you arrive somewhere new, your viewer needs to download all the relevant textures and objects and cache them.

So a trick to use here...

Make a prim, and texture each side of it with a texture from the home kit for YOUR Bellisaria home. You can determine which ones actually apply to your home by opening the textures after standing in your home long enough for it to rez fully while at draw distance 32. Any texture that instantly pops in is probably being used very near you. Most of them will be obvious just by name...

Take the prim into inventory and then wear it on 'Avatar Center' - now edit it to size 0.01 on all 3 dimensions, and move it inside yourself.

- Your own home's textures will now always be permanently cached and instant rez for you anytime you teleport there.

Because these texture are so repeated around Bellisaria, you might actually end up helping other people's texture lag as well when you go places that have other people who also live in Bellesaria...

 

Edited November 13, 2019 by Pussycat Catnap

[Pussycat Catnap]

I also have a high end machine.

2700 Ryzen, 2080 GTX nVidea, 32gb ram, and more stuff...

So yeah I don't experience lag much anymore.

But until recently I was on a 2013 Macbook Pro... the one that at the time went for over $3000 but SL lagged, even back in 2013, on that... because Mac...

- So I got used to all sorts of tricks to make things better.

(My profession requires me to use Macs, so I went nuts on a high end one so I could use it for more than work... big costly mistake...)

 

I strongly suggest 'derender and blacklist' for any sculpties you find within your draw distance. If you can find even the tiniest covenant violation for them; AR the things... they're lag beasts and it's a technology that LL really ought to just 'break' like they did with invisiprims...

Likewise look around your own home for things look high on the script side, and remove the scripts or get rid of the object. If it's on a neighbor's plot; nothing you can do unless it violates the covenant...

If you use Firestorm and you see any Orange on your mini-map...

(right click the mini-map and select the option: show -> Temp on Rez Objects)

....AR the owner of that parcel for using a temp-rezzer. That is a covenant violation and there was a LOT of it going on during Halloween decorations that I personally ignored to let people enjoy their holiday decorations... but it made a lot of sims lag beasts... time to start zapping any of it that's still around.
- make sure to do this for your sim and at least all 8 sims that touch it, regardless of draw distance settings.

 

Many things that will rez fish or birds or butterflies and so on in a plot of land work using temp rezzers...

 

Edited November 13, 2019 by Pussycat Catnap

[Eowyn Southmoor]

I would be an unhappy camper if LL broke sculpts. My best region-crossing boat is a sculptie - performance wise it's better than all the mesh boats I own.  Not all mesh is awesome, plenty of it is badly made, and more importantly, badly textured.

[Aethelwine]

There are good and bad sculpts. I remember some horrendous lag that arrived at ground level on a sim I ran a while ago now. After about a week of trying to work out the cause I eventually found the culprit was some sculpty plants with alpha blending. They were a small part of a 200 land impact japanese garden and looked like any other plant. But taking them out made a huge difference and the treacle like lag around the area went.

[Marianne Little]

5 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

So a trick to use here...

Make a prim, and texture each side of it with a texture from the home kit for YOUR Bellisaria home. You can determine which ones actually apply to your home by opening the textures after standing in your home long enough for it to rez fully while at draw distance 32. Any texture that instantly pops in is probably being used very near you. Most of them will be obvious just by name...

Take the prim into inventory and then wear it on 'Avatar Center' - now edit it to size 0.01 on all 3 dimensions, and move it inside yourself.

- Your own home's textures will now always be permanently cached and instant rez for you anytime you teleport there.

Because these texture are so repeated around Bellisaria, you might actually end up helping other people's texture lag as well when you go places that have other people who also live in Bellesaria...

 

But this is for the 6 textures? You do not make more cubes with several more textures?

You always know so many interesting things. ❤️

[Pussycat Catnap]

43 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

But this is for the 6 textures? You do not make more cubes with several more textures?

You always know so many interesting things. ❤️

It would depend on how many textures you want. Note that the more you add the more stuff you're carrying around with you - making yourself a potential point of lag for others.

I would just identify the 6 that seem most common in the kind of home I use.

 

On my old mainland what I used to do was retexture things like walls and floors with some textures from a high end fullperm kit I got ( ProMaterials ). Anything that worked well when you applied a repeating texture and maybe a new color. I then made a prim with the most common one, and would hide it in walls of all my builds, as well as use those textures across all my builds with... just a recoloring.

 

So this idea here is just a version of that... carry your most common textures with you. I would highly stress 'most common' so that there is less likelyhood of becomming a source of lag. This same trick could easily be abused to mess up the experience of everyone around oneself...

 

What I might do... Is take the textures my houseboat uses and put them on a prim and put it inside my traditional, and vice versa... center it as much as I can on the plot, so it's most likely to be only effecting me and people with high draw distance (who are very likely to load those textures from other sources as well).

Edited November 13, 2019 by Pussycat Catnap

[Pussycat Catnap]

6 hours ago, Eowyn Southmoor said:

I would be an unhappy camper if LL broke sculpts. My best region-crossing boat is a sculptie - performance wise it's better than all the mesh boats I own.  Not all mesh is awesome, plenty of it is badly made, and more importantly, badly textured.

The problem is that while some mesh is badly made; ALL sculpties are badly made by fault of the technology itself.

You could take the scripts in your sculpty boat and copy them all into a blank prim (or number of prims if it has something that counts the linkset)... and have basically the same experience.

 

Also... the best region crossing boats in SL are basically from 'Bandit' and it's related-brand TMS (The Mesh Shop), and all mesh. I can race some of their boats at full speed through sims and not have issues. I'd give them 6 stars out of 5 most of the time...

Try out Bandit IF and Flying Shadow for sailboats - Shadow is silly fast. I also have the Boss Craft 225 for a powerboat.

 

Taking away invisiprims broke some stuff... But it was the right move... They actually announced it was going away a year in advance, and then when it went away... it actually didn't for another year if you didn't update your viewer... In that massive space of time... anyone who was still active found a workaround.

Sculpty's time to go is long overdue.

There's one brand of plant maker... I see them recommended now and then in the Bellessaria Citizens groups. They make sculpty trees. They might look great once rendered... but those things are sim killers.
- When I went to the sim after the last time it was recommended I am not certain, but it looked a lot like the products I bought for my first land back in 2009:

- what you see in that screenshot there was all it took to take away maybe 20fps from everyone on sim... Something I know because one day I removed them...

 

Edited November 13, 2019 by Pussycat Catnap

[Eowyn Southmoor]

I have a few Bandit/TMS boats, and whilst certainly they are good quality and perform fine with region crossings- none of them come close to matching the old sculpt boat I have.. though I do think that it has more to do with the scripts than anything else.  Regardless, I love that boat and don't want it taken away