Massive Drop in FPS since BOM updates

[Jackson Redstar]

Anybody know what is going on in SL and the massive drop on FPS rates? I do wedding videos and all of a sudden in the past couple weeks I noticed MASSIVE performance hit with shaders and shadows on and a good number of avies around ... I tried rolling back the latestst FS viewer with BOM, wasn't that. Then I tried rolling back the latest Win 10 update, wasn't that. I spoke with another photographer at a wedding (whos machine is more powerful than mine) and she said the same thing! When she switches to "ultra'  she gets drops to like 5 FPS and it has never been like that before and she also had tried rolling back the latest FS release and same issue

Even with only;y maybe  16-20 avies around on an otherwise empty sim I'm seeing FPS rates between 3 - 7 FPS! and even switching just the shadows off and leaving Atmos Shaders on there is maybe a 1-2 FPS increase. Can any tech head chim in with what might be going on lately? I am hoping this is temporary as Linden is implementing the BOM stuff but this is really, really bad right now

I have noticed sans avatars I am often still getting decent frame rates, but start adding in avies the FPS just tanks big time (even way more that it used to)

My current setup:
 

Firestorm 6.3.2 (58052) Sep 27 2019 22:41:52 (64bit) (Firestorm-Releasex64) with Havok support
Release Notes

You are at 54.6, 149.4, 21.8 in Orchid located at sim9881.agni.lindenlab.com (216.82.46.23:13019)
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Orchid/55/149/22
(global coordinates 162,615.0, 266,901.0, 21.8)
Second Life Server 2019-11-01T18:02:37.532376
Release Notes

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60GHz (3672.25 MHz)
Memory: 32710 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 18363.476)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 970/PCIe/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 26.21.14.4120
OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 441.20

RestrainedLove API: RLV v3.2.1 / RLVa v2.2.0.58052
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.54.1 OpenSSL/1.0.2l zlib/1.2.8 nghttp2/1.25.0
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.10.7
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Studio 2.00.03
Dullahan: 1.1.1320 / CEF: 3.3626.1895.g7001d56 / Chromium: 72.0.3626.121
LibVLC Version: 2.2.8
Voice Server Version: Not Connected
Settings mode: Firestorm
Viewer Skin: Firestorm (Grey)
Window size: 1680x997 px
Font Used: Deja Vu (96 dpi)
Font Size Adjustment: 2 pt
UI Scaling: 1
Draw distance: 128 m
Bandwidth: 750 kbit/s
LOD factor: 2
Render quality: High (5/7)
Advanced Lighting Model: Yes
Texture memory: 2048 MB (1)
VFS (cache) creation time (UTC): 2019-9-1T1:41:28 
Built with MSVC version 1800
Packets Lost: 396/279,505 (0.1%)
November 25 2019 05:12:32 SLT

[Whirly Fizzle]

Are you seeing the same FPS drop with the current Linden Lab viewer?  Downloads | Second Life

Just to clarify - when you first installed the latest FS release, was FPS as expected for your system & suddenly FPS just tanked for no apparent reason on the same viewer version?

[Alyona Su]

BoM doesn't cause a drop in frame-rates. If anything, it could cause a slight delay in avatar skin rendering, and that "skin" will rerun every time a change is made to their outfit, but that's about it. If you're experiencing "massive" frame rate drops then the issue is almost always something on your computer. Have you tried a different viewer or turning your graphic settings down to see if it improves?

[DilliDallagio]

While I cannot say if the drop in FPS is viewer related or not I have noticed it too since the release of BoM. But I cannot attribute it to BoM. It is something else causing it but I have no way to really debug what it is.

I run a linux system so I have no option to fallback to the Second Life viewer. I can run the currently available TPVs for linux (Singlularity nightly, Firestorm, Cool VL Viewer, and Kokua) to compare how they perform against each other but without being able to run against a current Second Life viewer for comparison, I am not sure how much comparing only amongst TPVs is reliable.

For instance, on one sim where no people were around, I was able to get around 25 FPS in ultra settings on Firestorm at a 128m draw distance, The sim is built with a variety of mesh and prim/sculpty rezzed items. Over the past few weeks, with no changes to the sim's build (at least none the sim owners' know about), I have had to drop my draw distance down to 32m or less in order to get that same 25 FPS. As soon as other avatars start popping into the draw distance, the viewer's FPS drops down into the low single digits to the point that even trying to type out messages becomes a painfully slow process as the viewers (all of them) try to respond to keystrokes.

I thought maybe my distro of choice was "too new," as in the system libraries the viewer still needed to use were built with a compiler that is generations newer than what the viewers themselves are built with. So I changed to the oldest distro I could find that provides native hardware support for my graphics card, Ubuntu 18.04.3, installed it and still see the same FPS degradation with all my test viewers. Using the distro's provided Mesa graphics stack or the GPU vendor's "enterprise" proprietary stack has not made any difference.

At this point I have no idea what happened as suddenly as it did and I really doubt the connection between my FPS drops and BoM is anything more than just coincidental. Something happened and I am at a loss as to what it may be.

[Nova Convair]

The performance of this place "Orchid" is excellent. I didn't notice any fps drops at other places too.

Change viewer and drop what you wear, maybe you are the problem - more precise - your avatar.

[Jackson Redstar]

Like I said, I confirmed this with another user who has experienced the same issue so that pretty much rules out the viewer and/or an issue with the computer. So it may not be BOM related per say, but this issue came up as BOM is being rolled out onto the SL servers. Obviously, weddngs are tough as it is, but usualy I can get a good 11-16 FPS when the cam is facing to the crowd, but now 4 FPS is considered excellent if I can get that

And no, one cannot really make any type of decent film on the official viewer, so I have never used that although I may download it and try some A/B comparisons on a heavy avi sim

[Lyssa Greymoon]

I haven't noticed on my PC with a 970, but I use the official viewer and never run shadows.

Have you tried dialing down the texture memory setting? If something has changed with the Nvidia drivers and it's trying to use more than 3.5GB of VRAM, that might cause problems.

[Qie Niangao]

I haven't noticed this myself, using the official viewer, Firestorm, and (mostly) Catznip. I'm running on substantially less capable hardware (slower everything and less memory), but I'm not sure that matters. The fact the reports are from both Windows and Linux users really seems to eliminate a lot of otherwise plausible causes. Just a couple questions come to mind:

Does this same framerate drop apply when you're not doing any video recording? I don't even know if you're using some viewer-internal recording feature or an OS-level window recorder -- I just don't know anything about recording in-world video, sorry -- but either way, I'm trying to rule out the recording process itself, which presumably demands heavy I/O bus bandwidth, disk controller + cache throughput, etc., any of which may have changed coincidentally with SL server releases. (But why on both Linux and Windows?? Pretty implausible I guess.)

As others have suggested, has anything changed about your attachments, especially including HUD updates? I know the Slink HUD has gotten much simpler and faster to render with BOM, but perhaps some others got more complex, sorta accidentally. Or, like, purely coincidentally the videographers in this thread may have new alpha-intensive wigs or something. So I suppose the simplest test is checking frame rates while the avatar is completely alpha'd out, zero attachments and no HUDs.

I guess, grasping at straws here, there could have been some other coincidental server-side updates (maybe some new EEP fixes or debug coding or whatever) that somehow differentially affects videographers. Not sure how to test such a theory, especially when many of us who don't do videos aren't getting the framerate drop.

[Alyona Su]

6 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I guess, grasping at straws here, there could have been some other coincidental server-side updates (maybe some new EEP fixes or debug coding or whatever) that somehow differentially affects videographers. Not sure how to test such a theory, especially when many of us who don't do videos aren't getting the framerate drop.

I agree that this sounds like the only real, plausible answer at this point. It's cannot be the BoM feature itself. But who knows what other nerd-code came along with it on the simulator side? I use the same three viewers Qie uses along with LL and FS on macOS - and I'm not seeing any noticeable FPS drops (even in over-meshed places like Bellisseria and many Estate Regions.)

I doubt that it has to do anything with screen-recording if there is a *change* to what you're normally seeing.

And, no doubt everyone in this thread already knows well that the more agents present and within draw distance the bigger hit on FPS and server-side lag, though - again - if it's a*change* for the worse then something is amiss.

Perhaps some of the viewer experts or devs can proffer possible causes and, hopefully, solutions or work-arounds.

[rasterscan]

Does lowering Draw Distance in quick prefs help ?

Edited November 25, 2019 by rasterscan

[Lyssa Greymoon]

I installed the latest Firestorm and I'm getting 19-20fps at a fairly crowded venue (about 23 other avatars visible):

:

The frame rate in the LL viewer is the same. I don’t see anything obviously wrong with your system report, and your computer is more capable than mine, so maybe some other software is causing problems? 

Firestorm 6.3.2 (58052) Sep 27 2019 22:41:52 (64bit) (Firestorm-Releasex64) with Havok support
Release Notes

You are at 36.0, 207.9, 602.5 in Northfarthing located at sim10311.agni.lindenlab.com (216.82.50.33:13014)
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Northfarthing/36/208/602
(global coordinates 144,164.0, 288,464.0, 602.5)
Second Life Server 2019-11-01T18:02:37.532376
Release Notes

CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           W3670  @ 3.20GHz (3200 MHz)
Memory: 12272 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 18363.476)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 970/PCIe/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 26.21.14.4108
OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 441.08

RestrainedLove API: (disabled)
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.54.1 OpenSSL/1.0.2l zlib/1.2.8 nghttp2/1.25.0
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.10.7
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Studio 2.00.03
Dullahan: 1.1.1320 / CEF: 3.3626.1895.g7001d56 / Chromium: 72.0.3626.121
LibVLC Version: 2.2.8
Voice Server Version: Vivox 4.9.0002.30313

Settings mode: Firestorm
Viewer Skin: Firestorm (Grey)
Window size: 1920x1057 px
Font Used: Deja Vu (96 dpi)
Font Size Adjustment: 0 pt
UI Scaling: 1
Draw distance: 128 m
Bandwidth: 500 kbit/s
LOD factor: 2
Render quality: High-Ultra (6/7)
Advanced Lighting Model: Yes
Texture memory: 2048 MB (1)
VFS (cache) creation time (UTC): 2019-8-11T23:15:29
Built with MSVC version 1800
Packets Lost: 0/3,358 (0.0%)
November 25 2019 18:52:55 SLT

Edited November 26, 2019 by Lyssa Greymoon