Well This is Not Good!

[Chic Aeon]

Logging in during the middle of my VERY early morning hours I found that my password hadn't been saved. Not a biggie;  I know my password.  Then after logging in this is what I found.    

No, I did not get the new Lara body yet LOL.   Some of the textures that are white are mine, some on purchased products. 

 

So just in case this was a server issue and not a ME issue -- and for folks that are relatively new -- here's the deal.   THIS is when you need to clear your cache.  Of course I tried "texture refresh" but that wasn't it.  After clearing cache I still had one set of grasses (Fundati Desert) that were BLACK now instead of missing texture white - so like the alpha wasn't working.   Those I had to delete and replace with new copies of the items. Happily that worked fine and my world is back to normal. 

After clearing your cache be sure to log into somewhere quite (I chose Smith and was alone except for a couple of people having sex with their clothes on  -- yes, well).  AFTER your inventory completely loads you can go about your business. 

 

ADDING TO THIS.    

I just went over to a newly opened event to see if I could NOW get a demo to deliver (I could) but something odd is happening --- The textures are reloading AFTER they have loaded.  I have all the people derendered so they are not part of the issue, but as I cam around the outside walls and come back to the start  the textures that were fully loaded are NOW having to start over again from gray. So I am thinking this was not just a ME thing but something beyond my control.   Hopefully this wont affect too many people. 

 

Getting back home I find that my FPS are about half of what they have been for the last few weeks. So for me at ground level on a new private sim they are 72 now instead of 140-150.  Certainly still fine, but likely part of the bigger picture. 

Edited February 2, 2020 by Chic Aeon
adding info

[Qie Niangao]

2 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

After clearing cache I still had one set of grasses (Fundati Desert) that were BLACK now instead of missing texture white - so like the alpha wasn't working.   Those I had to delete and replace with new copies of the items.

I wish you'd been able to check whether those textures had swapped to Alpha Masking, a very old bug that was practically impossible to replicate, but (for me) very often accompanied cache corruption. (But my cache corrupts pretty frequently, I think because of network glitchiness. Often it's deeper than just the texture cache, but it was texture cache corruption that seemed to trigger my viewer to do the Very Bad Things that could corrupt the alpha mode of in-world content for which I had modify permissions.)

[Odaks]

3 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

textures are reloading AFTER they have loaded.

I've noticed this happening - but not all the time, just now and again. Camming off around a store, for example, and, when returning to the original cam position, you see all the textures re-building themselves. Probably because I've got a pretty good hardware/ ram setup, the textures seem to reload pretty quickly and it hadn't really been that noticable, but it definitely has happened. I'll start taking more notice over the next few weeks.

(Firestorm viewer x64 6.3.2.58052)

Edited February 2, 2020 by Odaks

[Wulfie Reanimator]

3 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

The textures are reloading AFTER they have loaded.  I have all the people derendered so they are not part of the issue, but as I cam around the outside walls and come back to the start  the textures that were fully loaded are NOW having to start over again from gray.

This is completely normal. Textures are unloaded when they are out of your view.

If the textures keep reloading while they stay in your view, that's called texture thrashing and it's caused by running out of texture memory.

[Chic Aeon]

3 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

I wish you'd been able to check whether those textures had swapped to Alpha Masking, a very old bug that was practically impossible to replicate, but (for me) very often accompanied cache corruption. (But my cache corrupts pretty frequently, I think because of network glitchiness. Often it's deeper than just the texture cache, but it was texture cache corruption that seemed to trigger my viewer to do the Very Bad Things that could corrupt the alpha mode of in-world content for which I had modify permissions.)

The textures that STAYED incorrect after the cache clearing were alphas for sure. I can verify that. As in my screenshot they WERE white but then became black  -- and still unusable -- even after clearing cache.  The white squares in the barn (hay bales) along with the ladder are mine and have no alphas. Hope that helps some. 

EDIT: I just realized I could at least pull the black alphas from my trash. Again, this is AFTER clearing cache, now when they were white like the non-alpha textures.    If I switch the alpha setting back to what it had been they were fine. I have never had this happen so didn't think to do that.  Hopefully it will be a long time before this happens again. 

 

And at @Wulfie Reanimator  while the textures needing to reload may be normal for some folks it is not MY norm (hence my mentioning). I was at the very same venue RIGHT after it opened and did the same camming routine  twice actually as I didn't realize there were gifts and so went back to get those (this about 14 hours earlier) and didn't have those issue at all.

 

So I think that part is also important.   Thanks. 

 

Just logging in now I haven't found any more corrupted textures. Hopefully whatever this was is over.    My framerate is in the 80s now but still not what it has been for the last three weeks.   

Edited February 2, 2020 by Chic Aeon
spelling and adding info

[Wulfie Reanimator]

7 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

And at @Wulfie Reanimator  while the textures needing to reload may be normal for some folks it is not MY norm (hence my mentioning). I was at the very same venue RIGHT after it opened and did the same camming routine  twice actually as I didn't realize there were gifts and so went back to get those (this about 14 hours earlier) and didn't have those issue at all.

When I say "normal" I mean "the viewer is specifically programmed to unload textures from memory when they aren't needed (in view)." It should be your normal, unless you are using a viewer that isn't LL's, Firestorm, or Black Dragon and it does things differently. The textures aren't unloaded immediately, but pretty quickly. (Like 5-20 seconds?) I believe you when you say "it's not your normal" but to me that sounds like there's more going on than your basic description of what happened.

[Chic Aeon]

14 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

When I say "normal" I mean "the viewer is specifically programmed to unload textures from memory when they aren't needed (in view)." It should be your normal, unless you are using a viewer that isn't LL's, Firestorm, or Black Dragon and it does things differently. The textures aren't unloaded immediately, but pretty quickly. (Like 5-20 seconds?) I believe you when you say "it's not your normal" but to me that sounds like there's more going on than your basic description of what happened.

I have used Firestorm since its beginning. I have my cache size MAXED OUT (on recommendation from a Firestorm person) and I haven't had this reloading  of gray thing for about six months (since I upped my cache size) and actually my previous issue wasn't really the textures going back to GRAY, but getting blurry and then clearing then blurry etc  (I don't have that any longer) .   

I do sometimes see gray at the beginning  depending on where I am -- and certainly at a busy venue.    Not sure what else to say :D.  It just seems like there were too many changes and problems (including  the loss of my password in the viewer at the start) for this all somehow NOT to be connected.   

 

My last Windows update was 1/15/2020 so that's not it. 

  

Edited February 2, 2020 by Chic Aeon
spelling

[Odaks]

My noticeable difference is simply that, where normally the textures pop back simultaneously on returning to the original view, they come back one at a time, bit by bit, as it were. I'm not at all sure that this is the same issue or not. As I said, I'll look harder over the next period.

 

[Qie Niangao]

2 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

The textures that STAYED incorrect after the cache clearing were alphas for sure. I can verify that. As in my screenshot they WERE white but then became black  -- and still unusable -- even after clearing cache.  The white squares in the barn (hay bales) along with the ladder are mine and have no alphas. Hope that helps some. 

EDIT: I just realized I could at least pull the black alphas from my trash. Again, this is AFTER clearing cache, now when they were white like the non-alpha textures.    If I switch the alpha setting back to what it had been they were fine. I have never had this happen so didn't think to do that.  Hopefully it will be a long time before this happens again. 

Looks familiar. The bug has at least a couple variants in the jira system. It's kind of wicked in that the affected object, just sitting innocently in-world, gets corrupted by a viewer in the same region that was not explicitly editing that object.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

Looks familiar. The bug has at least a couple variants in the jira system. It's kind of wicked in that the affected object, just sitting innocently in-world, gets corrupted by a viewer in the same region that was not explicitly editing that object.

Yeah, from the second link:

Quote

The code change to reproduce this bug 100% of the time:
https://bitbucket.org/lindenlab/viewer-release/src/f874297817465cf1874f2615e133ebc9776803d7/indra/newview/llvovolume.cpp?at=default&fileviewer=file-view-default#llvovolume.cpp-2208

Change line 2208 if(img_diffuse->isMissingAsset())
to
if (true)

When this change is made:

• If Avatar A enters the area on the modded viewer, all alpha masked or emissive masked textures will display as alpha mode none to Avatar A locally.
• If Avatar A has modify rights over the objects in the area, all observers will see alpha masked textures & emissive masked textures changed to alpha mode none - this is a permanant non-local change.

So guess we need a way to reliably reproduce that if(img_diffuse->isMissingAsset()) condition, which will trigger the bug.

That's a pretty scary content-destroying bug. If the viewer fails to resolve a texture UUID, it goes "whoops, dunno what that was, but it's this now."

That looks to be exactly what happened, based on Chic's screenshots and the fact that she has modify rights to the plant.

[Pamela Galli]

This sounds related to my long-standing bug affecting one of my houses, which was never fixed afaik but concluded something like “if the estate manager looks at the house, alpha turns to none.” 
Every six months or so the alpha masked windows turn black. I just Rez another copy in the same spot. I have only had one buyer report it, tho. 

[NiranV Dean]

5 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

I have used Firestorm since its beginning. I have my cache size MAXED OUT (on recommendation from a Firestorm person) and I haven't had this reloading  of gray thing for about six months (since I upped my cache size) and actually my previous issue wasn't really the textures going back to GRAY, but getting blurry and then clearing then blurry etc  (I don't have that any longer) .   

I do sometimes see gray at the beginning  depending on where I am -- and certainly at a busy venue.    Not sure what else to say :D.  It just seems like there were too many changes and problems (including  the loss of my password in the viewer at the start) for this all somehow NOT to be connected.   

 

My last Windows update was 1/15/2020 so that's not it. 

  

You are describing two entirely different things here and one has nothing to do with the other.

Textures going repeatedly blurry in your view is the Viewer attempting to make space for new textures because you are running out of texture memory either because your set texture memory is too low (or the usage too high) or you have already set the max and its still not enough. Either way there is nothing you can do to prevent this other than setting it higher, once you start texture thrashing you might as well switch regions and relog because it somewhat breaks the Viewer texture loading permanently sometimes.

Textures going grey outside of your view is completely normal, if the Viewer doesn't "see" a texture for some time, it assumes it is unneeded and will throw it out completely, i haven't seen it just loading lower resolution versions it should always toss them out under normal circumstances.

Cache size does not impact neither of these two issues, cache size only changes how much textures can be stored on your drive to load them faster in case they come back into view, the cache is only there to save you from redownloading and decoding the texture.

 

 

The issue the OP seems to be having seems to be simply textures loading incredibly slow, why they are white and not grey is beyond me but on an off chance that most of your texture cache got corrupted, try clearing your cache and relog, wait for all textures to load. Do not ever use the same cache for multiple Viewers ever unless it is the same Viewer (e.g multiple SL Viewer versions, multiple Firestorm versions etc)

1 hour ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Yeah, from the second link:

That's a pretty scary content-destroying bug. If the viewer fails to resolve a texture UUID, it goes "whoops, dunno what that was, but it's this now."

That looks to be exactly what happened, based on Chic's screenshots and the fact that she has modify rights to the plant.

It can rarely happen that if you login, alpha modes are *****ed, i had this happen already a few times on login. If this happens, DO NOT WHATEVER YOU DO OPEN THE BUILD/EDIT MENU AND TOUCH ANYTHING. Immediately relog, DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. If you touch them, right click them, do ANYTHING to them that refreshes them you WILL "apply" these changes if you have modding permissions. This is due to how the refresh mechanic works, whenever you select something you automatically "apply" its values, without mod permissions this does nothing other than refreshing the object for you, if you however have mod permissions it WILL apply the changes immediately, potentially causing an inconvenience or possibly permanently breaking an object (which shouldnt be possible because the viewer should not be able to apply changes if the object is not moddable)

Edited February 2, 2020 by NiranV Dean

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, NiranV Dean said:

You are describing two entirely different things here and one has nothing to do with the other.

Textures going repeatedly blurry in your view is the Viewer attempting to make space for new textures because you are running out of texture memory either because your set texture memory is too low (or the usage too high) or you have already set the max and its still not enough. Either way there is nothing you can do to prevent this other than setting it higher, once you start texture thrashing you might as well switch regions and relog because it somewhat breaks the Viewer texture loading permanently sometimes.

Textures going grey outside of your view is completely normal, if the Viewer doesn't "see" a texture for some time, it assumes it is unneeded and will throw it out completely, i haven't seen it just loading lower resolution versions it should always toss them out under normal circumstances.

Cache size does not impact neither of these two issues, cache size only changes how much textures can be stored on your drive to load them faster in case they come back into view, the cache is only there to save you from redownloading and decoding the texture.

 I understand all that (assume it was aimed at me) and perhaps I didn't explain well enough. I no longer HAVE texture thrashing -- that was six months ago.  Once I increased my cache setting from the default all was fine there. 

 

While I also understand that textures can be gray until they come into your view I have never had them do so for ME (even in a very busy venue ) until this morning.   

Textures along one wall would be completely rezzed. When I circled the venue and came back to that same wall they were then gray.  I DO understand that that could happen and does happen. Just that it is NOT
MY"  norm or even in my experience in the last few years. I cam around large event walls many times a month -- including the venu this morning which had no change in design. I  have not  had this issue before. 

 

I also understand what cache does.  So if I wasn't clear with what I said, perhaps I am MORE clear now.   

[NiranV Dean]

1 hour ago, Chic Aeon said:

 I understand all that (assume it was aimed at me) and perhaps I didn't explain well enough. I no longer HAVE texture thrashing -- that was six months ago.  Once I increased my cache setting from the default all was fine there. 

 

While I also understand that textures can be gray until they come into your view I have never had them do so for ME (even in a very busy venue ) until this morning.   

Textures along one wall would be completely rezzed. When I circled the venue and came back to that same wall they were then gray.  I DO understand that that could happen and does happen. Just that it is NOT
MY"  norm or even in my experience in the last few years. I cam around large event walls many times a month -- including the venu this morning which had no change in design. I  have not  had this issue before. 

 

I also understand what cache does.  So if I wasn't clear with what I said, perhaps I am MORE clear now.   

Textures are only purged if they stay inactive for some unknown amount of time, textures CAN theoretically go grey probably immediately when out of view (they shouldn't) but i've seen it vary from minutes to a mere 10-20 seconds before the Viewer starts purging them.

 

Again texture thrashing has NOTHING to do with your cache, increasing your cache is completely unrelated to texture thrashing. You didn't fix texture thrasing by increasing your cache limit, you were simply lucky to not be using too much texture memory, whether that is because you also changed the texture memory slider or because you upgraded your hardware or simply out of luck doesn't really matter.