How much can you improve on your end before you realize it’s Second Life’s problem?

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, AyelaNewLife said:

simply set a non-imposter avatars limit

I agree with this and have a very low limit set, but I also use the complexity limit. I find that even though there are plenty of "misses" -- avatars with fake low complexity scores that get rendered anyway -- there are hardly ever any false alarms: If they're over 100K, they're pretty much never worth rezzing.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

10 hours ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

That leaves the Second Life itself, which, certainly, could improve things, but most users who complain a lot, in my experience, have a lot they could do to improve.

And the part people refer to as "SL" is actually the viewer, which is open-source that anyone could modify (and do). The problem that "SL doesn't properly utilize hardware" is a fixable problem that doesn't rely on LL.

[Solar Legion]

M'kay ... since there's a fair bit of personal spec sharing and dodgy advice here and there, based more or less on personal experience ....

• AMD Ryzen 7 2700 (octa-core CPU)
• Used nVidia GTX 980ti 6GB VRAM
• 16 GB DDR4 System RAM
• 512 GB Toshiba SSD (System Drive)
• 2TB Western Digital Blue HDD (Data Drive)
• RoG Strix B450-f Gaming motherboard

A year of planning by those I live with and they surprise me with the above system for Christmas. Under most circumstances the above gets me in the 30-60 FPS range on most regions, only dipping lower with poorer object optimization. This, on Ultra settings as a baseline, Draw Distance pulled back to 128 most of the time, cache size maxed out, texture buffer set to 1024 at most, AA set to 4x ...

Outside of video recording, there is no need whatsoever to have an FPS higher than 60.

If you're getting 30 - 60 FPS as a normal thing, you have no reason to complain. If you're getting less than that, then yes you've got some reason to be upset though do bear in mind that the days of it running well out of the box (as it were) on machines meant for business or simple general use are pretty much gone.

This - mind - coming from someone who started using Second Life back when it could run just fine on a Pentium D and later a Core2Duo based system ....

There is also this rather irksome trend where some forum users will tell you that Second Life will "run" on some rather old hardware ... Their definition of "run" amounts to the program starting up. Maybe being able to log in and slug at a handful of FPS. That is not "running" as most users see it - you can safely ignore them.

Edited February 5, 2020 by Solar Legion
minor spelling correction

[Drayke Newall]

53 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

And the part people refer to as "SL" is actually the viewer, which is open-source that anyone could modify (and do). The problem that "SL doesn't properly utilize hardware" is a fixable problem that doesn't rely on LL.

The day I see a TPV creator or general user manage to fix second life viewers underutilized cpu (i.e. no multi core support not including an extra thread to process chat) or graphic card ram/optimisation utilisation issue or hardware cache utilisation issues etc. (and it not being LL and is actually ALLOWED by LL) is the day I will say Sansar is the best platform ever.

To the OP, many things rely on you not just for your own experience but for others as well. If you actively reduce your avatar render weight to good levels and use items that have optimised textures and objects then not only will your performance increase but so will others.

EDIT: it also comes down to how creators do things and how that flows on to the user/consumer. For example, many mesh bodies are a single body that uses a hud to make segments disappear. If creators however separated their bodies into smaller parts then it allows the user to not wear that part entirely if clothing covers it. For example if I wear full length pants and the mesh body has a separate lower body and feet I simply remove the lower body, wear the pants and then save that outfit in the outfits tab to use later. This means the viewer doesn't need to render the lower body or its alphaing at all.

Edited February 5, 2020 by Drayke Newall

[Tolya Ugajin]

44 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

And the part people refer to as "SL" is actually the viewer, which is open-source that anyone could modify (and do). The problem that "SL doesn't properly utilize hardware" is a fixable problem that doesn't rely on LL.

I'd like to see a viewer where you can put in a couple of performance targets (such as FPS) and the viewer would dynamically adjust various settings (such as draw distance, particles, etc.) to attain that performance target.  Heck, I'd pay for such a viewer.  Last thing I want to do when I land in a busy sim is stop and twiddle with viewer settings so I'm not walking in Jello.  Go ahead, turn off particles, shadows, reduce draw distance to 56 meters, whatever, automatically. 

[Drayke Newall]

9 minutes ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

I'd like to see a viewer where you can put in a couple of performance targets (such as FPS) and the viewer would dynamically adjust various settings (such as draw distance, particles, etc.) to attain that performance target.  Heck, I'd pay for such a viewer.  Last thing I want to do when I land in a busy sim is stop and twiddle with viewer settings so I'm not walking in Jello.  Go ahead, turn off particles, shadows, reduce draw distance to 56 meters, whatever, automatically. 

Would be nice, though I would dare say it would be a huge drain on the system to be able to do that, not to mention probably a coding impossibility considering SL Viewers single core reliance.

I would love to see such a feature in even modern games not just sl.

[Janet Voxel]

I’m not sure I would trust a viewer to adjust my settings for me.

You can easily set your viewer up with the appropriate settings for certain situations and save them for use. For example, I have a “normal” setting where particles are lowered, avatar imposters, draw distance, shadows off, frame rate limited, etc. That’s what I normally walk around with. Then I have an ultra setting where shadows are enabled, antialiasing is turned up, etc, etc. Then I have various photography settings just for photos, wide angle, interior, exterior, ultra with some adjustments to water, glow, etc.

All of them are set up at settings that let them run at a decent framerate for me. I have FS and Black Dragon set up that way. It takes a minute to do, but it’s really worth it as far as viewing experience goes.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

1 hour ago, Solar Legion said:

There is also this rather irksome trend where some forum users will tell you that Second Life ill "run" on some rather old hardware ... Their definition of "run" amounts to the program starting up. Maybe being able to log in and slug at a handful of FPS. That is not "running" as most users see it - you can safely ignore them.

Oh hey, that sounds like me. If I say "run" I try to qualify it with something like "well" or "like crap". If I say it runs well, I mean you'll get what I think most people would consider a satisfactory experience, not a slide show. >15fps is probably acceptable for socializing or general use. I consider a smooth average of better than 20 very good, better than 30 excellent. I have a set of landmarks I'll check out to benchmark hardware. Author's Point, Pendle Hill, Nelsonia Safe Hub, NCI Kuula and Everwinter. I think if a piece of hardware can handle those places, it's probably good to go for SL use. With appropriate graphics settings, a lot of really old hardware can handle SL by that standard. And I don't mean bottoming out all the sliders, either where you get no windlight and all the circles are hexagons. It has to look good too.

[Solar Legion]

3 minutes ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

Oh hey, that sounds like me. If I say "run" I try to qualify it with something like "well" or "like crap". If I say it runs well, I mean you'll get what I think most people would consider a satisfactory experience, not a slide show. >15fps is probably acceptable for socializing or general use. I consider a smooth average of better than 20 very good, better than 30 excellent. I have a set of landmarks I'll check out to benchmark hardware. Author's Point, Pendle Hill, Nelsonia Safe Hub, NCI Kuula and Everwinter. I think if a piece of hardware can handle those places, it's probably good to go for SL use. With appropriate graphics settings, a lot of really old hardware can handle SL by that standard. And I don't mean bottoming out all the sliders, either where you get no windlight and all the circles are hexagons. It has to look good too.

Not you, lyssa.

[NiranV Dean]

1 hour ago, janetosilio said:

I’m not sure I would trust a viewer to adjust my settings for me.

You can easily set your viewer up with the appropriate settings for certain situations and save them for use. For example, I have a “normal” setting where particles are lowered, avatar imposters, draw distance, shadows off, frame rate limited, etc. That’s what I normally walk around with. Then I have an ultra setting where shadows are enabled, antialiasing is turned up, etc, etc. Then I have various photography settings just for photos, wide angle, interior, exterior, ultra with some adjustments to water, glow, etc.

All of them are set up at settings that let them run at a decent framerate for me. I have FS and Black Dragon set up that way. It takes a minute to do, but it’s really worth it as far as viewing experience goes.

Antialiasing off... if my scaly butt had hair it would reach into the sky.

Antialiasing off doesn't help your performance at all, just leave it on.

 

Particles i'd basically leave off all the time unless i do them myself, they add basically 0 to the scene or immersion and are an absolute fps killer for no reason.

[Janet Voxel]

17 minutes ago, NiranV Dean said:

Antialiasing off... if my scaly butt had hair it would reach into the sky.

Antialiasing off doesn't help your performance at all, just leave it on.

 

Particles i'd basically leave off all the time unless i do them myself, they add basically 0 to the scene or immersion and are an absolute fps killer for no reason.

I get the antialiasing thing, I think it’s on 2x by default. I meant when I use higher settings, I turn it up more, I have it at 2x on lower settings.

Particles- they do kill your FPS, but for photos it doesn’t hurt to bump it up a little. Just for photos!!

Edited February 5, 2020 by janetosilio

[missyrideout]

@JPG0809 I'm curious what GPU/CPU you have and how many FPS you get in average conditions. On the way to the point of diminishing returns, a GTX 1050-ish card is great value, imho. Or whatever similar nVidia card is around $150—a 1050, 1050ti, 1060 or 1650. Spending $500 to upgrade mine to an RTX 20-series was a bit of a disappointment. You think "Finally, SL will run smooth as silk!" but it doesn't, not in crowded clubs and shopping events. So "yes" is one answer to the original question: SL does have its limits. But if you're only getting say 20FPS in empty regions, there is a lot of room for improvement. Definitions of "good enough" clearly have huge variation.

[Tolya Ugajin]

4 hours ago, janetosilio said:

I’m not sure I would trust a viewer to adjust my settings for me.

You can easily set your viewer up with the appropriate settings for certain situations and save them for use. For example, I have a “normal” setting where particles are lowered, avatar imposters, draw distance, shadows off, frame rate limited, etc. That’s what I normally walk around with. Then I have an ultra setting where shadows are enabled, antialiasing is turned up, etc, etc. Then I have various photography settings just for photos, wide angle, interior, exterior, ultra with some adjustments to water, glow, etc.

All of them are set up at settings that let them run at a decent framerate for me. I have FS and Black Dragon set up that way. It takes a minute to do, but it’s really worth it as far as viewing experience goes.

I'm way too lazy for all that (plus, I avoid busy sims anyway, and I know when I'm having problems, it's usually because I'm on hotel or airport internet), and I suspect most people are as well - not to mention most users are probably too, ummm, stupid to do it.  I'm particularly thinking of new users, who are not going to have the knowledge of how to do it, nor the attention span to figure it out.  One logs in, it's crappy visuals, "SL sucks!" and off they go to watching prons or Netflix or whatever.

Also, it could easily be a feature you could turn off for more advanced users.  It certainly shouldn't be impossible, or indeed all that hard, to program, given that the viewer itself is giving you a frame rate, and the viewer itself can, as you mention, be easily adjusted to give up some super duper pretty graphics to improve frame rate - and the number of parameters isn't all that great.  NASA managed to program the equivalent of a Commodore 64 to land the Space Shuttle, and there are wa lot more variables and target parameters in that, not to mention the average low end laptop today has more computing power than the entire fleet of shuttles at the time.

[Pussycat Catnap]

10 hours ago, Rachel1206 said:

Try and set antialising to 16! GForce drivers for the GTX 10XX-20XX seem optimized for this. I get higher FPS with antialising set to 16 than with lower values.

I didn't know this.

It seems counter intuitive.

I just went to 16x. My FPS went from 30-60 up to 80-120...

 

[Solar Legion]

I will laugh if doing the same will have a net positive effect with my 980TI ....

[Paul Hexem]

I7-7700, RTX 2070 overclocked, 32 gigs RAM and everything on M.2 drives. 

FPS goes from 5 to 100+ depending where I am. The problem is the content that LL allows to be uploaded.

 

8 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

I didn't know this.

It seems counter intuitive.

I just went to 16x. My FPS went from 30-60 up to 80-120...

That absolutely is counter intuitive. I'll have to try that when I get home. 

[Solar Legion]

Well ... no positive to report but no detriment either. Just looks somewhat nicer.

[Tonk Tomcat]

Most problems are not on your side, but sl. Switch into wireframe and you will see most avatars and environment in a super dense wire. That means everybody wears way too much polygones to render. Probably you have more polygons in your viewport than in a current aaa-game, because only a small amount of creators at least try to do game optimized content. Even on my machine where i render 3d stuff its hardly possible to smoothly walk arround on events or crowded places, because of all the million polygons. try blacklist (its possible in firestorm, not sure if the standard viewer has that option also) all the dense mesh you see and you are able to walk around a lot easier.

[NiranV Dean]

9 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

I didn't know this.

It seems counter intuitive.

I just went to 16x. My FPS went from 30-60 up to 80-120...

 

AA iterations dont exist anymore in newer Viewers, the only exception i know is Firestorm, which still offers the old MSAA.

What you describe sounds like FS did a big booboo and accidentally made 16x = FXAA instead of what it was previously (2x = FXAA). The reason you see a huge FPS boost is because MSAA is slow as ***** (but better) whereas FXAA is basically free but isn't as good as MSAA 8x+ and when you swap to 16x you might just be toggling MSAA off and switching to FXAA. Another explanation would be that you are somehow switching from SL's internal MSAA to your GPU drivers AA solution which is a lot faster but will be applied to your UI as well, making text harder to read and the UI really blurred.

To be honest i dont see a point in offering anything besides FXAA. MSAA is simply trash and has been long absent in most titles in the past ~5-10 years. FXAA is basically the basic go-to AA, its practically the new "off", then theres SMAA which is kinda an improved version of FXAA and then theres TAA and TXAA of which TAA is often complete trash because it only works in moving imagery whereas while still it basically doesnt do anything. TXAA is usually better but i've only seen a single game use it so far and that was Division 2 which did a pretty good job using it but ultimately still lost against FXAA's simple non-existant performance impact.

[missyrideout]

I've experienced this phenomenon but its not only related to AA. Bumping shadow resolution for example.  I think it's because SL doesn't actually use enough GPU to trigger the boost on my card, even on vanilla "ultra" settings. Watching in GPU-Z shows the clockspeeds jump. Overclocking likely is already in boost, so that might explain @Solar Legion's results.  I'm not confident enough in my current power supply to overclock the GPU. 

Edited February 5, 2020 by missyrideout

[Janet Voxel]

35 minutes ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

I'm way too lazy for all that (plus, I avoid busy sims anyway, and I know when I'm having problems, it's usually because I'm on hotel or airport internet), and I suspect most people are as well - not to mention most users are probably too, ummm, stupid to do it.  I'm particularly thinking of new users, who are not going to have the knowledge of how to do it, nor the attention span to figure it out.  One logs in, it's crappy visuals, "SL sucks!" and off they go to watching prons or Netflix or whatever.

Also, it could easily be a feature you could turn off for more advanced users.  It certainly shouldn't be impossible, or indeed all that hard, to program, given that the viewer itself is giving you a frame rate, and the viewer itself can, as you mention, be easily adjusted to give up some super duper pretty graphics to improve frame rate - and the number of parameters isn't all that great.  NASA managed to program the equivalent of a Commodore 64 to land the Space Shuttle, and there are wa lot more variables and target parameters in that, not to mention the average low end laptop today has more computing power than the entire fleet of shuttles at the time.

They already have that: it’s called low, medium and high settings. Other than that it’s going to vary so much from user to user it’s not going to be any more effective than low, medium and high, because you have some users running SL on a Commodore 64 and some users running SL on a hotrod and most users in between. How  would a programmer know where the metric is?

[Solar Legion]

8 minutes ago, missyrideout said:

I've experienced this phenomenon but its not only related to AA. Bumping shadow resolution for example.  I think it's because SL doesn't actually use enough GPU to trigger the boost on my card, even on vanilla "ultra" settings. Watching in GPU-Z shows the clockspeeds jump. Overclocking likely is already in boost, so that might explain @Solar Legion's results.  I'm not confident enough in my current power supply to overclock the GPU. 

I will say that there's no overclocking on my end - beyond what ASUS's AI system decides anyway (none at present).

It should be noted that while I have no FPS increase, my temps dropped. Usually my CPU is at 60+ degrees Celsius when in most places in SL.

It's barely getting to 60 right now. Ditto the GPU.

[cheesecurd]

6 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

Outside of video recording, there is no need whatsoever to have an FPS higher than 60.

If you're getting 30 - 60 FPS as a normal thing, you have no reason to complain. If you're getting less than that, then yes you've got some reason to be upset though do bear in mind that the days of it running well out of the box (as it were) on machines meant for business or simple general use are pretty much gone.

lol? Is it 2004 again?

On the whole consumer tech scale we are moving well past 60hz displays, anything less is completely unacceptable and in many titles even 60fps is considered the bare minimum. Even my cell phone has a 120hz display on it. Sub 60fps on anything is a joke, let alone on a game with the graphical prowess of 2006's finest offerings running on modern hardware.

And its the exact opposite, right now is the point where even the lowest end new computers and laptops can run SL flawlessly. Intel HD610/620 is capable of playing SL at high settings with ALM on all the time, i know this for a fact because i literally use an acer aspire with an i5 7200u and HD620 as my daily machine for a year. And HD620 comes on your average 350-500$ consumer tier craptop with 7th-10th gen mobile processors. Really thats only even been a thing since about HD3000 in 2011/2012, with the 2nd gen of HD3000 on Ivy Bridge performing better, but Ironlake HD graphics and the core2 stuff before it like GMA 3100, x1300, GMA 950, IEG2, etc was barely capable in its respective era with SL. Same for even further with things like ATI Radeon Mobility chips on Pentium M based systems.

6 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

This - mind - coming from someone who started using Second Life back when it could run just fine on a Pentium D and later a Core2Duo based system ....

And everything I say is from someone whos currently staring at 3 different 8800GT's, two 8800GTX's, a Quadro FX 5600, FX 4600, GTX 8800 Ultra, 8600GT and a box containing every single core2duo since wolfdale and at least every major core2quad, telling you that it can still run on that type of hardware, and it can still run surprisingly well. And thats not a good thing, its 2020, i shouldnt be able to pull 30fps in 1080p on a Core2duo E6700 and 8800GT, thats 13 year old hardware thats been obsoleted for over a decade now.

Thats the problem, this game can run on decade old if not older hardware and run well, and still manage to run terribly on modern systems.

 

6 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

There is also this rather irksome trend where some forum users will tell you that Second Life will "run" on some rather old hardware ... Their definition of "run" amounts to the program starting up. Maybe being able to log in and slug at a handful of FPS. That is not "running" as most users see it - you can safely ignore them.

Nice passive aggressive jab, i didnt know we were still in middle school.

Ill take this is an opportunity to just outright prove you wrong, with an old post from one of the people who uses this forum account.

That is a Core2quad Q6600, from 2007. Paired with a nvidia Quadro FX 4600 (8800GTX equivalent) from 2006. Which was pulling a variable but playable 20fps-ish in 1080p with mixed settings with plenty of people around and a 128m draw distance on SI5.

Please know what youre talking about, before you talk about it.

[Jackson Redstar]

i have noticed it can be highly sim dependent. Some sims just rock, even pretty well built ones, and some sims just flat out suck the life out of your viewer. having alot of avies around is always an issue, but since I video weddings, i have no choice but to leave everyone rendered. I do keep my FS settings one notch below ultra and turn on what I need

I have now a 8gig gtx 1080 and when I am at 'full blast' on a crowded sim recording I can see video memory is easily up to 6 or 7 gigs, my previous gtx 970 was a 4 gig card. I have a core 17 and 16gig ram. I also have 100mbs download speed. Custom fan profiles are your friends

People spend big bucks on 'gaming' rigs cause usually you get a good return for your money. Not really the case with SL

[Solar Legion]

That's nice, now I have one more account I can safely toss the opinion of, into file 13.

Do read rather carefully next time and try to only react to what is actually being said in the future.