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

[Janet Voxel]

6 minutes ago, cheesecurd said:

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.

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.

 

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.

 

[Solar Legion]

1 minute ago, janetosilio said:

 

Amusingly all their response did was showcase why one ought to very carefully read what is written, then react to exactly what is written when typing up their response.

Oh yes and also showcasing why one should never assume a post is about them.

It's lovely that they're able to run Second Life on the hardware they've tested - the entire point of my quoted response was rather missed however.

[cheesecurd]

Just now, Solar Legion said:

the entire point of my quoted response was rather missed however.

The entire point of your quoted responses was moot when you started posting information that was factually incorrect and easily proved wrong. And your, ill requote myself, "passive aggressive jab", didnt exactly help that.

[Solar Legion]

That's nice. There was no "passive aggressive jab" in my response and it was quite factually correct: A business or general use computer or laptop is not intended to run Second Life nor is it really intended for gaming. Such machines are intended to be used for whichever purpose said business had them built for (and yes, some might just use specs that allow them to run Second Life and actual games rather well) while a general use machine is not intended to excel at any particular use.

That they can is rather irrelevant.

You may have the final word as I'm not interested in an argument or debate over hardware capabilities - not when said debate/argument was sparked because you mistook capability and intent/purpose.

[Tolya Ugajin]

37 minutes ago, janetosilio said:

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?

Those settings do not vary dynamically with the conditions the avatar is in, so not what the value of your suggestion is.  You're still stuck switching it when you move from environment to environment - IF the user even knows how to do it.  Considering how many morons run around with everything on ultra and complain how slow the sim is, plenty of people obviously don't understand.

As for the poor programmer, the same way programmers usually set metrics - someone tells them what to aim for.  I'm baffled why, when folks are surrounded every day by devices that automatically account for what sensors tell them is going on (don't like the space shuttle example?  your car has multiple systems including the brakes and emissions systems, let alone ACC, proximity breaking, etc.) that do precisely the same thing, people seem to think would be so hard to apply to SL. 

Regardless of what the system is running, the viewer knows what the FPS are (it's displayed in the upper right corner, after all).  If the target is 30 (pick a number - me, I'd have LL base that target on market research with noobs) and have a programmed list of settings to adjust in steps until it hits that.  If you're really running a Commodore 64, guess what - it'll set everything to the lowest setting and a message can pop up saying "hey, this is the best we can do on your POS computer and lousy internet connection, TFB, loser".

[cheesecurd]

Just now, Solar Legion said:

You may have the final word as I'm not interested in an argument or debate over hardware capabilities - not when said debate/argument was sparked because you mistook capability and intent/purpose.

Thanks, I appreciate it.

[Janet Voxel]

4 minutes ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

Those settings do not vary dynamically with the conditions the avatar is in, so not what the value of your suggestion is.

Stop being lazy.

[FairreLilette]

I have not read the whole thread but upon my changing to a Dinkie avatar (a tiny cat with human characteristics)...the lag was essentially gone.  I can even rez the "biggie" avatars that hang out with us "tinies" (the small humanimal avatars - Dinkies, Tinies, Titchies) at times depending on how many "biggie" avatars are there.  

You, your avatar may be the cause of your system's lag more than anything.  This is what I found out.  

If I were you, I'd get an alt using a low complexity all meshed together avatar and see if your SL is different.  Mine changed completely but you biggies are still, at times, difficult to rez.  Biggie avatar clothing may have larger textures too such as 1024 x 1024 whereas for tiny avatars we use 512 x 512 textures mostly.  I keep my draw distance at 64 most times and can rez a lot.  (My specs to run SL are the minimum).

Particles OFF is helpful, too.

  

Edited February 6, 2020 by FairreLilette

[Pussycat Catnap]

How do we manage to find drama out of just about ANYTHING...

 

Anyway... I think I managed to learn some things despite any drama...

 

Edited February 6, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[Sprout Evergarden]

whatever you do if you love SL do not get a AMD graphics card. the OpenGL implementation on them Stinks

i recently went from a Nvidia GTX 750 ti to a much newer RX 570 and got a huge loss of frame rates in SL

 

 

[Drayke Newall]

1 hour ago, Atosuria Daviau said:

whatever you do if you love SL do not get a AMD graphics card. the OpenGL implementation on them Stinks

i recently went from a Nvidia GTX 750 ti to a much newer RX 570 and got a huge loss of frame rates in SL

That is because AMD have never provided a full OpenGL driver with the shaders component only being emulated. They have always concentrated on Direct3D/X and their own developed system Mantle since 2013. Mantle was then freely given to Khronos Group who renamed it Vulcan which has now replaced OpenGL entirely. Nvidia have also directly altered the driver code of OpenGL to suit their graphics cards in the past by implementing features that the base drivers never offered. 

OpenGL is no longer updated and hasn't been since 2017, which has meant AMD really only have supported OpenGL as a life support measure as opposed to Nvidia who actively pushed it until recently.

The fact that there is talk of no longer supporting OpenGL as new graphics cards come out poses a serious issue for games such as Second Life that still run on them as Vulcan is not backwards compatible with OpenGL.

Edited February 6, 2020 by Drayke Newall

[Tolya Ugajin]

4 hours ago, janetosilio said:

Stop being lazy.

A useless and unhelpful suggestion. I'm sure it's the same sort of myopic thinking that was offered when things like power steering were introduced, or, more recently, "stop being forgetful and turn your thermostat down before you leave, who needs to be able to do it by smart phone?"  Almost a billion a year in annual Nest sales later (10 times Second Life's revenue for LL).

See, smart businesses are always looking for ways to innovate and make their customers' experience better.  Lazy companies sit back and say "my product is just fine the way it is, our customers can figure out how to use the product better on their own."

You may not need it, but SL is more than just you.  I don't need it, but I'm thinking of people other than myself.

[Pussycat Catnap]

6 hours ago, NiranV Dean said:

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.

So yeah - just did this. Which was NOT was I was doign before. And it jumped me to 142 fps. But text got blurry.

Now I play around to see what will maximize fps without noticeable blur.

 

Managed to keep the 140-144 range by turning off nVidia's FXAA and letting the application control antialiasing, but then letting nVidia control a lot of other things.

As normal for SL, when I TP into a new region there's a dip - but the amount of dip down and how long it stays down are greatly improved. Most critically - letting nVidia have it's way with as many things as possible speeds up texture loading.

- The impact on this from when I tab out of the app or back into it is MORE dramatic than it was before (as I type this my FPS hit 15.2 and textures that didn't yet load are just paused, but when I tab back over to Firestorm FPS rapidly rises to and textures snap in quickly).

- Essentially I've doubled how well Firestorm performs when it's the window in focus, and halved how poorly it performs when another window is in focus.

- I'm not sure I really changed anything, so much as told it to be actively 'present'.

Really curious to see what I can get out of a less bloated viewer like the Dragon one... but I've been holding off on that viewer until I can write an AO that does the things I desire.

 

 

Edited February 6, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 hours ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

A useless and unhelpful suggestion.

Be nice!

2 hours ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

You may not need it, but SL is more than just you.  I don't need it, but I'm thinking of people other than myself.

I have some sympathy for your idea: SL is in many ways clunky and non-intuitive, and it doesn't really do enough to help either new users, or users who are frightened or mystified by technology, learn the ropes. So, something that automates graphics settings to optimize them for people who are not going to go into "Preferences" (yet alone the Advanced menu) to do it is, on the face of it, not a terrible idea.

HOWEVER . . .

(You knew there was going to be a "however," right?)

2 hours ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

A useless and unhelpful suggestion. I'm sure it's the same sort of myopic thinking that was offered when things like power steering were introduced, or, more recently, "stop being forgetful and turn your thermostat down before you leave, who needs to be able to do it by smart phone?"  Almost a billion a year in annual Nest sales later (10 times Second Life's revenue for LL).

This kind of thinking drives me nuts. It's an almost perfect example of Evgeny Morozov's thesis about technological solutionism: someone comes up with a bright idea that will allow people to do something almost utterly useless, so they invent a nonexistent "problem" for which it can be posed as a solution. And, god knows, it works from a marketing perspective: how many completely stupid and needless technologies do we now think we'd absolutely die without?

Another angle on the same kind of thing is what I tend to think of as the Apple vs. PC philosophy with regard to software design. Apple seems to assume that most of its users are slightly moronic, or very lazy, and it pretty much insists on doing absolutely everything for you, whether you want it to or not. Getting its software to permit you to do things that are outside of what their designers obviously consider "normal" uses for their products can actually be hard work. Whereas PCs generally aren't quite as condescendingly controlling and restrictive about, for instance, getting in behind the dashboard and fiddling with or reconfiguring things yourself

In either case -- Apple's insistence that, really, it knows what's best for you, and the technological solutionism that is uselessly automating more and more of our lives -- our agency is being encroached upon.

And, I think, we're all becoming, little by little, a bit more stupid as a result.

Edited February 6, 2020 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Lyssa Greymoon]

I think the experience would be improved considerably if developers made the default graphics settings more realistic. Shadows and ALM are on by default on video cards that have no business running them. You don’t need to have the viewer automatically turn off ALM as soon as you leave your skybox if it’s not on in the first place. 

[NiranV Dean]

2 hours ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

I think the experience would be improved considerably if developers made the default graphics settings more realistic. Shadows and ALM are on by default on video cards that have no business running them. You don’t need to have the viewer automatically turn off ALM as soon as you leave your skybox if it’s not on in the first place. 

LL has removed toggling Basic Shaders, so thats a tiny little nudge towards ALM. Shaders and Atmospheric Shaders are now the new default.

[Tolya Ugajin]

8 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Some drivel.

Oh, I see, I am called "lazy" and your reaction is to laugh.  I reply that that the person is being unhelpful, and I should be nice?  Interesting difference in reactions.

Sorry, I'm going to be "not nice" instead.  You label things as "useless solutions" and "nonexistent problems".  Perhaps you should pull your head out of ... the sand.  There is literally thread after thread complaining about lag,. "Nonexistent problem"?  Sim owners deal with people complaining about lag constantly.  "Nonexistent problem"?  In thread after thread the experience of new people or people returning after a significant hiatus (remember the OP here?) who struggle with a clunky interface (ie. lag) - "nonexistent problem"?  New people come on and ask about lag and oldbies point them to long drawn wiki pages about it, talk through a dozen different settings, and they get frustrated and leave, but a suggestion that could help those people is a "useless solution"?

Drivel.

You can babble all day about quaint, meaningless theories of "technological solutionism", but it's useless prattle.  Your snippet about Apple vs. PC demonstrates a complete and utter lack of understanding about how consumer-oriented business (which SL is) survive and thrive.  What you call "assuming most of us are slightly moronic or lazy" Apple and successful companies call being customer-centric - and it's why they employ tens of thousands while LL employs tens of tens.  It's why their user bases expand while SL contracts.  Remember the concept of user base?  Recall any useless threads talking about declining user base for SL?  That SHOULD be a real concern for people who have invested years here, because you have a lot more to lose as SL becomes more and more obsolete.  Technology is passing SL by, and telling new users they need to stop being lazy and instead spend hours learning how to tweak settings and telling them that the problem is their computer only drives them away.  New users of something as complicated as SL ARE inherently "moronic" - at least about the platform.  And they have too many options for how to spend their time (and money) to be bothered with the learning DOS when they could use a Mac.  Your example had one good use - it demonstrated your lack of awareness.  The ease of Mac over DOS-driven machines is exactly why Apple became a major company.  Perhaps if LL started thinking about how to make the new user experience simpler and better (as Apple did) rather than worrying about how to make minimal incremental improvement to how our cartoon characters look, it would not be such a small, stagnant company.

 

Edited February 6, 2020 by Tolya Ugajin
Because at 5 AM before coffee, I'm loopy enough to confuse "employ" and "employee"...

[Janet Voxel]

49 minutes ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

Oh, I see, I am called "lazy" and your reaction is to laugh.  I reply that that the person is being unhelpful, and I should be nice?  Interesting difference in reactions.

Sorry, I'm going to be "not nice" instead.  You label things as "useless solutions" and "nonexistent problems".  Perhaps you should pull your head out of ... the sand.  There is literally thread after thread complaining about lag,. "Nonexistent problem"?  Sim owners deal with people complaining about lag constantly.  "Nonexistent problem"?  In thread after thread the experience of new people or people returning after a significant hiatus (remember the OP here?) who struggle with a clunky interface (ie. lag) - "nonexistent problem"?  New people come on and ask about lag and oldbies point them to long drawn wiki pages about it, talk through a dozen different settings, and they get frustrated and leave, but a suggestion that could help those people is a "useless solution"?

Drivel.

You can babble all day about quaint, meaningless theories of "technological solutionism", but it's useless prattle.  Your snippet about Apple vs. PC demonstrates a complete and utter lack of understanding about how consumer-oriented business (which SL is) survive and thrive.  What you call "assuming most of us are slightly moronic or lazy" Apple and successful companies call being customer-centric - and it's why they employee tens of thousands while LL employees tens of tens.  It's why their user bases expand while SL contracts.  Remember the concept of user base?  Recall any useless threads talking about declining user base for SL?  That SHOULD be a real concern for people who have invested years here, because you have a lot more to lose as SL becomes more and more obsolete.  Technology is passing SL by, and telling new users they need to stop being lazy and instead spend hours learning how to tweak settings and telling them that the problem is their computer only drives them away.  New users to something as complicated as SL ARE inherently "moronic" - at least about the platform.  And they have too many options for how to spend their time (and money) to be bothered with the learning DOS when they could use a Mac.  Your example had one good use - it demonstrated your lack of awareness.  The ease of Mac over DOS-driven machines is exactly why Apple became a major company.  Perhaps if LL started thinking about how to make the new user experience simpler and better (as Apple did) rather than worrying about how to make minimal incremental improvement to how our cartoon characters look, it would not be such a small, stagnant company.

 

 

[Tolya Ugajin]

23 minutes ago, janetosilio said:

 

Lol I'm a geek, not a nerd.  I think...

 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

10 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

Essentially I've doubled how well Firestorm performs when it's the window in focus, and halved how poorly it performs when another window is in focus.

Psst... Firestorm has a setting to limit its own performance when the window isn't in focus... If you turn it off, you get 100% identical performance.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

1 hour ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

Sorry, I'm going to be "not nice" instead.  You label things as "useless solutions" and "nonexistent problems".  Perhaps you should pull your head out of ... the sand.  There is literally thread after thread complaining about lag,. "Nonexistent problem"?  Sim owners deal with people complaining about lag constantly.  "Nonexistent problem"?  In thread after thread the experience of new people or people returning after a significant hiatus (remember the OP here?) who struggle with a clunky interface (ie. lag) - "nonexistent problem"?  New people come on and ask about lag and oldbies point them to long drawn wiki pages about it, talk through a dozen different settings, and they get frustrated and leave, but a suggestion that could help those people is a "useless solution"?

Everyone is trying to make things more complicated than they really are. All the settings a n00b needs to adjust to deal with lag are in the basic graphics settings screen. Turn off ALM, dial down draw distance and avatar complexity. Then leave it there. Most of the stuff in the advanced settings makes no difference, or can make it worse and can safely be ignored.

2 hours ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

And they have too many options for how to spend their time (and money) to be bothered with the learning DOS when they could use a Mac.  Your example had one good use - it demonstrated your lack of awareness.  The ease of Mac over DOS-driven machines is exactly why Apple became a major company.

If Second Life was an Apple product, you'd have to type in your password for every region crossing and teleport to protect you from yourself. The ease of use thing for Macs is pretty 1980s. Apple isn't a computer company, it's a phone company that makes computers on the side.

[Alyona Su]

1 hour ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

If Second Life was an Apple product, you'd have to type in your password for every region crossing and teleport to protect you from yourself.

That sounds a lot more like Windows Vista. On macOS Catalina you are asked once only. Other than that, it only asks for your password during use when there is a change to the underlying system that could be dangerous (and has always done this at least since the '90's.) Though it's an interesting comparison, just the same.

Edited February 6, 2020 by Alyona Su

[Scylla Rhiadra]

4 hours ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

Oh, I see, I am called "lazy" and your reaction is to laugh.  I reply that that the person is being unhelpful, and I should be nice?  Interesting difference in reactions.

Sorry, I'm going to be "not nice" instead.

OMG. So. GRUMPY.

Did you drop your Oh-So-Beautifully-Designed-But-It-Doesn't-Have-USB-Ports-Use-Streaming-Instead-BTW-Did-We-Mention-We-Own-a-Streaming-Service? computer on your foot this morning?

I "laughed" at Jane's response to you because it was a non-hostile, glib, and funny response. As you would see if you stepped back a bit.

(BTW she's Canadian, and part of the Secret Network of Canadian Women. You should watch your step . . .)

4 hours ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

Perhaps you should pull your head out of ... the sand.

I'll keep my head wherever I like, thank you very much.

4 hours ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

There is literally thread after thread complaining about lag,. "Nonexistent problem"?  Sim owners deal with people complaining about lag constantly.  "Nonexistent problem"?  In thread after thread the experience of new people or people returning after a significant hiatus (remember the OP here?) who struggle with a clunky interface (ie. lag) - "nonexistent problem"?  New people come on and ask about lag and oldbies point them to long drawn wiki pages about it, talk through a dozen different settings, and they get frustrated and leave, but a suggestion that could help those people is a "useless solution"?

The "useless problem" isn't lag -- it's the idea that most users are too stupid to be able to take the simple steps required to fix it themselves using available tools.

Kinda like how resetting the thermostat isn't a useless problem, but finding some way of ensuring that people don't have to walk the 15 feet to the thermostat in order to reset it is.

4 hours ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

[A whole lot of stuff that is probably warming the hearts of Apple shareholders everywhere ]

Sorry, when did I address this as an issue relating to Linden Lab's viability as a company? I don't recall questioning Apple's success, because it's not at all relevant to what I was saying. Pretty sure PT Barnum or someone else had something instructive to say about this model of business strategy, though.

I'd agree that many SL users are tech-challenged. I'm arguing that a better answer than infantilizing them and reinforcing their fear and ignorance about the UI is to educate them on how to use it properly, so that they become a little less ignorant and fearful about it.

It doesn't require an advanced degree in CS to do so: Lyssa laid it out very nicely above. Yes, it could be redesigned to make it even easier and more intuitive: I'd like to see them do that. But that's not the same as essentially robbing them (and you, and me) of agency.

Now, go get another coffee, and take an aspirin for your throbbing foot, and stop being so out-of-sorts.

Edited February 6, 2020 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Selene Gregoire]

Since the help I once provided to SL users for more than 5 years is now considered nothing more than pointing at long pages of a wiki that doesn't help anyone, I'm done. Done with being treated like crap. Done with people who can't see the forest burning all around them because they're too fekking busy setting the fires.

[Tolya Ugajin]

31 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

OMG. So. GRUMPY.

Did you drop your Oh-So-Beautifully-Designed-But-It-Doesn't-Have-USB-Ports-Use-Streaming-Instead-BTW-Did-We-Mention-We-Own-a-Streaming-Service? computer on your foot this morning?

I "laughed" at Jane's response to you because it was a non-hostile, glib, and funny response. As you would see if you stepped back a bit.

(BTW she's Canadian, and part of the Secret Network of Canadian Women. You should watch your step . . .)

I'll keep my head wherever I like, thank you very much.

The "useless problem" isn't lag -- it's the idea that most users are too stupid to be able to take the simple steps required to fix it themselves using available tools.

Kinda like how resetting the thermostat isn't a useless problem, but finding some way of ensuring that people don't have to walk the 15 feet to the thermostat in order to reset it is.

Sorry, when did I address this as an issue relating to Linden Lab's viability as a company? I don't recall questioning Apple's success, because it's not at all relevant to what I was saying. Pretty sure PT Barnum or someone else had something instructive to say about this model of business strategy, though.

I'd agree that many SL users are tech-challenged. I'm arguing that a better answer than infantilizing them and reinforcing their fear and ignorance about the UI is to educate them on how to use it properly, so that they become a little less ignorant and fearful about it.

It doesn't require an advanced degree in CS to do so: Lyssa laid it out very nicely above. Yes, it could be redesigned to make it even easier and more intuitive: I'd like to see them do that. But that's not the same as essentially robbing them (and you, and me) of agency.

Now, go get another coffee, and take an aspirin for your throbbing foot, and stop being so out-of-sorts.

You're deliberately missing the point, and it's tiresome.  You and the rest of the "don't be lazy" crowd are ignoring the fact that such "nonexistent problems" cost SL new members. 

Customers are saying "there's a problem" - and calling them lazy or moronic is moronically lazy from a business practice perspective.  Telling them to how to fix it themselves is all well and good, but it doesn't eliminate the problem, it merely tells people how to make it less annoying.  Designing a product that prevents them from seeing a problem in the first place is 10 times better, and gets more people to keep using your product.  You can call that "infantalizing" the customer, but people who understand consumers call it "good business".

In other words, my sweet socialist, let the capitalists handle making the business better.  You just go enjoy Bellisaria.