Constant Blurring and Sharpening of Textures Issue

[Ankrs]

Hi all! I'm in need of some help with graphics. To start, here's my PC build info:
CPU: I7-8700K (OCed 4.7ghz), Memory 31.9gb
Mainboard: ASUS Z370A
Ram: GeIL DDR4 16G PC4-24000 CL16 Super Luce RGB Sync White (8Gx2)
Psu: Seasonic Focus Plus 750 Gold SSR-750FX
Gpu: RTX 2080 Hall Of Fame (HOF)
Playing on a: Samsung 970 EVO M.2 SSD 1TB
O/S: Windows 10 Home FPP
For Wi-Fi: I'm connected by a line to my router (wall impossible) and according to a speed test online when the game is running my ping seems to be 6-8, download mpbs high 80s- low 90s, and upload mpbs low-mid 90s. I live in South Korea and I'm not using a VPN if that makes a difference. So, I'm tethered, not using wi-fi.

My current settings for SL and the Stastics. I'm in Vista's Animation shop so the FPS is at around 30-40 but I have seen it go higher before I believe:
(Also, I use the regular SL Viewer 64x bit, I don't use Firestorm or any other viewer): SL Settings and Cache size in advanced settings is 1024mb. Packet Loss seems to stay around 0.0-0.4 range.

So, the issue I'm having is a constant blurring and sharpening of what I assume are textures. Like the background and my avi will blur and sharpen with every movement. Sometimes, if I've been playing a while, the blur just won't go away and I'm forced to restart the game. There's quite a bit of gray loading in the bg as well. My avi will also constantly get stuck in a walking position while walking or running everywhere, it's so annoying and hard to move around. I'll also see other people's avatars in pieces around me (not fully loading). Basically, nothing ever finishes loading no matter how long I wait in the room. Once I move the camera, it all blurs again.

I've looked at a few older posts on topics similar to my issue and I've tried to apply any answers that were on these with no luck. Honestly, I don't understand what else could be happening. Or if I should change a setting to better optimize use of my PC for the game please do recommend. Could it just be these shops that have too much packed into them for the PC to handle? I've tried to go to less involved shops like Lelutka's mesh head shop but I still have the same issue. I'm really at a loss and it's starting to hurt my eyes with all the blurring and re-sharpening lol. Any suggestions? I have no idea what settings to mess around with. I've tried looking for a suggested "

What I've Tried:
Making sure my graphics drivers are up to date.
PC temperatures are fine (around a constant 45-55c).
Going into NVIDIA control panel to customize settings: Turned "Power management mode" to Prefer Max Performance, Turned "Threaded Optimization" on.
Refreshed cache in the Advanced settings menu.
Restarting computer and/or game.
And I've tried searching for a suggested "Viewer texture memory buffer" setting but I can't find it anywhere. Must be a Firestorm thing?

[Wulfie Reanimator]

The main issue is texture memory usage in the area you're in. The SL viewer allows 512 MB of texture memory.

When your texture memory gets full, the viewer starts discarding textures to reduce the memory usage. Then it tries to load up more textures because it has free memory... and then memory gets full and it has to discard... repeat on and on.

It's a common bug that has existed for a long time, I don't think there's a permanent fix for it until the viewers fix it. Lowering your draw distance definitely helps since there will be less textures on screen. You might also use another viewer (like Firestorm) which allows 1024 MB of texture memory.

Edited May 4, 2020 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Lindal Kidd]

You have a very capable computer.  Still, the first thing I'd suggest is lowering your draw distance.  Try it at 128 or so.  This will greatly reduce the number of textures your PC will have to render.  You might also increase your cache size, unless you're really limited in storage space, and decrease the number of non-imposter avatars, say from 16 down to 10 or 12.  You may not need to do this, but you could also turn off shadows.  (I like to have them on myself, but they really deal you a performance hit.)

[Mollymews]

what Wulfie said

i use Catznip TPV which allows me to set my 1050Ti graphics card memory to 1,360MB. On the Catznip I don't get anywhere near the amount of texture thrashing that I do on the 512MB Linden viewer

[Wulfie Reanimator]

5 minutes ago, Ankrs said:

@Lindal Kidd I still seem to have the same issue with the draw distance lowered but I guess I'll keep it lower to not overload my PC! And I lessend the amount of non-imposter avatars as wel, hopefully it'll help some. @Wulfie Reanimator @Mollymews I see... so a big part of it must be the viewer issue then. And that's more on Linden's part than the capability of my PC? That's really unfortunate cause I'm so used to the main viewer So, I should uninstall the main viewer and try one of these other ones? When I'm on these viewers, then how do I make sure to increase the texture memory usage to the max?

Your PC is not the problem. It's 100% the viewer's fault in this case. You don't have to uninstall the SL viewer before you try the other ones.

The texture memory setting can be found here in Firestorm:

[Mollymews]

10 minutes ago, Ankrs said:

@Lindal Kidd I still seem to have the same issue with the draw distance lowered but I guess I'll keep it lower to not overload my PC! And I lessend the amount of non-imposter avatars as wel, hopefully it'll help some. @Wulfie Reanimator @Mollymews I see... so a big part of it must be the viewer issue then. And that's more on Linden's part than the capability of my PC? That's really unfortunate cause I'm so used to the main viewer So, I should uninstall the main viewer and try one of these other ones? When I'm on these viewers, then how do I make sure to increase the texture memory usage to the max?

you can download and install a TPV and have both it and the Linden viewer on your computer.  Changing between the two as you like

Firestorm has a Linden viewer compatibility mode (which helps it to look like the Linden viewer).  Catznip looks like the Linden viewer out of the box, with some extra bits

on Linden the Texture Memory slider is on: Preferences \ Graphics \ Advanced Settings \ Hardware \ Texture Memory

Edited May 4, 2020 by Mollymews

[LittleMe Jewell]

2 hours ago, Ankrs said:

@Wulfie Reanimator @Mollymews Thanks so much for the details! Is it true if I do switch between both it'll cause the cache to fill up quicker and might cause issues though? Or is that not really something I would need to worry about? I have heard of Firestorm but never heard of Catznip so I'll definitely check it out thank you!

Each viewer has its own cache area -- in your AppData folder, in sub-folders named after the viewer.  You can go back and forth between the different viewers and they won't impact each other.  

Note that if you save your Chat & IM logs, those are also not shared between the viewers, so you won't see all of the history when you switch from one viewer to another.  Not a big deal for most people, just something to keep in mind.

 

[Ankrs]

@Lindal Kidd I still seem to have the same issue with the draw distance lowered but I guess I'll keep it lower to not overload my PC! And I lessend the amount of non-imposter avatars as wel, hopefully it'll help some. @Wulfie Reanimator @Mollymews I see... so a big part of it must be the viewer issue then. And that's more on Linden's part than the capability of my PC? That's really unfortunate cause I'm so used to the main viewer So, I should uninstall the main viewer and try one of these other ones? When I'm on these viewers, then how do I make sure to increase the texture memory usage to the max?

[Ankrs]

@Wulfie Reanimator @Mollymews Thanks so much for the details! Is it true if I do switch between both it'll cause the cache to fill up quicker and might cause issues though? Or is that not really something I would need to worry about? I have heard of Firestorm but never heard of Catznip so I'll definitely check it out thank you!

[Ankrs]

14 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Each viewer has its own cache area -- in your AppData folder, in sub-folders named after the viewer.  You can go back and forth between the different viewers and they won't impact each other.  

Note that if you save your Chat & IM logs, those are also not shared between the viewers, so you won't see all of the history when you switch from one viewer to another.  Not a big deal for most people, just something to keep in mind.

 

Thanks that is good to know!