Ultra is killing me

[Talligurl]

Recently when I try to take a picture using Firestorm with my graphics setting set to ultra, Firestorm crashes and i get no picture. This did not used to happen, though it has been going on maybe two months or so. Anyone have any ideas why and what i might do to fix this.

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

15 minutes ago, Talligurl said:

Recently when I try to take a picture using Firestorm with my graphics setting set to ultra, Firestorm crashes and i get no picture. This did not used to happen, though it has been going on maybe two months or so. Anyone have any ideas why and what i might do to fix this.

 

[Marianne Little]

I got the same problem with version 6.3.9.58205. The version I had before (6.3.2.58052), did not have this issue.

I have not needed to take fancy pictures, and so I took the lazy approach. Waiting to do something until I need to. I hope you find out of it @Talligurl, I have thought about uninstalling the newest version and install 6.3.2.58052 again.

[LittleMe Jewell]

Set it to medium-ultra.  Then start adding/changing the individual things one at a time until you find the problem.  You might be able to not use the problem setting or get by with it set just a little lower, depending on which one is causing the problem.

Edited August 26, 2020 by LittleMe Jewell

[Seicher Rae]

I understand the problem/question you're having. This is kind of a tangent subject to the OP and something to what LittleMe just said.

I don't use the settings of good/ultra whatever, because they are never set for where I want them Just because it says "ultra" doesn't mean you're getting the right settings for the photo you're trying to take. I know you are talking about FS crashing on a setting, but I used to post on some photo pages in Facebook, and that was something people were always talking about, how they were setting to "ultra" but why didn't their photos look like So&so's? Yeah, it is late, I should be asleep, instead I'm going off on tangents in the forum...

[Chic Aeon]

I use "mid-ultra" primarily because ULTRA sets your distance at 256 and your LOD to 3. Both of these things can greatly impact your photo and in most cases are not needed at all. So to the OP, maybe turning it down a notch might help. I also always have shadows on and have no problems with DOF or the smoother shadow settings.  My computer is going on three or four years now so not new. 

So maybe some tweaking in the settings is all that really needs to happen. 

 

[Solar Legion]

The named presets are just that - presets.

Set it wherever you like and adjust as needed. Example: Mine is set to Ultra preset with Draw Distance at 128 (most of the time) and Object LoD at about 2.5-2.75. allowed Complexity near maxed. Non-Imposter Avatars set low. DoF is off but shadows are on.

You get the idea - I hope.

[Marianne Little]

41 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

I use "mid-ultra" primarily because ULTRA sets your distance at 256 and your LOD to 3. Both of these things can greatly impact your photo and in most cases are not needed at all. So to the OP, maybe turning it down a notch might help. I also always have shadows on and have no problems with DOF or the smoother shadow settings.  My computer is going on three or four years now so not new. 

So maybe some tweaking in the settings is all that really needs to happen. 

 

That should not apply to changing to another version of Firestorm? I mean, I have pre-made settings for photos, I never just push the slider to Ultra. I have named the presets "Event" "Normal" "Photos" and some more. Where "Event" is the lowest and so it goes up. When I load a preset and chose one of the Photo presets, it always comes up draw distance 72 for Photos1 and 48 for Photos2. Never depth of field.

And it is not crashing one of 2 times either. It is literally every time, and always on the 1st picture. Of course I crashed some times before, it could be after zooming in and out and rotating the camera between pictures.

Edited August 27, 2020 by Marianne Little
changed a few words to clarify

[Chic Aeon]

12 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

That should not apply to changing to another version of Firestorm? I mean, I have pre-made settings for photos, I never just push the slider to Ultra. I have named the presets "Event" "Normal" "Photos" and some more. Where "Event" is the lowest and so it goes up. When I load a preset and chose one of the Photo presets, it always comes up draw distance 72 for Photos1 and 48 for Photos2. Never depth of field.

And it is not crashing one of 2 times either. It is literally every time, and always on the 1st picture. Of course I crashed some times before, it could be after zooming in and out and rotating the camera between pictures.

Well if you are using presets at 72 distance then you are not using Ultra. So confused about your post. I am using the same version of FS as you are with no issues.    So it is crashing every time when you use your presets????  That isn't what the OP was talking about.  If Talligurl is using the new BETA Firestorm with EEP that could certainly be the issue.   Yours sounds more like a graphics card issue and those are definitely hard to find the cause of. Usually when I have those (and I do from time to time) it turns out to be nothing that "I" can control but server changes or Windows updates etc.  "I" do nothing and eventually things go back to being good.  That isn't helpful I know.    

 

[Solar Legion]

4 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Well if you are using presets at 72 distance then you are not using Ultra. So confused about your post. I am using the same version of FS as you are with no issues.    So it is crashing every time when you use your presets????  That isn't what the OP was talking about.  If Talligurl is using the new BETA Firestorm with EEP that could certainly be the issue.   Yours sounds more like a graphics card issue and those are definitely hard to find the cause of. Usually when I have those (and I do from time to time) it turns out to be nothing that "I" can control but server changes or Windows updates etc.  "I" do nothing and eventually things go back to being good.  That isn't helpful I know.    

 

User Made Presets, not the Preferences slider. Yes, that is a thing.

[Marianne Little]

12 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Well if you are using presets at 72 distance then you are not using Ultra. So confused about your post. I am using the same version of FS as you are with no issues.    So it is crashing every time when you use your presets????  That isn't what the OP was talking about.  If Talligurl is using the new BETA Firestorm with EEP that could certainly be the issue.   Yours sounds more like a graphics card issue and those are definitely hard to find the cause of. Usually when I have those (and I do from time to time) it turns out to be nothing that "I" can control but server changes or Windows updates etc.  "I" do nothing and eventually things go back to being good.  That isn't helpful I know.    

 

https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/preferences_display_tab

Presets: Three buttons which allow you to save, load or delete graphics settings presets.

• To create a preset, set your graphics settings as you like. Click “Save” and give the preset a name.
• To load a preset that you have created, click “Load” and choose the preset to load.
• To delete one, click “Delete” and choose the preset to delete.
• The presets can be accessed either from Preferences → Graphics → General or from the presets button in the upper right of the viewer, near the media and sound controls.

With this, I can set the draw distance where I wish, LOD where I wish, and

the other adjustments, and save it.

Mostly, I have no problems using a Photo setting to explore, rez furniture and such things, if I forget to change down from Photos. That is the same with version 6.3.9.58205. Some places it can happen to be very laggy, and I remember that I am still having that setting on.

It is when I open the snapshot window and press "save" that I crash.

Edited August 27, 2020 by Marianne Little
typo

[Chic Aeon]

I understand that @Marianne Little

I was replying to the OPs comment which in the title and in the text is about crashing on ULTRA.

"Recently when I try to take a picture using Firestorm with my graphics setting set to ultra, Firestorm crashes and i get no picture." 

 

My underlining.    

[Marianne Little]

@Talligurl, do you use Ultra with Draw distance 256?

I crash when I push the "save to" button on the identical setting as I had in the previous 6.3.2.58052.

They are: The slider pushed all the way to the right, to "Ultra". Draw distance reduced. LOD increased to 4. Sun, moon and projectors on, but no Depth of field.

I call that taking pictures with my graphics set to Ultra.

 

[Rachel1206]

I use Ultra with everything on max for photo sessions or when at amazing beautiful sims or some of my favorite relaxing nature spots. I do not have any problems with draw distance 1024 meters and everything else set to max.

Graphic card GForce 1060 6 GB with latest drivers, iCore 7, Windows 10 64 bit 2004 version.

@Talligurl is it happening everywhere for you? Updated drivers? Something got corrupted in cache?

Edited August 28, 2020 by Rachel1206

[Whirly Fizzle]

Open Phototools with ALT+P
Go to the Light tab.
Click the D buttons next to all the shadow & AO settings.
Does that fix the crash?

Setting shadow res above default is the most usual cause of crashing when taking snapshots with shadows enabled.
You need a really powerful graphics card to handle setting shadow resolution at 3 or 4.

[NiranV Dean]

On 8/28/2020 at 5:23 PM, Whirly Fizzle said:

Open Phototools with ALT+P
Go to the Light tab.
Click the D buttons next to all the shadow & AO settings.
Does that fix the crash?

Setting shadow res above default is the most usual cause of crashing when taking snapshots with shadows enabled.
You need a really powerful graphics card to handle setting shadow resolution at 3 or 4.

A really powerful GPU?

I haven't made any recent tests but currently i only allow up to 8K shadow resolution. I should probably do some tests to see how far i can bump up the shadow resolution before the viewer says goodbye but i'm sure it won't be far past 8K. Since snapshots currently hard-crash at above 12K i'd assume that 12K is the shadow resolution limit as well.

But to the details why the Viewer crashes. Firestorm (and all other Viewers except Black Dragon) lock their shadow resolution to the world render resolution (generally speaking the window resolution or snapshot resolution if you are taking snapshots). The shadow resolution slider is a multiplier (in case its label doesn't make it obvious) so its not a direct "quality" slider but rather a multiplier to whatever the Viewer already uses as baseline, lets say 1920x1080 (newer versions, since EEP i believe should clamp this to proper power by 2 resolutions, which would probably make this 2048x1024 if it rounds to nearest although i wouldn't be surprised if it simply goes by the lower one which would be 1024x1024 and would explain why shadows have dropped so massively in quality in EEP). If the user sets the multiplier to 2 or higher, we start multiplying the shadow map resolutions (notice multiple) by 2, we'd be looking at 3840x2160 (probably 4096x2048 or 2048x2048). We do this for 6 shadow maps (4 at all times, 2 additional for when projectors are enabled), this means 4/6 times 2048x2048 shadow render resolution, we're rendering everything in a shadow's view at a 2K resolution. Now the funky part, since the shadow base resolution is based on your world render resolution we will increase shadow resolution even further if we take a snapshot at higher resolutions. Let's say you take a 6K picture. 6000x3000 x 2 (multiplier) and we're looking at 4/6 times 12000x6000 shadow maps. This means we are effectively rendering everything that shadows see at 12000x6000 in addition to the picture itself which needs to be rendered at 6K as well. This is a crazy amount of work your GPU has to do. Now imagine what happens if you take a 6K picture with a 4 times shadow multiplier.... 6000x3000 times 4 = 24000x12000, 4 to 6 times....

This is your GPU.

 

 

Note again that above is not the case with Black Dragon.

Black Dragon has options for each shadow map individually and directly independent of screen or snapshot resolution.