No more bad frame rates or sort your inventory!

[Gwin LeShelle]

I already admitted here that I am an inventory messy. A bad one with over 380k unsorted items at peak.

Well now I had the problem, finally, that I after 14 years experienced a flat inventory issue. 

And I have to say thank you to all 3 Lindens that went above and beyond helping me fix it again. With patience and a lot of help, finding some corrupted items, and sorting my inventory all is fine now again.

Fine now again she says? Not really...fine is just not enough of a word XD . I sorted like a loon ...deleted ...subfoldered and subsubsubsubfoldered everything, btw I deleted 70k demos ...check your inventory for those too maybe lmao 

And now what? I longer experienced looong logins, logouts were more like long wait til crash... TP History took ages to open, recent items tab not really working and like 15 fps at max even on a good PC and with 1gb speed.

And now? I never thought this would have SUCH a huge impact but my fps are now always at around 100 and even in Belli at my stilt home I have at least 60 and I have to say I did not even know this was possible in SL XD 

It's so smooth now, it's sometimes scary! And I never ever sorted my inventory before, but now I delete demos after use, and sort everything in folders on Sundays x3 

The most patient of the Lindens was @Volo Linden

I knew he was going to fix it, because my favorite animal is a giraffe so it was perfect match XD and he has all my love forever 💜 and I feel sorry for him to have to deal with my whiny self XD 

I also learned it does not at all matter how big your inventory is  as long as it is not flat, use damn subfolders for everything. I have now only 4 main folders (beside the usual inventory pre made ones) with a load of sub..subsub...subsubsub and so on folders.

Thank you for that @Wendi Linden for teaching me the sorting ways, senpai! And also for repeatly explaining to me the subfolder thing ( I felt rather stupid XD) and what flat actually means, believe me that was no easy task lmao and I also want to thank my super patient husband to further explain all the folder things to me while I cry-yelled at hime  

So frame rate bad? Try sorting your inventory XD 

A thing I thought I would never ever say in Second Life ╰(⸝⸝⸝´꒳`⸝⸝⸝)╯

Also I see people complaining about support sometimes...I was a huge, in panic-mode baby when this problem started and they stayed calm, friendly and cheery and gave me the hope that all will be fine again we just need to rule out the problems. They really went out of their way to help me.

[Ceka Cianci]

I try to use the main folders above the library and trash can as much as possible for my main folders and then sub folders from there.

I used to have my own main folders and then sub folders and so on..But I'm finding it a lot nicer just using the main directory that they give us from the start..

[PixelBerry]

I took myself the time today to delete the sizes of bodies that I don't use, with gachas as an exception. I will probably go trough my inventory more, because I totally have things that I do not use or never will use. It takes time but I think it is worth doing now and then, it is like cleaning in real life, the result is satisfying! 😁

I have my inventory sorted by lots of sub folders, but I made an legacy folder when I got it, that needs more sorting, so that is another project mhm.

[Lindal Kidd]

Can Outfits and Calling Cards folders have sub-folders? Those are my two most likely places to give flat inventory problems

[Scylla Rhiadra]

13 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Can Outfits and Calling Cards folders have sub-folders? Those are my two most likely places to give flat inventory problems

Not sure about calling cards, but you can use subfolders in Outfits. I have about 3 levels (and occasionally more) of subfolder in my Outfits. It's sooooo much easier to find things.

Edited June 13, 2021 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Rowan Amore]

22 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Can Outfits and Calling Cards folders have sub-folders? Those are my two most likely places to give flat inventory problems

I have subfolders in calling cards.

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Can Outfits and Calling Cards folders have sub-folders? Those are my two most likely places to give flat inventory problems

As Scylla says, you can have sub-folders in Outfits, but you have to manually move things around.  If you create an outfit from the Appearance panel, it will only go into the top level of Outfits - there is no way to make it go into a sub-folder from there.  So you then just have to move it wear you want it after creation.

[Chris Corvinus]

Thats such a ridiculous way to lower framerate 😂 

[Coffee Pancake]

32 minutes ago, Chris Nova said:

Thats such a ridiculous way to lower framerate 😂 

Only if you don't know how any of this works.

Nothing the SL client does is free.

[Chris Corvinus]

44 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Only if you don't know how any of this works.

Nothing the SL client does is free.

What does free have to do with it? 

Edited June 14, 2021 by Chris Nova

[Rowan Amore]

2 hours ago, Chris Nova said:

Thats such a ridiculous way to lower framerate 😂 

 

On 10/14/2017 at 12:11 PM, Whirly Fizzle said:

Yes.

If you keep timing out during login or you get disconnected within a couple of minutes of login, the problem can be caused by a large , flat inventory structure.
It's not so much the size of your inventory, it's the flatness that causes the problem.
During the login process, inventory views are created from your inventory cache. A large & flat inventory structure will cause inventoryt view creation to take so long that login can time out. If you connection is slow &/or your system is slow, you will be more likely to see a problem too. You only have so long to get logged in & anything that makes this slower can tip you over into a disconnect.

There are 2 ways you can test to see if it's likely an issue with your inventory structure.
1) Test logging in with an alt.  If the alts are not affected, that points to the affected accounts inventory.
2) Clear inventory cache & login the affected account.  If you can login normally on a clean cache, then that very much points to an inventory structure problem - inventory view creation will be instant on a clean cache.

If only one of your accounts is affected & you can login normally when you clean cache, then file a support ticket & tell them to check your inventory for flatness. LL support can fix this for you.
https://support.secondlife.com/create-case/

As you can see, it also effects logging in.  

[Jaylinbridges]

Out of the 20,687 Folders under Main Inventory, 19,000 are all flat first level folders.  I take it 19K first level is too flat

This is a friends inventory, I been working on sorting into subfolders for 2 years now, and might finish in another year. Originally she only had Outfits subfolders (which were made automatically with about 600 outfits), the rest were all flat Main folders.  I have reduced her log in time from 2 minutes to 45 seconds, so that is progress.

I really don't see much improvement in performance though as long as the Inventory window is closed.  Maybe because my gaming desktop is fast enough.

Her solution was much simpler - she started using an old Alt as her Main that only had 10K total inventory, and just bought new clothes and bodies.

Edited June 15, 2021 by Jaylinbridges

[Psyche Starling]

Oh wow, I was worried I was going to cause this by having like 30 top-level folders. 😲

[Chris Corvinus]

3 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

 

As you can see, it also effects logging in.  

And its very weird 

[Qie Niangao]

The universe is under no obligation to make sense to me, but still, of all the things Inventory organization might affect, framerate seems kinda… yeah, "ridiculous".

It doesn't surprise me that at login the viewer might need to do some top-level scan of Inventory; it makes sense that the login process might be sped up a bit by tidiness. I've always heard that teleporting is affected, too, and that's acceptably weird: it's not obvious what about teleporting should prompt the viewer to reference any piece of Inventory-related memory, let alone manipulate it, but it's settled folklore at this point.

It makes more sense to me that the simple number of Calling Cards, especially those on the Friends list, might affect teleports (and logins) if those events prompt the viewer to register with a Presence service for individual Friend-specific status updates (or something). I seem to recall that one particularly "friendly" steampunk oldbie got to the point he couldn't teleport at all anymore and the Lab had to remove some friends to get him back in. (Not sure sorting calling cards into subfolders would do any good though.)

But framerate? Really?

[Gwin LeShelle]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

The universe is under no obligation to make sense to me, but still, of all the things Inventory organization might affect, framerate seems kinda… yeah, "ridiculous".

It doesn't surprise me that at login the viewer might need to do some top-level scan of Inventory; it makes sense that the login process might be sped up a bit by tidiness. I've always heard that teleporting is affected, too, and that's acceptably weird: it's not obvious what about teleporting should prompt the viewer to reference any piece of Inventory-related memory, let alone manipulate it, but it's settled folklore at this point.

It makes more sense to me that the simple number of Calling Cards, especially those on the Friends list, might affect teleports (and logins) if those events prompt the viewer to register with a Presence service for individual Friend-specific status updates (or something). I seem to recall that one particularly "friendly" steampunk oldbie got to the point he couldn't teleport at all anymore and the Lab had to remove some friends to get him back in. (Not sure sorting calling cards into subfolders would do any good though.)

But framerate? Really?

I only told what I experienced. My fps increased massively( I have a 5digit expensive gaming desktop for work related reasons) and a 1GB fast connection. Nothing changed on my system or way of connection, and I could watch my fps going up the more my inventory got sorted. And log in times too. I do not have many calling cards although I am here for 14 years now, I deleted all and only have like 12. I think that a flat, really large inventory, that probs tries to load all dem things constantly because it probably never fully finished on login can obviously cause a lot of troubles. I am also a blogger for a lot of sponsors and 2 of the largest events on the grid, which adds around 5k items (skin layers etc.) Every damn week, so maybe a high influx effected it too but I never was laggy tho, even at packed events I was able to move fine and if not I derendered everybody x3. But now it's like wooosh, and as I said even at packed regions like newly opened events I am now at least at 60fps, a number I never saw before sorting my inventory. So no matter if this makes sense to you or me it's what happened and I am still happy to have it that way now. 

[Gwin LeShelle]

5 hours ago, Chris Nova said:

And its very weird 

It's even weirder that TP times sped up too, I always was last when playing SL with my hubby and daughter XD they were always making fun that it's probably because my avatar is too heavy with the almost 400k items inventory...I did not expect them to be right 😂 overall performance increased so much, I am just thankful tho. In RL I love everything neatly sorted ...but my inventory in SL? Could never be bothered to do that and even giggled over some friends\people having inventory sort parties 😆 not laughing that much anymore about it x3 

[Gwin LeShelle]

Thank you all for the nice answers and we'll some others too lmao when I first noticed I could only log in anymore when I cleared cache, all I wanted was just to be able to login again. The weeks before that happened I experienced a lot of unusual crashes while TPing etc. I asked I posted in the forums about it since I thought it might be cloud uplift related.

And I never expected anything happening beside being able to login again...I never knew what all could be effected until Wendi and Volo Linden explained to me all the side effects a flat inventory can cause. As Volo put it "a myriad" of problems ...And as Wendi said so nicely ".... but with a really flat inventory like yours..." It was bad...14 years of slack had finally bitten my ass. And the only reason I not really was thaaat bothered but the foresigns was probably my good PC and my fast connection otherwise I am sure I would have noticed some of the things much earlier. 

And I made this post for people running into similar problems, so no matter how ridiculous you personally find that or not is not keeping those things from happening and I was just trying to help people to not be as stupid as I was.

[Chris Corvinus]

4 minutes ago, Gwin LeShelle said:

Thank you all for the nice answers and we'll some others too lmao when I first noticed I could only log in anymore when I cleared cache, all I wanted was just to be able to login again. The weeks before that happened I experienced a lot of unusual crashes while TPing etc. I asked I posted in the forums about it since I thought it might be cloud uplift related.

And I never expected anything happening beside being able to login again...I never knew what all could be effected until Wendi and Volo Linden explained to me all the side effects a flat inventory can cause. As Volo put it "a myriad" of problems ...And as Wendi said so nicely ".... but with a really flat inventory like yours..." It was bad...14 years of slack had finally bitten my ass. And the only reason I not really was thaaat bothered but the foresigns was probably my good PC and my fast connection otherwise I am sure I would have noticed some of the things much earlier. 

And I made this post for people running into similar problems, so no matter how ridiculous you personally find that or not is not keeping those things from happening and I was just trying to help people to not be as stupid as I was.

Well, its just something the average person doesnt consider or think about. Who knew that having subsubsubsub folders in a neatly compiled inventory of hundreds of thousands of items could increase your framerate 😂 

Someone from LL might wanna put that in the logging in screen tips. 

I have 80k items and a messy inventory so this kinda makes me wanna try it even tho I dont have problems. Maybe I can prevent replicating your issues haha. Its a good post! 

[Gwin LeShelle]

10 minutes ago, Chris Nova said:

Well, its just something the average person doesnt consider or think about. Who knew that having subsubsubsub folders in a neatly compiled inventory of hundreds of thousands of items could increase your framerate 😂 

Yup me neither. And you have NO idea how often Wendi and my husband later in RL had to explain to me why and what is "flat" and why having subsubsubsubfolders is making a difference lmao I am still not sure if I fully grabbed that but it worked so I am not complaining 🤣 I still need to get my hubby a gift for rage squeaking at him "IT STILL MAKES NO SENSE TO ME!" After he explained it for the 50th time...XD but at this point I had spent several LONG nights (because RL work XD )in the premium sandbox (only place I was able to login in with emptied cache) and was lost in the dark hole called sorting the 500k mess I made myself. 😂 It was not cute. And my daughter is now making fun of me because I always delete my Demos right away now (mom you sure you don't need then later? Or maybe you want to keep those for 14 years?) and sort my new items in folders on sundays 😂

Edited June 15, 2021 by Gwin LeShelle

[Rowan Amore]

5 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

The universe is under no obligation to make sense to me, but still, of all the things Inventory organization might affect, framerate seems kinda… yeah, "ridiculous".

It doesn't surprise me that at login the viewer might need to do some top-level scan of Inventory; it makes sense that the login process might be sped up a bit by tidiness. I've always heard that teleporting is affected, too, and that's acceptably weird: it's not obvious what about teleporting should prompt the viewer to reference any piece of Inventory-related memory, let alone manipulate it, but it's settled folklore at this point.

It makes more sense to me that the simple number of Calling Cards, especially those on the Friends list, might affect teleports (and logins) if those events prompt the viewer to register with a Presence service for individual Friend-specific status updates (or something). I seem to recall that one particularly "friendly" steampunk oldbie got to the point he couldn't teleport at all anymore and the Lab had to remove some friends to get him back in. (Not sure sorting calling cards into subfolders would do any good though.)

But framerate? Really?

I always knew there was a good reason not to have too many friends.

[LibGwen]

In the days of MS-DOS, having too many items in the root directory would slow processing to a crawl.  People generally knew not to have more than 200 files and sub-directories listed in the system root directory, but this was true even for the root directory of a storage diskette that contained no system files.  People got in the habit of making a few general directory names in the root directory and storing the bulk of their stuff deeper in the directory tree.

Running counter to that habit later, Microsoft Windows 9x onwards had the problem that all those directory names are part of the name of the file and there's a limit to how long a filename can be.  "Why won't my computer let me Save As?"  "Are you trying to put the document inside many nested folders with long names?"

 

Edited June 15, 2021 by LibGwen

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

7 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

But framerate? Really?

The universe never ceases to amaze me, but maybe this is good. To paraphrase a hollywood star, "If you wake up in the morning and the universe doesn't amaze you, you died in the night"

This does actually make some sense to me: I remember asking Oz at the server user group meeting once why I should get chat-lag in busy areas and why trying to cursor back to correct typo should make it dramatically worse. His reply was that all the typing and shown text is graphics-intensive in the same way that rendering any other visible item on the screen is. I had been expecting that chat would just be unicode bytes thrown to and fro, not bit-mapped to the screen. So if you divide the viewer operations into visible and under-the-hood, anything under the hood must take place at the expense of the visible.

[Jaylinbridges]

1 hour ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

So if you divide the viewer operations into visible and under-the-hood, anything under the hood must take place at the expense of the visible.

That could explain why closing the inventory window while the caches are reloading, vastly improved the fps.  With my friends 200K flat inventory, you could barely move and the frame rate was 1 fps if the inventory window was open.  Close the window during cache reloading, and fps would move up to 20 fps.  Once inventory was fully loaded, fps would move to the normal 40 fps she got at her home region.

 

[Alwin Alcott]

6 hours ago, Gwin LeShelle said:

I never knew what all could be effected until Wendi and Volo Linden explained to me all the side effects a flat inventory can cause.

Past years these things were discussed and talked about several times, and how to prevent it, on the forums .. (it's not always useless bickering    )