The Lab ending work on mobile viewers

[Nick0678]

2 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

this is fair comment. I sometimes think Windows 10 is a turd.  I want my Windows 8 back

Of course Win10 is a turd. 16gb minimal of HDD space so that the majority of users will simply run a browser , check their e-mail and play a facebook game = turd

[Mollymews]

1 minute ago, Nick0678 said:

Of course Win10 is a turd. 16gb minimal of HDD space so that the majority of users will simply run a browser , check their e-mail and play a facebook game = turd

is all relative our preferences

my main point was that I think it would great if Linden bought Lumiya, assuming that the owner does want to sell it. Which I dunno about

[Nick0678]

1 minute ago, Mollymews said:

my main point was that I think it would great if Linden bought Lumiya,

I couldn''t agree more with that.. and even if Alina wasn't selling i am sure other developers could do the same work and even better with proper salary but i guess mobile clients were never a priority for the Lindens.

[Arielle Popstar]

7 hours ago, Mollymews said:

is all relative our preferences

my main point was that I think it would great if Linden bought Lumiya, assuming that the owner does want to sell it. Which I dunno about

The first assumption would be that Alina has been found to even be able to discuss Lumiya's purchase by the Lab. Therein was the problem that she basically disappeared and stopped doing any updates. Friends and business associates all reporting they had not been able to contact her now for several years.

[Nick0678]

17 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

The first assumption would be that Alina has been found to even be able to discuss Lumiya's purchase by the Lab. Therein was the problem that she basically disappeared and stopped doing any updates. Friends and business associates all reporting they had not been able to contact her now for several years.

Yes forget Alina she has been gone for years and her account deleted.

[Flea Yatsenko]

16 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

I'm just hoping it's not cloud rendering again or a 'show off your avatar' toy app.

Why not? SL already has the problem of cloud streaming games where your input has to go to a server, be processed there, then sent back to the client. Except people are stuck downloading the assets and rendering client side instead of basically sending inputs and receiving a video. I really don't like cloud streaming games and it's usually a horrible idea but I don't see how it could be any worse with latency than what we already have. I don't know how it could be profitable but it would be pretty cool to have streamed video rendering with a real time interface for chat and stuff. I'd even argue it could have less latency at times. Example if you wear something from your inventory, you send the wear command to the server which then handles everything probably in the same datacenter and sends it back to you, instead of all the back and forth we currently have.

[Coffee Pancake]

4 hours ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

Why not? SL already has the problem of cloud streaming games where your input has to go to a server, be processed there, then sent back to the client. Except people are stuck downloading the assets and rendering client side instead of basically sending inputs and receiving a video. I really don't like cloud streaming games and it's usually a horrible idea but I don't see how it could be any worse with latency than what we already have. I don't know how it could be profitable but it would be pretty cool to have streamed video rendering with a real time interface for chat and stuff. I'd even argue it could have less latency at times.

Because it's been done and proven to be a waste of time.

• The only people who loved it were bloggers and techy press.
• General uptake was very low.
• It was felt to be expensive and a poor overall experience (desktop UI doesn't translate well to a tiny screen).
• Anything more complicated than roaming around the grid was cumbersome and fiddly. (Good luck holding a text conversation or digging about in inventory)
• It's data hungry and needed a solid and stable connection (so not mobile data friendly).
• For in home use, adding the SL client to Steam and using in home streaming is better (and free).
• Before SL GO died (and they sold the farm) they tried accepting L$ payments and running with Firestorm - All of the mobile UI work was lost because the product was streamed meaning they didn't need to comply with the GPL.

To quote Inara Pey

Quote

As it stands, OnLive, in something of a departure from their normal pricing models, are initially presenting the service on a pay-as-you-go offering starting at $3.00 for an hour in SL (with an initial 20-minute free trial period for new sign-ups), through $8.00 for up to three hours access, to $25.00 for up to ten hours. This is being seen as prohibitively expensive for using Second Life

Source

 

 

4 hours ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

Example if you wear something from your inventory, you send the wear command to the server which then handles everything probably in the same datacenter and sends it back to you, instead of all the back and forth we currently have.

The region servers and asset / texture servers are not in the same datacenter.

[Kitt Whipple]

On 10/22/2021 at 8:36 PM, Chris Nova said:

Good. They should have never started it. The app also looked like something you could create on your own using a free mobile app creator website. Horrible, horrible. HORRIBLE.

Plus, there truly IS such a thing as just plain being too connected.

[Coffee Pancake]

6 minutes ago, Kitten5ylph said:

Plus, there truly IS such a thing as just plain being too connected.

That's an us problem though, not an LL one. Their job is to enable connectivity.

[QwiQ]

I'm really interested to see what the new announcement is. 

Just a few thoughts, naïve as they probably are, but here goes:

• Mobile/Desktop use is currently 54% (mobile) vs 43% (desktop) with mobile use continuing to take share away from desktop across all the more potentially lucrative markets. If LL wants to attract a new user demographic, then catering to mobile and/or VR with a modern 3D engine is probably a good way to go.
   
• It is viable (I believe) to switch to a Unity based engine which then gives the option to cater to various rendering APIs including OpenGL and Vulkan. This would make it much easier to target a whole raft of modern form factors (mobile/VR/Consoles).
   
• Admittedly, given the gross tonnage of fragile legacy code, porting existing sims/continents to the new infrastructure would be a nightmare,
  
  But what about providing new Unity compatible server side resources initially to mobile users only but then providing Unity as an option (via auto region detection or manual selection) within the standard desktop viewers as well. Thus allowing a gradual evolution and migration from current OpenGL regions to new Unity regions on a gradual basis.
   
• Interoperability between "Legacy" regions and Unity regions could be maintained to a degree in the form of authentication and communication protocols. It would be up to creators to decide which platform they target. They can stick with just targeting the current infrastructure, just the mobile side of things, or both - all depending on their personal opinion of the opportunities available. Obviously current investment and sales would be protected to an extent.

I'm not sure if I'm right, but I thought mobile users were going to access their own mobile only regions anyway. This way introducing Unity based regions would allow a gradual transition to the new engine one sim at a time but without the risk of a big bang approach.

If the demand isn't there for the transition on the desktop then fine, if it is then the technology transition will be demand led.

For SL this would provide a controlled and demand led framework for Evolution rather than Revolution?

Is this a potentially realistic approach and a possible reasoning behind the new direction or am I talking complete rubbish?

Edited November 18, 2021 by QwiQ

[Coffee Pancake]

27 minutes ago, QwiQ said:

If LL wants to attract a new user demographic, then catering to mobile and/or VR with a modern 3D engine is probably a good way to go.

Game engines operate in fundamentally different ways to SL. The SL viewer has been open source for many years now and there are zero projects to  port SL to unity or unreal or anything else (there are even fully FOSS license compatible engines like GODOT). That alone should be pretty informative.

The vast majority of what the SL viewer needs to do each and every frame happens way before it gets to the render engine, sure you could probably squeeze it in, but it's going to be a performance disaster.

Game engines are top fuel drag racers, they are king for very specific workloads and very specific conditions.

27 minutes ago, QwiQ said:

It is viable (I believe) to switch to a Unity based engine which then gives the option to cater to various rendering APIs including OpenGL and Vulkan. This would make it much easier to target a whole raft of modern form factors (mobile/VR/Consoles).

Only superficially. SL renders things using your GPU, game engines do too .... 

Or in other words - Tell me you haven't read the source code without telling me you haven't read the source code.

27 minutes ago, QwiQ said:

Admittedly, given the gross tonnage of fragile legacy code, porting existing sims/continents to the new infrastructure would be a nightmare,

It's not a content issue, it's a dynamics issue.

Meshes are just meshes, prims can be rendered as meshes, textures are just textures.

Everything else breaks the drag racers back.

27 minutes ago, QwiQ said:

Is this a potentially realistic approach and a possible reasoning behind the new direction or am I talking complete rubbish?

It's based on a very common assumption missing how all the deep magic works.

Games are built around a lot of fundamental assumptions that SL just breaks, constantly, every single frame, for fun.

If they taught game design and used SL as an example, it would be as an example of literally every single thing you should never do with a game engine. They don't make games like SL, on purpose. This alone goes a long way to explaining why there is literally nothing else like SL.

At it's core SL isn't a game, or even a render engine. It's a massive data management system where everything can change from one frame to the next.

If SL were a vehicle, it would be garbage truck and every pickup is a new frame to render. Take a drag racer to that party and the engine has stalled by the second frame and there isn't anywhere to put all the new stuff being tossed on from the curb.

 

 

 

[QwiQ]

Hi Coffee,

Thank you so much for responding to my post on this.

My view or suggestion was somewhat guided by the following LL job advert which placed lots of emphasis on mobile technologies and Unity specifically (minimum requirement 7 to 10 years).

What do you reckon this person will be working on (I'm guessing more Tilia focussed)?

Senior Software Engineer, SDK

Primary Functions

As a Senior Software Engineer, SDK, you’ll spearhead our efforts to build SDKs for our REST based services and play a pivotal role in pioneering the financial rails that underpin real economies and power video game and metaverse worlds. You will be a leader and innovator, guiding the team on technical design, leveraging best practices and helping to solve some of the most challenging technical problems on the team. 

Our SDKs will be open source and you’ll have the opportunity to develop and release SDKs, develop code and tools for other developers, assist developers in working through integration challenges, write documentation, and apply your keen design eye. This role will be as much a technical evangelist and open source coordinator as it will be a developer, supporting Unity and other game and mobile platforms, and frameworks such as iOS/Swift, Android, and Flutter.

Experience

• 7 - 10 years of experience working in Unity Development technologies.
• Demonstrated experience with iOS or Android applications.
• Experience with designing client side language SDKs with interest in learning multiple languages (Python, Java, Go)
• Experience with writing high-quality, well-architected and well-documented code.

Edited November 18, 2021 by QwiQ

[Coffee Pancake]

That does imply the development of SDKs for Tilia services that can be incorporated into game engine based projects, which would be a sensible move.

 

[Sprout Evergarden]

good, people don't need another reason to be on there phones and not watching the road. 

[QwiQ]

19 hours ago, Atosuria Daviau said:

good, people don't need another reason to be on there phones and not watching the road. 

No need to worry Atosuria, given the current real number of active SL users, you're more likely to bump into a sentient skeleton 🙂

[emmiedee]

IMO, the problem is that we are talking about ONE client rather than a suite of client apps.

I want one app for doing my wardrobe, NO CHAT, NO ONE KNOWS I'M ONLINE, so I can get dressed to go out later, when I get home, while I am in a meeting.

I want one app with JUST CHAT, so I can figure out with WHOM I'm going out, when I get home.

I don't want them to be the same app, and there is no reason they need to be.

[Velk Kerang]

Ya know I was doing some research on this. I didn't even know this was a thing until recently when my phone provider forced me off my old flip phone to one of them new fangled pocket puters. lol However after a few weeks and peeking under the hood of an Android OS confirming it is indeed based off of a Linux system I have come to a few conclusions that actually bring me to something I've said about SL running on low end PC's from day one.

First if amuses me they'd even need mobile regions in the first place. Second Life is an mmo. The Viewer is the client that renders all the visuals and the grid is the server that hosts all our data. Just like any other mmo. Played around with OSG and peeked under the hood a long time ago so I know what I am talking about. It is not really that hard and complicated if the person has the technical know how to create a viewer that renders the world in lower resolution textures.

I mean that's half the problem. People keep beating a dead horse trying to render PC size resolution textures on devices not designed for it. Take Ark for example. That game is by far superior in visuals compared to Second Life and yet we have a mobile version of it as well too that runs very smoothly I might add. Why? Because you're not running PC sized textures designed for high end video cards on a mobile phone. Duh. lol🤪

So there is never going to be a mobile viewer worth a crap until that issue is addressed. The world needs to render in a viewer that converts to or renders in low resolution textures. Period. End of story. That's the only way that works.

Personal recommendation for anyone willing to tackle it. The source code for the Singularity Viewer would be ideal for this. It operates and renders the world the way old school viewers did. For a Linux based system it is by far superior in performance compared to any other viewer out there even including Firestorm. It can operate purely in opengl which is what you need and unlike every other viewer it utilizes true full screen and not window mode full screen which is complete crap in terms of performance.

Anyway that's my two cents. I'm sure someone will argue it, but that's pretty much the reality of it. Take care and be safe everyone.😎

[bigmoe Whitfield]

On 1/22/2022 at 6:26 AM, emmiedee said:

IMO, the problem is that we are talking about ONE client rather than a suite of client apps.

I want one app for doing my wardrobe, NO CHAT, NO ONE KNOWS I'M ONLINE, so I can get dressed to go out later, when I get home, while I am in a meeting.

I want one app with JUST CHAT, so I can figure out with WHOM I'm going out, when I get home.

I don't want them to be the same app, and there is no reason they need to be.

IMO, the problem is that we are talking about ONE client rather than a suite of client apps.

Not ever going to happen.

 

I want one app for doing my wardrobe, NO CHAT, NO ONE KNOWS I'M ONLINE, so I can get dressed to go out later, when I get home, while I am in a meeting.

SL is not coded to do such and would require to much lifting on the server side to handle what you are suggestion, ALSO,  if you are online, you ARE online there is not way of getting around that bit.

I want one app with JUST CHAT, so I can figure out with WHOM I'm going out, when I get home.

We used to have a beta program many moons ago called SLim, it never took off, but it did work as a chat and im app. (not anything for a phone, this is before smart phonesish)

I don't want them to be the same app, and there is no reason they need to be.

Yeah if I was the developer, it would be only one app,  plus you seem to have all the storage space, when lots of people do not,  have you ever taken the moment to actually read the forums and see what people are physically running computer wise,  it's not pretty,  and people like me are using phones that are 8 to 16gb in storage capacity, why might you ask, it's called being BROKE.

 

[Coffee Pancake]

On 4/17/2022 at 5:44 AM, Velk Kerang said:

Personal recommendation for anyone willing to tackle it. The source code for the Singularity Viewer would be ideal for this. It operates and renders the world the way old school viewers did.

Hi, third party viewer developer here.

All desktop viewers, regardless of how they look, are based for the most part on the same, most recent code from Linden Lab. If they weren't, they wouldn't even be capable of logging in. Singularity, for all it's likeness to the old viewers of days gone by, is a fully featured fully modern client.

The CPU's, feeble GPU and tiny amounts of operating memory present in mobile devices make this a complete non starter. Especially on Android devices, the bulk of which are built to a very low cost. Feel free to look your new device up on https://www.gsmarena.com/

Mobile devices are not designed to run full bore applications for all but the briefest periods, they are simply not designed around the loads a full fat desktop SL client can present and are severely lacking in almost every comparable area ... and that's ignoring the UI, usability and accessibility aspects of using a desktop client on a tiny phone screen.

The closest you can possibly get is a flagship phone or current Apple device, but even then. You can't put a device designed to sip power from a tiny battery next to a machine that can pull hundreds of watts from the wall, for extended periods, where half it's mass and overall designed is explicitly concerned with heat dissipation.

Apple even go as a far as to state "power usage" as reason to deny an app getting into their store as it will dramatically shorten a devices service life.

There have been android viewers with 3D such as lumiya, but even then it was designed as a text client first. With the 3D on it would drain the battery in my flagship Samsung phone in under an hour, get too hot to hold, throttle the CPU & GPU to save itself from letting the magic smoke out and then hard crash. lumiya is no longer available from reputable sources, so I would strongly advise you don't bypass all the security present on your device by sideloading it and handing over your SL login credentials.

There have been multiple attempts to run SL "in the cloud" and then stream that to you mobile device, you can even try it yourself with steam in home streaming. It's a bad experience.

On 4/17/2022 at 5:44 AM, Velk Kerang said:

Take Ark for example. That game is by far superior in visuals compared to Second Life and yet we have a mobile version of it as well too that runs very smoothly I might add. Why? Because you're not running PC sized textures designed for high end video cards on a mobile phone. Duh. lol🤪

That sadly has nothing to do with it. SL textures are easy to blame as you have to wait for them to load and decode, it's a massive red herring.

Games are designed entirely differently to Second Life. The only common point is that both games and SL will render things in 3D, how they get to that 3D endpoint couldn't be further apart, the difference is what makes SL.

The version of ARK on your phone is not the same as the version that runs on your PC or dedicated games console.

On 4/17/2022 at 5:44 AM, Velk Kerang said:

Anyway that's my two cents. I'm sure someone will argue it, but that's pretty much the reality of it. Take care and be safe everyone.😎

It's really not and fundamentally misunderstands how any of this works.

If it was even half that simple, someone would have just done it in the last 16 years, even if just for the lulz.

Edited April 19, 2022 by Coffee Pancake

[Velk Kerang]

8 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Hi, third party viewer developer here.

All desktop viewers, regardless of how they look, are based for the most part on the same, most recent code from Linden Lab. If they weren't, they wouldn't even be capable of logging in. Singularity, for all it's likeness to the old viewers of days gone by, is a fully featured fully modern client.

The CPU's, feeble GPU and tiny amounts of operating memory present in mobile devices make this a complete non starter. Especially on Android devices, the bulk of which are built to a very low cost. Feel free to look your new device up on https://www.gsmarena.com/

Mobile devices are not designed to run full bore applications for all but the briefest periods, they are simply not designed around the loads a full fat desktop SL client can present and are severely lacking in almost every comparable area ... and that's ignoring the UI, usability and accessibility aspects of using a desktop client on a tiny phone screen.

The closest you can possibly get is a flagship phone or current Apple device, but even then. You can't put a device designed to sip power from a tiny battery next to a machine that can pull hundreds of watts from the wall, for extended periods, where half it's mass and overall designed is explicitly concerned with heat dissipation.

Apple even go as a far as to state "power usage" as reason to deny an app getting into their store as it will dramatically shorten a devices service life.

There have been android viewers with 3D such as lumiya, but even then it was designed as a text client first. With the 3D on it would drain the battery in my flagship Samsung phone in under an hour, get too hot to hold, throttle the CPU & GPU to save itself from letting the magic smoke out and then hard crash. lumiya is no longer available from reputable sources, so I would strongly advise you don't bypass all the security present on your device by sideloading it and handing over your SL login credentials.

There have been multiple attempts to run SL "in the cloud" and then stream that to you mobile device, you can even try it yourself with steam in home streaming. It's a bad experience.

First. What viewer? If you don't mind me asking. Curious about your skill level since you obviously seem to question mine.

Second. You wouldn't be the first viewer developer I've spoken to over the years and from what I've been lead to believe from each one is that there is a massive difference in how each viewer is coded. So while true they are based on LL code as far as graphical viewers are concerned they are absolutely not all the same. Not everyone carbon copies viewer features from one to the next just like that.

And Singularity is absolutely not like any other viewer. I'm not even arguing that. I stand by what I said on that viewer.

Also if that were the case in terms of being allowed to log in then text based viewers would not exist. Either way that is neither here nor there. Really has nothing to do with my point.

Thirdly. You pretty much validated exactly what I said in regards to beating a dead horse. You essentially said the same thing in a different way. So I don't really disagree with you because you basically made my exact same point. So thank you. lol👍

 

8 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

That sadly has nothing to do with it. SL textures are easy to blame as you have to wait for them to load and decode, it's a massive red herring.

Games are designed entirely differently to Second Life. The only common point is that both games and SL will render things in 3D, how they get to that 3D endpoint couldn't be further apart, the difference is what makes SL.

The version of ARK on your phone is not the same as the version that runs on your PC or dedicated games console.

I disagree. While I am not a Second Life viewer developer I am someone who has created and worked on many mod projects in the past in several various gaming communities over the last 25 years in my spare time off and on. So I know a thing or two about a thing or two. lol So challenge accepted.

I'll submit two examples validating my point. First we'll work from the ground up. Take Star Wars Galaxies Legends. Pretty old mmo right? Can run on a potato PC by today's standards. However if you pop one of the higher end texture mods over all of the entire game those system requirements sky rocket right on up.

Now let's work from the sky down. Take Elden Ring for example. Pretty high end game right? Brand new in fact. Minimum on the video card alone is 4 gigs, recommended 8 gigs. Know why? Texture resolutions. I could easily scale those same graphics down and reduce the games size and make it run on a potato machine with 1 gig video card.

Your comment about Ark Mobile again has validated my point. Of course it runs. The textures were designed for it to.

The PC version of Ark. It's sort of a no brainer it obviously would not which is exactly what I originally stated in the first place.

So it's pretty obvious they are not going to be the same. Which is again leading right back to my original point.👍

 

8 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

It's really not and fundamentally misunderstands how any of this works.

If it was even half that simple, someone would have just done it in the last 16 years, even if just for the lulz.

I understand more then you think. Maybe I am reading you wrong, but I get the sense you're trying to downgrade my intelligence level rather then offering a feasible explanation as to why something can't be coded to be done in a Second Life viewer. If that's the case you might want to pull that shirt with someone who actually hasn't contributed to the creation of mods packs that re-scaled entire games from the ground up.

As for why someone hasn't done it in the last 16 years. You tell me. You're a developer you said. Why haven't YOU done it? Fair question right? You say the 3D end point is different. Let's start there. How so? The viewer controls how the world is rendered. Explain to me how it can't control that rendering process to fit a much smaller scale for lower end devices. I am curious to why when several other platforms that render via a browser out here can, but yet Second Life is some how unable to.

I mean outright gave you and everyone else the fix. I said it because I've never once in all the years on this platform seen anyone else say it. People are to busy trying to get it to render on their phone like they can their computers. That's always seemed to be the focus. Not ever gonna happen. We obviously both agree on that even.

I feel like you call yourself trying to tear me down and yet in all your reasons you gave you pretty much validated every single solitary word I said as to why it won't happen. However you didn't explain why it can't. You were to busy trying to call BS on what I said in which you are actually dead wrong about. Backed it up with examples even. One of which you can currently test out and see for yourself if you feel so inclined to do so. So I showed you'd mine. Now show me yours.😎

Edited April 19, 2022 by Velk Kerang
Corrections.

[Coffee Pancake]

5 hours ago, Velk Kerang said:

First. What viewer? If you don't mind me asking. Curious about your skill level since you obviously seem to question mine.

I work on Catznip with Kitty. We don't import feature code from other viewers, everything is a unique work that we have worked on together, every viewer even the official one has our work in it. We've been doing this for over 10 years.

 

5 hours ago, Velk Kerang said:

I've been lead to believe from each one is that there is a massive difference in how each viewer is coded.

Every viewer must operate with the systems LL have in place and stay up to date with their changes, and we are all bound by the not only the data that LL exposes, but how and when they expose it for their own viewer. This acts as a huge constraint on how far into the deep magic we can practically go as the viewer is dumb like a rock. We can't get creative with data we don't have.

The bulk of the code under the hood is at least functionally the same (and likely to be 99% identical to Linden). UI does make up a significant portion of the code base and tends to be where TPV developers focus.

 

5 hours ago, Velk Kerang said:

I disagree. While I am not a Second Life viewer developer I am someone who has created and worked on many mod projects in the past in several various gaming communities over the last 25 years in my spare time off and on. So I know a thing or two about a thing or two. lol So challenge accepted.

Modding games and working on SL viewers are entirely different skills.

 

5 hours ago, Velk Kerang said:

 Take Star Wars Galaxies Legends. Pretty old mmo right? Can run on a potato PC by today's standards. However if you pop one of the higher end texture mods over all of the entire game those system requirements sky rocket right on up.

In large part because the core engine was explicitly designed around the lower resolution assets.

Games are Formula1 race cars, everything is designed specifically towards a singular end. The engine and the context it operates in and the hardware it runs on are tightly balanced and optimized in unison. So while you could mod a F1 car to run with monster truck tires, it's not going to perform like a actual monster truck.

The SL viewer is more like a dump truck, built to handle a staggering amount of random stuff people put out for it to pick up.

 

5 hours ago, Velk Kerang said:

Maybe I am reading you wrong, but I get the sense you're trying to downgrade my intelligence level rather then offering a feasible explanation as to why something can't be coded to be done in a Second Life viewer. If that's the case you might want to pull that shirt with someone who actually hasn't contributed to the creation of mods packs that re-scaled entire games from the ground up.

It's nothing personal. This topic or variations on it have been brought up thousands of times over the years.

 

5 hours ago, Velk Kerang said:

Explain to me how it can't control that rendering process to fit a much smaller scale for lower end devices. I am curious to why when several other platforms that render via a browser out here can, but yet Second Life is some how unable to.

Games are entirely focused around getting the game rendered and maintain strict performance goals. The rendering end goal is dominant and everything else is constrained by that focus, right down to the logistics behind managing the raw data and assets. Games - Here's all your assets - Go go go go gogoooo !!

SL is focused on data management. The bulk of the work load is processing assets as the server pops them into existence, resolving avatars and animations and so on. Rendering is just something that happens after all that. SL - here's a few hundred breadcrumbs, that explode into more breadcrumbs. Busy with that? Here's a hundred more. Miss something and stuff breaks.

The rub .. that data management can't be fundamentally changed or shortcut because the SL servers dictate, and off the back of that the SL client can generate a significant amount of http traffic (all of which needs subsequent extremely specific processing) - we used to overwhelm the cheap home routers shipped by ISPs.

You want that running single threaded on a cell phone, yeah, good luck.

Games are easy .. simplify the assets, get more speed.

SL .. not so much. The only way you're getting significantly more speed is by reducing the overall load by dropping draw distance.

 

Specifically concerning textures, You can easily limit max texture resolution in the viewer .. you know what happens? You shorten the total time spent fetching and decoding. But the bulk of the work still has to happen and doesn't go away. Even if you sit on your hands and let it do all the work, the final frame rate after it's all done .. barely improves.

 

BUTT 🍑 ... it gets worse, because of course it does.

Sequentially resolving avatar animations and applying that individually for each and every worn rigged object (attachments can be many objects) consumes a huge amount of CPU and scales linearly.

 

Guess what isn't happening while the viewer is doing this processing ? Rendering.

5 hours ago, Velk Kerang said:

I mean outright gave you and everyone else the fix.

No, you jumped to the same suggestions we have been handed hundred of times based on the same fundamentally wrong assumptions. 

SL looks like a game, it can run like a game, game optimizations must apply.

SL content takes ages to rez, therefore the content must be bad, fix the content and fix SL.

SL rendering looks simplistic, it must be simplistic, my phone can do better.

 

That all said ... 

The viewer and all the required dependencies are open source (builds without havok), the development tools are free, all you have to lose is time .. and perhaps some hair. 

The reason you haven't see any viewer devs doing this is all the years we have had the source isn't a lack of desire for a mobile client or laziness. Same reason there haven't been any big attempts to get SL to run on a "real" game engine. It's showing to a F1 meet with a dump truck.

If it was even remotely viable, someone would have done it just for the fun of it .. that is why we do third party viewer development in the first place.

Edited April 19, 2022 by Coffee Pancake
typos

[Madelaine McMasters]

15 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

SL textures are easy to blame as you have to wait for them to load and decode, it's a massive red herring.

Texture size is absolutely a red herring. Firestorm has two graphics settings that impact texture loading.

Preferences -> Graphics -> Rendering

• Restrict maximum texture resolution to 512px (64bit only; requires Restart)
• Max Texture quality level: Normal, Mid, Lo, and No

Here's my skybox at full, normal resolution and 59.9fps...

A moment later, at 512px and lowest texture quality and 59.5fps...

Reducing texture size to awfulness does approximately nothing to frame rate, as I'd expect. The size of a texture in the cache does not affect the speed with which a surface can be textured. I believe textures are downloaded progressively, using JPEG2000. The various progressions then populate mip-maps. The texture mapping engine then selects the best fit map and strides it as needed to fill the surface.

Because SL content is user created, there's no high level coordination to promote reuse of textures across assets. When I joined SL, my only other 3D game experience was some XBox game my emergency backup kid showed me. I noticed that the tread pattern on the car he was driving was the same as the brick homes, but black. There were only a few leaf shapes for all the foliage in view, resulting in dandelion trees and sunflowers with aspen petals.

There's no way to shove SL's bazillion texture worms back in the box, but there are bigger fish to fry, like single-threadedness, OpenGL, and all the data management issues you described.

 

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

2 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

59.9fps

Umm, I may be completely wrong here but are you sure your framerate isn't locked to your monitor refresh rate, it seems a little strange that you're getting exactly 59.9fps in all cases, does it ever go any higher?

[Madelaine McMasters]

12 minutes ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

Umm, I may be completely wrong here but are you sure your framerate isn't locked to your monitor refresh rate, it seems a little strange that you're getting exactly 59.9fps in all cases, does it ever go any higher?

Yep, that's full screen. If I squish it down, it rises to over 130.

ETA:

Edited April 19, 2022 by Madelaine McMasters

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

3 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Yep, that's full screen. If I squish it down, it rises to over 130.

It may still be that you're locked to your monitor refresh rate.  Apparently it's not uncommon when running in full screen and there are several posts on reddit and nvidia forums about the issue (some are quite old but then so is SL).

144hz - Most Games Capped at 60 FPS in Fullscreen

I only skimmed through the thread but there do seem to be some suggested fixes that have allowed people to achieve higher frame rates when running full screen.