Animesh trees vanishing and flickering

[Rick Nightingale]

1 hour ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

Did you check your non-impostor value in Prefs > Graphics as animats suggested?

Yes, as stated above it's at 30. Was at 20 before I started troubleshooting this issue. Looking around with Render Metadata:Collision Skeletons shows I'm the only one in the region, with animesh, and a total of six objects with skeletons in the entire region right now, including myself. Four of them are my testing trees and one animesh 'pet'.

I don't think it's anything to do with LOD as such, not directly, although the viewer shows very strange figures for the trees when they are invisible as stated above which might be informative to someone.

I'm still waiting for the trees to vanish again to try out the RenderMaxNodeSize setting (inbetween working). I'm well aware we're just debugging the issue - if we can figure out exactly what causes it, there might be a 'fix' that doesn't make the viewer explode.

Thanks, btw, to everyone for joining the thread

Edited December 19, 2021 by Rick Daylight

[NiranV Dean]

i've recently had a lot of these reports from my users, roughly a week or two it started cropping up.

A lot of people report certain animeshes (specifically pets) and pose stands to vanish, sometimes entire places. Despite all kinds of things we tried and even using their settings i could not reproduce the issue nor diagnose whats happening. Idk why its happening all of the sudden but all of these cases seem to be about the sane type of objects and most of them have in common that they swapped from Firestorm to my Viewer beforehand. Idk what to think of this nor what to make of this but i know SL had a lot if issues recently and there was also the Amazon server outages. I'll keep investigating and the only thing i can still think of is straight up cache corruption, but cache clear did not help either...

[Henri Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, Rick Daylight said:

I'm still waiting for the trees to vanish again to try out the RenderMaxNodeSize setting (inbetween working). I'm well aware we're just debugging the issue - if we can figure out exactly what causes it, there might be a 'fix' that doesn't make the viewer explode.

If it is indeed a RenderMaxNodeSize issue, you may try and provoke it by  changing its default value for something smaller (divide it by two or four): if the trees vanish, you got the most likely diagnosis. Another (more random) way to provoke it, is to place several such trees close together (in the hope the viewer will add them to the same render group which will then overshoot RenderMaxNodeSize and will get evicted from the render pipeline).

[Rick Nightingale]

@Henri BeauchampI tried setting it to 16384 (from 65536). Made no difference; the trees are still persistently not vanishing now we're testing them. I relogged too with the lower setting, in case that was needed.

Typical isn't it? The trees have been popping in and out constantly for three days, until I started this. I've rezzed some more... let's push it!

[Henri Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, Rick Daylight said:

@Henri BeauchampI tried setting it to 16384 (from 65536). Made no difference; the trees are still persistently not vanishing now we're testing them. I relogged too with the lower setting, in case that was needed.

Typical isn't it? The trees have been popping in and out constantly for three days, until I started this. I've rezzed some more... let's push it!

It might be a cache and/or network issue, then: either the cache for that mesh got somehow corrupted or the mesh data failed to download completely (and the corrupted cached asset entry got since erased)... Let's see if this issue reappears, and if it does, do save your viewer log for closer examination !

Edited December 19, 2021 by Henri Beauchamp

[Rick Nightingale]

I don't think it's cache corruption, because I reproduced it easily on a clean install of the Linden viewer. I did check the stats panel during it happening and there was no packet loss or any other indications of network problems (not that there couldn't be something still).

I'll save the log as soon as it happens again (been busy today, not had chance to play really).

[Qie Niangao]

[ Sorry I have nothing useful to add. Just cheering from the sidelines and enjoying a good chase. Some Linden might be invited, if somebody knows who to summon.]

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

42 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Some Linden might be invited, if somebody knows who to summon.]

Just make sure they're not prone to flicker-induced-seizures.

To be momentarily serious, has this been checked to see if it shows up in the Performance Improvements viewer? Since they are looking into quite a few rendering issues this might be of interest to them.

Edited December 19, 2021 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[Rick Nightingale]

@Henri BeauchampIncreasing the RenderMaxNodeSize setting did nothing. I went up to 512000, down to 8192. The tree which finally had disappeared today did not appear, and the ones still visible stayed visible. I have four sets rezzed (previous to testing it was two). One set is still invisible after 15 minutes of camming around, watching its shadow, wailing* around it etc. The other three remain visible.

I saved the log from a few minutes after doing the tests. It's 2.8MB; I had been logged on for a while, moved about a bit and uploaded some mesh beforehand. If it's of use to anyone I can send it. Don't know what I would be looking for myself (I note that the name of the tree can't be found in the log).

Is there any confidential info in those logs that needs redacting? (I don't care you seeing where I went or anything like that, I just mean passwords or the like).

Any other tests or suggestions welcome.

*That was meant to say walking, but wailing is just as appropriate.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Rick Daylight

[Henri Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, Rick Daylight said:

@Henri BeauchampIncreasing the RenderMaxNodeSize setting did nothing. I went up to 512000, down to 8192. The tree which finally had disappeared today did not appear, and the ones still visible stayed visible. I have four sets rezzed (previous to testing it was two). One set is still invisible after 15 minutes of camming around, watching its shadow, wailing* around it etc. The other three remain visible.

This seems to exclude the render node size, the random invisibility due to race conditions (solved by a selection/right click: I assume you did it), and the mesh data corruption (if at least another identical mesh tree shows up, it means the mesh data was properly received)...

Pretty puzzling.

Quote

I saved the log from a few minutes after doing the tests. It's 2.8MB; I had been logged on for a while, moved about a bit and uploaded some mesh beforehand. If it's of use to anyone I can send it. Don't know what I would be looking for myself (I note that the name of the tree can't be found in the log).

The name won't appear, but the UUID could... Depending on how well the viewer log messages are designed (sadly, LL's viewer log messages are pretty minimal and ”anonymous”, often not even quoting the UUID of the affected asset in the warnings) or have been improved by the coders/maintainers of the viewer you are using, there could be relevant info in there... I suggest you attach the (zipped) log to a bug report for that viewer (in the JIRA/forum/whatever facility they provide for bug reports). Join as many details as you can (such as the UUID of the tree object not rezzing).

Quote

Is there any confidential info in those logs that needs redacting? (I don't care you seeing where I went or anything like that, I just mean passwords or the like).

There is no secret data in the viewer logs. You may however wish to redact out your computer account name/home directory (just use a text editor and its ”replace all” feature to replace the login/directory with whatever placeholder), or your computer IP address (should it get logged, which is normally not the case), especially if it's a fixed one.

I would also recommend trying out a couple other TPVs, so to see whether or not it happens with them.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Henri Beauchamp

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

I've been to see for myself, using Singularity 8419, SecondLife official viewer 556335, and SecondLife Performance Improvement viewer 565324. I saw no problems. All four clumps of five trees were there nice and steady, they vanished and came back all together when I moved back out of Draw distance and then forwards again.

All three viewers are set up to have a cache of 4096 in different locations. Because I had to download the latest LL viewer I gave it a fresh cache, the other two have got a fair bit in them, so that excludes a cache issue as far as I can see. I set my bandwidth to the OP's in case it was a slightly low setting but saw no problems.

However, I am not running such high graphics settings as they OP, just "High" on a slightly worn GT 640. I'm wondering if this is something to do with current NVidia drivers?

 

ETA

I did notice one odd thing:

I had walked around among the trees, then walked back away from them to the pond that I was using as my distance marker. I turned round and looked at the trees. All four clumps were there, but there was a slight jump as they seemed to change shape or outline together, as if they had just realised somebody was looking at them and it was time to start performing. I've not seen that before.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[Rick Nightingale]

48 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

..there was a slight jump as they seemed to change shape or outline together, as if they had just realised somebody was looking at them and it was time to start performing. I've not seen that before.

I've noticed that with them too. I assumed what you say is exactly what is happening... the viewer doesn't bother animating them until looked at (with an unfortunately long delay so it's noticeable). The crows circling my land do similar, although they are an old build of mine using simple kfm and texture animation and nothing to do with animesh.

Unfortunately, the problem with the trees is quite random. For a few days it happened frequently but for whatever reason, it's now much less frequent. I've not been there as much though. It took several hours last time until a set of trees vanished on maximising my viewer. I had left the camera pointing at them and minimised the viewer while I did something else.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Rick Daylight

[Coffee Pancake]

43 minutes ago, Rick Daylight said:

I've noticed that with them too. I assumed what you say is exactly what is happening... the viewer doesn't bother animating them until looked at (with an unfortunately long delay so it's noticeable).

Animating rigged mesh is expensive and computationally intensive, this is why avatars (typically made from a dozen overlapping meshes) incur such a huge performance hit.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

13 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Animating rigged mesh is expensive and computationally intensive, this is why avatars (typically made from a dozen overlapping meshes) incur such a hug

I guess the computations are done in the client PC? Does this mean that the animesh movements are going to be different for each person viewing the animesh, much like Omegas? Ie, not synched?

[Coffee Pancake]

7 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

I guess the computations are done in the client PC? Does this mean that the animesh movements are going to be different for each person viewing the animesh, much like Omegas? Ie, not synched?

Yup.

[Rick Nightingale]

@Profaitchikenz HaikuThank you for coming to take a look; shame the trees behaved.

Funny thing is that for the whole time I was there before having to leave you, there was a set of the trees I had forgotten about because they had vanished for me from the moment I logged on. You saw them - the set on the edge of the glasshouse I had just uploaded, between it and the sim edge. They just appeared now at log on, to my surprise cutting into the glasshouse. That explains why I was struggling to select parts of the glasshouse when I started to texture it, lol.

I'll try what you suggest about dropping my graphics settings. It's worth a shot.

Just to remind everyone... the creator of the trees has seen the issue as well, on their own land. I still think the fact that Firestorm shows the trees (when vanished) as having a tiny object radius is somehow significant. It's not just not drawing them; it reports on them wrongly (yet still draws their shadows).

The creator did give me a mod copy of the trees, but unticking Animesh makes its land impact jump to 350-ish. I don't have the free LI to have that out on my land for testing.

[Rick Nightingale]

This is still happening. I haven't used the trees for ages, but put some out a few days ago. This is with the latest FS viewer.

I did get a visit from a Linden investigating the issue - sorry, can't recall your name now - hope you see this.

This is odd - when I noticed one lot of two animesh trees had vanished today, I went into edit mode and clicked around where they should be until I got them. If I move them up and down, they vanish when I lower them and reappear when I raise them. Videos of this, and the trees just flicking in and out, especially if I cam around.

 

[Henri Beauchamp]

I went at your place, using the Cool VL Viewer (which got several workarounds for badly designed meshes).

When I turn all workarounds off and with a RenderVolumeLODFactor of 3 (max ”normal” value), I see the trees LOD degrading at a relatively short distance (30m or so), and vanishing at medium distance (60m or so), but not flickering.

With the workarounds on (placing the ”Mesh boost factor” slider at 2.0 in the graphics settings, meaning that for meshes the LOD factor is doubled), they stay visible up to 120m or so before degrading rapidly.

Whenever I force max LOD on them (right click on tree, then in the pie menu ”More>”, ”More>”, ”Rendering>”, ”Max LOD”) they stay visible even at a far distance (512m when zooming out with the camera and a draw distance of 512m, i.e. they vanish last and reappear first, when compared with other objects around them).

Conclusion: those trees are simply badly designed (only their best LOD displays properly).

As for mesh LODs during editing, you should not rely on them: there is a bug in the viewers renderer (all of them; I suspect a spatial partition issue) that causes the lowest LOD to be wrongly selected for some meshes (especially true with rigged meshes) during editing; some viewers got a workaround for it, forcing the highest LOD on edited meshes (FS and mine got it), but flickering may (and will likely) still happen...

[Qie Niangao]

From back in December:

On 12/20/2021 at 5:43 PM, Rick Daylight said:

[…]

Just to remind everyone... the creator of the trees has seen the issue as well, on their own land. I still think the fact that Firestorm shows the trees (when vanished) as having a tiny object radius is somehow significant. It's not just not drawing them; it reports on them wrongly (yet still draws their shadows).

The creator did give me a mod copy of the trees, but unticking Animesh makes its land impact jump to 350-ish. I don't have the free LI to have that out on my land for testing.

1. Even though you reported it before, seeing that first video with the shadow-drawing was pretty striking. Probably viewer devs see and and say "of course" but it's astonishing to me.
2. Do Animesh fans expect that 350-ish Land Impact number? I assume it's all Download weight, as More Info from the Build Tool would report. (I guess it's possible it could be Physics and that would offer the possibility of linking to a simple prim root and turning off physics on the mesh altogether, but that's surely nothing to do with what's going wrong here.)

It's been four years since Animesh went into beta, so I'm not sure @Vir Linden has any ongoing involvement, but maybe a new Jira is in order? Or maybe this one about disappearing animesh attachments* was closed prematurely back in 2019; as @NiranV Dean commented then:

Quote

After fixing this issue i had it happen again today, just like for everyone else, relogging or simply changing the SIM fixed it, no matter what i did (turning down the calculation and turning it back up didnt fix it either as suspected)

________________
*"When wearing certain animesh products and zooming in at certain angles the product vanishes. its still clickable in edit, it still casts a shadow, but the whole mesh object just vanishes. until i zoom or or lower the angle"

[Ardy Lay]

I remember when the system trees swayed in the wind.  That was removed supposedly to improve rendering performance.

[Henri Beauchamp]

33 minutes ago, Ardy Lay said:

I remember when the system trees swayed in the wind.  That was removed supposedly to improve rendering performance.

”Animate trees”, an option still available in the Cool VL Viewer (in ”Advanced” -> ”Rendering” menu), as well as Classic clouds, or Terrain map tiles, for example... All those lovely features LL abandoned without a *good* reason !

Edited April 16, 2022 by Henri Beauchamp

[Ardy Lay]

Another thing I miss...  Snowglobe had an extract from astronomical database that it used to generate the night sky.

[Rick Nightingale]

@Henri Beauchampare you sure you were looking at the Animesh trees? There are a lot of trees on my land; just two sets of animesh near the pond. I'm checking because the point of using those trees (for me) isn't that they are animesh (I don't even have their animesh animations active), but they have a very strong LOD behaviour. I can see them (when they don't 'vanish' which can happen at any distance) at 1st LOD model from one end of my sim to the other, at viewer LOD factor 3. See screenshot below for switch points and triangle count.

Note also that the behaviour seems completely random; the trees will be visible for days then suddenly they'll not be there (or at least one set wasn't - the other set was still visible). I made no changes to any viewer settings. If it was a straightforward issue that the trees were badly designed, would the problem not be more reliably reproduced? (You clearly know a lot more about the viewers than I do though, so I might be talking nonsense.)

@Qie Niangaothe trees have astonishing numbers in the More Info box when animesh is unticked; see below. They have a high triangle count in all the LOD models (which is why I like them... they are visible from a long distance). It's all download:

Edited April 17, 2022 by Rick Daylight

[Lucia Nightfire]

Under Preferences > Graphics, what is the value for "Max. # of non-impostor avatars"?

If you increase that value to Unlimited, does the issue still repro?

[Rick Nightingale]

@Lucia Nightfire it's 30 (was 20 before I started investigating this issue). The region is empty most of the time apart from me, and no other animesh present. I'll try setting unlimited and leave it on that for a while, but I'm guessing it won't make any difference. Might take a few days before I notice the trees vanishing (or not); they behave when I'm waiting for it to happen.