What is the verdict on the latest Firestorm release, performance floater and autotune?

[sandi Mexicola]

Just now, NanashiNyx said:

I just need a button to click to set a preset graphics level that's good for taking pictures, then drop back down to no reflections or shadows with a lower LoD to actually have a useable framerate.

That's built into FS.  I am sure someone knows where.    If I ever get online, and that information hasn't been provided here yet, I will check and make a post.

[KT Kingsley]

You can access graphics presets via the screen icon at the right of the top bar, at the bottom right of Preferences/Graphics/General and in the camera control window (Avatar menu, Ctrl+K). Note that Firestorm has a compact version of the camera controls available that doesn't have the presets buttons. Which version you get is determined by the "Use small camera window" setting in Preferences/User Interface/Interface Windows.

I don't think the LL viewer has the small camera window option, but the rest of the preset controls are available, presumably located in the equivalent menus and windows.

Edited March 24, 2022 by KT Kingsley

[Tarani Tempest]

32 minutes ago, sandi Mexicola said:

That's built into FS.  I am sure someone knows where.    If I ever get online, and that information hasn't been provided here yet, I will check and make a post.

Preferences, Graphics, General tab; you can save your graphics settings as presets.  There is a quick drop down at the top right of the viewer that will give you your saved presets to choose from

Edited March 24, 2022 by Tarani Tempest
lol I see is was answered just above too :)

[Rowan Amore]

48 minutes ago, NanashiNyx said:

There's a mode where you can crank up the settings for a photo, right?

 

If I turn the graphics up enough to get a good shot I am running at about 2 FPS, which is not okay to actually use SL, but I can deal with it for a few minutes while I'm lining up a picture and getting the lighting just right.

 

I just need a button to click to set a preset graphics level that's good for taking pictures, then drop back down to no reflections or shadows with a lower LoD to actually have a useable framerate.

You can make graphic presets and save them.  They are then available top right of the viewer.  I have one for shopping/crowds and 1 for pictures.  I also added a quick preference button to enable shadows.

[Anna Nova]

Okay, I looked and looked, but I gotta ask...

Is my system really capable of doing all this without ANY time at all?  And why is there all that overwriting scribble on top?

(Archlinux 5.16.16, Cinnamon 5.2.7, Ryzen 7 2700X, 32Gb, GTX1080tx)

[Extrude Ragu]

I found the floater pretty helpful. I was surprised that my HUD's alone account for 6% of my render time. I followed Beq's advice and ALT-SHIFT-H to hide my HUDS. Using the floater I also realized that the creator of my anime head had made a bunch of unnecessary glowing parts inside my eyes with a random texture that would never be seen. It also points out that my hair is the laggiest but I couldn't find any way to improve my hair.

In my sim, even with several people around the majority of render time was the scene. Guessing that's because we're in Kemono's which are low poly/low alpha slice compared to mainstream human bodies.

My personal wishlist:-

• As a sim owner who would like to do their best to optimize the sim, a scene tab showing render time of items currently visible in the scene.
• A toolbar button to toggle HUD visibility, to make hiding/showing HUD's more practical (I forget shortcuts + It's an awkward keyboard combo, would prefer to just click a button)

All in all however, it's a really insightful tool and I'm glad it's in the viewer.

 

[Beq Janus]

9 hours ago, NanashiNyx said:

I just need a button to click to set a preset graphics level that's good for taking pictures, then drop back down to no reflections or shadows with a lower LoD to actually have a useable framerate.

Nothing has changed in that regard. Set your settings, whether that is through general prefs / phototools or whatever. and save a preset. You can save and load presets form the perf floater so, you are at liberty to load "Photp settings OMG Slow" preset, take your shots then either click autotune or load "My normal settings" and move around again. 

[Anna Nova]

Alt-Shft-H is ticked, but greyed out for me, and all my HUDs are visible and working.  Once upon a time I probably did something, but I have forgotten what it is.  That's one of the huge issues with SL viewers, the HUGE number of interacting settings.

[Beq Janus]

4 minutes ago, Anna Nova said:

Alt-Shft-H is ticked, but greyed out for me, and all my HUDs are visible and working.  Once upon a time I probably did something, but I have forgotten what it is.  That's one of the huge issues with SL viewers, the HUGE number of interacting settings.

You may have an RLV restriction that is preventing you from hiding HUDs. That's the only reason I know of for the hide HUDs to be unavailable

[Beq Janus]

16 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

• I notice that the person using the floater is almost certain to be top of the list. The floater explains that this is because it takes into account the HUDs you're wearing, but then advises you to "use the Attachments tab" to see your impact as others would. But there IS no "Attachments tab" that I can see...
• Besides that, I would argue that it's not helpful to calculate impact for the user differently than for others around her. What I'm looking for is how I compare. I'm not likely to remove any of the HUDs I have on, because they are ones I use very frequently, so knowing I'm shooting myself in the FPS foot by having them there only makes me feel unhappy, and does not give any data likely to change my behavior.

The numbers are showing you the actual impact on your viewer FPS, it is not intended first and foremost as a comparison tool. Even with HUDs off your avatar will take more time there is just more overhead in the viewer when dealing with your avatar than the rest. As for keeping the HUDs on, as noted by other alt-shift-H is a great option. The other thing I use a lot is the favourite wearables. All the HUDs I use semi-frequently, got added to the favourites and when I need them they are just two clicks away.

16 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

The window is not re-sizeable, and is way too large to leave on screen all the time. A very clumsy tool.

As mentioned elsewhere, I worked on making it resizable but the UI would not play nice. It'll be revisited, though how I will approach that I do no know yet.

16 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

There needs to be more than one way to get at the tool, too. I didn't notice if a keyboard shortcut was assigned to it; it should have one. There should also be a menu link to it in Avatar > Avatar Health, and in Preferences > Graphics, and in the QuickPrefs button menu.

You can currently get to it from Wordl menu, and Advanced->performance tools. There is a tool bar button which yo can add to any of the tool bars. 

16 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

The AutoTune feature seems to tune the environment as well as avatars, even when "only avatars" is selected. I turned the feature on, and it turned off Shadows for me.

All shadows? Can you reproduce that if so please throw me a Jira? I think what you probably saw avatar shadows being removed, that is expected. The environment settings do not autotune shadows at all at present because that triggers are far more disruptive change in the viewer shaders, whereas the avatar shadow removal is less invasive.

17 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

As others have said, the units used could use some work. The Complexity figure, given as 2 digits, is inconsistent with Complexity as reported elsewhere in the viewer, and therefore difficult to relate to. I suggest using two or three digits and a K suffix, as in 81K. Microseconds of rendering time, shown to six significant figures, is also not as informative as it could be. I spend all my time mentally moving decimal points and converting to milliseconds, which is what the other performance tools in the viewer use.

The problem I struggled with is that the range of numbers is very large. On some systems a single avatar can take a many milliseconds, on another a few hundred microseconds. Using a units suffix like K might help. I am certainly open to ideas.

 

[Beq Janus]

1 hour ago, Anna Nova said:

Is my system really capable of doing all this without ANY time at all?  And why is there all that overwriting scribble on top?

Mostly cos silly Beq had a non-default UI scaling when she laid it out and realised just too late and the builds were already on their way to QA. Sorry.

In your screen it looks more cramped than ever which is likely a font thing on your setup. That will hopefully get fixed if I can make the UI behave and support resizing

As for the overhead of capturing that info, it is pretty low (lower than all the fast timers that have always been in the viewer) and most importantly almost all of the work is done off of the main rendering thread. 

[Extrude Ragu]

34 minutes ago, Beq Janus said:

As for the overhead of capturing that info, it is pretty low (lower than all the fast timers that have always been in the viewer) and most importantly almost all of the work is done off of the main rendering thread. 

Think she was referring to the fact that the render time for all of her attachments was zero in her screenshot

Actually just noticed this happen on my viewer, my friends render time are both showing zero

[Anna Nova]

1 hour ago, Beq Janus said:

You may have an RLV restriction that is preventing you from hiding HUDs. That's the only reason I know of for the hide HUDs to be unavailable

Still greyed, and ticked, even with RLV turned off.

This is mystifying me, but not germane to this discussion, so I will stfu.

EDIT: Actually it was RLV, but I didn't 'save' after unsetting RLV.  Doh!

Edited March 24, 2022 by Anna Nova
Stupidity.

[Beq Janus]

1 hour ago, Extrude Ragu said:

Think she was referring to the fact that the render time for all of her attachments was zero in her screenshot

Actually just noticed this happen on my viewer, my friends render time are both showing zero

aha! yes, that will hapopen if you have fps limited. I'm going to explore that a little more, but effectively at the moment (as the top right text (if you can read between the Beq derp layout) states, if you have an fps liimit or are tabbed out looking at other things, then I suspend collection. this is because I can't really rely on frame time that is mostly made up of deliberate sleeps. That said, the reality is the attachments and avatars still take the same time so I should probably be a little more accomodating and let those through and just keep the summary stats blanked/greyed or something.

 

[Extrude Ragu]

6 minutes ago, Beq Janus said:

aha! yes, that will hapopen if you have fps limited. I'm going to explore that a little more, but effectively at the moment (as the top right text (if you can read between the Beq derp layout) states, if you have an fps liimit or are tabbed out looking at other things, then I suspend collection. this is because I can't really rely on frame time that is mostly made up of deliberate sleeps. That said, the reality is the attachments and avatars still take the same time so I should probably be a little more accomodating and let those through and just keep the summary stats blanked/greyed or something.

 

Ah that would explain it, yes I did have FPS limit on.

[JeromFranzic]

20 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Dahlings! My own sense of public spirit knows no bounds, and I've resolved to do what I can to reduce my own ARC.

But the fascinator stays. One must make some concessions for style, no?

(The tacky black rectangle, on the other hand . . .  How very bourgeois the forums are!)

Kisses kisses! Mwah mwah!

*mwah*

Too true. I have managed to stay under 100k for some photos. I need to upgrade some of my hairdos, some of them are killing me in the complexity department. Not a huge deal with small groups, but problematic when I'm in the mood to pixel mosh at a metal club.

[Coffee Pancake]

2 hours ago, Anna Nova said:

Still greyed, and ticked, even with RLV turned off.

This is mystifying me, but not germane to this discussion, so I will stfu.

EDIT: Actually it was RLV, but I didn't 'save' after unsetting RLV.  Doh!

RLVa disables hiding HUDS (ALT+SHIFT+H) and Wireframe mode if you have any locked HUD attachments.

Typically locked HUD attachments include relays, CTS Wardrobe, and blindfolds (hence the reason we do this).

You can leave RLVa enabled and have ALT+SHIFT+H & Wireframe work so long as none of your HUDS are locked on!

 

[Nalates Urriah]

16 hours ago, NanashiNyx said:

There's a mode where you can crank up the settings for a photo, right?

 

If I turn the graphics up enough to get a good shot I am running at about 2 FPS, which is not okay to actually use SL, but I can deal with it for a few minutes while I'm lining up a picture and getting the lighting just right.

 

I just need a button to click to set a preset graphics level that's good for taking pictures, then drop back down to no reflections or shadows with a lower LoD to actually have a useable framerate.

Many of us do this graphics settings change when taking pictures. Often an FPS of 2 or 3 doesn't matter. I think enough people have explained how to do Graphics Presets. I use them several times a day. Way handy. Great for the panoramas and shopping.

@Rowan Amore 400k!!! I was like...

I was thinking she must be using Black Dragon...

But how you get a lower ACI than me and look that good is amazing. Above I am at about 90 ACI.

I find it interesting that my Slink body is such a low μs time.

The difference in μs of render time and ARC between my body and head is an indication of the complexity of figuring out what has a heavy render versus a lighter render.

The Slink body includes hands and feet. I am surprised it is so much less than other bodies. But the nails are way heavy considering how small they are. And that is where things get complex. With the use of LOD camera distance can make a huge difference and whether the designer made models for all the LOD levels.

[Anna Nova]

4 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

RLVa disables hiding HUDS (ALT+SHIFT+H) and Wireframe mode if you have any locked HUD attachments.

Typically locked HUD attachments include relays, CTS Wardrobe, and blindfolds (hence the reason we do this).

You can leave RLVa enabled and have ALT+SHIFT+H & Wireframe work so long as none of your HUDS are locked on!

 

Vital info, thanks very much @Coffee Pancake

And I confirm my zero times were that long forgotten 'Limit Framerate' like @Extrude Ragu

This has been a fascinating thread.  I love the deep tech stuff! (despite being hopeless).  It's always good to get the real @Beq Janusinto the discussion.

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, Nalates Urriah said:

Many of us do this graphics settings change when taking pictures. Often an FPS of 2 or 3 doesn't matter. I think enough people have explained how to do Graphics Presets. I use them several times a day. Way handy. Great for the panoramas and shopping.

@Rowan Amore 400k!!! I was like...

I was thinking she must be using Black Dragon...

But how you get a lower ACI than me and look that good is amazing. Above I am at about 90 ACI.

I find it interesting that my Slink body is such a low μs time.

The difference in μs of render time and ARC between my body and head is an indication of the complexity of figuring out what has a heavy render versus a lighter render.

The Slink body includes hands and feet. I am surprised it is so much less than other bodies. But the nails are way heavy considering how small they are. And that is where things get complex. With the use of LOD camera distance can make a huge difference and whether the designer made models for all the LOD levels.

I stopped wearing add on nails and just use maitreya ones.  Just an extra thing added on that I felt was unnecessary.  I'd rather use it somewhere else, I guess.  In the previous pic, I'm wearing add on ears from Swallow.  With earrings that are usually intricate, I often skip a necklace now.   And it ALL depends on what hair I might want to wear.  Hairbases with a small attached bun are far.less than actual hair so I can add another accessory.  

 

[Beq Janus]

2 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

The difference in μs of render time and ARC between my body and head is an indication of the complexity of figuring out what has a heavy render versus a lighter render.

The Slink body includes hands and feet. I am surprised it is so much less than other bodies. But the nails are way heavy considering how small they are. And that is where things get complex. With the use of LOD camera distance can make a huge difference and whether the designer made models for all the LOD levels.

That's easy to answer. It is a proper BOM implementation with very limited cuts in it. The bodies with Alpha HUDs are sliced into little mesh pieces and every one of these has a large overhead to draw it making those bodies far slower and less efficient. Contrary to what many believe, at the present time the number of triangles makes very little difference because the alpha cuts are so very bad that it makes the triangle overhead pale into insignificance. 

For SLink, the hands are 1 extra mesh (possibly two but I think 1 as left and right are the same object). The feet too, because only one pose is visible at any time, you only pay for that single mesh. In addition, Slink bodies have a butt panel and a boobs panel, that allows you to wear the petite chest and the alternate bums. Finally they have the left arm as a separate mesh to allow for independent tattoos. This means that in total, a SLink body has a tiny fraction of the meshes that the cut bodies have; as a result when the viewer has to draw a slink body it has to draw around 30 meshes. By contrast, when drawing a Lara or Legacy body it has to draw a lot more, about 8x and 11x more respectively.

 

PS - This is why Avatar Complexity/ARC or whatever name you give that fixed number is completely irrelevant as a measure. It does not take into account any of the actual complexity of rendering on a modern CPU/GPU. 

 

[Rowan Amore]

16 hours ago, Beq Janus said:

This is why Avatar Complexity/ARC or whatever name you give that fixed number is completely irrelevant as a measure. It does not take into account any of the actual complexity of rendering on a modern CPU/GPU. 

Then what exactly is the point of including this number?

[Nalates Urriah]

5 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Then what exactly is the point of including this number?

At the time the Lab started using the number avatar render cost was a significant and growing bottleneck. The state of technology and the age of computers and graphics cards at the time lead them use a loose approximation. It was the only 'relative' comparison tool available to us. And like lots of legacy stuff it hangs around.

It was probably at one of the Oz lead viewer meetings the the idea was born. Those were the days I was doing a lot of reporting on viewer development. I was pushing for a way to get users into helping reduce lag and allowing users a tool for comparing render cost for things in SL seems like a great idea. Power of the Free Market and all...

ARCTan has been talked about for a couple of years as a replacement for ARC/ACI. But, replacing the number is not as simple as we often think. The calcs are also a factor in the PRIM limit on parcels... that pesky mesh to prim equivalency... its not just a thing for avatars.

So as Beq said somewhere, this may the push the Lab needs to get something done and ARC/ACI numbers will change to some more realisitic and accurate.

[Echelon Alcott]

55 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Then what exactly is the point of including this number?

I believe this will also educate people and make them realize that ARC/AC does not necessarily reflect the actual time required/effort to render such object.

[Beq Janus]

1 hour ago, Rowan Amore said:

Then what exactly is the point of including this number?

It is included in part because that is what the Lab were propsing to show, and the very reason I developed this feature was to illustrate quite clearly how fundementally misleading those numbers now are. People have been saying "yes we know complexity is wrong but it is better than nothing" for a number of years now, and frankly, that is a lot of BS and I am calling out that BS with hard data.

The complexity number gets used by region owner to shame/ban people based on spurious information. The promotion of it as a valid stat is detrimental. I know of a number of people who have looked at their ARC, freaked out and removed their old unrigged hair and replaed it with a similar rigged mesh hair. The ARC plummets because the rules by which it is calculated are flawed, however the render cost actually gets worse.

As a TPV, we are expressly forbidden from changing the ARC formula. One viewer chose to go against that rule but if FS were to do the same the Lab would fall on us like a tonne of bricks.

You can see, quite clearly  on this display, that the ARC and the render time do not correlate. My goggles are apparently the worst part of my outfit. In reality, they are a small contributor, certainly not eleven times worse than my hair, which by comparison, allegedly, has a very low complexity. If I were worried about my complexity in order to get into an event, or just to be a good citizen, I would likely remove my goggles, when in fact the better change to make in this case would be my earrings.

Using myself as an example is not always a good  idea, my render time is low as I wear simple things. However, If I wear a different body and hair, you will see how the ARC numbers have very little correlation to reality

The hair that I added, a 2017 Red Mint hair, is one of my all time favourites; and "wow ONLY 2K complexity" but wait... uh oh..it is a disaster for my render time.

The legacy body likewise shows as 8 complexity less than that of my collar, but nope, it is by far the worst item I am wearing in rendering terms. (notice my collar is invisible, no render cost hardly, yet complexity 9(k) ).

I don't like to keep knocking the body makers, for while they have chosen to retain these cuts it is in no small part "our fault" because "we" as customers (and "we" as clothing creators) were dismissive of BOM and alpha layers initially. SLink went down the right path performance-wise, but lost commercial ground in part because of this.

What I'd love to see is for the big body makers to provide a low cut version of their bodies. Alpha layers are common place now because of Slink and Inithium and of course people could still opt to wear their older bodies with older outfits. I live in hope. Sadly I think red mint has closed 😞 so I can't hope for a performance-tuned version of my favourite style.

There is a place for an ARC-like number, and the Lab have been talking this (as an aspect of "project ARCTan" for about four years now) no real progress has been made. One reason why is that it is a hard, maybe impossible nut to crack. The reasons that the existing number is wrong will apply equally to most attempts to update it to another arbitrary number, which is primarily because we all have different hardware and that hardware evolves over time. What is slow for you might not be slow for me, or vice versa, and what is slow for us today may not be slow for us next time we buy a new PC/GPU.

Any new number needs to somehow take this problem into account. I tried various optoins and in the end decided that the best solution was direct measurement. 

So why am I showing the old number? To highlight how badly misleading it really is in 2022.

 

 

Edited March 25, 2022 by Beq Janus
small tidy up