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

[Drayke Newall]

On 3/27/2022 at 3:39 AM, Lindal Kidd said:

One of the reasons I loved the advent of BoM is that now designers can make alpha masks specific to their garments again.

I just wish that all designers DID SO.

The problem is that it adds a layer of complexity to an already complex avatar dressing/creation system. Whilst yes, it is a matter of just wearing the included alpha cut it isn't just that simple.

For example, some times people made clothing layers that crossed over the bounds of the LL allowed zones. A shirt that went longer over the pants meant that if you bought some pants with a no-mod alpha layer, the shirt lower section was alpha'ed as well. Not very new user friendly.

Then add to that the further complexity of avatar modding - eg. A furry avatar, the alpha cuts provided for human avatars will not necessarily work for them. Then take bodies that have their own uv mapping system such as Regalia etc, those alpha cut layers wont work for them either. This is where segmented alpha cuts on bodies work better. It is also why people still use this system over alpha layers.

Alpha cut layers aren't a be all and end all fix and the issue itself comes down to how LL decided to do BoM. Rather than tweaking the old baking system, they instead used the same system of large BoM layer segments (Upper Body, Lower Body, Left Arm, etc.). They also didn't allow for auto-hiding when mesh is worn within the BoM system. Making it harder and not user friendly for everyone.

What LL should have done is segmented the BoM layers into smaller parts similar to mesh bodies and then have them under a grouping. So for example, you would have BAKED_LEFTARM as the group heading and then under that heading, smaller BoM segments such as BAKED_LA_NAILS, BAKED_LA_FINGERS, BAKED_LA_HAND, BAKED_LA_WRIST etc.

By doing this it would allow creators the same customisability as the mesh alpha segments, colour systems etc, already used but with BoM and without the need for people to create their own alpha layers by uploading a custom alpha unless in unique situations.

With smaller segments all the creator would need to do is the following: Inventory>Create> New Clothes>New Alpha and then simply select from a list of tick boxes next to the parts you want to hide. Save as alpha and done. No estimating where the alpha should stop on a texture in phtotoshop and no need to upload the texture. Just a simple inbuilt menu system that uses a default 8x8 masked alpha texture from the library to alpha each segment selected.

Then they should have also made it so that a mesh object can be linked to BoM alpha segments so that when the mesh clothing/object is worn it auto-hides like current bodies do with their auto-hide scripts. Then no need for individual alpha layers in every folder of your inventory.

You also have further customise options with such a system like removing another part of the mesh body hud, finger nail colour options. Just select BAKED_LA_NAILS and change the colour in the viewer without needing to go to photoshop, load the uv map, find where the nails are and then start painting.

The lack of customisability of BoM etc, and all the extra steps needed is what makes optimisation for a creator and user impossible. If LL gave better inbuilt creation systems the older systems would die very quick.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Drayke Newall

[Echelon Alcott]

@Beq Janus I was curious to see the impact of the popular animesh companions would have on my avatar rendering time. So I recorded my ART without the animesh companion (2468.90μs) and did it again with an animesh companion attached (2488.33μs), for comparison purposes. While it is clear in the list of avatar attachments the additional time to render the animesh companion (1076.89μs), the total time changed very little. I was expecting the total time to increase, reflecting the additional rendering time of the animesh companion. Am I by any chance misinterpreting how the total time works?

Avatar without animesh companion

Avatar with animesh companion

[CalypsoJewel]

2 hours ago, Echelon Alcott said:

@Beq Janus I was curious to see the impact of the popular animesh companions would have on my avatar rendering time. So I recorded my ART without the animesh companion (2468.90μs) and did it again with an animesh companion attached (2488.33μs), for comparison purposes. While it is clear in the list of avatar attachments the additional time to render the animesh companion (1076.89μs), the total time changed very little. I was expecting the total time to increase, reflecting the additional rendering time of the animesh companion. Am I by any chance misinterpreting how the total time works?

Avatar without animesh companion

Avatar with animesh companion

Are you sure that's animesh? "Classic" would suggest their old line-unless they named it that for whatever reason-, and that's an awful lot of time for an animesh.
My Rezz Room Wolf animesh companion, and my Teegle Animesh horse(Andalusian) come to about this, so that Jian leaves me wondering

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

The only place I really experience lag is when I am in a Linden Home. Its so bad I can not even change outfits there and usually there is no other avatar around. I wish I understood techie enough to know what the heck you are all talking about.

[Echelon Alcott]

40 minutes ago, CalypsoJewel said:

Are you sure that's animesh? "Classic" would suggest their old line-unless they named it that for whatever reason-, and that's an awful lot of time for an animesh.
My Rezz Room Wolf animesh companion, and my Teegle Animesh horse(Andalusian) come to about this, so that Jian leaves me wondering

First, if people are getting caught up on my use of the term "animesh", let's simply call it companions.

Second, it is not my intent to compare the products of different stores that sell avatar companions. My interest is to better understand if/how avatar companions are factored in the avatar attachment complexity total.

Third, I returned to SL six months ago, so all my purchases have been done within the last six months. I have no insight into the reason Jian named their product "classic". In the new example below, I used a different Jian avatar companion purchased recently that does not have "classic" in its name.

Below are additional data points to support my original question, if avatar companions rendering time are considered in the avatar attachment complexity total or not. My expectation is that it would impact the total. But the examples below show that the avatar companions do have a rendering cost, but the total remains around the same ART, consistent with when the avatar has no companion attached.

Avatar with no avatar companions attached (total: 2046.62μs)

Avatar with baby chimp (total: 2001.42μs, baby chimp: 60.26μs)

Avatar with tiger cub (total: 1945.19μs, tiger cub: 840.58μs)

Avatar with Daenerys (total: 2026.78μs, Daenerys: 108.47μs)

[Persephone Emerald]

2 hours ago, LittleSparrow Skydancer said:

The only place I really experience lag is when I am in a Linden Home. Its so bad I can not even change outfits there and usually there is no other avatar around. I wish I understood techie enough to know what the heck you are all talking about.

There may be something in your house or in a neighbor's house that is lagging you out. It's possible to use the new tools in the Firestorm viewer to help figure out what it could be. You cam also go into Wireframe (I think in the Advanced menu View options?) to see if some item are using many vertices to create a detailed surface. Good items are harder to see in Wireframe, while poorly meshed ones look almost like they do in your regular view. (This is just one factor in creating lag, but it's something you could see for yourself in Wireframe.) You can also check the scripts in your parcel, but I don't think you can check your neighbor's scripts.

One simple possible solution to your problem is to create a simple sky platform or skybox for changing clothes. Being farther away from the ground level might remove some of the factors that are creating lag for you while dressing.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Persephone Emerald
corrected farther for further. lol

[Beq Janus]

7 hours ago, Echelon Alcott said:

So I recorded my ART without the animesh companion (2468.90μs) and did it again with an animesh companion attached (2488.33μs), for comparison purposes. While it is clear in the list of avatar attachments the additional time to render the animesh companion (1076.89μs), the total time changed very little. I was expecting the total time to increase, reflecting the additional rendering time of the animesh companion. Am I by any chance misinterpreting how the total time works?

Avatar without animesh companion

Thanks for this @Echelon AlcottI think I know what is happening here and I think it is basically an oversight on my part in how I track the sum. Kind of a bug,  but it is not that the code is wrong, I just didn't think about there being a mismatch between the way that the sum it calculated and the smooth costs of each item.

In theory, you are correct, the total there should reflect the sum of the listed ones. There is a caveat (and within that the bug), the numbers you see on the lists are "smoothed" to remove the jitter you see from frame to frame (I use the term smoothing as I got told off in the past for talking about statistical averages 🙂 - but I'll expand on it if anyone cares.) The sum at the top right, on the other hand,  is a point in time (this frame) sum, every frame the counter gets set to zero and the total accumulated anew. As such these will differ, both are right in their own way, but they are not comparable (sorry).

What I should be doing, in order to make the sum and the parts correlate better is to smooth the sum over time as well, it'll still be slightly astray because of the nature of the smoothing but it will be a lot closer than now.

[Jennifer Boyle]

Sadly, my favorite hair was taking more time than my Maitreya body, so I've had to replace it.

I was delighted to learn about Alt-Shift-H.

Can someone explain why avatars that are not in my field of view take time, since they are not rendered?

As a test, I set autotune to 25 fps. I found it strange that my fps stabilized at 35 fps. I expected autotune to increase my graphics settings until fps approximated the set value. Why doesn't it?

ETA: The discussion of alpha cuts on mesh bodies was interesting and educational. It's worth noting that much good-quality fitmesh clothing doesn't require hiding body parts. One advantage of alpha cuts is that areas can be hidden and unhidden instantly; alpha masks are much slower due to needing an avatar rebake. There are also certain attachments (that I think I'm not supposed to name in this forum) that rely on alpha cuts to have the correct appearance. Ideally, I would like Maitreya Lara, the body I always wear, to come in a full alpha cut version like the current one, a version with just a few alpha cuts that are required for attachments to work, and a version with no alpha cuts. I won't hold my breath.

Edited March 29, 2022 by Jennifer Boyle

[Beq Janus]

1 hour ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

Can someone explain why avatars that are not in my field of view take time, since they are not rendered?

There is some cost in them just being there, what you see is the cost of working out where they are and deciding that they are not relevant basically. 

1 hour ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

As a test, I set autotune to 25 fps. I found it strange that my fps stabilized at 35 fps. I expected autotune to increase my graphics settings until fps approximated the set value. Why doesn't it?

It depends on a couple of factors. 

As I noted waaaay up higher in this thread (I don't expect anyone to have seen it) the current version of this feature has limited tuning capability for scenery, there are only a few things it can actually tweak in that regard (in an avatar rich scene there is more it can and will do).

Within those parameters that it does alter I have tried to place "sensible" defaults, there is for example a limit on how far it will adjust the draw distance and the highest water reflection level. It tries to set these based on the existing settings (which implies that if you were already out performing the limit it will not (by default) improve the settings. You can adjust the upper limits by clicking the "gear icon" next to the auto tune button, this takes you to more advanced settings and in there you can change some of the targets. 

This is an area that I expect to evolve in the future. One of the problems with scene wide settings changes is that they have a large impact. Water reflections for example, can (for some people) take you from 35 FPS to 20 FPS, and one of the difficult tasks in trying to write an algorithm to manage this all is working out when you are "good enough" you really don't want water reflections flickering on and off every few frames as it hops one side of the target and then the other. It needs to be able to settle, and I am far from happy with how that works in many situations at present. 

1 hour ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

Sadly, my favorite hair was taking more time than my Maitreya body, so I've had to replace it.

Yes, some hair is scary slow and I've lost a few of my faves over this 😞

On the plus side, we can demo them now and make more informed choices, at least that's the idea.

[Jennifer Boyle]

I forgot one thing in my previous post:

Thank you so much for doing this.

[Echelon Alcott]

@Beq Janus I'd like to echo Jennifer's sentiment. Thanks for all the thoughtful and hard work on the latest Firestorm version. Much gratitude to you and the entire team!

[Persephone Emerald]

I don't know if I've said it already, but I really love the Graphics Speed window. And now that I've optimized my modifiable Belleza bodies I love it even more. I was able to remove my applier/ onion layers. I then made the mesh nipples invisible by changing their texture to the default invisible texture. I think the rendering speed gives me a much better idea of who and what is probably creating the most lag. The window also gives me a much easier way to see what I might want to toss out for being harder to render, much better than just putting something on and seeing my ARC go way up. I've been using Autotune, but my computer and wifi are pretty good anyway, so it doesn't make much difference in my performance. What helps me more is seeing my fps in big numbers in the upper left corner of the Graphics Speed window, rather than just the small numbers in the upper right corner of my viewer window. I honestly wasn't looking at those as much as at the bar when it goes into the red. I like having all this extra information readily available, and how it also lets us decide what we want to tune and when. I can see the advantage now of turning down my draw distance when I'm inside my skybox and of making more of my mesh body invisible, even when its wearing well-fitting clothes.

Thank you to all the Firestorm people who worked on this release and who continue to add value to our SL experience with this viewer.  ❤️ 

[Odaks]

On 3/28/2022 at 7:36 PM, LittleSparrow Skydancer said:

The only place I really experience lag is when I am in a Linden Home.

Bellisseria, or the old Linden Homes? If Bellisseria, this is the second time that a poster has recently slated Bellisseria  as being bad for lag, but that is not my experience at all. Either way, something nasty must be rezzed in the vicinity. That needs to be located before the whole area is written off as laggy.

[cunomar]

Why can't i find an older version of Firestorm , like a fool i updated and this laptop cannot run the new version .

Nevermind i found it , turned out the page wasn't loading properly .

Edited March 30, 2022 by cunomar

[Lindal Kidd]

On 3/27/2022 at 3:22 PM, Lindal Kidd said:

This is so off topic, but this thread led me to grab a couple of demos of the SLink mesh body, the Redux (BoM) versions of the original and the Hourglass.

I love them! especially the deluxe version with the integrated hands and feet. And the hands have such lovely nails! So now I am thinking of taking the huge step of actually getting one and having to *shudder* rebuild my wardrobe and my Outfits. But before I do that, I have a couple of questions for the room:

1. Does the SLink body actually decrease the Avatar Complexity number, compared to Maitreya Lara? While I know this is not a "true" reading of one's performance impact, so many people have their ACI sliders set to about 100,000. So if my ACI is over that, I'm a jelly doll to them. If there's no great change, it might not be worth switching, since Lara works with BoM now, too, and the alpha cut controls are less of a factor.

2. Which SLink body has more clothes available for it? The look of the Original body is more in line with my personal style, Hourglass is too lush. So I'm hoping that the Original version is well supported.

I do already have a ton of shoes and manicures for the SLink hands and feet, so that's a plus.

A follow up!

Thanks for the input, Persephone! I did some testing and answered my own #1 question. Both the Maitreya body and the SLink bodies have the same complexity, about 4,000. But the SLink bodies render over five times faster, about 100 microseconds vs. 600 for the Maitreya. I used Beq's new Autotune floater for these numbers.

I also played with the shape sliders using both the Physique Original and Hourglass bodies. The Hourglass can be slimmed down quite nicely in most areas, but you are still going to have a well-padded butt and you are not going to have petite boobs. But you CAN create a shape that, while curvy, doesn't look TOO well padded. I had some trouble getting smoothly curved hips with the SLink Original; they looked too bony until I fiddled with body fat and saddlebags settings as well as hip width.

After some research in the Forums and on the Marketplace, I find that quite a few of my favorite stores do stock clothing for the Physique and/or Hourglass. There is about 25% more content made for the Hourglass. Maitreya has by far the most content available (no surprise there!) but there are still around a million items for the SLink bodies. It would take some serious shopping to run out of stuff to buy for them.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

A funny thing to note about mesh bodies (and objects in general) is that if something is set to 100% transparent (not a fully transparent texture, I mean the value in Edit Tools), no time is spent rendering it.

I think Beq's written a blog post or two about it, but I noticed this especially after doing what others have done and cleaning up the Freya -- I whittled it down from 143 links to 44 by just removing the Tattoo/Clothing/Underwear mesh layers (and then further reducing to just 18 links). This made no difference in the render time of the body, and making all of the remaining parts visible doubled the render time.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Beq Janus]

1 minute ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

A funny thing to note about mesh bodies (and objects in general) is that if something is set to 100% transparent (not a fully transparent texture, I mean the value in Edit Tools), no time is spent rendering it.

I've mentioned this in my blogs (but probably after the point that most people have already fallen asleep) the majority of TPVs have an optimisation originally provided by Niran, that will skip over any fully transparent attachments. Notably these have to be 100% transparent  at the material level (i.e. the transparency setting on the texture tab in the build floater) it does not work for fully transparent textures (because there is no fast way to confirm that a texture is 100% transparent).

It is for this reason that my table on bodies earlier in this thread shows the "typical visible" count of faces (which is based on some relatively arbitrary sampling at events and other crowded places). It is also the reason that I added the "visible faces" count to the inspect floater in an earlier release. If you do wear an alpha segmented body then ensuring that you toggle off as many faces as possible for the outfit that you are wearing will help reduce your count.

It is also why I am typically less concerned about multi-pose feet and multi-style hair than I once was. The invisible parts of the hair have very little render time overhead. However, a word of caution in this regard. The viewer still has to load the meshes into RAM and do various other items of prep work that typically happens on a separate thread, so while it does not affect the FPS outright they do have an impact on memory consumption and the overall scene rendering time upon arrival (how long things are gey blobs for). Nothing is entirely free 🙂

 

6 hours ago, Lindal Kidd said:

The Hourglass can be slimmed down quite nicely in most areas, but you are still going to have a well-padded butt and you are not going to have petite boob

I transitioned from Physique Original to HG when the Redux was released, primarily because of the clothing supply. as you say, you can get a reasonably decent shape, with a little more padding than we were perhaps used to (hey we're all getting older).

However, I do also have the petite boobs addon for Slink. This gives you a nice itty bitty option, but does cut down on clothing choices further still. As such I have two sets of shapes that I use, my petite boob shape that I wear with "proper" HG petite clothing and a "mostly flat" non-petite shape, that gives the smallest acceptable breasts on the normal HG and is usable with all HG clothing that is fully covered such as sweaters overcoats and high neck dresses (it is not a nice look when uncovered). 

I believe the is a flat butt option though I do not have it.

Incidentally, bringing things back to the technical domain. The provision of the boob and butt options is why I listed the Redux as "low cut" count as opposed to "no cut" because in order to provide the interchangeable boobies, the base body has to allow the larger boobs to be set invisible. this is done as a single cut per body part. 

 

[Setsuki Takeda]

Ooh, turned over to my photo mode preset today...

About 2.5X the FPS from before the update with dull water reflections and projector shadows turned on.

Still completely unplayable at those settings, but not a total slideshow with the latest update.

[Solar Legion]

What - precisely - is this unplayable frame rate you are getting?

[Paul Hexem]

52 minutes ago, NanashiNyx said:

Ooh, turned over to my photo mode preset today...

About 2.5X the FPS from before the update with dull water reflections and projector shadows turned on.

Still completely unplayable at those settings, but not a total slideshow with the latest update.

 

49 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

What - precisely - is this unplayable frame rate you are getting?

Oh, this is gonna be good.

[Setsuki Takeda]

1 hour ago, Paul Hexem said:

Oh, this is gonna be good.

6 FPS up from 2-3 FPS, so...

I don't think anyone would argue that is playable XD

My GPU died, so I'm playing CPU only, with dd 32 and medium graphics (I need advanced lighting to see if my avatar is messed up, I look terrible with it off due to parts I have equipped) I can get 20ish FPS most places which is fine to explore and interact with others. Though I'm more forgiving than most, especially since I normally hard cap FPS at 30 to save battery life when I'm on the road, so I'm used to "low FPS" even when I had a fully functional PC.

[Paul Hexem]

3 minutes ago, NanashiNyx said:

6 FPS up from 2-3 FPS, so...

I don't think anyone would argue that is playable XD

Yeah, I wouldn't tolerate anything under 15 or so, personally.

I'm just waiting for someone to say effectively "SL is supposed to be this laggy, fixing it is bad."

[Solar Legion]

1 hour ago, NanashiNyx said:

6 FPS up from 2-3 FPS, so...

I don't think anyone would argue that is playable XD

My GPU died, so I'm playing CPU only, with dd 32 and medium graphics (I need advanced lighting to see if my avatar is messed up, I look terrible with it off due to parts I have equipped) I can get 20ish FPS most places which is fine to explore and interact with others. Though I'm more forgiving than most, especially since I normally hard cap FPS at 30 to save battery life when I'm on the road, so I'm used to "low FPS" even when I had a fully functional PC.

Yeah, no. Not really playable.

[Mollymews]

8 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

I'm just waiting for someone to say effectively "SL is supposed to be this laggy, fixing it is bad."

lag is your friend. Is always with you when everybody else abandon you. If fix the lag then you won't have any friend, and you be super lonely in your souped up world

😸