New Performance Viewer Build

[SarahKB7 Koskinen]

I just tried out this new viewer in the SL Sci-Fi convention sim regions and I DID see quite a noticeable improvement in framerates and smoothness over other viewers.

Sadly, it still retains that horribly uninstinctive and unusable UI.

Edited May 19, 2022 by SarahKB7 Koskinen

[Jackson Redstar]

I had a chance to try this out in a crowded sim and the FPS was great. No issues that I could see. Runs smooth. for maybe going to a club event or shopping event this would be good I think. For getting new users on board and being able to enjoy a crowded event, this is great. Unfortunately, the LL UI is just not suited at all for doing any kind of serious machinima, video, work at all. Now if only say, Firestorm to take what ever engine is powering this viewer and pair it with their UI, we woud have a perfect viewer!

[Ansariel Hiller]

2 hours ago, Jackson Redstar said:

I had a chance to try this out in a crowded sim and the FPS was great. No issues that I could see. Runs smooth. for maybe going to a club event or shopping event this would be good I think. For getting new users on board and being able to enjoy a crowded event, this is great. Unfortunately, the LL UI is just not suited at all for doing any kind of serious machinima, video, work at all. Now if only say, Firestorm to take what ever engine is powering this viewer and pair it with their UI, we woud have a perfect viewer!

I already merged all that stuff - and took it all back out, because we think living at high speeds is not good for your health and 5 FPS is enough when already visiting "wild" events.

Edited May 19, 2022 by Ansariel Hiller

[Henri Beauchamp]

12 hours ago, Ansariel Hiller said:

we think living at high speeds is not good for your health and 5 FPS is enough

High FPS rate epilepsy ? 🤣

Or perhaps slow living: a new marketing approach for SL ? 🥱

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

High FPS rate epilepsy ? 🤣

Or perhaps slow living: a new marketing approach for SL ?

Ooh! A new possible pet peeve! "SL has too high a framerate now."

[Love Zhaoying]

18 hours ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

 

Sadly, it still retains that horribly uninstinctive and unusable UI.

Even worse, the same tacky, annoying avatars are in SL even with the new viewer!

[Ardy Lay]

3 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Ooh! A new possible pet peeve! "SL has too high a framerate now."

There's a checkbox for that:  

This is helpful to reduce power consumption, heat generation and GPU fan roaring.  I suppose there are other benefits as well but there is always somebody saying VSync is bad.  Meybe they have a 360 Hz refresh rate monitor.  I don't.  Mine seems to refresh at 60 Hz.  60 FPS is good enough and I get just that most of the time.  Sometimes, however, when the place fills up, the viewer slows down to 40-something.  (36-44 avatars inside that 64 meter draw distance)

The bug I mentioned earlier in this thread had been dealt with. 

[Love Zhaoying]

27 minutes ago, Ardy Lay said:

This is helpful to reduce power consumption, heat generation and GPU fan roaring.  I suppose there are other benefits as well but there is always somebody saying VSync is bad.  Meybe they have a 360 Hz refresh rate monitor.  I don't.  Mine seems to refresh at 60 Hz.  60 FPS is good enough and I get just that most of the time.  Sometimes, however, when the place fills up, the viewer slows down to 40-something.  (36-44 avatars inside that 64 meter draw distance)

The bug I mentioned earlier in this thread had been dealt with. 

Then, that checkbox should be always checked to save!the!planet!!!1!

[Coffee Pancake]

4 hours ago, Ardy Lay said:

This is helpful to reduce power consumption, heat generation and GPU fan roaring.  I suppose there are other benefits as well but there is always somebody saying VSync is bad.  Meybe they have a 360 Hz refresh rate monitor.  I don't.  Mine seems to refresh at 60 Hz.  60 FPS is good enough and I get just that most of the time.  Sometimes, however, when the place fills up, the viewer slows down to 40-something.  (36-44 avatars inside that 64 meter draw distance)

The bug I mentioned earlier in this thread had been dealt with. 

Vsync bad for SL.

SL bad for vsync.

 

Vsync is only really useful when the framerate is consistently higher than your refresh rate, every single frame takes less than the refresh time, so you get visual tearing when you move or rotate. Vsync fixes this.

SL does not ever render every frame in less time than your refresh rate. Some frames are too fast and some frames are much too slow. So you will get stuttering and stalls.

[Henri Beauchamp]

32 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Vsync bad for SL.

SL bad for vsync.

 

Vsync is only really useful when the framerate is consistently higher than your refresh rate, every single frame takes less than the refresh time, so you get visual tearing when you move or rotate. Vsync fixes this.

SL does not ever render every frame in less time than your refresh rate. Some frames are too fast and some frames are much too slow. So you will get stuttering and stalls.

V-sync is bad for everything. Period. Tearing won't happen at all, as long as you enable ”triple buffering”. Please read this (old but) excellent article about it.

V-sync is a PITA as soon as your ”unlimited frame rate” (i.e. the inverse of the actual time it takes for your PC to render a single frame) drops below 60FPS (or the frame rate of your monitor), the worst case scenario being when your render time is about 33% higher than a monitor frame time: then the driver ”freezes” the program until the next V-sync pulse happens on the monitor. This causes frame rate ”hiccups” that do not happen with triple buffering.

In SL, this artificial slowing down also causes slower network transfer rates, objects data, textures and mesh decoding, etc, because all these operations are executed in the same thread as the renderer: if you slow down the latter, you also slow down all the rest !

[Ardy Lay]

31 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Vsync bad for SL.

SL bad for vsync.

 

Vsync is only really useful when the framerate is consistently higher than your refresh rate, every single frame takes less than the refresh time, so you get visual tearing when you move or rotate. Vsync fixes this.

SL does not ever render every frame in less time than your refresh rate. Some frames are too fast and some frames are much too slow. So you will get stuttering and stalls.

That's your ancient opinion.  I reject it because when it comes to running my viewer on my hardware your opinion is incorrect.  There is no "tearing" either way due to buffering.  Stuttering is only apparent when the frame takes so long to render that TWO buffer presentation periods elapse prior to frame rendering completion, and even then there is no "tearing" because the youngest render buffer's presentation period is elongated into the next interval, reducing presentation frames per second to 30.  I could disable presentation buffering in the video driver and get the artifacts you describe but why the hell would I do that?

[Ardy Lay]

2 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

V-sync is bad for everything. Period. Tearing won't happen at all, as long as you enable ”triple buffering”. Please read this (old but) excellent article about it.

V-sync is a PITA as soon as your ”unlimited frame rate” (i.e. the inverse of the actual time it takes for your PC to render a single frame) drops below 60FPS (or the frame rate of your monitor), the worst case scenario being when your render time is about 33% higher than a monitor frame time: then the driver ”freezes” the program until the next V-sync pulse happens on the monitor. This causes frame rate ”hiccups” that do not happen with triple buffering.

In SL, this artificial slowing down also causes slower network transfer rates, objects data, textures and mesh decoding, etc, because all these operations are executed in the same thread as the renderer: if you slow down the latter, you also slow down all the rest !

Yeah, do not use driver setting overrides to force V-SYNC on PERSISTENTLY in the driver.  Just turn it on in the viewer, as the GODS intended.

[Jackson Redstar]

after spending some time on this, one thing I noticed was ALOT of texture thrashing, I went through debug settings looking for memory settings , not sure where it is. So things can be fixed in debug settings ith this, but the texture thrashing is really bed

[Jaylinbridges]

Another performance update on Friday May 20.   Why are so many bug fixes listed in this (and every) new version update?  Are they carried over or really new bugs discovered in one week?   If they are new bug fixes, then this project is running around 500 bugs since it started, and you find and fix another 100 every new update?   I must be missing something here.  It must be that Resolved Issues are carried over for each new version.

https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/viewer/6.6.0.571939.html

 

Edited May 22, 2022 by Jaylinbridges

[Ansariel Hiller]

It's a comprehensive list of changes/fixes/improvements in relation to the current default release viewer.

[Extrude Ragu]

I tried the Performance Improvement Viewer today, some notes

Firstly, to answer the obvious question, the performance improvement was actually pretty good - I logged in next to my Premium Linden Camper home with Ultra settings and draw distance 128 and the viewer was managing a stable and smooth-to-the-eyes (no stutter) 20fps. On firestorm with equivalent settings I'd get about 5fps and not a smooth 5 either.

So firstly, let me just say that, that might not sound like a big deal, and I can already hear the people demanding 60fps. But the effect it had on me was big - Usually when I visit my premium home, I lower my draw distance, and I never leave because either I have to turn my graphics down to get decent FPS or keep my draw distance so low it's not enjoyable to explore. But because the FPS was so much better, I actually went exploring and found it enjoyable! I spent a good couple of hours just roaming around the continent and seeing things I'd never seen before. To me that was pretty revolutionary and I can't overstate how transformative that felt.

As I was exploring, I noted that the FPS remained smooth, even when turning my camera etc. Eventually I just closed the performance window and just had a walk around. Lag was no longer an issue that had to be at the front of my mind whilst exploring.

Were there bugs? Yes, but nothing major - Notably I noticed on occasion that some textures near me or even under me such as the road blurred on occasion despite definitely already being cached. A couple of buildings during my exploration seemed to be stuck in lowest LOD until I cammed close.

Now for some criticism of Belissaria!

It's a damn maze! There's no signage or anything, and lots of dead end roads that there is no warning it's a dead end such as a sign.

During my wander I didn't encounter any people, or any natural social spots such as shops, bars etc, and I feel like that is a missed trick for making these sims nicer place.

I also felt like too much space was given to the car and not enough to the humble avatar - Especially over bridges where the sidewalks become narrow enough that the lamp-posts take up the entire sidewalk and you have to use the road. It would have been nice to have some trails that are just for walking.

Sim crossings still suck, and at one point I ended up under the road http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sutherfield/172/252/30  here and had to use someones furniture inside their house to escape from under the road - I then got stuck inside their house because the doors were locked!!

 

 

 

[JeromFranzic]

On 5/20/2022 at 12:10 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

Vsync bad for SL.

SL bad for vsync.

 

Vsync is only really useful when the framerate is consistently higher than your refresh rate, every single frame takes less than the refresh time, so you get visual tearing when you move or rotate. Vsync fixes this.

SL does not ever render every frame in less time than your refresh rate. Some frames are too fast and some frames are much too slow. So you will get stuttering and stalls.

Exactly, what I do instead is CAP the frame rate. Most of my viewer settings cap at 30 or 60 FPS, 60 being the highest that my laptop screen can fully render @ 60hz. I have a few 24 FPS settings for that old school film vibe LOL. 

Oh wait... darn... I don't think the LL viewers allow frame rate caps...?

Edited May 24, 2022 by JeromFranzic
I might have forgotten something...

[Jaylinbridges]

1 hour ago, JeromFranzic said:

Oh wait... darn... I don't think the LL viewers allow frame rate caps...?

They don't.  LL is trying to attract all the cool kids who can brag about their 240 fps in their 50 $L skybox while using the ultracool SL Viewer.  VSync is their answer, for those that use 60 fps interlaced monitors and see no reason to burn up the GPU doing nothing useful or detectable.

 

Edited May 25, 2022 by Jaylinbridges

[Phil Deakins]

I have to write this update.

In my first post I said that the new LL viewer gave me around 115 FPS, and I was amazed. Right now, I'm using the latest, bug-fixed, version and it's only giving me around 60 FPS. Big difference!

In a later post, I said that the Cool VL Viewer was giving me over 200 FPS and right now, it's still giving me over 200 FPS. So whatever has reduced the LL viewer's FPS isn't anything to do with the internet being slow at my end.

All FPS measurements taken at over 4000m up, on a platform with a few objects around but no other avatars, graphics set at High, and draw distance at 64m.

Edited May 26, 2022 by Phil Deakins

[Henri Beauchamp]

17 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

In my first post I said that the new LL viewer gave me around 115 FPS, and I was amazed. Right now, I'm using the latest, bug-fixed, version and it's only giving me around 60 FPS. Big difference!

Verify that the V-sync setting is disabled in LL's viewer.

[Phil Deakins]

9 hours ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

Verify that the V-sync setting is disabled in LL's viewer.

Ah. It was enabled. Disabling it upped the FPS to ~85 which is still significantly lower than the 115 FPS I reported in my first post.

[Gavin Hird]

On 5/27/2022 at 12:40 AM, Phil Deakins said:

Ah. It was enabled. Disabling it upped the FPS to ~85 which is still significantly lower than the 115 FPS I reported in my first post.

It looks like there was a last minute change to the performance viewer that dropped the frame rate quite a lot when I applied it to my viewer code. SL-17244 to be specific. 

[Henri Beauchamp]

9 minutes ago, Gavin Hird said:

It looks like there was a last minute change to the performance viewer that dropped the frame rate quite a lot when I applied it to my viewer code. SL-17244 to be specific. 

The commit for SL-17244 (a crash fix) won't explain any slow down (and I certainly did not notice any slow down in my viewer after backporting it)...

Edited May 29, 2022 by Henri Beauchamp

[Jaylinbridges]

I've not seen any announcements, other than the Release Page, that the latest Performance Viewer version is now the Default SL Viewer for everyone.  Since VSync On is the default setting, I wonder when someone will think they have lost frame rate.  Of course you need to actually open the stats window to see the FPS in the SL Viewer, and most users of the SL viewer have no idea how you do that.

May 25, 2022 was the date announced.  Since I was already using 1939, I didn't realize the current Default was upgraded until I tried to change back to it, and found the old Default was no longer listed. (I was doing comparisons between the default and performance up to then)

Edited May 29, 2022 by Jaylinbridges

[Gavin Hird]

7 hours ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

The commit for SL-17244 (a crash fix) won't explain any slow down (and I certainly did not notice any slow down in my viewer after backporting it)...

I did notice a sharp drop of 20-30 fps after applying that single patch. – Your code, is your code.