Do other user's slow computers affect my ability to see their avatar? Can I slow you down?

[jenna Fessbeinder]

Inevitably when I am in a super crowded club sim (80 avatars) someone will IM me and say "your shoes and hair are missing you need a new faster computer."

The theory it would seem, is that my if my computer is slower than theirs, I am slowing them down -- if they can't see me, it is my fault for still running an i7.

Now my understanding has always been nothing they see is on my computer, I am just providing SL with a list of things which others can look at.   I am aware of course if my complexity is high, I will be harder to load, so my "list" should be small and efficient as possible.  

But still, my question  -- if I enter a sim on SL does my computer care if everyone in the sim is on an ancient machine?    Or in other words, "does my i7 slow your i9 down?

[Love Zhaoying]

No.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

while SL is a shared experience everything is sent to the server side and then rendered on the viewer you use,  their system/connection would not affect you as you are only getting the data from the server and not them, this is not a peer to peer system.

[jenna Fessbeinder]

Thanks Love and bigmoe, my question was of course a bit tongue in cheek, as bigmoe said "this is not a peer to peer system."   But tonight I was more or less endlessly semi-insulted by someone who kept referring to my "old slow computer."  It is a bit outdated, 3.2 GHz i7 6 core, with an external Radeon, but it does OK. 

I did respond to the "IT pro" in question, by saying "you do know none of what you are looking at is on my computer?"  That did put a chill in the air.  

But still, I began to wonder if there was any relation to speed, other than my presence on the sim.  I am a sometimes web consultant, but am a server maroon.

Edited August 21, 2023 by jenna Fessbeinder
typos

[Kathrine Jansma]

Short answer: No.

But as was mentioned on some other thread:

Changing your outfit right before TP'ing into such a SIM is not perfect. It looks great on your side, but the server side bake is not always done in time, so others might see incomplete or strange looks for a little while before things settle.

This still has nothing to do with your local computer...

[AmeliaJ08]

4 hours ago, jenna Fessbeinder said:

Thanks Love and bigmoe, my question was of course a bit tongue in cheek, as bigmoe said "this is not a peer to peer system."   But tonight I was more or less endlessly semi-insulted by someone who kept referring to my "old slow computer."  It is a bit outdated, 3.2 GHz i7 6 core, with an external Radeon, but it does OK. 

I did respond to the "IT pro" in question, by saying "you do know none of what you are looking at is on my computer?"  That did put a chill in the air.  

But still, I began to wonder if there was any relation to speed, other than my presence on the sim.  I am a sometimes web consultant, but am a server maroon.

SL users can be so stupid, there's definitely a huge amount of tech ignorance on the platform anyway.

Intel were selling 6 core i7's until a couple of years ago and they're in no way obsolete, the way some people talk though it's like it's 1996 or something and you need a new CPU every year. It's a 12 thread CPU! to my 1990's sensibilities we're living in a crazy future as far as the hardware in even modest machines.

 

Edited August 21, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[jenna Fessbeinder]

2 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Intel were selling 6 core i7's until a couple of years ago and they're in no way obsolete, the way some people talk though it's like it's 1996 or something and you need a new CPU every year. It's a 12 thread CPU! to my 1990's sensibilities we're living in a crazy future as far as the hardware in even modest machines.

 

I try to go with the every 2  or 3 year mode of computer replacement.   It almost seems like buy a new phone, computer,  ebike every year is expected.  lol

[Monty Linden]

Confirming:  viewers are very well isolated from each other.  There is a tragedy in the commons when someone rezes a horror of an avatar.  And I still use an i7-3770 for testing/compatibility.

[AmeliaJ08]

1 hour ago, jenna Fessbeinder said:

I try to go with the every 2  or 3 year mode of computer replacement.   It almost seems like buy a new phone, computer,  ebike every year is expected.  lol

I came through the 90s and early 00's always being bang up to date and I think I burned myself out on that... in the 2010s platforms just started lasting a lot longer for me and we became very well served as far as computing power, I do keep up to date on what is happening but I just don't feel the compelling reasons to upgrade more than every 5-6-7.. 10... years. I have (high spec for the time) machines from 2012 I still find perfectly usable for a lot of tasks for example.

I suppose it all depends, people involved in certain industries of course need to keep bang up to date and gamers do still shell out thousands every few years to keep frame rates high but the rest of us are probably content with being a generation or two behind.

 

 

[bigmoe Whitfield]

1 hour ago, Monty Linden said:

Confirming:  viewers are very well isolated from each other.  There is a tragedy in the commons when someone rezes a horror of an avatar.  And I still use an i7-3770 for testing/compatibility.

I'm still daily driving this

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5820K CPU @ 3.30GHz (3317.27 MHz)
Memory: 32679 MB
Concurrency: 12
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 19045.3324)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 8192 MB

zero issues doing anything, windows 11 will be a chore, but I haz the plans!

[Henri Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, Monty Linden said:

There is a tragedy in the commons when someone rezes a horror of an avatar.  And I still use an i7-3770 for testing/compatibility.

Aww... Want me to give you away my oldest PC for testing, instead ?... Core2 Quad Q6600, 8GB RAM, GTX 460... 🫣

And yes, using it also for testing/compatibility/viewers performances comparisons (under Linux, Windows 7 and... Windows 11 🤪 ).

Edited August 21, 2023 by Henri Beauchamp

[jenna Fessbeinder]

My question was answered -- and I can use this thread as an answer in future.

But it is interesting to see what others are using to visit second life.   I feel better about my rig.

 

And yes, I like old Flexie hair.  It suits me.

Edited August 21, 2023 by jenna Fessbeinder
more info

[Jackson Redstar]

No, but then again, even on a i9 with a 4090 you can still be a crowded sim with a half a dozen half rezzed people, people missing hair and shoes and skirts and pants .... so LOL

[Zalificent Corvinus]

14 hours ago, jenna Fessbeinder said:

Inevitably when I am in a super crowded club sim (80 avatars) someone will IM me and say "your shoes and hair are missing you need a new faster computer."

The theory it would seem, is that my if my computer is slower than theirs, I am slowing them down -- if they can't see me, it is my fault for still running an i7.

Now my understanding has always been nothing they see is on my computer, I am just providing SL with a list of things which others can look at.   I am aware of course if my complexity is high, I will be harder to load, so my "list" should be small and efficient as possible.  

But still, my question  -- if I enter a sim on SL does my computer care if everyone in the sim is on an ancient machine?    Or in other words, "does my i7 slow your i9 down?

You have already been told the answer is "no" but just as some historical perspective.

Once upon a time, back in fugly system avatar days of old. your appearance, your system bake, was done CLIENT side, and over-entitled oldbies would regularly scream "rebake damn it you noob, you're not rezzed and it's ruining my Immersion! Rebake! Rebake!".

 

Client side avatar baking went away years ago,  replaced with SERVER side appearance baking, maybe 9 years? However many oldbies are basically completely clueless how SL actually works, and assume that all bakes are still done client side, and therefore that anyone not rezzing in properly must be "a filthy poor person with a potatoe pc and two tin cans connected by string for internet" and they will scream at you because OBVIOUSLY, it cannot be the fault of THEIR mega gaming rig, and it's connection to SL, right?

 

So next time some oldbie screams rebake at you, tell them that "Server Side Appearance" has been a thing now for NINE years, and they need to update their meatware cpu to something that delivers a THREE digit IQ score...

 

[jenna Fessbeinder]

3 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

So next time some oldbie screams rebake at you, tell them that "Server Side Appearance" has been a thing now for NINE years, and they need to update their meatware cpu to something that delivers a THREE digit IQ score...

 

Wow that is the best answer!!!   I needed you when he made me feel bad about my poor i7.

[JeromFranzic]

On 8/21/2023 at 7:15 AM, AmeliaJ08 said:

SL users can be so stupid, there's definitely a huge amount of tech ignorance on the platform anyway.

Intel were selling 6 core i7's until a couple of years ago and they're in no way obsolete, the way some people talk though it's like it's 1996 or something and you need a new CPU every year. It's a 12 thread CPU! to my 1990's sensibilities we're living in a crazy future as far as the hardware in even modest machines.

 

Mine is a 6 core, 12 thread i7, 8th gen Intel from 2018. Still works great for SL and most of the other apps I run on it. 

If I had a desktop for that I could be running a 3060 GPU instead of the 1050 my laptop is stuck with, it would still be doing a fine job. Top speed for my i7 with six cores is 4.1 Ghz, not too bad. (I could run a 3060 with the 8th gen Intel, right? I've no clue...)

Anyway, here's a shot from Furzona. Taken last Friday night (slt+ 3), grabbed a screenshot from my phone's mewe app. Anyway, see the wrestlers? They were the only avatars which didn't fully render. Around fifty avatars populated the arena, perhaps a bit more. Turned off ALM and shadows, dd at 96m, high graphics, didn't crash at all.

 

 

 

[jenna Fessbeinder]

1 hour ago, JeromFranzic said:

 

Anyway, here's a shot from Furzona. Taken last Friday night (slt+ 3), grabbed a screenshot from my phone's mewe app. Anyway, see the wrestlers? They were the only avatars which didn't fully render. Around fifty avatars populated the arena, perhaps a bit more. Turned off ALM and shadows, dd at 96m, high graphics, didn't crash at all.

I have noticed quite often when clubs have 80 avatars, that some avatars never seem to fully render.   No one has really addressed this issue, and what causes some of them to seem to get "stuck" half rendered.

[Beq Janus]

On 8/21/2023 at 10:01 PM, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Client side avatar baking went away years ago,  replaced with SERVER side appearance baking, maybe 9 years? However many oldbies are basically completely clueless how SL actually works, and assume that all bakes are still done client side, and therefore that anyone not rezzing in properly must be "a filthy poor person with a potatoe pc and two tin cans connected by string for internet" and they will scream at you because OBVIOUSLY, it cannot be the fault of THEIR mega gaming rig, and it's connection to SL, right?

Interesting (maybe, to some, at least) addendum to the history lesson. In OpenSim, client-side baking is still a thing; it actually makes sense when you consider that the server that you are connected to may be a very low-end machine and also that the layers that you are wearing may be hosted by a different grid. The downside is of course that you are then co-dependent on your fellow potato wranglers.

Before we roll about laughing though consider that the SL bake service is behind the majority of your orange cloud experiences. I timed it recently, logging out standing next to my partner who was fully-rezzed, and then logging in again, a few minutes later, I get a swirly cloud. It took 183 seconds for the cloud to resolve itself (the timers are in your viewer log file). I have a perpetual TODO note to explore exactly what is happening but the majority of this is I believe down to fetching a large number of bake textures and the fact that the viewer is told not to try to render an avatar until all its bakes have arrived. 

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

25 minutes ago, Beq Janus said:

but the majority of this is I believe down to fetching a large number of bake textures and the fact that the viewer is told not to try to render an avatar until all its bakes have arrived. 

Didn't BoM increase the number of bake channels from 6 to 11, and the resolution from 512 to 1024? Four times the pixels on almost twice ass many bakes, that must have had an effect on bake times?

[jenna Fessbeinder]

26 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Didn't BoM increase the number of bake channels from 6 to 11, and the resolution from 512 to 1024? Four times the pixels on almost twice ass many bakes, that must have had an effect on bake times?

i have to experiment with not checking "show avatars which have not finished loading."    edit (answer myself): a lot of orange clouds since I have the clouds turned off in debug.

Edited August 23, 2023 by jenna Fessbeinder
answered myself

[JeromFranzic]

Maybe we can get the best answers from anyone living near the AWS servers, running 2+ gigabit internet and a 4090 GPU. I suspect it'll be the same problems though.

[jenna Fessbeinder]

Avatars seem to be suddenly rendering when they change their tag in large groups.   Has anyone experienced this?   

Several avi's have said to me "let me change my tag" and boom they instantly render fully.

Edited August 23, 2023 by jenna Fessbeinder
be suddenly typo

[Henri Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, jenna Fessbeinder said:

Avatars seem to suddenly rendering when they change their tag in large groups.   Has anyone experienced this?   

Several avi's have said to me ”let me change my tag” and boom they instantly render fully.

Yes. Changing group causes some UDP message about the avatar to be resent to all viewers around, with info about avatar visual params, for example: if the cause for their viewer not rendering your avatar right was the result of failure to get this message in time when you arrived, then the group change will repeat it, and allow everyone that missed it to see your avatar rezzing, at last.

Other things to try, when your avatar does not rez for others are:

• Verify that you are wearing all mandatory wearables (shape, eyes, skin, legacy hair).
• Rebake: CTRL ALT R
• When your avatar position is corrupted in other viewers (e.g. they can ”hear” you in chat but their radar or mini-map reports you 500m away), sit down on an object and stand up.

Edited August 23, 2023 by Henri Beauchamp

[Kathrine Jansma]

48 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

Verify that you are wearing all mandatory wearables (shape, eyes, skin, legacy hair).

I wonder why viewers do not offer to "wear" one of those, if they are detected as missing after some short timeout? Or is this not detectable by a viewer?

 

[Henri Beauchamp]

46 minutes ago, Kathrine Jansma said:

I wonder why viewers do not offer to ”wear” one of those, if they are detected as missing after some short timeout? Or is this not detectable by a viewer?

Normally, the viewer won't allow you to remove any of those mandatory wearables (if it does, it's a bug), but just to replace them with another of the same type: e.g. you can wear another shape in place of the current one, but cannot remove your current shape.

However, the viewer only makes requests to the server to wear another wearable, and it's the server which gives the ”OK, it's now considered worn” message back to the viewer; it may happen that the latter message never arrives (inventory server or AISv3 issues), at which point you may end up with an incomplete outfit and never fully rez.

As for timeouts, I did implement them in the Cool VL Viewer (I rewrote from scratch all the Current Outfit Folder and related LLAppearance/LLAgentWearable code, which is way too convoluted and extremely racy in LL's code); it does insist when the server fails to wear an item, and resyncs the COF, rebakes, etc, but if the server keeps failing, there is nothing to do...

Edited August 23, 2023 by Henri Beauchamp