Conifer Dada Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 (edited) I'm still finding that LL's latest PBR viewer is much slower than the previous v.6 one. Going anywhere that is even slightly busy means that avatars and surroundings take ages to rez and some textures never rez. I think there has been one update of the PBR viewer but that didn't show any improvement in performance. Turning down the graphics to minimum appears to make no difference to performance, it's still really slow. Re the old EEP settings - I found they were messed up with PBR but I made some new settings which look fine. Edited January 1 by Conifer Dada 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scylla Rhiadra Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 3 minutes ago, Conifer Dada said: I'm still finding that LL's latest PBR viewer is much slower than the previous v.6 one. Going anywhere that is even slightly busy means that avatars and surroundings take ages to rez and some textures never rez. I think there has been one update of the PBR viewer but that didn't show any improvement in performance. Turning down the graphics to minimum appears to make no difference to performance, it's still really slow. Re the old EEP settings - I found they were messed up with PBR but I made some new settings which look fine. Yeah, I don't think that's going to change, and is going to be the most common experience of people moving to PBR viewers, all of the cries of "actually rendering is faster in PBR" notwithstanding. LL needs to respond by finding new ways of improving performance to compensate, or they'll have essentially erased the gains they made a year or so ago. What is also sort of interesting, for me anyway, is that this is not just about having ALM turned on. I've found that PBR viewers are still slower than pre-PBR ones with ALM on. In other words, this isn't just an effect of having ALM turned permanently on. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlotte Bartlett Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 We did a poll of our customers to get an idea where people are at and will be repeating this each few months to track adoption. This is a subset of SL users and those who are actively engaged with our products. 1. 61% are waiting for Firestorm to use PBR (so not using the LL viewer). 2. 15% are using the LL PBR viewer. 3. 9% will use PBR when Firestorm is in Beta (versus Alpha). 4. 9% Haven't used the LL PBR viewer yet but are intending to use it soon. 5. 4% are waiting for Alchemy or Catznip to use PBR. 6. 2% will never use a PBR viewer (reasons unknown). 1 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rowan Amore Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 (edited) 14 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said: Yeah, I don't think that's going to change, and is going to be the most common experience of people moving to PBR viewers, all of the cries of "actually rendering is faster in PBR" notwithstanding. LL needs to respond by finding new ways of improving performance to compensate, or they'll have essentially erased the gains they made a year or so ago. What is also sort of interesting, for me anyway, is that this is not just about having ALM turned on. I've found that PBR viewers are still slower than pre-PBR ones with ALM on. In other words, this isn't just an effect of having ALM turned permanently on. This is just not what has been my experience at all. Was on the FS alpha all morning. Did a little test at a club with around 70 people. Rezzed in quickly. Where I would have many unrezzed avatars on the normal viewer, I had avatars that simply did not show at all until they were complete. That was interesting. I was getting almost 60 fps (I have it set to 60 Max) without shadows on. Turning shadows on, I lost maybe 5 fps initially but it soon went back up. No idea what they're doing differently than the LL viewer but it's encouraging. Edited January 1 by Rowan Amore 2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henri Beauchamp Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 (edited) 3 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said: This is just not what has been my experience at all. Was on the FS alpha all morning. Did a little test at a club with around 70 people. Rezzed in quickly. Where I would have many increased avatars on the normal viewer, I had avatars that simply did not show at all until they were complete. That was interesting. I was getting almost 60 fps (I have it set to 60 Max) without shadows on. Turning shadows on, I lost maybe 5 fps initially but it soon went back up. No idea what they're doing differently than the LL viewer but it's encouraging. They recently changed the code to not rez avatars with partly rezzed meshes attachments. This got nothing to do with PBR, and I personally find it annoying (you risk bumping into people just because one of their meshes did not yet rez and you can't see them at all, or they can stay unrezed forever if that mesh fails to download)... I therefore won't adopt that change in my viewer. 😛 Edited January 1 by Henri Beauchamp 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rowan Amore Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 1 minute ago, Henri Beauchamp said: They recently changed the code to not rez avatars with partly rezzed meshes attachments. This got nothing to do with PBR, and I personally find it annoying (you risk bumping into people just because one of their meshes did not yet rez and you can't see them at all, or they can stay unrezed forever if that mesh fails to download)... I therefore won't adopt that change in my viewer. 😛 Well, I have yet to run into anyone as I use my minimap and can see their nametag. I prefer them to rez in full rather than seeing lumpy blobs that sometimes never rez at all. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luna Bliss Posted January 1 Author Share Posted January 1 ✫ `•.❤ ӇƛƤƤƳ★ ♫`¸.•* ¸｡☆ ☆`•.¸ `• ƝЄƜ *´.•´`¸ ✫ ☆｡¸ .•´ƳЄƛƦ! °° * .•*´ ♫ ♥*.*`.•´ * °¸.•❤ ¸｡☆ ☆｡¸¸*•. ❤ ✫ °` •`°`¸.•* ♥*********♥ \ 2024 / \ ° ° / \ ° / \ ° / \ღ/ | | ღ❤ღ ~♥❤♥~ 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ceka Cianci Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 10 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said: Well, I have yet to run into anyone as I use my minimap and can see their nametag. I prefer them to rez in full rather than seeing lumpy blobs that sometimes never rez at all. Ya I'm teh same way.. If I'm walking at all, I zoom in on my mini map and just aim for in between the dots.. hehehe 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ceka Cianci Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 2 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said: ✫ `•.❤ ӇƛƤƤƳ★ ♫`¸.•* ¸｡☆ ☆`•.¸ `• ƝЄƜ *´.•´`¸ ✫ ☆｡¸ .•´ƳЄƛƦ! °° * .•*´ ♫ ♥*.*`.•´ * °¸.•❤ ¸｡☆ ☆｡¸¸*•. ❤ ✫ °` •`°`¸.•* ♥*********♥ \ 2024 / \ ° ° / \ ° / \ ° / \ღ/ | | ღ❤ღ ~♥❤♥~ I think someone had a thread mix up.. hehehehe 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scylla Rhiadra Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 27 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said: This is just not what has been my experience at all. Was on the FS alpha all morning. Did a little test at a club with around 70 people. Rezzed in quickly. Where I would have many unrezzed avatars on the normal viewer, I had avatars that simply did not show at all until they were complete. That was interesting. I was getting almost 60 fps (I have it set to 60 Max) without shadows on. Turning shadows on, I lost maybe 5 fps initially but it soon went back up. No idea what they're doing differently than the LL viewer but it's encouraging. You've noted before that you've not been experiencing a performance loss. I have absolutely no reason to doubt you, but it's not been my experience or that of others I've heard here or spoken to in-world (see Conifer above, for instance). As I've said, I think that, over and above the huge differences we may all have in the particular computer setups we use, how we employ SL, where we go, what we do, etc., is going to mean that there is no one singular common experience of how PBR is impacting on us. I have to say that turning shadows on, for me, even pre-PBR, has always resulted in a MUCH larger hit than 5 FPS, so I'm not sure what you're doing right -- but keep on doing it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qie Niangao Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 25 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said: They recently changed the code to not rez avatars with partly rezzed meshes attachments. I didn't realize that. If it means EvoX BOM head textures will stop painting on surfaces with non-EvoX UV maps (like the system avatar) while the head mesh rezzes, this will really reduce the fright factor when arriving at busy venues. 1 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henri Beauchamp Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 12 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said: I think someone had a thread mix up.. hehehehe Too much Champagne... 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luna Bliss Posted January 1 Author Share Posted January 1 7 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said: Too much Champagne... Too much chanting... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conifer Dada Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 I've just been to a club with about 15-20 people in. It was just a simple building with a few plants and bits of furniture. Using the LL PBR viewer I found that . . . The building rezzed but its textures took ages to load. Most avatars rezzed eventually but for most of them their textures never loaded so they stayed grey (not jellydolls though). A couple of avatars stayed as white clouds. Lag for movement was not too bad. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Love Zhaoying Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 21 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said: You've noted before that you've not been experiencing a performance loss. I didn't notice one either, but I didn't go test different busy places. And, my (notebook "gaming") PC is less than a year old (although the model is from a year ago). If I do see a big performance change, I'll certainly mention it. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rowan Amore Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said: I have to say that turning shadows on, for me, even pre-PBR, has always resulted in a MUCH larger hit than 5 FPS, so I'm not sure what you're doing right -- but keep on doing it! That is what surprised me when I tried today. Shadows always tanked my fps to the point that I only used it for pictures. Yeah, I really can't explain today's little.experimemt , either. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scylla Rhiadra Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 1 hour ago, Rowan Amore said: That is what surprised me when I tried today. Shadows always tanked my fps to the point that I only used it for pictures. Yeah, I really can't explain today's little.experimemt , either. Are you using the NEW new Alpha? They just released it yesterday, I think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rowan Amore Posted January 1 Share Posted January 1 7 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said: Are you using the NEW new Alpha? They just released it yesterday, I think? I did download the newest one. Not sure if it was yesterday or the day before. To say I was stunned by the performance with shadows on would be an understatement. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gabriele Graves Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 Rowan's not the only one. I'm also getting really good performance with the latest FS alpha as can be seen here (I'm running at 4K resolution as well which isn't apparent from the UI): 4 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arton Rotaru Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 1 hour ago, Gabriele Graves said: Rowan's not the only one. I'm also getting really good performance with the latest FS alpha as can be seen here (I'm running at 4K resolution as well which isn't apparent from the UI): Lets be honest, with these settings at 4k you couldn't even complain if the performance wouldn't be good. 😇 I wouldn't recommend to set Reflection Detail to Realtime, though. 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gabriele Graves Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 16 minutes ago, arton Rotaru said: Lets be honest, with these settings at 4k you couldn't even complain if the performance wouldn't be good. 😇 I wouldn't recommend to set Reflection Detail to Realtime, though. Exactly, and yes, I know. That was the point though. To show with some pretty heavy settings that performance hasn't tanked for all hardware. I think that generally it is poorly understood that there can be so much variation of performance with different hardware and what affects one greatly does not necessarily affect all greatly. 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NiranV Dean Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 9 hours ago, Henri Beauchamp said: I re-did the tests I had done a few weeks and months ago, using my ”potato” computer (which was considered quite decent a gaming computer back when I built it): Core2 Quad Q6600 CPU OCed @ 3.4GHz with 8GB DDR3, GTX 460 (Gigabyte GV-N460OC-1GI) with 1024MB VRAM, 1920x1200 24” monitor. Sadly, this PC is ”too weak” to record a video while doing the viewer benchmarking (it would too badly impact the frame rates), so I could only take screen shots as proofs, but you are of course welcome to redo the tests by yourself if you still do not trust me ! I used Second Life maintenance viewer v6.6.17 (pre-PBR), Second Life release viewer v7.1.2 (PBR), Black Dragon v5.0.3 (PBR; I did not find a pre-PBR version of BD), and the Cool VL Viewer v1.32.0.4 (dual renderer). All viewers were tested under Windows 11, and the Cool VL Viewer (the only one with native Linux builds among them), was also tested under Linux (but I forgot to test shadow modes... Drat !). The benchmarking conditions and protocol are as follow: CPU and GPU locked to their maximum (OCed) frequencies, all energy saving features turned off. Viewers in windowed mode and their window maximized (same size for all viewers). GL/GPU settings set to core GL profile, anisotropic filtering on, FSAA in 4x mode. The NVIDIA OpenGL driver is configured to use threading, V-sync off, triple buffering on. Texture memory setting (GL bound texture memory for Cool VL Viewer) set to 512MB so that the viewer won't spill vertex buffers and GL textures over to the RAM (which would tremendously slow it down), while using as much VRAM as possible. All benchmarks made in a single place, in front of my shop in Hunburgh, with just one avatar on screen (my alt avatar, a potato legacy avatar too !... You won't tell the conditions are too stringent, this way... 😜). Draw distance set to 256m (the same draw distance I always used, including in the old days when this PC was my brand new one). Environment setting set to midday (legacy version, i.e. without PBR auto-adjust). Camera settings set so that all viewers got the same FOV (and the same objects to render). All rendering settings common to all viewers set at an equal value (and the ones that are specific to a given viewer are disabled). In particular the LOD factors were set as follow in all viewers: Objects (volumes) LOD to 3.0, Linden trees LOD to 3.0, Terrain LOD to 2.0, Avatars LOD to 1.0, Avatar physics LOD to 0 (off), jelly dolls off (no complexity limit), max non-impostors set to 10 (16 for the Cool VL Viewer: I just remarked this discrepancy, but it is not really a problem with just one avatar on screen). Each time, the viewer in benchmark was started and left alone until it settles to a stable frame rate, with all textures loaded (verified via the texture console). Here are the results (note that the quoted fps rate is averaged and varies in real time with spikes and dropouts by about +/-5%, for all viewers): In forward rendering mode: Second Life Viewer 6.6: 46fps Cool VL Viewer under Windows: 71fps Cool VL Viewer under Linux: 81fps In ALM mode, without shadows (and SSAO off too): Second Life Viewer 6.6: 37fps Cool VL Viewer: 42fps In ALM mode, with shadows and SSAO off: Second Life Viewer 6.6: 23fps Cool VL Viewer under Windows: 28fps (*) In ALM mode, with shadows and SSAO on: Second Life Viewer 6.6: 20fps Cool VL Viewer under Windows: 22fps (*) In PBR mode, without shadows (and SSAO off too): Second Life Viewer 7.1: 27fps Black Dragon: 34fps Cool VL Viewer under Windows: 36fps Cool VL Viewer under Linux: 43fps In PBR mode, with shadows and SSAO off: Second Life Viewer 7.1: 20fps Black Dragon: 25fps Cool VL Viewer under Windows: 27fps In PBR mode, with shadows and SSAO on: Second Life Viewer 7.1: 17fps Black Dragon: 18fps Cool VL Viewer under Windows: 21fps (*) In this test, SMAA and CAS shaders were also activated in the Cool VL Viewer, to replace FXAA and provide a sharper render. As you can see, at no time any viewer has been capable, in this rather simple 3D scene, to render at 60fps with shadows on ! You can also notice how badly deferred rendering (ALM and PBR shaders alike) does impact the frame rates with this kind of old GPU (the same impact, or even worse, is seen with iGPUs, even newer ones). With the Cool VL Viewer (which C++ highly optimized code shines brighter when less time is spent rendering with the GPU), the forward rendering mode is about 60-70% faster, when compared to the shadow-less deferred mode (ALM and PBR alike, here as well). But even LL's poorly optimized pre-PBR viewer can gain 30% in fps rate by simply switching to the forward rendering mode... Here again, this is specific to old GPUs and (pretty much all) iGPUs, since for modern GPUs, ALM/PBR is almost always as fast or faster than the forward mode. Finally, there is the problem of the VRAM usage: have a look at the textures blurriness in the screen shots, and in the Linux directory, to the CVLV-*Params.png screen shots, showing the texture console (look at the Bias value): the ALM mode eats up a lot of VRAM, and PBR is even worse in this respect, sometimes causing texture trashing (even in such a simple scene) on old those GPUs with less than 3GB of VRAM or so... My conclusion is simple: for PBR (or ALM in pre-PBR viewers), you must have a modern enough PC and a discrete GPU with as much VRAM as possible. The minimum requirements for SL PBR viewers should be changed to: 4-core CPU, preferably with SMT. 16GB of RAM. GTX 960 or equivalent. Well i'm not saying you should be running around with a GTX 460 (let alone a dual core) but your tests also showed that you could run SL with that hardware, of course a more complex scene (such as a club) with several avatars would quickly put an end to your still usable framerate (especially with shadows) but very generous use of impostors can help here to keep at least ~10-15 FPS, which should be more than usable for the average SL user. On 12/31/2023 at 8:14 PM, NiranV Dean said: Before my GTX 670 died i had to jump down to my old GTX 460 for a bit until i got my GTX 1060 and (apart from the 2GB VRAM being far too little for SL) the 460 was churning out stable 60 FPS with Deferred and shadows enabled. This was back in 2022... As i adressed earlier already VRAM is a big issue and there is absolutely no getting around this not to mention that hitting the VRAM cap can and will impact your performance drastically as the GPU starts shoveling around textures in and out of memory which should be avoided at all cost. If it wasn't for the low VRAM i'd say your tests have clearly shown that a GTX 460 is capable enough as "minimum" requirement for SL. Though i agree it should probably be a GTX 6xx at least for GPU power, VRAM on the other hand anything that has at least 4GB is absolute minimum for SL (at least now with PBR). To your tests, considering that you are showing several many plants, 2 houses at least and a tree? sky? platform and probably more stuff behind those bushes i'd say this is a somewhat average complexity scene, the scene i got 60 FPS was a little less complex (the Hippo Hollow and Theater regions) which was probably what pushed me to 60 FPS (note those weren't stable 60 FPS) and neither were they exact we're talking about ~60 FPS so jumping anywhere between 50 and 70 wildly (with the occasional drop into the low frames due to something happening). Your tests do leave the option that 60 FPS are capable (not in your scene) but absolutely possible. On top of that you used a "theoretically" far weaker CPU than i did (although the FX series was notoriously slow and even an Intel Dual Core should blow the FX out of the water by miles at least on single core performance) so depending on how that Intel actually performs you might have lost quite some frames there too compared to my tests, nonetheless i'm quite impressed at the average FPS you pulled with that hardware (even in my Viewer) and even more surprising (heck even shocking almost) is the fact that you pulled consistently more FPS (even close to your own Viewer) out of my Viewer than the LL Viewer. I was very much under the impression that my Viewer is consistently slower than the LL in its stock settings, though we have to keep in mind this is PBR only since you didn't get to test 4.X.X, i'm pretty sure with pre-PBR which still contains all my rendering changes you would have seen lower framerates. (I can make an exception and toss you a link to the latest pre-PBR to test, 4.3.2. I'd be really interested to see what kind of framerate you'd get with that) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henri Beauchamp Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 4 hours ago, NiranV Dean said: Your tests do leave the option that 60 FPS are capable (not in your scene) but absolutely possible. Come on ! 🤪 You said 60fps in ALM with shadows, and in the very simple scene I benchmarked, I hardly pull 20fps with shadows and without SSAO from the GTX 460. Short of testing in a skybox or an empty sim, there is no way you'd get 60 fps with shadows on. Period ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theresa Tennyson Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 15 hours ago, Conifer Dada said: I've just been to a club with about 15-20 people in. It was just a simple building with a few plants and bits of furniture. Using the LL PBR viewer I found that . . . The building rezzed but its textures took ages to load. Most avatars rezzed eventually but for most of them their textures never loaded so they stayed grey (not jellydolls though). A couple of avatars stayed as white clouds. Lag for movement was not too bad. That's not saying anything about the actual rendering speed of the viewer. You're reviewing the taste of the pizza by saying how long it took the delivery driver to get to you. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qie Niangao Posted January 2 Share Posted January 2 There might be uncertainty about a PBR viewer's texture loading speed, on the theory that it could be delayed "looking for PBR textures" or something. In fact, I'd appreciate a detailed, step-by-step description of the whole materials loading process with and without PBR. Like, a PBR viewer needn't download all the non-PBR maps for surfaces with a PBR Material, so it doesn't, right? And is a PBR Material downloaded all in one batch or do the component maps get downloaded and assembled in the viewer for caching and use as a Material? Once a component map (ORM, say) is downloaded, it's cached and can be used in another Material, or it gets downloaded again for each Material of which it's a component? I can make up just-so stories about the process but a viewer dev would actually know, and save us from bad guesses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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