Slow rez in Second Life Viewer on Macbook Pro 2019

[ethereal999]

Hi everyone,

I've returned to SL after a year of inactivity using the same laptop, same internet connection and same viewer. However everything is taking a long time to rez and other avatars and animations aren't rezzing properly.  Avatars remain naked and deformed most of the time when I'm in a busy sim. This is really frustrating and I don't understand what has changed. I am using a MacBook Pro 2019, a super fast internet connection and the SL viewer and never used to have any issues with lag or rez. I've tried our Firestorm and the same issue is happening there. I really want to get back into SL but this rezzing issue is making things difficult. Does anyone have any advice or tips I can do to fix this issue? 

[filz Camino]

How much video and how much system memory do you have? And does the problem appear when you are not in a busy sim? If not, it might just be that you're hitting the hardware limits of your system. In that case, you might get some improvement if you tick "enable lossy texture compression" in graphics settings  and then restart your viewer, that does help reduce demand on the graphics memory.

If the problem tends to appear in all situations then it sounds more like a network problem to me. Are you using Wifi or a wired network connection? If the former, try a wired connection if you can. If you can't do that, try sitting right next to the router with your laptop, and also try restarting the router. If all that fails, try connecting to a different network if possible. If you have a good 4 or 5G signal on your phone, you could just try tethering your laptop to that to experiment with how it works on a different network (best to do this in a different location to your home, in case radio interference to the Wifi is the problem).

Edited December 24, 2023 by filz Camino

[ethereal999]

6 hours ago, filz Camino said:

How much video and how much system memory do you have? And does the problem appear when you are not in a busy sim? If not, it might just be that you're hitting the hardware limits of your system. In that case, you might get some improvement if you tick "enable lossy texture compression" in graphics settings  and then restart your viewer, that does help reduce demand on the graphics memory.

If the problem tends to appear in all situations then it sounds more like a network problem to me. Are you using Wifi or a wired network connection? If the former, try a wired connection if you can. If you can't do that, try sitting right next to the router with your laptop, and also try restarting the router. If all that fails, try connecting to a different network if possible. If you have a good 4 or 5G signal on your phone, you could just try tethering your laptop to that to experiment with how it works on a different network (best to do this in a different location to your home, in case radio interference to the Wifi is the problem).

I’m not sure whether this is a hardware issue or network issue. I never used to have any issues like this with second life until I came back recently. Before, everything ran smoothly with no issues. I have something like 99gb memory free on my laptop. The problem doesn’t occur when I’m alone in a sim, it only happens when I’m on busy sims. I’m using a wired connection as I always have. I don’t have a strong 5G signal on my phone but I will give that a try anyway! I just don’t understand what’s going on because I never used to have this problem and I am using the same laptop, same network and same everything. @filz Camino

[filz Camino]

27 minutes ago, ethereal999 said:

I’m not sure whether this is a hardware issue or network issue. I never used to have any issues like this with second life until I came back recently. Before, everything ran smoothly with no issues. I have something like 99gb memory free on my laptop. The problem doesn’t occur when I’m alone in a sim, it only happens when I’m on busy sims. I’m using a wired connection as I always have. I don’t have a strong 5G signal on my phone but I will give that a try anyway! I just don’t understand what’s going on because I never used to have this problem and I am using the same laptop, same network and same everything. @filz Camino

OK if it only happens on busy sims, I think it is more likely to be the computer than the network. It is possible that there is something running on your computer in the background using memory that wasn't running previously, this could cause the situation you describe.

99GB will be your disk space rather than your computer memory.

To find out how much video and system memory you have, click the Apple icon in the top left corner of your screen and select "About this mac", and post the information that you find there under the 'Graphics' heading and the 'Memory' heading.

To find out how much system memory you have free right now, open the 'Activity monitor' application (You'll find that in the 'Utilities' folder inside the 'Applications' folder), click the 'Memory' tab at the top, and you can see your current memory use at the bottom of the app. 'Memory used' is how much system memory is already in use and not available to run the Secondlife viewer, that would be interesting to know;

If you post those 3 those figures, then I might be able to tell if that is the problem.

[ethereal999]

10 hours ago, filz Camino said:

OK if it only happens on busy sims, I think it is more likely to be the computer than the network. It is possible that there is something running on your computer in the background using memory that wasn't running previously, this could cause the situation you describe.

99GB will be your disk space rather than your computer memory.

To find out how much video and system memory you have, click the Apple icon in the top left corner of your screen and select "About this mac", and post the information that you find there under the 'Graphics' heading and the 'Memory' heading.

To find out how much system memory you have free right now, open the 'Activity monitor' application (You'll find that in the 'Utilities' folder inside the 'Applications' folder), click the 'Memory' tab at the top, and you can see your current memory use at the bottom of the app. 'Memory used' is how much system memory is already in use and not available to run the Secondlife viewer, that would be interesting to know;

If you post those 3 those figures, then I might be able to tell if that is the problem.

@filz Camino I highly doubt it is my computer because I have been able to run very demanding games on Windows Bootcamp such as Cyberpunk, Hogwarts Legacy very smoothly with minimal issues. I also had no issues previously running SL on this same computer last year.  I think it is a network issue. I just decided to do an experiment by tethering my phone's 5G connection to my computer and they problem was basically resolved. Everything loaded perfectly, the only issue remaining is that avatars did not animate. So I think it is definitely a network issue. 

These are the computer specs: 
Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB
16 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

The memory used in Activity Monitor is 7 gb. Hope that helps! 

[filz Camino]

5 hours ago, ethereal999 said:

I just decided to do an experiment by tethering my phone's 5G connection to my computer and they problem was basically resolved.

OK, well if that is the case, it does sound like the problem is a network issue. You'll need to speak to your ISP about that, although I think I'd contact Linden Labs support first, because they will be used to dealing with the problem, and will be able to give you instructions on how to test the network connection so that you've got the necessary test data to give to your ISP.

Having said that, if just after restarting your computer and before you run any other software you've already got 7GB of memory in use, there probably is something running in the background that could be impacting the performance of Secondlife viewer on a busy sim. For reference, my 16GB Macbook with a fresh install of MacOS has just 2.8GB of memory in use immediately after restarting the computer, so has 50% more free memory in that situation.

If you have bootcamp on your computer, I guess another quick test you could do would be to install Secondlife under Windows and see how that works?

It does sound from your test results that it is a network problem, though, so I think that's the first thing to focus on!

 

 

[ethereal999]

3 hours ago, filz Camino said:

OK, well if that is the case, it does sound like the problem is a network issue. You'll need to speak to your ISP about that, although I think I'd contact Linden Labs support first, because they will be used to dealing with the problem, and will be able to give you instructions on how to test the network connection so that you've got the necessary test data to give to your ISP.

Having said that, if just after restarting your computer and before you run any other software you've already got 7GB of memory in use, there probably is something running in the background that could be impacting the performance of Secondlife viewer on a busy sim. For reference, my 16GB Macbook with a fresh install of MacOS has just 2.8GB of memory in use immediately after restarting the computer, so has 50% more free memory in that situation.

If you have bootcamp on your computer, I guess another quick test you could do would be to install Secondlife under Windows and see how that works?

It does sound from your test results that it is a network problem, though, so I think that's the first thing to focus on!

 

 

I'll contact Linden Lab and see what they advise me to do. After doing some experimenting and determining that it is a network issue, I've been able to get other avatars to rez eventually but the only issue now is that no one is moving, I can't see AOs or animations, other avatars are mostly just static for me. 

I tried shutting down some of the programs that were using memory and that seems to have helped a bit, avatars are loading now in busy sims but they are just not moving which is frustrating. 

I tried running SL on bootcamp a few months ago and it didn't run well but I could give it another try.

I'm glad I've been able to determine what the issue is! Had a feeling it wasn't my computer because it has run so many demanding games. Hopefully my ISP will point me in the right direction. 

[filz Camino]

2 hours ago, ethereal999 said:

the only issue now is that no one is moving, I can't see AOs or animations, other avatars are mostly just static for me. 

OK, avatars are very resource heavy things to display so in the viewer there's a Graphics setting called "Max. non-imposter avatars" that defines the maximum number of avatars that will be fully animated. It is quite a useful setting because on many computers, it would overwhelm the CPU trying to animate all of them.

If that setting is set to 5, and you are on a sim with 60 avatars on it, only the nearest 5 avatars will be animated, the other 55 avatars will all appear frozen, and only occasionally update.

So it may be that!

The viewer also has a feature that adjusts graphics settings to try and maintain a specified frame rate, so if you have enabled that feature, it could be that which is turning "Max. non-imposter avatars" right down.

Also - if shutting down background programs made things work better, that does imply you are at or close to the memory limits needed for the viewer to work well. In that case, it might be worth trying "Enable lossy texture compression" in graphics settings. With that option enabled, the viewer should use what memory you do have available more efficiently.

 

Edited December 25, 2023 by filz Camino

[filz Camino]

Also - what viewer are you using? If you are using the Linden labs Secondlife Viewer, be aware that it has had a big update recently that completely changes the way that graphics work, and that could account for some of the difference in performance you are seeing between now and when you were on SL previously.

For the time being, the Firestorm viewer still has the old graphics code in it, so if you are using the viewer from Linden Labs, it might be worth trying Firestorm to see how that works:

https://www.firestormviewer.org/

 

[ethereal999]

9 hours ago, filz Camino said:

OK, avatars are very resource heavy things to display so in the viewer there's a Graphics setting called "Max. non-imposter avatars" that defines the maximum number of avatars that will be fully animated. It is quite a useful setting because on many computers, it would overwhelm the CPU trying to animate all of them.

If that setting is set to 5, and you are on a sim with 60 avatars on it, only the nearest 5 avatars will be animated, the other 55 avatars will all appear frozen, and only occasionally update.

So it may be that!

The viewer also has a feature that adjusts graphics settings to try and maintain a specified frame rate, so if you have enabled that feature, it could be that which is turning "Max. non-imposter avatars" right down.

Also - if shutting down background programs made things work better, that does imply you are at or close to the memory limits needed for the viewer to work well. In that case, it might be worth trying "Enable lossy texture compression" in graphics settings. With that option enabled, the viewer should use what memory you do have available more efficiently.

 

Thank you so much for explaining this, I had no idea what non-imposters were and it turns out I played around with that setting in an attempt to improve my performance and it was set on 4. Now I have increased it to 20 and the problem is resolved! I'm so happy! I've done a bit more experimenting today and yesterday I maxed out the cache and that seems to have improved performance as well. Now majority of avatars are loading in busy sims (it takes 2-5 mins) and I can see animations. SL is running way better than before!

In the SL viewer the only option I can see is "Enable texture compression," is this the same thing? Is it still worth a try even if SL seems to be performing much better now for me?

I had no idea SL viewer got a big update. I have Firestorm but it runs very poorly, nothing loads at all for a long time. Right now though I'm happy with the performance improvements I've noticed in the SL viewer,  it is running much more smoothly and actually playable. 



 

[filz Camino]

10 hours ago, ethereal999 said:

In the SL viewer the only option I can see is "Enable texture compression," is this the same thing?

yes, that's it. i think it is probably worth experimenting with it to see what effect it has. i'd expect it to improve performance on a busy sim, but if it doesn't, or if it makes things worse, you can always disable it again. you need to restart the viewer after changing it. 

[ethereal999]

16 hours ago, filz Camino said:

yes, that's it. i think it is probably worth experimenting with it to see what effect it has. i'd expect it to improve performance on a busy sim, but if it doesn't, or if it makes things worse, you can always disable it again. you need to restart the viewer after changing it. 

So I tried that setting and it seemed to make things worse, avatars were only appearing as clouds. I turned it off again and tried entering a very busy sim with my fixed connection and it was very slow. Then I tried the same thing with my mobile data and most avatars loaded but some were still appearing as clouds and never loaded. Then I tried again with my fixed connection and it took 5-10 mins but everything loaded and I can see everyone. So it's definitely something going on with my fixed internet connection. 

[filz Camino]

4 hours ago, ethereal999 said:

So I tried that setting and it seemed to make things worse, avatars were only appearing as clouds. I turned it off again and tried entering a very busy sim with my fixed connection and it was very slow. Then I tried the same thing with my mobile data and most avatars loaded but some were still appearing as clouds and never loaded. Then I tried again with my fixed connection and it took 5-10 mins but everything loaded and I can see everyone. So it's definitely something going on with my fixed internet connection. 

OK, it is a bit hard to conclude anything from those results I think, it sounds like it isn't working perfectly on mobile data or your fixed line internet. If the sim is really busy, I think it is possible that you are hitting the limits of your hardware, so it might be better to do some tests on a sim that isn't so busy. 

For reference: Firestorm running on my PC uses over 30GB of total memory on a busy sim, that's almost 4 times more than you have free, and that is going to have an impact on how well it all works.