Linden Lab your framerates are too high it seems.

[Count Burks]

I noticed this a while back but haven't spoken about it as I figured other people would. 

When I am working on a Homestead island, terraforming an island for example I notice a lack of smooth movement. This has been happening for well over a month now. When checking I notice that I have 370 FPS. I noticed you have made attempts to increase FPS for users however 370 FPS seems abnormal high. 

I have read that game developers implement a hard cap on framerates and looking further into this these Framerates should be around the norm.

• 240 FPS: target frame rate for extremely competitive gaming that requires fast reflexes
• 144 FPS (eSport quality): target frame rate for competitive eSport games like LoL, DotA, and CS:GO
• 120 FPS: Very good and difficult for the layperson to distinguish any frame rates higher than this.
• 90 FPS: Target VR framerate as to not feel dizzy
• 60 FPS (Gaming PC quality): Target FPS for most games. Buttery smooth.
• 50 FPS: Pretty good
• 40 FPS: Acceptable.
• 30 FPS (previously console quality): Noticeably less smooth, but still playable
• 25 FPS (movie quality): Barely playable.
• 20 FPS: Very difficult to play and frame rate may prove to be a significant handicap in games.

The 370 or 350 FPS is causing issues because the monitor cannot keep up with incredible high framerates which are unnecessary to have in world I think. You might want to put in a limitation in the preferences window to cap the FPS inside of the viewer as a user wishes. 

Keep in mind I only have this on large empty parcels which I have to landscape, but it is annoying and it is only since around the beginning of December I first started to notice these extreme high framerates in the viewer.

Looking forward to your feedback.

[Count Burks]

Make that 460 FPS during zooming into the ground. It makes the using the camera tool less smooth and harder to use.

[Modulated]

There is one, there's a vsync option in there to limit the fps to your display's refresh rate. Works wonders.

[Count Burks]

15 minutes ago, Modulated said:

There is one, there's a vsync option in there to limit the fps to your display's refresh rate. Works wonders.

I will look it up thank you.

[Count Burks]

For those that have similar issues Enable Vsync is in Preferences -- Graphics --- Hardware Settings. It sets the viewer to 60 FPS. A slider to choose your maximum FPS would be welcome. I like 90 FPS to 120 FPS myself.

[steeljane42]

48 minutes ago, Count Burks said:

For those that have similar issues Enable Vsync is in Preferences -- Graphics --- Hardware Settings. It sets the viewer to 60 FPS. A slider to choose your maximum FPS would be welcome. I like 90 FPS to 120 FPS myself.

If it locks you to 60 fps with vsync you have a 60Hz screen, and you wouldn't benefit from higher fps in any way as your screen can't display those. However if you still want that, then some viewers have this feature, and you can also limit fps via GPU driver settings, for Nvidia it's Manage 3D settings>Max Frame Rate. There's a global settings and program settings, so if you only want to set limit for the viewer - find/add it under programs and set a desired fps limit there. No idea about AMD.

Edited January 23 by steeljane42

[Qie Niangao]

6 hours ago, steeljane42 said:

If it locks you to 60 fps with vsync you have a 60Hz screen, and you wouldn't benefit from higher fps in any way as your screen can't display those.

A related question I've never bothered to investigate: Does a 60 Hz screen appear smoother at rates for which the screen's refresh rate is an integer multiple? So 30 better than, say, 45? With the FPS lower than the refresh rate, all the frames should be shown, but the intervals between new frames would be steady at 30, but staggered at 45… but it's all so far above flicker-fusion maybe nobody can detect it?

(It's all kinda academic for me, though. The way I use SL, 15 FPS is plenty smooth enough, and lets me run at ridiculous resolution with quiet fans.)

[Richardus Raymaker]

Fake frames. The server side still is limited to 45 ups or lower. Its for my feeling a bit low for a smooth world while rotating left or right. But it also depends on the sim your on.

[steeljane42]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

A related question I've never bothered to investigate: Does a 60 Hz screen appear smoother at rates for which the screen's refresh rate is an integer multiple? So 30 better than, say, 45? With the FPS lower than the refresh rate, all the frames should be shown, but the intervals between new frames would be steady at 30, but staggered at 45… but it's all so far above flicker-fusion maybe nobody can detect it?

(It's all kinda academic for me, though. The way I use SL, 15 FPS is plenty smooth enough, and lets me run at ridiculous resolution with quiet fans.)

Can't say I've noticed it being less smooth at random values when I did some tests. I use 144Hz screens for ages, though, so when I did the testing I was comparing 144 FPS to lesser values as there's no real point to have that much in SL and I prefer GPU fans not spinning at all times too.

For my hardware I found 80 FPS to be a sweet spot for how I use SL (messing with stuff in my region, shopping/making outfits, and occasionally roleplaying, all of which don't involve much, if any, movement) for the smooth framerate and GPU fans being idle more often than not. If there's any possible difference between 80 and 72 in smoothness, then I just couldn't notice it. I'll probably have to test again when PBR stuff is all fixed/adjusted and a full FS release has it.

But that's just all "on eye testing", I didn't bother to check for the frame-pacing as SL is, well, not quite an action game where it could be important.

  

12 minutes ago, Richardus Raymaker said:

Fake frames. The server side still is limited to 45 ups or lower. Its for my feeling a bit low for a smooth world while rotating left or right. But it also depends on the sim your on.

Region FPS has nothing to do with a client side FPS. Or it's the SL's version of "movies have 24 frames and therefore human eye can't see more" myth?

 

Edited January 23 by steeljane42

[Extrude Ragu]

too much fps is a nice problem to have, all things considered

[Love Zhaoying]

11 hours ago, Count Burks said:

When I am working on a Homestead island, terraforming an island for example I notice a lack of smooth movement. This has been happening for well over a month now. When checking I notice that I have 370 FPS. I noticed you have made attempts to increase FPS for users however 370 FPS seems abnormal high. 

Is this a subtle ploy to rent Homesteads?

[Wulfie Reanimator]

Whether you have a graphics card by Nvidia or AMD, both of them can limit the framerate of any app (including your viewer) even if they lack a built-in setting for it.

All viewers should have a Vsync option (which limits the viewer to your monitor's refresh rate, usually 60), and most third-party viewers should have a "max. framerate" slider.

Higher framerates won't cause things to "slow down" or "become hard to control," but can have other effects you won't like, like heat or fan noise.

2 hours ago, Richardus Raymaker said:

Fake frames. The server side still is limited to 45 ups or lower. Its for my feeling a bit low for a smooth world while rotating left or right. But it also depends on the sim your on.

While the region will update avatars/scripts/objects at most 45 times per second (also known as "server frames", "server FPS", or "tick-rate"), many things can be updated much faster than that by your own viewer: camera movement, avatar animations, texture animations, rotating objects, moving objects, particle effects... etc.

[Count Burks]

After enabling Vsync yesterday everything is working fine for me so it is good that this option is there. 

Fact remains that Linden Lab their programmers have been altering framerates or removed a cap on the framerates in the previous months. I never went above 160 in the past but since some update took place I noticed the weird behavior during terraforming on Homestead islands where framerates went above 300 and now even peak to 450 FPS. I also saw the increase in fan speed and then a lack of smoothness during use of the camera during landscaping.

The viewer should have Vsync enabled as a default setting I think. 

For programmers to just let framerates rise like this on people their machines until the software application becomes unusable isn't how it should be I think.

Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 6144 MB

Edited January 23 by Count Burks

[Solar Legion]

When a software update occurs, you look for any changes is performance/usage and alter your configuration as needed.

There are TPVs that let you set an FPS limit/cap in your settings as well - something I have found I have had to do from several revisions back. I have recently had to dial back the cap however - formerly around 90 FPS as a cap, now closer to 75. This has occurred due to a settings change on my end that increased performance at the cost of running a bit hotter overall while using Second Life.

Furthermore any system side changes can affect your performance.

The only thing Linden Lab (and TPV devs) has/have changed is in regard to overall performance - this is putting aside the PBR changes.

Frankly going by your own words you really should have been using V-sync some time ago (or the options available to you through TPVs to manage your FPS). This should be a basic thing users are taught to do.

[Flea Yatsenko]

13 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

A related question I've never bothered to investigate: Does a 60 Hz screen appear smoother at rates for which the screen's refresh rate is an integer multiple? So 30 better than, say, 45? With the FPS lower than the refresh rate, all the frames should be shown, but the intervals between new frames would be steady at 30, but staggered at 45… but it's all so far above flicker-fusion maybe nobody can detect it?

(It's all kinda academic for me, though. The way I use SL, 15 FPS is plenty smooth enough, and lets me run at ridiculous resolution with quiet fans.)

Refresh rate and frame rate are basically how much something happens in a second. It's confusing because monitors use refresh rates and hz and games use frame rates and FPS. But they are all pretty similar in the end.

An LCD screen can only display a certain frame rate or refresh rate. CRTs had variable refresh rates. LCDs generally do not. So if you have a 60hz panel, it's going to update 60 times a second whether your frame rate is 2, 60, or 1000. Now imagine you have a panel that only updates 60 times a second, but you are updating the contents of the screen 48 times per second because you are getting 48fps. 48 does not go into 60 very well, so there's a bunch of janky stuff that has to go on to make the numbers work between your monitor only showing 60hz (fps if you really want to be consistent) and your graphics card only outputting stuff at 48fps.

It also goes backwards, If you have a 60hz screen and your game is running at 65fps, it doesn't line up either. So it has to do some jank stuff to make it work. I don't know the details. But it's the same deal

Now, if you have a factor that goes into 60hz, like 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 for your fps it feels smoother because the screen update time is not fighting the screen refresh time. Which is why 30fps probably feels smoother to you than 31fps.

vsync is one option to fix it. It adds like a frame of lag (1/60th of a second) and it stops your screen from tearing. Like when it splits and you have a line across your screen for a little bit.

You can also limit frame rates.

Monitors with VRR/Freesync/G-Sync are LCDs where the refresh rate can change with the content on your screen. So if you have a VRR/Freesync/G-sync (just call it VRR, variable refresh rate), the graphics card can tell the monitor it's only getting 48fps and the monitor will only update when it needs to, instead of trying to cram 48 frames into 60 slots of updates per second. I have a gaming monitor that refreshes 175 times a second (175hz) and it has freesync down to like 40fps. So anything between 40fps and 175fps doesn't have the jank and feels way smoother.