PBR Viewer

[Andred Darwin]

I just thought to share what I'm seeing with the new PBR viewer along with some fps readings on scenes representing scenes that I use the most (Mainly my stores a few other areas, some just as a reference for my fps readings... Quantum City as an example).

These are particular to my computer, which I'm also sharing the specs, maybe the numbers could be useful to someone considering updates or using a similar setup... anyway, it's just what I see with this computer based on my habits within the game.

I'm looking for opinions on what others are seeing when using their own machine and scenes they frequent the most, comparing the old viewer with the new one and your experience between the two.
(Ps.: Of course, a RTX 4090 with latest I7/I9 14th gen or latest AMD processors may make things a lot smoother... lol... no competitions or show off's if it all possible... viewer could be any that you use, as long is the same comparing PBR vs non PBR, example Firestorm PBR vs Firestorm non PBR, etc..... )

This computer is configured as follows:

I7 11700KF (Stock speed settings)
64gb DDR4-3200 (XMP2 enabled)
1tb SSD (Main Drive) - PCIE 4.0
RTX 3060 Strix 12GB (Stock speed settings, rebar enabled)
1440p monitor @ 165hz (3x setup)
SL PBR Viewer 7.1.3.7821226606
SL Viewer 6.6.17.6709258523

Both viewers with default settings except:
- LOD factor set to 4.0. (RenderVolumeLODFactor)
- Draw Distance set to 72 meters. (Just enough to cover the scene as seen on each snapshot)
- On the scene with several avatars, I did change Max Impostors from the default 16 and No Limit then back to 16.

I'm adding a sample screenshot for each scene rendered, and FPS results on a chart, comparing 1080p resolution and 1440p for both viewers, 6.6.17 (Legacy) and 7.1.3 (PBR).
Numbers were taken using the same scene with same camera position for both viewers, after 1 minute or so, until the scene seemed to load completely.
Only one scene could be considered a PBR scene, EEP, Reflection Probes and Lights (which is my store, under construction, but still one the scenes I use the most.)

My 2 cents and perception:

1)  PBR viewer is definitely slower in most cases, except on scenes with multiple avatars, which the PBR viewer seems to do a better job... not really noticeable, cause its too slow anyway.

- I have 2 completely different experiences with the PBR viewer, if I leave everything somewhat stock... I can't stand how much it "stutters" (165hz monitor) when turning my avatar/camera (even though fps does not change much), it's pretty bad when comparing to the old viewer even at FPS over 100... however... if I go the Nvidia Control panel, and limit fps to 72 for the SL PBR Viewer, it's like from water to wine... everything is much smoother, no stuttering, a much better experience, the fact of being a slower viewer becomes not noticeable at all. 
  I'm using 72 as a limit, cause it seems to be the "slowest" fps I see on average for the scenes I play with the most, I never had to do that with the old viewer using this machine, even at much lower fps. 
  
- PBR viewer texture handling seems to be much degraded (this is perception of course) compared to old viewer specially transparency, the incessant texture trashing (seems like textures switch between resolutions way too much even when not moving the camera), is not only distracting, but quite "ugly".

- PBR viewer seems to have a "mind of its own"... Login to a scene/region... one performance reading... tp out, visit other places... come back... a different performance reading... sometimes its faster... sometimes way slower, even with same EEP settings, all after waiting a bit before seeing results.

- Reflection probes in full PBR scenes, also seem to have a "mind of its own", along with auto exposure, it's like they are smoking weed! lol.

- PBR viewer seems to lock up for a few seconds quite a lot, specially right after login (sometimes right before receiving messages, or avatar bake updates, etc)... reflection probes, when updating also change the scene for a few seconds, from super bright to normal, and happens quite often, specially after editing an object.

- The final rendering of the PBR viewer though, is miles away from the old engine/viewer, of course there are exceptions, but from my point of view, far superior even with legacy scenes.

I will post the same numbers with a 4060 TI, which I found a really good deal on Amazon for $320 bucks (Asus ProArt 16GB... after a gift card and discounts), I may return it if does not make much of difference for SL, I'm pretty pleased with the current setup keeping in mind I don't use this computer only for SL.

Overall, for now at least for me, its a "Like/Hate" game with the new viewer, but, assuming it will continue get better, I really enjoy it specially after limiting fps at the Nvidia Control panel.

I will add the fps chart to this post and the pictures to another post.

Edit:  Adding the same chart now with a 4060 TI, same system except video card, same as few posts below.

 

Edited February 17 by Andred Darwin
Add 4060 TI

[Andred Darwin]

Reference snaps of above, I'm not adding pictures of my stores... but they are available at my profile (Taber & Bay City)

Edited February 16 by Andred Darwin

[Janet Voxel]

I’m using Alchemy. I remember about a month or two ago, I was having the stuttering problem. I felt like I was crazy because I was describing it in their discord and nobody else was getting it. 
 

A couple of patches later(and reading the patch notes) it was gone. Apparently, it was something with an NVIDIA update that caused it.

[Andred Darwin]

I saw that info too about Nvidia 551.23... then they launched a patch hot-fix driver (551.46 if I'm not mistaken)... but I never noticed any stutter with any other software or game , and with 6.6.17 viewer there was no stutter at all...even with the said driver that had that issue... either way, I reinstalled 546.65 just in case... and for my system the PBR viewer still stutters a lot until I limit fps... its like a huge difference.. maybe the stutter is due to the monitors running at a higher frequency, the 3060 cannot handle SL @ 1440p above 165 fps average for what I use... )... anyway, it doesn't stutter anywhere else...  and after limiting fps, its just nice.

Thank you btw!

Edited February 16 by Andred Darwin

[Extrude Ragu]

When you say downloaded a PBR viewer, do you mean the SecondLife default one, or a TPV?

[Andred Darwin]

29 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

When you say downloaded a PBR viewer, do you mean the SecondLife default one, or a TPV?

For these numbers, only the official viewer (or latest builds of it from Github...)

SL PBR Viewer 7.1.3.7821226606 (Github gltf-maint-2 latest build)
SL Viewer 6.6.17.6709258523

Edited February 16 by Andred Darwin

[Andred Darwin]

Adding the same readings now with a RTX 4060 TI instead of RTX 3060. Much faster (of course) and the stutter perception is much lower, but still there (gone if using frame limit of 100 fps). The fps fluctuate a lot more with both viewers.

 

 

Edited February 17 by Andred Darwin

[Henri Beauchamp]

If you really want to compare the rendering speeds, you must use equivalent (and actually equal, whenever possible) settings, else you compare pears with apples.

There is no reflection in the old renderer, so you must disable the latter in the new one (PBR reflections tax a lot the CPU when enabled, and cause a large decrease in frame rates): in the PBR viewer, un-tick ”Screen space reflections”, set ”Reflection detail” to ”Static only” and ”Reflection coverage” to ”None”. On the other hand, PBR does not have proper water reflections, so be sure to set the old viewer water reflections to ”None (transparent)” (or ”Minimal” for some TPVs).

In LL's viewers, be careful with LOD settings (IIRC, they increased the maximum value for the slider corresponding to the RenderVolumeLODFactor, in the PBR viewer): check/set them from the debug settings to be sure (type ”LOD” in the search line, and set all settings it finds to the same value between viewers).

Yes, there is something fishy with the PBR renderer (my (wild) guess is that it has something to do with occlusions during rezzing) and sometimes, after login, it renders at a lower rate a scene that it renders faster after a TP away/back in. I can see this too in the Cool VL Viewer (which can render in all three forward, ALM/deferred and PBR modes) by not even moving but just toggling PBR off and then back on (with CTRL ALT P), after which the fps rate significantly increases.

The PBR viewer got quite a few optimizations in the underlying code (code that exists in both viewers), such as with the vertex buffers (now cached when possible), the VBO pools (with a much more efficient management code), and the avatars' matrix palettes uploading to the shaders (with the legacy code, they used to be uploaded pointlessly, sometimes several times per frame, while already uploaded). The Cool VL Viewer got all these optimizations backported, so they benefit all three rendering modes (forward/ALM/PBR) alike; if you want to measure the impact of the PBR shaders and render pipeline alone, this is a better viewer to perform your tests (and this is where you see the actual impact on old hardware).

All in all, and with all settings at equal values (i.e. with reflections off for PBR, and water reflections off for ALM/forward), the PBR renderer is not slower than the ALM one, and sometimes even faster than the latter on modern hardware. However, if you want to benefit from all the new shinies (pun intended), such as reflections, you will see lower frame rates, even on modern hardware. There is always a trade-off for new features: no free lunch !

As for the stuttering you mention, this is likely due to the new way the PBR viewer manages the VRAM usage for textures (LL's algorithm causes the VRAM to fill up to the brim, with vertex buffers and GL textures spilling out to the RAM as a result as soon as you turn the camera around and get new stuff rezzed while VRAM is already full); the Cool VL Viewer does not use this new code (but instead the old texture discard bias method with a rewritten and refined algorithm) and won't suffer from this kind of stuttering/freezes.

Edited February 17 by Henri Beauchamp

[Andred Darwin]

The "sort of stuttering" while rotating the avatar and transparency handling ( even after converting toggling from alpha blend to alpha mask where possible) are the most annoying thing for me about the new viewer ... not counting how harder it is to setup a full PBR scene with probes, and at lot more lights, and of course, see fps just go down compared to the old engine (we could go by before without lights using EEP only)... right now there is sort of a "honey moon" for most with SL PBR (its always great at the beginning... )... full PBR scenes will come to play...

The main goal with that post was not to show a full apples to apples comparison (its just too different anyway, its a different beast), which you are right, even mentioning ways to do it..., thank you for the tips!

I just wanted to share the results/readings and my 2 cents using the older card and the new one which I was about to receive, in a way that maybe most users that look at fps may perceive the new rendering engine (login and play).

I guess it's cool to know the "technicals", apples to apples, etc,  but at the end... it's really login and play.... I had high settings before, still use high settings now... what do I see, what performance, benefits and drawbacks do I get with the new engine, do I need to update my system to enjoy the same way I used to?... (even knowing the final result with PBR is a much improved scene when using PBR materials, use more resources, etc... ).

I only increase LOD factor cause I hate to see things deforming a lot when I visit other places... and I never really a noticed much lower FPS running with a value of 4.0 vs the default setting but I do notice all objects rendering without deformation, which is great.

I updated all my monitors to 27in @ 1440p @ 165hz from 23in @ 1080p @75hz about a month ago. Using the 75hz ones, I never not noticed any stutter before (of course)... but the RTX 3060 was probably not the best option to run @ 1440p. Does a great job @ 1080p though and for SL PBR @1440p if you limit the fps at the driver control panel, still works great (I dont notice any stutter with the old viewer @ 1440p with the 3060). 

I was really surprised on how the 4060 TI performed, I was not expecting it, specially after seeing the reviews just bashing it due to the price vs performance gain comparison against its predecessor, the 3060 TI... but @ $320 upgrading from a 3060... for 1440p, I think it was a good deal for me, the worst that would happen... would be to return it...

The 11700k seems to do ok with the 4060 TI for SL, some scenes seems to show that a faster processor could push the 4060TI a bit more, but overall it does a pretty decent job I guess... I was not expecting over 30% better fps for SL @ 1440p with the 4060TI and 11700K (a lot more for some scenes, over 50%)..., even when most videos on the internet do show other games with similar performance increase, usually for SL, it used to be a much lower number compared to other games video benchmarks..  I may be able to keep this system for another 3 years until the 6000 series comes out... 

Anyway, that was the main goal...  hopefully helps someone that is choosing an upgraded card to better enjoy PBR or update their system trying to keep budget in mind...

I would not have bought the 3060 at the time, even for 1080p if I knew how much of a difference 3060 TI would make for a few bucks more playing SL, in fact, would not even consider buying another one for 1440p today, a forum post with some numbers and other users opinions specific for SL would have helped me make a better choice.

Some websites say the 11700K is not fast enough to keep up with the 4060TI, which may be true, but for SL as the main game seems to do a great job  .... I'm seeing a much better result with them, more than enough for what I need and saved a couple hundred dollars compared to a 4070 which was my first choice. 

Also... the 160W TDP for the 4060 TI is probably something to keep in mind... 

Edited February 17 by Andred Darwin

[Flea Yatsenko]

I noticed default PBR settings are too aggressive. I.E. what's recommended is usually too high and runs poorly. I was able to get PBR running on a very old netbook. It wouldn't even run at default above 1fps at recommended settings, but lowering draw distance and some settings made it usable if I really had no other choice. What is happening is people are not changing their settings, running PBR, seeing it's slower, then comparing it to their old settings (which probably have been tweaked, like lower draw distance) and thinking PBR is slower.

I think Linden Lab is still adjusting their graphical defaults based on their minimum requirements, which seem completely too low

https://secondlife.com/system-requirements

Do you know anyone running SL with 4GB of ram on an 800mhz Pentium 3? The netbook I used is close to a 1.5ghz Core 2 Quad in performance per clock and it struggled massively.

[Andred Darwin]

43 minutes ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

Do you know anyone running SL with 4GB of ram on an 800mhz Pentium 3? The netbook I used is close to a 1.5ghz Core 2 Quad in performance per clock and it struggled massively.

No I don't know anyone... I didn't even think it was possible.

Edited February 17 by Andred Darwin

[Extrude Ragu]

Yeah, the minimum requirements are definitely out of touch. There seems to be consensus from the third party viewer developers about this. I think LL just hasn't updated the page in a very long time. Really the 'recommended' column should be the 'minimum' column today.

SecondLife is blessed (and cursed) that it has an ageing user-base. It has managed to keep people around for a very long time, which is a nice problem to have, but also a progressively more expensive one trying to keep SecondLife playable on hardware that was probably mid-tier in the late 2000s' whilst simultaneously trying to attract a new audience to maintain itself. These old computers are actually probably even slower today than they were in the 2000s as I doubt many residents are dusting insides/pasting them (or taking it to a shop to have that done for them.). Components wear over time, fan bearings etc.

If I were the lab I'd maybe start thinking about putting some 'SecondLife University' style videos to help residents start making informed upgrade decisions or even just basic things like looking after their computer. Not all residents are very computer literate, so it would help a lot. After all, the better residents computers are performing, the more of them are likely to stick around and keep playing SecondLife.

As for the inevitable 'what if they can't afford to upgrade' question - I don't claim to know the answer. But I don't think trying to keep SL working on older and older computers will be sustainable in the long run, even if the lab wanted to do it, I doubt they could afford it. Performance improvements should still be sought, but effort also needs to go towards ensuring residents have modern computers.

 

[AmeliaJ08]

1 hour ago, Extrude Ragu said:

Yeah, the minimum requirements are definitely out of touch. There seems to be consensus from the third party viewer developers about this. I think LL just hasn't updated the page in a very long time. Really the 'recommended' column should be the 'minimum' column today.

SecondLife is blessed (and cursed) that it has an ageing user-base. It has managed to keep people around for a very long time, which is a nice problem to have, but also a progressively more expensive one trying to keep SecondLife playable on hardware that was probably mid-tier in the late 2000s' whilst simultaneously trying to attract a new audience to maintain itself. These old computers are actually probably even slower today than they were in the 2000s as I doubt many residents are dusting insides/pasting them (or taking it to a shop to have that done for them.). Components wear over time, fan bearings etc.

If I were the lab I'd maybe start thinking about putting some 'SecondLife University' style videos to help residents start making informed upgrade decisions or even just basic things like looking after their computer. Not all residents are very computer literate, so it would help a lot. After all, the better residents computers are performing, the more of them are likely to stick around and keep playing SecondLife.

As for the inevitable 'what if they can't afford to upgrade' question - I don't claim to know the answer. But I don't think trying to keep SL working on older and older computers will be sustainable in the long run, even if the lab wanted to do it, I doubt they could afford it. Performance improvements should still be sought, but effort also needs to go towards ensuring residents have modern computers.

 

They need to be putting up actual minimum specifications with specific hardware examples, their minimum requirement of OpenGL 4.6 is fulfilled by pretty much everything since the dark ages.

Okay maybe not quite but that page is absolutely useless for anyone interested in trying Second Life, I know they don't want to scare anyone away but I'm not sure that would actually happen since SL-in-2024 does run reasonably well on most dedicated 2016+ graphics hardware, even some slightly older stuff will handle it quite well.

 

[Henri Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

They need to be putting up actual minimum specifications with specific hardware examples, their minimum requirement of OpenGL 4.6 is fulfilled by pretty much everything since the dark ages.

It depends on the architecture and ”computer”... When using an ARM64 Single Board Computer (Raspberry Pi & Co, on which the Cool VL Viewer Linux aarch64 releases can run), then you are stuck with OpenGL 3.x and even then, not even fully debugged: most SBCs won't be able to do deferred rendering, for example, due to bugs in the current Mali GPU drivers (so, forget about PBR and even ALM: it's forward mode or nothing)... 😛

But yes, for x86_64 platforms, the minimum requirements as listed by LL are totally outdated and even plain silly (32 bits for Linux ?...  🤪 Nope, not any more !!!).

Edited February 17 by Henri Beauchamp

[kaahupahau]

24 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

It depends on the architecture and ”computer”... When using an ARM64 Single Board Computer (Raspberry Pi & Co, on which the Cool VL Viewer Linux aarch64 releases can run), then you are stuck with OpenGL 3.x and even then, not even fully debugged: most SBCs won't be able to do deferred rendering, for example, due to bugs in the current Mali GPU drivers (so, forget about PBR and even ALM: it's forward mode or nothing)... 😛

But yes, for x86_64 platforms, the minimum requirements as listed by LL are totally outdated and even plain silly (32 bits for Linux ?...  🤪 Nope, not any more !!!).

*kneels and kisses the ground under your feet*

You're the reason I am able to access Second Life from outside the workshop or the mediaroom, and instead use it in my own room where my Odroid N2 is my trusty Desktop since before Corona!