Can't limit framerate on DeltaFPS SL viewer

[Phate Shepherd]

I am running 7.1.10.10622905308 on my Mac Laptop. I am trying to limit the frame rate to 30 or lower on the viewer. I don't need max FPS as it eats my laptop battery alive when it is trying to get as high an FPS as possible.

The settings window for Automatic Adjustment says 60FPS no matter what I set the desired frame rate too, and this is confirmed with GPU usage, power draw and just general feel when spinning my avi around. It is ignoring the setting and trying to get max FPS no matter what.

What is frustrating is that the background FPS mode is working. In the background, SL drops to 20fps. So I know the capability is there.

Do I have a fundamental misunderstanding of how Automatic Adjustment works? Is it not targeting a frame rate, but just effing with the settings if my FPS drops below the desired frame rate?

Firestorm PBR does honor the FPS setting, but it is also a few versions back and eats 100% of my GPU no matter what the settings are.

I guess I need to look at Alchemy, Cool, etc?

Edited September 3 by Phate Shepherd

[AmeliaJ08]

Is Automatic Adjustment just a new name for "Improve graphics performance" or whatever it was called?

Quote

Do I have a fundamental misunderstanding of how Automatic Adjustment works? Is it not targeting a frame rate, but just effing with the settings if my FPS drops below the desired frame rate?

This was definitely how it used to work, yes. It would reduce settings dynamically to attempt to maintain the desired frame rate. If the window says 60FPS regardless of what you have set the desired frame rate to though I guess it's maybe broken?

This is a beta so you probably want to submit a bug report if you feel it isn't working right.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

13 hours ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Is Automatic Adjustment just a new name for "Improve graphics performance" or whatever it was called?

This was definitely how it used to work, yes. It would reduce settings dynamically to attempt to maintain the desired frame rate. If the window says 60FPS regardless of what you have set the desired frame rate to though I guess it's maybe broken?

That's what it is. But if you have higher FPS than the desired FPS, your settings won't be reduced because that would increase your FPS even further. It only adjusts your settings if you are below your desired FPS.

The LL viewer doesn't have a "limit framerate" slider like Firestorm, so the best thing you can do is dig into the debug settings:

1. World -> Show -> Advanced menu
2. Advanced -> Show debug settings
3. Search for "YieldTime" and set it to 25 milliseconds.

Now your viewer is limited to 30 FPS all the time.

[Aishagain]

1 hour ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

1. World -> Show -> Advanced menu
2. Advanced -> Show debug settings
3. Search for "YieldTime" and set it to 25 milliseconds.

Now your viewer is limited to 30 FPS all the time.

Surely setting 25 milliseconds results in 40 FPS?

Setting 33 ms would be much closer to 30FPS?

[Wulfie Reanimator]

29 minutes ago, Aishagain said:

Surely setting 25 milliseconds results in 40 FPS?

Setting 33 ms would be much closer to 30FPS?

No, and the value depends on your system anyhow. If you have slower hardware, you should use a lower value than 25.

30 FPS means there's 33.333 ms between each frame, and YieldTime causes the viewer to sleep for a set amount of time after a frame has finished. So if you sleep for 33ms after a frame, you'll get way below 30 FPS because frametime + 33ms is much longer.

Edited September 4 by Wulfie Reanimator

[JeromFranzic]

Hmph... no wonder TPVs exist. They just use the FrameRateLimit option in debug settings or include it in the menus.

That's not negating Wulfie's last comment, I learned something from it. Sometimes simplifying things makes better sense, SL is already difficult to set up as is, especially for less technically inclined users.

 

ETA, IIRC the latest Firestorm Alpha is in line with the DeltaFPS viewer. Worth looking at if the LL viewer lacks some features for you. Just need to be a member of the Firestorm Preview group in world, and grab the download links there.

Edited September 4 by JeromFranzic

[AmeliaJ08]

1 hour ago, JeromFranzic said:

Hmph... no wonder TPVs exist. They just use the FrameRateLimit option in debug settings or include it in the menus.

That's not negating Wulfie's last comment, I learned something from it. Sometimes simplifying things makes better sense, SL is already difficult to set up as is, especially for less technically inclined users.

 

ETA, IIRC the latest Firestorm Alpha is in line with the DeltaFPS viewer. Worth looking at if the LL viewer lacks some features for you. Just need to be a member of the Firestorm Preview group in world, and grab the download links there.

It's a beta now, apparently. 7.1.10.75843. Works good!

[Nofunawo]

The current FS Beta 7.1.10.75843 is not based on the DeltaFPS viewer. It is based on the Atlasaurus release. 

Just read the Beta NC:

 
This beta aligns us with the LL release known as "Atlasaurus". It has a number of performance improvements to support lower end hardware, though I would note that this is not the final set of updates that we are expecting. A further viewer update dubbed "DeltaFPS" is currnetly being worked upon and we will of course incorporate those changes as they become stable and mature.

 

FPS limit: There is also an option to limit FPS depending on the app in the NVIDIA settings - it will probably also be available for AMD...or Intel...

Edited September 4 by Nofunawo

[JeromFranzic]

On 9/4/2024 at 3:38 PM, Nofunawo said:

The current FS Beta 7.1.10.75843 is not based on the DeltaFPS viewer. It is based on the Atlasaurus release. 

Just read the Beta NC:

 
This beta aligns us with the LL release known as "Atlasaurus". It has a number of performance improvements to support lower end hardware, though I would note that this is not the final set of updates that we are expecting. A further viewer update dubbed "DeltaFPS" is currnetly being worked upon and we will of course incorporate those changes as they become stable and mature.

 

FPS limit: There is also an option to limit FPS depending on the app in the NVIDIA settings - it will probably also be available for AMD...or Intel...

thanks for clarifying

[JeromFranzic]

On 9/4/2024 at 7:54 AM, Wulfie Reanimator said:

That's what it is. But if you have higher FPS than the desired FPS, your settings won't be reduced because that would increase your FPS even further. It only adjusts your settings if you are below your desired FPS.

The LL viewer doesn't have a "limit framerate" slider like Firestorm, so the best thing you can do is dig into the debug settings:

1. World -> Show -> Advanced menu
2. Advanced -> Show debug settings
3. Search for "YieldTime" and set it to 25 milliseconds.

Now your viewer is limited to 30 FPS all the time.

JFC man... what a drag. I am trying out the latest LL DeltaFPS in Win11 and I had to mess with this to get to near 30 fps. My previous comment still stands, this should be a more straightforward setting to tweak. On my GTX 1050 laptop I have to set this to 20ms. But I'll live lol! 

[elleevelyn]

with Windows 11 and NVidia then we can set up a profile for Secondlifeviewer.exe

i have this NVidia

OS Version: Microsoft Windows 11 64-bit (Build 22631.4037)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti/PCIe/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 32.0.15.5612
OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 556.12

with the profile we can set up our SL to run as we prefer, including the Max Frame Rate (in this example I set to 20 FPS)

 

 

[JeromFranzic]

On 9/7/2024 at 11:28 AM, elleevelyn said:

with Windows 11 and NVidia then we can set up a profile for Secondlifeviewer.exe

i have this NVidia

OS Version: Microsoft Windows 11 64-bit (Build 22631.4037)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti/PCIe/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 32.0.15.5612
OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 556.12

with the profile we can set up our SL to run as we prefer, including the Max Frame Rate (in this example I set to 20 FPS)

 

 

I have three instances of the SL viewer installed in Win11: 6.6.17, the current Default, and the latest DeltaFPS release. If I stick my chosen FPS limit like this, will it work across all three instances?

ETA @ 14:27 : yeah, it's ok  thanks!

Edited September 8 by JeromFranzic
figured it out, it works as i asked :)

[Aishagain]

That facility is not new in Windows 11, I use it on Windows 10 already.  It is available to anyone running the NVidia Control Panel.

Edited September 9 by Aishagain
spelling

[elleevelyn]

2 hours ago, Aishagain said:

That facility is not new in Windows 11, I use it on Windows 10 already.  It is avaiable to anyone running the NVidia Control Panel.

this is good to know for everyone

I wasn't sure if it was available on previous versions of Windows or NVidia Control Panel or NVidia driver, so I only went with what I do know

[JeromFranzic]

On 9/7/2024 at 11:08 AM, JeromFranzic said:

JFC man... what a drag. I am trying out the latest LL DeltaFPS in Win11 and I had to mess with this to get to near 30 fps. My previous comment still stands, this should be a more straightforward setting to tweak. On my GTX 1050 laptop I have to set this to 20ms. But I'll live lol! 

OK, now I'm humbled... *pouts* I have to use YieldTime in Alchemy as well... may be needed for a few other TPVs (Genesis maybe?). Just installed the latest update for that viewer in Lubuntu, later in Win11.

*tests Alchemy for a bit*

[Nagachief Darkstone]

OpenGL tends to struggle to limit FPS outside of vsync. TPV implementations tend to undershoot because they try yielding time based on current FPS.

The most universal way to limit FPS (since Intel and AMD's framerate target control doesn't work on OpenGL, ugh), is to use RivaTuner Statistics Server. It's a critical part of MSI Afterburner, but you can also just install it stand-alone. It's one of the many tools benchmarkers and hardware reviewers use to monitor performance. It also just happens to have a comprehensive and accurate frame limiter system. Just keep in mind some programs are very unhappy having a process hooked to them, so make sure it doesn't hook to anything by default (or you only run it when you want to use it).

Though, I have no idea if it has a Mac version, unfortunately.

Edited September 10 by Nagachief Darkstone
mac mention

[Henri Beauchamp]

On 9/10/2024 at 11:33 AM, Nagachief Darkstone said:

TPV implementations tend to undershoot because they try yielding time based on current FPS.

The time granularity (accuracy) you can expect from a sleep-based frame limiter is 1ms (and this needs proper workarounds in most (not ancient) Win10 versions and all Win11 versions, because by default the timer granularity is degraded and relaxed to 10ms).

My ”smart” frame rate limiter implementation in the Cool VL Viewer manages quite well to stay at +3/-0 fps within the configured limit.