DeltaFPS Viewer Update - Does it improve your framerate?

[Extrude Ragu]

Linden Labs put out a new official viewer a few days ago (Delta FPS 7.1.10.10622905308).

I don't think it is release channel yet, so if you want to try it you need to follow the link above to the releases page to get a copy.

Are you someone who struggled with FPS after the Firestorm update to PBR? It would be interesting to hear from you how the DeltaFPS viewer performs for you and the hardware you run.

[Extrude Ragu]

Personal Observations:-

I get around 140fps in a fairly typical mainland scene in ultra on the DeltaFPS viewer where I get about 80-90fps on Firestorm release viewer - So pretty good, but I'm on high end hardware and I'm not sure if the budget end sees a similar boost?

The DeltaFPS viewer seems to lose performance every time you change graphics preset. I changed from ultra to high, back to ultra, and now it is stuck at 120fps instead of 140. Relog fixes it, but an unfortunate stumbling block others are likely to hit without realising it I think.

[Midnoot]

10 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

Linden Labs put out a new official viewer a few days ago (Delta FPS 7.1.10.10622905308).

I don't think it is release channel yet, so if you want to try it you need to follow the link above to the releases page to get a copy.

Are you someone who struggled with FPS after the Firestorm update to PBR? It would be interesting to hear from you how the DeltaFPS viewer performs for you and the hardware you run.

It helped my fps , but it gets wrekt by loading . Becomes jerky and laggy even with fps indicating high . Overall better  than firestorm ( once the sim loads) but less smoothness during the actual texture loading  . Still prefer it over lower fps .

 

And yes , it loses fps over time as well . I have to relog to fix it .

Edited September 4 by Midnoot

[gwynchisholm]

8 hours ago, Extrude Ragu said:

So pretty good, but I'm on high end hardware and I'm not sure if the budget end sees a similar boost?

Ill give it a shot on my toaster and see if its any improvement.

[Frionil Fang]

I'm not struggling and have had zero problems since it's a reasonably strong computer (no particular inexplicable lag, no texture load failures), but I felt like running some numbers out of curiosity. My test is just my own avatar on screen in my own not super dense apartment, with an invisible alternate viewer avatar camming to a defined position in the scene and recording the numbers with the statistics floater (control-shift-1, since not every viewer has a statbar FPS counter and having the floater up deducts some FPS) and settings tuned to as close to each other as possible.

Firestorm release: 216-220
SL Viewer Atlasaurus: 222-225
SL Viewer DeltaFPS: 228-230
Alchemy 7.1.9.2492: 239-241
Cool VL Viewer 1.32.2.11: 252-255

It's notable though that after staying logged in for a while, going around places and returning home, Firestorm starts hitting 230-240 FPS in that exact same scene/avatar/position, so something is going on there. Didn't test doing that with the other viewers; the numbers are all "just logged in directly to the scene" numbers. Conclusion: it's consistently a little better, but still ways to go to reach Alchemy/Cool VL numbers.

[gwynchisholm]

Ok, so this is kinda neat though also not super conclusive?

Context of the toaster:

Its an N100 with a 4gb 750ti and 8gb of ddr4 on windows 8.1, runs an nvme ssd. This is probably one of the lowest end CPU's you can buy new in 2024 and its usually only in embedded stuff, its performance metrics are similar to haswell era quadcores, its almost dead on with an i5 4570 for reference. Doing all this on a 1080p monitor.

Firestorm 7.whatever on toaster mode:

Firestorm at max whack

Something to note here is how inconsistent the framerate in firestorm is. Im not 100% sure what is causing that, its going up to 100fps at times and im not sure what the reasoning would be. Its kinda like the inverse issue where stutters would show as some super low framerate dot on the plotter. Either way i wouldnt consider the averages to be real numbers there, its a similar feeling though with more stutter.

And then the DeltaFPS viewer at toaster mode

and then at max whack, mirrors absolutely killed framerate for this viewer

This is after viewer restarts and caches being cleared on all fronts, giving the viewers all time to re-download all their stuff.

The big difference here was framerate stability, the DeltaFPS viewer was smooth as silk. You can see it in the framerate plotters.

I would say the framerates are fairly similar, taking firestorms inconsistency out of the equation which was throwing the average off. I will say that the major impact of performance on the DeltaFPS viewer was mirrors. If you did all the settings but without mirrors, it was running a little bit better than firestorm, but its hard to say with how the framerate in FS was going

Firestorm also did this number a few times where im not sure what it loaded, but just minimizing the window and coming back would help. This wasnt like the application was int he background and it tanked framerate, this was while i was actively in the program.

Overall, i cant really determine a huge difference with the DeltaFPS viewer? I will say it stuttered a lot less. Ill look at some other metrics and see if theres a cause for that, i think it uses less ram.

[gwynchisholm]

Firestorm is using a bit more ram for the same settings

These are both the same left in toaster mode 128m, same view, everything loaded in.

I dont think this matters too much unless you have very slow ram? The actual quantity used isnt that big overall even if the difference is pretty big. Disregard the other measurements, they fluctuate constantly, cpu usage and network usage and such. Firestorms was taken at a spike and Deltas was taken at a dip, but the ram usage stays pretty stable.

Edited September 4 by gwynchisholm

[Aethelwine]

Sailing around with the Delta Viewer on default settings around island areas I get rubberbanding and FPS drops to 25

On the old firestorm I am getting drops to 190 FPS in the same area and no mid region rubberbanding.

CPU: 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-13400F (2495.99 MHz)
Memory: 16181 MB (Used: 1487 MB)
Concurrency: 16
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 11 64-bit (Build 22631.4037)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 8188 MB

 

Delta PBR viewer giving significantly worse performance when sailing and travelling about island areas.

Conclusion Delta PBR remains unuseable for my purposes.

Edited September 4 by Aethelwine

[Scylla Rhiadra]

53 minutes ago, Aethelwine said:

Sailing around with the Delta Viewer on default settings around island areas I get rubberbanding and FPS drops to 25

On the old firestorm I am getting drops to 190 FPS in the same area and no mid region rubberbanding.

CPU: 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-13400F (2495.99 MHz)
Memory: 16181 MB (Used: 1487 MB)
Concurrency: 16
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 11 64-bit (Build 22631.4037)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 8188 MB

 

Delta PBR viewer giving significantly worse performance when sailing and travelling about island areas.

Conclusion Delta PBR remains unuseable for my purposes.

Wow. Your FPS drops from the pre-PBR FS high of 190 all the way down to 25?????

That's really a lot!

[Aethelwine]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Wow. Your FPS drops from the pre-PBR FS high of 190 all the way down to 25?????

That's really a lot!

I don't think my screen is displaying at that rate on Firestorm, but I think it does demonstrate the capability of the old firestorm viewer.

The 190 figure is the lowest FPS, I was averaging over 200 in less texture intensive areas.

It isn't just my experience but the same with friends. Of those that started using a PBR viewer without exception I think they are all back on Pre-PBR viewers because of ongoing poor performance in the newer ones.

Edited September 5 by Aethelwine

[Jaylinbridges]

Unless the Graphics settings are shown for all comparisons, the results are not really useful.  Default settings are different with every viewer and graphics card, and most defaults are wrong and need adjusting.  And then there are the Windows Graphics settings for your card, which also affect the SL viewer performance.

Anyone expecting the SL/TPV viewers to be some sort of turnkey software - install it w/ defaults and run it, are going to be disappointed.

For sailing or flying, you probably have a large draw distance, and if anywhere near land, your fps will be affected.  Best to turn everything off or down you don't need when traveling thru mainland waters.   Sailing with a PBR viewer, given its SL water reflection issues doesn't sound very nice either.  Night sailing might be fine though, on a cloudy night.

 

Edited September 5 by Jaylinbridges

[JeromFranzic]

I'm on a 1050 GPU... I turn the occlusion and SSR off. Static only and Manual only for the main PBR settings. Shadows off in busy areas. I peak at about 40 FPS at 128m draw distance. Lately I have been capping FPS at 30-40. I do this partly to keep my system temps sane... ATM I  do need a new laptop battery as the current one is useless when unplugged, new one should be installed tomorrow. Those of you on primfeed, facebook and MeWe know the details about that, so I won't repeat them here.

 

[Aethelwine]

4 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

Unless the Graphics settings are shown for all comparisons, the results are not really useful.  Default settings are different with every viewer and graphics card, and most defaults are wrong and need adjusting.  And then there are the Windows Graphics settings for your card, which also affect the SL viewer performance.

Anyone expecting the SL/TPV viewers to be some sort of turnkey software - install it w/ defaults and run it, are going to be disappointed.

For sailing or flying, you probably have a large draw distance, and if anywhere near land, your fps will be affected.  Best to turn everything off or down you don't need when traveling thru mainland waters.   Sailing with a PBR viewer, given its SL water reflection issues doesn't sound very nice either.  Night sailing might be fine though, on a cloudy night.

 

With Mid setting on the Delta viewer, which includes non-transparent water so significantly worse looking than the old firestorm, I am still having FPS dropping to 25 FPS, and whilst no rubberbanding as such, the movement within regions is a little stop starty or jittery, not smooth like I am used to. Yes in all my testing draw distance is 200m, whilst I can sail with a 128m view distance that is a compromise not wanting to make.

Edited September 5 by Aethelwine

[Theresa Tennyson]

With my usual desktop performance is about as same as the 7.1.9 or possibly a bit worse, but with my laptop (integrated Intel Iris graphics, 8 GB memory) on low settings it's very usable now whereas before loading was very slow and I was getting crashes.

[Extrude Ragu]

11 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

I get rubberbanding and FPS drops to 25

11 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

On the old firestorm I am getting drops to 190 FPS

You say drops - What do the viewers stabilize around?

 

[Aethelwine]

2 hours ago, Extrude Ragu said:

You say drops - What do the viewers stabilize around?

 

The old firestorm was mostly reporting over 200 FPS, the lowest it went to through island areas was the 190. The only stuttering with it is on region crossings, because of the way the handovers work.

The delta viewer mostly high 50s but with drops to 25 FPS in those same island areas. On high settings those drops came along with rubber banding. On medium settings which includes no transparency on water there was no actual rubber banding, but movement noticeably stuttery within busy island regions.

There is more work to be done on PBR performance before I will move happily to a PBR viewer.

Re reading your question, the way I use the viewer primarily is for sailing, so if by asking what things stabilise as, is about standing still and waiting, then it would probably go back to the high 50s on the Delta viewer, but that sort of misses the point. I am not enjoying sailing if I am stopping all the time for things to stabilise.

 

Edited September 5 by Aethelwine

[Aethelwine]

Thinking about it as the graphics settings on the Delta viewer don't seem to impact my FPS numbers, just rubber banding maybe the cause is the additional strain on the viewer and my 30 Meg download bandwidth looking for PBR textures even when the objects don't have them?

[Extrude Ragu]

16 minutes ago, Aethelwine said:

Re reading your question, the way I use the viewer primarily is for sailing, so if by asking what things stabilise as, is about standing still and waiting, then it would probably go back to the high 50s on the Delta viewer, but that sort of misses the point. I am not enjoying sailing if I am stopping all the time for things to stabilise.

Fair enough, yes I can understand that.

I assume with sailing and whatnot you'd need a bigger draw distance to see into the distance? I know I've had a few experiences on the PBR viewer in the mainland where the FPS has just bombed out on me. I think the viewer seemed to struggle with areas with lots of particles.

[Gabriele Graves]

13 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

With Mid setting on the Delta viewer, which includes non-transparent water so significantly worse looking than the old firestorm, I am still having FPS dropping to 25 FPS, and whilst no rubberbanding as such, the movement within regions is a little stop starty or jittery, not smooth like I am used to. Yes in all my testing draw distance is 200m, whilst I can sail with a 128m view distance that is a compromise not wanting to make.

 

7 hours ago, Aethelwine said:

The old firestorm was mostly reporting over 200 FPS, the lowest it went to through island areas was the 190. The only stuttering with it is on region crossings, because of the way the handovers work.

The delta viewer mostly high 50s but with drops to 25 FPS in those same island areas. On high settings those drops came along with rubber banding. On medium settings which includes no transparency on water there was no actual rubber banding, but movement noticeably stuttery within busy island regions.

There is more work to be done on PBR performance before I will move happily to a PBR viewer.

Re reading your question, the way I use the viewer primarily is for sailing, so if by asking what things stabilise as, is about standing still and waiting, then it would probably go back to the high 50s on the Delta viewer, but that sort of misses the point. I am not enjoying sailing if I am stopping all the time for things to stabilise.

 

On old FS did you have ALM tuned off so you could see the invisi-prim instead of water in your boat?  If so, for a better comparison you should turn on ALM in the old FS.

So assuming that ALM is off on old FS :

The performance hit you might be seeing could be in part or even mostly due to that now that ALM is on all the time.  That's not a PBR problem and it would be unlikely that performance on your hardware will ever return to pre-ALM levels on newer viewers.

[AmeliaJ08]

If ALM was off previously then it is genuinely no comparison.

 

[Aethelwine]

5 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

 

On old FS did you have ALM tuned off so you could see the invisi-prim instead of water in your boat?  If so, for a better comparison you should turn on ALM in the old FS.

So assuming that ALM is off on old FS :

The performance hit you might be seeing could be in part or even mostly due to that now that ALM is on all the time.  That's not a PBR problem and it would be unlikely that performance on your hardware will ever return to pre-ALM levels on newer viewers.

On the old firestorm I had ALM on, infact it was on recommended settings at 200m draw distance, which for me is one step down from the maximum. All the boxes ticked including Ambient Occlusion.

Edited September 6 by Aethelwine

[Scylla Rhiadra]

New update from LL.

Fingers crossed but this sounds good.

https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/15924-an-update-on-second-life-performance-enhancements/

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

New update from LL.

Fingers crossed but this sounds good.

https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/15924-an-update-on-second-life-performance-enhancements/

It certainly sounded "extra reassuring" when I read it! 🙂

The promises of "pre-PBR performance", and even "better" performance than that, was pretty strong.

 

[Gabriele Graves]

40 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

It certainly sounded "extra reassuring" when I read it! 🙂

The promises of "pre-PBR performance", and even "better" performance than that, was pretty strong.

 

I guess we'll wait to see if there's anyone left affected for the wailing and gnashing of teeth after these updates.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

I guess we'll wait to see if there's anyone left affected for the wailing and gnashing of teeth after these updates.

I suspect "it will be a minute" (figuratively speaking) until Firestorm gets the updates too..and most of the complaints are from Firestorm users..