Sharp Jerking Movements of Avatars

[Mayalily]

Hi,

I have a new computer build which is a custom build, so I don't have specs yet because I didn't ask yet.  (Will ask as soon as it is possible).

Anyhow, I have sharp jerking like movements of my avatar and other avatars.  It's like the frames are trying to move, but get stuck and jerk, like my avatar has a palsy of some kind.

It's kind of hard to describe, but anyone ever heard of this, or may know what may be wrong?

Is it my avatar health, my computer, my internet connection (not the greatest ISP, I will be switching eventually).... or is it something else?

It's like the smoothness of movement is gone.  That's the best way I can describe it. 

 

[Jacki Silverfall]

Mayalily you can get your computer stats from your viewer. Go to help, about secondlife or what ever viewer your on. it shows you stats then you can post them here for us.

Sounds like a slow framerate.

ETA unplug router/modem for a minute then reconnect. that might help to.

Make sure your in a low lag area and see if it still jerks.

I don't think its your avatars health. Clear cache, restart computer.

Some one will come rescue ya!

[Storm Clarence]

There are many things you can tweak to improve your performance.  

In your preferences:

Graphics:

Enable OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects

Set your draw distance to 85

Network Tab:

Increase your 'bandwidth' to 2500kbs (regardless if your ISP offers these speeds)

Increase your cache

 

 

[Storm Clarence]

Do you wear an AO?  If not, one may settle your avatar.  

[Medhue Simoni]

Of course, the information is a bit vague, but allow me to take a stab at this.

Check your settings. Off the top of my head, I know of 2 major issues on some PCs that can ruin your frame rate. Those are voice, and antialiasing. Like I said, it depends on the PC. I use 3 different PCs and on my main PC, which has by far the best specs, I can't use voice or antialiasing. If I do, my frame rate drops significantly.

It could also be something you are wearing.

Last note: Depending on your settings, avatar imposters may also be what you are describing.

[Mayalily]

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Storm Clarence wrote:

Do you wear an AO?  If not, one may settle your avatar.  

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I sometimes wear an AO and sometimes not.  The reason being is my AO has been defective from the beginning such as my AO works half of the time.  I am hoping to get a new AO after the holidays, as 'tis the season to be broke.  falalalala  However, yes, the AO does "settle" it a bit.

I was just on SL just now for an hour, and it is doing that quick jerky like movements like it's missing a beat or something.  It's so hard to describe.  I will check all the things in this thread and get back, but I did want to mention that our TV and internet are on the same box and our TV misses frames at times too and sort of scrambles or fades in and out on our TV, but this is the first time I've seen this on a computer do this with running our current ISP.

So, I need time to check all this stuff and will get back to thread tomorrow, as it's been a long day for me.

@ Jacki, thanks!  I thought my avatar health was getting very poor.  I'm not sure, but it's hanging in there, but it looks like my avatar has "seizures" sort of.  It could be our ISP.  I'm just not sure yet, but our TV runs very cruddy and has "seizures" a lot, too. 

Thanks everyone... will check out all these things tomorrow and maybe call our ISP tomorrow as well.

 

[Storm Clarence]

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Mayalily wrote:

 The reason being is my AO has been defective from the beginning...

 

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Are you asking me or telling me? :matte-motes-bored:

[Mayalily]

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Jacki Silverfall wrote:

Mayalily you can get your computer stats from your viewer. Go to help, about secondlife or what ever viewer your on. it shows you stats then you can post them here for us.

Sounds like a slow framerate.

ETA unplug router/modem for a minute then reconnect. that might help to.

Make sure your in a low lag area and see if it still jerks.

I don't think its your avatars health. Clear cache, restart computer.

Some one will come rescue ya!

---

Ok, done those, and here are my specs.

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Processor (3214.65 MHz)

Memory: 4096 MB

OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)

Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.

Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6450

 

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0010.1083

OpenGL Version: 4.1.10834 Compatibility Profile Context

@ Storm, yes telling you about my AO.  I don't wear one all the time because it's a pain in the neck and had to finish my SL house (that's where a lot of money went) and I can't afford a new AO at this time as budgets get very stretched this time of year.  With my house done though, I may be able to budget in a new AO sooner; just depends, but I'm waiting to get a good one (which means I want to shop around, ask questions before I buy, ask about a refund beforehand before I even buy one, etc.)

@ Not Storm, but generally to thread: 

Have changed clothes and hair many times, but that didn't help.  Status of my noticing this problem is about four days ago, so I've changed many times since then including baldbases, etc.

My bandwidth is at max, graphics is at high (can go to ultra), I have uped my cache to 2024, current avatar imposters set at about 24. (These are my settings that I had with the jerking movements.)

 

[Mayalily]

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Storm Clarence wrote:

There are many things you can tweak to improve your performance.  

In your preferences:

Graphics:

Enable OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects

Increase your cache

 

 

---

Sorry, I wrote wrong cache setting in post above, it's set at 2048. 

Under graphics I cannot find:  Enable Open GL Vertex Buffer Objects, but I did find the shadows and they are finally working on V3.  We have shadows now on V3!!! (Just an FYI about the shadows).

[Kelli May]

I had a similar issue (as far as I can tell from your description): mostly good fps (20-30) interrupted by momentary spells of very low fps (low single-digit). The suggestion that worked for me was to stop my virus-checker from accessing the SL cache folders; the theory being that when the virus checker sticks its nose in the folders, your viewer can't get the free and frequent access it needs to run efficiently.

The procedure varies between different virus checkers, but the first step is to look in your SL preferences and find where your cache folder is. Probably something like:

C:\Users\<yourname>\AppData\Local\PhoenixViewer\<some cache names>

Next, open your anti-virus preferences and look for a way to set 'exclusions' or 'exceptions'. Add the folder path(s) here and save. You can still run checks on the cache folders when you aren't running SL.

[Mayalily]

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Kelli May wrote:

I had a similar issue (as far as I can tell from your description): mostly good fps (20-30) interrupted by momentary spells of very low fps (low single-digit). The suggestion that worked for me was to stop my virus-checker from accessing the SL cache folders; the theory being that when the virus checker sticks its nose in the folders, your viewer can't get the free and frequent access it needs to run efficiently.

The procedure varies between different virus checkers, but the first step is to look in your SL preferences and find where your cache folder is. Probably something like:

C:\Users\

<yourname>

\AppData\Local\PhoenixViewer\

<some cache names

>

Next, open your anti-virus preferences and look for a way to set 'exclusions' or 'exceptions'. Add the folder path(s) here and save. You can still run checks on the cache folders when you aren't running SL.

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Thanks Kelli.  Let me check on that.  Hope it works! 

[Venus Petrov]

One thing I have not seen mentioned so far is the use of the AO that is built into the viewer.  Both Phoenix and Firestorm have built in AOs (you load up the animations and it runs as if you had a HUD).  The built-in feature is supposed to help reduce lag.  I notice when I went to Firestorm that the built-in AO caused some of my animations to appear jerky.

So, I have reverted to wearing an AO HUD.

I do not know if V3 has a built-in AO feature.  Since Firestorm is based upon V3, it was worth a shot.

[Mayalily]

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Venus Petrov wrote:

One thing I have not seen mentioned so far is the use of the AO that is built into the viewer.  Both Phoenix and Firestorm have built in AOs (you load up the animations and it runs as if you had a HUD).  The built-in feature is supposed to help reduce lag.  I notice when I went to Firestorm that the built-in AO caused some of my animations to appear jerky.

So, I have reverted to wearing an AO HUD.

I do not know if V3 has a built-in AO feature.  Since Firestorm is based upon V3, it was worth a shot.

---

Hi Venus,

I'm not sure if V3 has that area that say AO on the bottom as I don't remember.  I'd have to check, but that sounds cool.

Anyhow, I found an AO at 200 lindens, so I just bought it.  It will do well for now.  I thought the AO's would cost a lot more, as I paid 1200 lindens EACH for two AO's from one place, and they were both so not worth the money.  They just stopped working correctly after about a day, and the movements on those was very "robotic" as the changing of animations was so slow my avi looked like a slow running robot with unsmooth movements between changing animations. 

Anyhow, bought the 200 lin AO, and I'll try that for now.  I thought a good AO would be a lot more.  I also have most of the 10 lin AO's from Marketplace, and a few that were under 300 lins from MP, but the 1200 lin AO I liked the best, however did not work well from the beginning.

So, now I'm broke, but have a new AO and hopefully no more "seizures". 

 

[Storm Clarence]

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Mayalily wrote: 

Sorry, I wrote wrong cache setting in post above, it's set at 2048. 

Under graphics I cannot find:  Enable Open GL Vertex Buffer Objects, but I did find the shadows and they are finally working on V3.  We have shadows now on V3!!! (Just an FYI about the shadows).

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Try Graphics>hardware check the box for Enable OpenGL

[Mayalily]

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Storm Clarence wrote:

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Mayalily wrote: 

Sorry, I wrote wrong cache setting in post above, it's set at 2048. 

Under graphics I cannot find:  Enable Open GL Vertex Buffer Objects, but I did find the shadows and they are finally working on V3.  We have shadows now on V3!!! (Just an FYI about the shadows).

---

Try Graphics>hardware check the box for Enable OpenGL

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Thanks, Storm.  Found it!  Done!

 

[Medhue Simoni]

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Venus Petrov wrote:

One thing I have not seen mentioned so far is the use of the AO that is built into the viewer.  Both Phoenix and Firestorm have built in AOs (you load up the animations and it runs as if you had a HUD).  The built-in feature is supposed to help reduce lag.  I notice when I went to Firestorm that the built-in AO caused some of my animations to appear jerky.

So, I have reverted to wearing an AO HUD.

I do not know if V3 has a built-in AO feature.  Since Firestorm is based upon V3, it was worth a shot.

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The official viewer does not have a built in AO, and I hope it never does. Why? Cause then you are limited to that setup, and reliant on LL not to break it. Plus, if you buy the right AO hud, it will not cause you any lag. Many people like to assume that it is their AO causing their lag, because if you move and things in the distance are not loaded on your PC, then the things in the environment needs to load, which leads to a delay. This has nothing at all to do with the AO.

Now, this does not mean that all AOs and HUDs are designed well. Many AO hud scripts are not made efficiently and If a creator makes mocaps and your PC has to hold some 30+ animations at 30fps, and all are 30 seconds long, then your PC will be continuously having to redownload each 1 of those animations. This is not much different than your avatar or the environment having too many textures and your PC redownloading those textures all the time. You can up your cache to counter this. I keep my cache at round 3000mbs or more, usually. As an animator tho, I create most of my motion capture animations at 15fps, and usually around 10 seconds. In the world of animation, 10 seconds is a very long time, lol.

Just a note: If you buy a game at the store and load it into your PC, the game is likely holding 6 gigs or more of data so that it all loads quickly. So, knowing this, setting your cache at 5-6 gigs is not unreasonable, especially considering that most people have way more room on their PC than they will ever need.

@Mayalily - Bring up your Statistics by hitting Ctrl+Shift+1. This will show you all the relevant stats. The first thing you want to look at is your FPS at the top. If this is low, like 5, then you are going to see jerkyness.

[Venus Petrov]

Thank you for the excellent explanation, Medhue.  While both Phoenix and Firestorm viewers have built-in AOs, you do not need to use them.  You can just leave them off and use an AO HUD.  So, use of the built-in AO is entirely optional.

[Medhue Simoni]

I just want to say that I'm not totally against built in AOs or the people that use them. As an AO creator, they are just not ideal, and are extremely limited as to what it overrides and how creative I can be with it. Plus, not saying mine are the best or anything, but I do think that a custom AO HUD made by an animator is going to be much more fun for the user than something created by just coders.

[Dreams Magic]

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wow! it seems to work for me...:matte-motes-big-grin: thank yuo very much...

I had exactly the same problem: a new Windows version and a  new virus-checker ... I tried yuor suggestion and it seems to work so far!!:heart: thank you!!:matte-motes-inlove:

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