Mesh Viewer - horrible framerate

[Matheus Gleeson]

I have tried the Mesh viewer.  I know it's supposed to make SL such a beautiful experience.  I know it's supposed to make everything look so much better.  We're supposed to have so much more fun! with this viewer.  However...

I downloaded the viewer.  I installed it.  I left it at the recommended settings.  I got a framerate that just cannot be made better!  I downgraded most of the options in the graphics settings, and it was still  a horrible experience, just because of framerate!

LL, I know you're trying to make things better, but sometimes it seems like you're creating a viewer by committee.  We need something that can run on our computers, and still look good; if we had viewer 1.8 today, we'd have a beautiful experience.  Unfortunately, we have viewers that require a Dreamworks mainframe to run as they're intended.  Please, instead of adding anything else... Could you, please, just fix it so it'll run on the average computer?

And yes, the average computer would be the mid-priced computer from Wal-mart or Staples for most of your residents.

[Sassy Romano]

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Matheus Gleeson wrote:

Please, instead of adding anything else... Could you, please, just fix it so it'll run on the average computer?

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Far too many "average computers" have a below average graphics card, example, the Intel ones.  That's about it, you don't expect to play high end games or other graphics intensive software on low end graphics and hope for a good experience.

 

 

[Thrayce Lanley]

"We need something that can run on our computers, and still look good; if we had viewer 1.8 today, we'd have a beautiful experience. Unfortunately, we have viewers that require a Dreamworks  mainframe to run as they're intended. Please, instead of adding anything else... Could you, please, just fix it so it'll run on the average  computer?"

(emphasis mine) 

 

Sassy has it right on the money here.  How exactly do you define "Dreamworks Mainframe?" in relation to "average computer?"  

When LL (or any TPV developer for that matter) writes code for a viewer, they have to write that code with the idea in mind that Joe User's comp will meet a hardware average somewhere between "10-year-old Dell with 1.2GHz CPU and 512MB ram on an onboard GPU" and "Whizbang-2011 with 3.8GHz 16GB RAM and twin- 2GB GTX560's on SLI"   With any hardware, there is a line beyond which, no matter how clever the coding, there will be a completely-diminished return; and for what can be defined as "average hardware" that line is where no amount of clever coding is going to make things prettier.

Try to bear in mind that LL isn't in business just to make your SL-experience a terrible one.  Rather, things like Mesh, Shadows, DOF, AA, and all the other neat stuff were implemented to make that experience better .  Unfortunately, with all these wonderful implementations comes a harsh reality: Older or "non-Dreamworks-Mainframe" hardware simply isn't going to be able to keep up.  In the end, they have a choice to make...

a)  delay implementation of things like Mesh and eyecandy (to the frustration of the userbase that can run then) in favor of keeping Joe User's ten-year-old Dell usable, or

b)   improve the quality of that virtual world by adding all the system-intensive eyecandy, and hope that Joe User with the 10-year-old Dell decides to upgrade his hardware.

Of course, it's not always that simple, but my point is, far too often the blame is thrown at LL for 'incompetent coding' , when it's always too soon forgotten that it's just not always possible to make everyone happy.

Cheers! 

 

[Sassy Romano]

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When LL (or any TPV developer for that matter) writes code for a viewer, they have to write that code with the idea in mind that Joe User's comp will meet a hardware average somewhere between

"10-year-old Dell with 1.2GHz CPU and 512MB ram on an onboard GPU"

and

"Whizbang-2011 with 3.8GHz 16GB RAM and twin- 2GB GTX560's on SLI"

    

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Worse than this even is that people (unfortunately) buy a shiny new laptop with xx processor, yy memory, zz size screen and... an Intel mobile graphics adaptor.

One only has to look at this slightly out of date chart to realise that their new shiny is very dull when it comes to SL

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Typical_Frame_Rate_Performance_by_Graphics_Card/GPU

The average computer from the supermarket is not generally intended for 3D gaming but more office apps and web browsing, youtube, playing movies etc.

A graphics card that will make SL enjoyable doesn't have to be expensive, Ebay, older models etc. 

 

[Anna Carlberg]

Hello all,

A year ago when my laptop broke I have buy a new one. A gamelaptop  a very fast one with a very good

graficcard. When I came on secondlife it was comparing with my old laptop a big difference. My old

laptop was also not a cheap one. But this one was a real gamecomputer specially buy this one for

role game for fighting with swords. You need a fast connection and of course a fast computer. And

it works all great! Of course to work with viewer 2 take some time. Also filming with spacenavigator works

great and very smoothly. But than I get a upgrade in august so that I could have more than 25 groups.

Very nice that I can have more groups, but after that it works not so good more. Filming is not smoothly more,

much lag it take a long time before I see everything. I see many clouds everything is become slow. Iam now using

viewer 3. I have also try other viewers but I am use to the sl viewer. But this week I was looking to all the settings

and saw the cameraview standing all to the left. I have changes that  a little more to the right. it is all become better but still not so as it was before that upgrade of august. So Iam still wonder what is happen in august that my experience in sl become worse?? And it was so great!!

 

Bye Bye Anna,

[Tristizia Demonista]

What Mesh Viewer ? There are quite a few Viewers (LL's or TPV) available now that can display Mesh ! 

I would not consider my Computer to be anything like Gaming High-Tech, but i don't have a problem getting a decent framerate with it when i use a "modern" Viewer. There are a lot of options in Prefs that can be changed to tweak ANY Viewer to run on your compy.

 

[JohnMiddlefield]

And I am sure LL management is still scratching its collective head, wondering why retention rates have been so poor ever since Viewer 2 was launched, and why concurrency rates have been steadily declining since the same event. In fact, just recently, concurrency took the biggest nosedive ever seen in the last two years. I still can't figure out which one mesh is, a bell or a whistle? But if LL wants a virtual world where just a few can enjoy a more technically beautiful world, then they have most definitely been going in the right direction for the past two years.

[Rolig Loon]

I agree, Tristizia, at least to a point.  My computer was new in 2008, and I replaced its graphics card with a GeForce 9600GT with 1 Gb of on-card memory last year.  I'm running on Windows XP.  Unless I make the mistake of going to an overcrowded club full of script-bloated avs, i usually have a frame rate between about 40 and 75.  I rarely crash, I have had no significant inventory problems, and my av isn't a fluffy cloud for more than 10 seconds after login.  I don't think I have a charmed life.  I just know where my graphics settings have to be optimized for good performance on this machine, and I take good care of my hardware. 

There is a limit, though.  We see an endless stream of complaints here in the Answers forum from people who are trying to run an SL viewer on an underpowered $300 notebook computer with an Intel Mobility graphic chip, often on a wireless connection.  Even with the lowest settings, SL is never going to work for them.  I'm no apologist for LL and its V3 viewer, but it's not their fault that a person wih a substandard computer can't log in.  It's also unfair to blame LL for moving the goalposts, so that yesterday's non-SSE-compliant computer can't run today's viewer code.  The "average" computer and SL viewer codes have to keep pace with each other and have to keep moving ahead each year.  There will come a time when my 2008 computer can no longer run a "modern" SL viewer, no matter how I tweak the settings.  That's not LL's fault.  That's progress.

[Thrayce Lanley]

"But if LL wants a virtual world where just a few can enjoy a more technically beautiful world, then they have most definitely been going in the right direction for the past two years."

Again, define "just a few".  I can't remember where I saw it, but not so long ago LL posted their classification list, which classified end-user hardware according to the degree which it could run SL on a scale from 0 to 3.  According to the report that was attached, it was estimated that 65% of SL users were running thier viewers on class-3 hardware; that means that approximately 65% of users have hardware that is just barely capable of running well enough to stand in-place and chat.  (a slight exaggeration, but the point is made).  This leaves 35% of users with systems capable of running the viewer with the eyecandy to some degree.

Please tell me the end-users of SL aren't falling into the haves/havenots thing like the 1%/99% thing. 

As Rolig put it,  there are far too many users blaming LL for bad coding, when it's the system on the user's end where the problem resides.  Don't get me wrong here; the real-world economy sucks right now, and a new system/upgrade  is not within the reach of everyone.  But honestly, should LL (as well as TPV devs) dumb-down the viewer code, removing SSE-extensions so that Joe User with the ten-year-old Dell can at least be on an even playing field?

 

ETA: I don't have a citation for the LL system of classification that I mentioned above, and I think I may have the order mixed-up.  Could anyone point me to this?

 

Cheers! 

[Tristizia Demonista]

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JohnMiddlefield wrote:

And I am sure LL management is still scratching its collective head, wondering why retention rates have been so poor ever since Viewer 2 was launched, and why concurrency rates have been steadily declining since the same event. In fact, just recently, concurrency took the biggest nosedive ever seen in the last two years. I still can't figure out which one mesh is, a bell or a whistle? But if LL wants a virtual world where just a few can enjoy a more technically beautiful world, then they have most definitely been going in the right direction for the past two years.

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Do you really think that all "potential" new users that sign-up nowadays, try to log in on an ancient P3 with a Voodoo Graphic Card ?

Even LL have to acknowledge the fact that the Graphicstandards have somewhat evolved in the last few Years, and to properly experience better Graphix, you need a better (or more modern) Computer. This is the same as for any Game that came out in the last few Years, why should SL be different ?

[leliel Mirihi]

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Thrayce Lanley wrote:

"But if LL wants a virtual world where just a few can enjoy a more technically beautiful world, then they have most definitely been going in the right direction for the past two years."

Again, define "just a few".  I can't remember where I saw it, but not so long ago LL posted their classification list, which classified end-user hardware according to the degree which it could run SL on a scale from 0 to 3.  According to the report that was attached, it was estimated that 65% of SL users were running thier viewers on class-3 hardware; that means that approximately 65% of users have hardware that is just barely capable of running well enough to stand in-place and chat.  (a slight exaggeration, but the point is made).  

This leaves 35% of users with systems capable of running the viewer with the eyecandy to some degree.

[,,,]

ETA: I don't have a citation for the LL system of classification that I mentioned above, and I think I may have the order mixed-up.  Could anyone point me to this?

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You mean this post here? You're numbers are a little off, it's only 35% of users that have class 0 hardware, and 40% of users can run on high or better.

[Thrayce Lanley]

Thanx for the correction, Leliel. 

As I said, I had read that post a while back, referred there by the Kirsten forum, and I had a feeling that I had the numbers reversed.  :matte-motes-confused: 

Cheers!

 

[Raziel Lameth]

I it might be a bit late for this responce.  But I am running an Nvidia GTS250 with 3GHZ quad core processor.  I have 4GB of ram.  before Mesh I could get about 60 FPS, after mesh I am lucky to have 20.  I really do think there is something wrong with this.

[Danny Nolan]

I'm confused by posts like this. Personally, SL's never ran better for me. I'm on build 3.2.4.246064, and I'm at my friend's store which is a skybox with a buncha sculpties, and a fair amount of adds/prims in the store, I'm getting like 150-200fps.

However, I'm on a "good" machine. So what it seems like .. is SL's starting to run better on "certain" hardware. But, some people with newer and still decent hardware are reporting less framerate. So I'm not sure.

While I feel like Second Life is finally starting to take advantage of my computer, I still feel like SL is horribly optimized. I think, it's using more of my hardware, however it seems like they've just bloated the crap out of the viewer with unoptimized code. So, it's using more of my hardware, but doing so because the viewer's just requiring more resources. *shrug*. 

But, people are right. You just can't expect to run modern software on an ancient machine. In many ways, SL is more demanding than even games of this and last generation. 

 

Core i7 980x @4.5ghz
GTX 480 x2 @ 800mhz (running single card, obviously)
12gb of Ram 

[Perrie Juran]

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Raziel Lameth wrote:

I it might be a bit late for this responce.  But I am running an Nvidia GTS250 with 3GHZ quad core processor.  I have 4GB of ram.  before Mesh I could get about 60 FPS, after mesh I am lucky to have 20.  I really do think there is something wrong with this.

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Please see here:  http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/Is-The-New-Viewer-Lagging-You-Down-Check-Your-Hair/m-p/1265543#M40469

Here: http://jira.phoenixviewer.com/browse/FIRE-4146?focusedCommentId=60899#comment-60899

And here:  https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SH-2694

 

Your machine sounds similar to mine, I use the GTS250 and a 3G processor.  Please add your voice to the JIRA's if you find any of this applies to you. 

[Perrie Juran]

To be clear here, I am in favour of SL looking as pretty as can be.

But when my performance drops from good to unacceptable that seems to me to be a little extreme.

I know that the GTS250 is not a super fancy card but I shouldn't be finding myself reduced to a crawl!

 

[Cincia Singh]

Besides CPU, RAM and Video Card many other things dramatically impact fps. How you have your viewer preferences set can slow the highest powered PC to a crawl. For instance draw distance; I routinely help people who come into our club and complain about lag and low fps and it's not unusual to find out they have their draw distance set to 256m or 512m ... or they have shadows and water reflections set to max. It is small wonder that people experience lag when they're forcing their hardware to draw everything 2 regions away everytime they take a step.