Performance issues

[Aurelius Fhang]

I don't know if this is the right place to ask this, but I'll go ahead anyways.

I just recently checked out Second Life again after not being online for a good while.

When I had downloaded the new viewer and logged in I noticed the performance was very bad, like lagging when moving around. (and yes, I've tried different sims. Starting place is terrible, difficult to move around and such, and even smaller sims with no people around gives me lag)

I don't think there's something wrong with my computer, as it should be pretty decent.

 

Here's my computer specs:

System: Windows 7 64-bit

Processor: Intel Core i5 (quad)

RAM: 8GB

Graphic card: AMD Radeon HD 6870 (1 GB)

 

It should be enough to run Second Life smoothly. 

I've tried to go through the graphic settings, setting it to the lowest point, closing all background programs, turning off the aero theme for windows 7,  and even then it lags.

My internet provider should be good enough, I guess. Checked out the statistics bar (for the first time, so I don't know how it was before). Had around 200 MS. I guess that's because the servers are placed in the US while I live in Norway.

Any answers to what could cause the bad performance is appreciated :)

 

Edit: Case sovled, at least temporary. Thanks to all that helped me out :)

 

[Chelsea Malibu]

There are many, many things that can cause lag as I am sure you know.  On the client side, it could also be your router, your modem, your ISP, background apps and even your NIC card. 

A couple of things that may help diagnose this.

Try to find and empty sim or fairly low traffic, clean sim without a lot built, like  sandbox and see if you still lag.

Reset your modem and router and see if it picks up a new trace route.

Set up another user profile on your PC and log into SL from there (this will tell you if it's background aps)

If you are on a wireless modem, hard wire you PC and see if that helps.  Also if you are on a wireless, make sure it is secure and that no one else if poaching your bandwidth.

Also, try another game and see if they all do this. You can trial WoW or LotR and see how they run for you as well.

Go to a bandwidth monitor online, there are many free ones and I suggest checking with a couple.  Gomez has a good one as I recall.  And, see how much throughput you are getting.

I hope this helps and please get back to us as I am sure we'd all like to find out if any of these worked for you.

 

 

[Aurelius Fhang]

Thanks for your reply

I've entered a fairly empty sim now, sim ping being at 200-220 ms.
there's no one around and just a few buildings here and there. But there's still a minor lag out there. 

So I made a new account, as one of your advices.
I found a place with about nothing on it. The FPS with the new account were around 40-70.
I logged back on my main account and went to the same place.
Here I got 25-45 fps when standing still, and while moving around 15-24 FPS.

Also, I believe there's no problem with my connection, as I play different games. League of legends, MW3, WoW and so on. No problems with connection or lag in those games.

As for my internet, I got a network cable plugged into a switch (d-link). So it's more or less wireless as there's currently no way to get a cable from my router and up to my computer.

Could there be something wrong with my avatar at my main account?

[Indio Quinnell]

I think the previous poster meant for you to create a new Windows User Account on your PC, not a new Second Life account... the idea was to see whether or not you might have had a bunch of "invisible" tasks loading up in the background, thanks to software you may have installed in the past.  (Because everything wants to install its own "special sauce" background "helpers" and "agents" and whatnot.)

However, you may have accidentally hit on something.  Is it possible that your main avatar is wearing a ton of scripted objects, or is wearing outfits consisting of a very large number of flexis or sculpties that are giving your graphics chip a headache trying to cope with?  When you switch back to your main account, try removing everything you're wearing (when no one else is around, of course ), or even reverting to one of the "stock" starter avatars in the library, and see what happens then. 

Oh, and one other thing to keep in mind -- you really cannot make a valid comparison between performance in games like Warcraft, Legends, etc. and Second Life.  Those types of games simply do not have the same kind of network-usage issues that SL does, because the vast majority of their in-world content (if not all of it) is pre-loaded onto your PC's hard drive when you first installed the game, and it rarely if ever changes, so nearly everything you see around you in WoW is coming directly off your own hard drive and can be displayed as fast as the data can be read from the drive into memory.

Second Life, on the other hand, has to fetch virtually everything you see around you from the SL asset servers, so things can only be displayed as fast as they can be transmitted over the network from SL to you -- and the relative speed of your connection from your laptop to the router, or even from your router to your ISP's local server, is only one link in that chain. Yes, the data is then cached for a while -- but just like the cache on your web browser, there is only so much room in the cache, so sooner or later those things you looked at in "sim A" yesterday will be pushed out to make room for the things you're seeing in "sim B" today, so when you go re-visit "sim A" tomorrow, all that stuff will have to be reloaded again.

[Aurelius Fhang]

oh, my bad I might want to try out that. Thanks for the heads-up

Could be, but I've been at Second Life for a few years, and never had this problem before. But it might be worth a try of course.

and I'm aware of the differences ^^ but as the previous poster asked me to try out other games to check out the connection I thought I might just wanted to add that part. I'm not completely new to Second Life ^^ Just this issue whereas I don't know what's causing it.

[Aurelius Fhang]

ok, I don't know where the edit button is for editing previous posts, if anyone could direct me

I've just done some more testing. I made a new windows user account and gave it a shot.

Still no improvements at my main account at SL.
So I stripped the avatar down and noticed a nice improvement of the performance.
It seems like the flexi parts and possibly some scripts may cause the lag I've been experiencing.
Is there anything I could do? Except having a complete different avatar? Would like to keep my avatar

Gotta thank you two for helping me out

[arton Rotaru]

Looks like you are wearing a ton of sculpted prims as well. Plus the flexi prims, no wonder you see such a difference in viewer FPS with different avatars.

Scripts don't affect viewer fps.

[Aurelius Fhang]

Yeah, it's a good deal of prims, and some flexi.
I just find it strange that I suddenly gets this problem now, while I didn't had it before.

 

[arton Rotaru]

Well, the viewer changed a lot the last couple of month. You could try the Development Viewer instead of the Release Viewer. Though, think about, if your AV is lagging you, it lag others as well. Since we have Mesh upload, there are ways to make such an AV with way less polys than it was done with sculpts.

[Aurelius Fhang]

Thanks for the tip about the Dev Viewer
I downloaded it and tried it out now, and it's a HUGE improvement. At this empty place I were testing in yesterday, I get FPS like 50-75 FPS when standing still, and even when moving around. No lag at all. The graphic settings is even at High.

While you do have a fair point with my AV, I don't think it would cause too much problems for others. I'll check out if there's an update for it just in case though. I haven't been online for at least half a year, and I've never really made any prims at all, or done 3D at all, so I don't really know what the mesh thing is x)

Oh well, I got an temporary fix for it.
Thank you all for helping me out

[Theresa Tennyson]

I seem to remember hearing about a bug where hovering your mouse cursor over flexiprims causes a FPS drop, and that it has been fixed in some development threads. That might have been your problem - when your mouse was over your avatar that would have caused FPS to drop.

[Aurelius Fhang]

Yup, could be. At least the lag is non-exsisting in the SL Dev viewer

[Indio Quinnell]

Since we have Mesh upload, there are ways to make such an AV with way less polys than it was done with sculpts

 

While that may be true in theory, there are two practical problems there:

First, a large number of SL users are not using mesh-capable viewers yet.  In fact, most places I go, Phoenix tags still greatly outnumber Viewer2 and Firestorm tags, so I'd even go so far as to say that a decisive majority of SL users can't view mesh.

Second, and perhaps even more importantly -- most of us who wear various "furry" AVs did not make them ourselves, from scratch; most of us bought a pre-made AV from one of several avatar makers and then made slight modifications such as coloring or body shapes.  So unless the maker who made Aurelius' avatar gets around to making a mesh-based updated version, that advice won't really help.

[arton Rotaru]

Well, yes. At the moment it won't help much, because mesh is still at it's starting point. So my intention  was more a general advice, that wearing many sculpts can slow some people down, and that there are possibilities now, to improve such things in the future.

The viewer thing is just a temporary issue, too. Even Phoenix will render mesh soon. Maybe there will be some who can't run a mesh viewer, because of there hardware. But I'm sorry, things go forward, even those should upgrade there hardware someday.

I'm pretty sure in 2 years from now, we won't see much new items that aren't made with mesh. Maybe some palm tree groups and some plants and large organic shapes will survive as sculpts. But the majority of new items will be mesh.

[Marimag]

I hope I can help. I can not go to sl. M indicates be failed and communicate with a simulator. I also read that are providing maintenance to the servers and that it took several weeks. Which is why I do not perimte will enter SL or for other reasons?
If someone can comment on it thank you. I place in the Caribbean area in Puerto Rico.