MaxCraxster

Update: I tried DisableMouseWarp on the latest version of Firestorm again and I can confirm that with my Shadow and Firestorm, the setting does NOT work. But it does work with Shadow and Alchemy. So for now I am sticking with Shadow and Alchemy.

I think it works pretty good, especially now that this DisableMouseWarp option is helping with my current setup. That had been killing me for a year, so much so that I had to start using the mouse click camera controls as a backup option to view around my avatar when using Shadow. I have a special use case though that most people probably don't have. I have this 12 year old Intel i7-2600K CPU paired with a newish GTX 1080 Ti GPU as my primary system that crashes all the time because I really need to replace it with a new CPU/MB (or at least reformat the SSD with a fresh Win 10 instance which I never have the time to do). Besides the 2600K bottlenecks the 1080Ti substantially. The 2600K is one of those fantastic CPU's you come across every so often and you just can't bear to move off them, plus laziness. In the mean time I've been testing shadow with SL since SL is the primary app I use. One thing I like is that when my regular PC crashes (which it does often), I don't get logged off of Shadow so my SL session stays live and I just reboot my PC and then reconnect. Still in the same SL location I left the Shadow. It also helps with the amount of energy my PC normally uses with SL by lowering the electric bill. Hoping to get a new PC here very soon and then I'll probably drop the Shadow subscription but for now it does it's job. Ditto on the GeforceNow SL option, I'd like to see that as well, plus Now uses better hardware for each client I believe. Shadow only has a super old CPU paired with a GTX 1080 non-Ti and it really isn't worth the current subscription cost unless you have a special use case or two. The other use case I have is crowded sim crash reduction which Shadow helps with a little. (50 to 100 avatars in crowded clubs). I'm still in shock that this Ardy Lay suggestion of DisableMouseWarp is working so well on Shadow with the Alchemy viewer. Hope it continues to do so. Although I haven't tried it in a 50 to 100 avatar club yet where the results might be different as fps drops to 5 or 10 and that could affect mouse zooming negatively, planning to test that this weekend. Another thing I should mention is that if you do use Shadow for long Second Life sessions as I do, you'll need to also have an Unlimited data plan with your ISP. Currently Comcast rips people an extra $30 per month for that, but if you live in a location that also has Verizon 5G Home Internet plans, you can tell Comcast that and they can give you a better yearly promo price. (They can waive the entire $30 Unlimited price gouge in some cases). Oh, there was one other thing. When I ordered my Shadow, there was a gigantic backlog. It took 6 months from the date of purchase for it to be ready. Hopefully they aren't still backlogged so much but they have previously had horrible back log times.

Ardy Lay's DisableMouseWarp suggestion worked for me about 95% using Shadow PC and the Alchemy viewer. I'd be curious if it helps others with the same setup Shadow / Alchemy as well as other viewers such as your Black Dragon viewer but I don't think many other people use Shadow with Second Life to be able to test it. I think I'm the only Shadow / SL user so far. And I've only been testing DisableMouseWarp for about 30 minutes so I haven't tested it over the long term yet. Still has a couple quirks but no where near as bad as before. Have you tried DisableMouseWarp with Black Dragon on Shadow or another remote PC alternative yet?

Wow! This actually works for me using Shadow PC and the Alchemy SL viewer while Alt Cam Viewing - Zooming. It seems to cure the haywire mouse zoom into avatar. Thanks for the suggestion. I had been struggling with this for a year now on Shadow PC. I thought I had previously tried it on my previous go to viewer (Firestorm on Shadow PC) when you suggested it here, and I thought it didn't seem to work but I don't recall if I tried it thoroughly enough at the time, but since it seems to work now on Shadow PC / Alchemy, I'll stick with it. I'm tempted to run another issue past you about your thoughts on Crowded Sims Data Exchange causing low frame rates but I haven't posted that yet. In the 16 years I've been using SL I've always noticed crowded sims (night clubs with 50 to 100 people) often bring the frame rates down to 5 to 10 no matter what the client PC is running for latest hardware. I was hoping that eventually an alternative viewer could solve that with a patch of some kind to be able to filter out all the data going back and forth from all the servers / clients or use a DLSS3 style of ai generated frames to make a full sim at least feel like it's not getting locked at 5 to 10 FPS when not viewing any avatars at all (besides own avatar). Maybe I'll start that thread soon and post the link to it here or something. thanks again.

Is there anyone else using Shadow PC for Second Life or Firestorm who has noticed that Alt-Zooming doesn't seem to work correctly? Typically it moves too fast as to be unusable. Curious if others have noticed this and overcome it? I prefer using the Alt key when zooming into my avatar for various reasons and after using Shadow with SL for a year now, it's the only thing that doesn't work properly for me and I have no workaround yet so I'm stuck using the SL / Firestorm built in Orbit camera arrows with the mouse scroll roller and they are not as nice to use and are too cumbersome.

Thanks, so it sounds like I'm better off tweaking avatar complexity than merging tattoos or worrying about wearing too many tattoos.

If I created 10 different tattoos and where them all at the same time, is there any performance gain to be had if I merge all 10 tattoos into one single tattoo? The way I see it, I would think when I log in, everyone around me, their viewers would have to download 10 image files (1 for each tattoo), versus 1 single image file if all 10 tattoos were merged into a single tattoo. Or is this not how it works, and instead, the SL servers bake all 10 together and then the users viewer only downloads a single image?

Your timing of this post is surreal with the CEO's passing 3 days after the post. Second Life with an Unreal engine has always been something to aspire to. The possibilities would be endless and amazing. There was a post not too long ago with Lab members discussing Unity and Unreal engine possibilities but they seemed to not want to pursue them, or put them on the far back burner. You might consider starting an inworld group called Second Life Unreal V or something like that, or maybe an Official Second Life Unreal V forum thread somewhere to showcase your ideas (or just use this thread). Better yet, if you are that passionate about it, they are looking for a new CEO still I believe. Maybe this timing is no coincidence. Second Life on Unreal V would be spectacular, that much I know. I'm sure you would have an endless supply of beta testers for this project because there have to be a lot more people out there that want to see this come to fruition. I know I do.

That's the common response I've see quite often. Not really that helpful though. My coding level isn't that high and sometimes just reading someone else's code that you didn't build yourself can be a *major* nightmare plus I'm nowhere near Niran's level and don't claim to be. I would think that there should be other settings similar to Jelly Dolls or the like that could help for all the content issues though. I am curious if SL uses the very latest OpenGL or DirectX versions for starters. I know that info is somewhere out there I just don't have the link at the moment. Might even be on Niran's site. Anyone know where the official link is about the SL OpenGL and DX versions currently being used? In the standard viewer I thought it used to be available right on one of the Systems Info pages. Not sure where that would be in BD though. I've seen it years ago but don't recall exactly where it is. In BD under Help About it lists what looks like the version I am running on my machine but I don't know if that is the same version SL is using or not: Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 1080 Ti/PCIe/SSE2 Windows Graphics Driver Version: 25.21.14.1722 OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 417.2

I agree with this point of view. I've built my own pc's for decades and I've never seen a piece of software that utilizes hardware as badly as Second Life. Unfortunately, this is a fact. I keep wondering what the community can do to resolve the issue. Can we form some sort of advanced SL hardware user group or something so that we can work with LL to request enhancements to the product that will utilize GPU hardware more efficiently? Or is the engine so lost that the only way to help it would be to throw it out and start all over? Can Black Dragon get around some of the limitations in a major way? I've been using BD for about a year or two and even it provides me with slow frame rates in places with more than a few avatars running top of the line hardware. I would imagine that BD would be bound by many limitations of the regular SL engine but I'm not positive. I realize the content people build can be to blame, but seriously, how hard would it be to have a piece of code in place that could detect bad content and streamline it on the fly? I wouldn't think that would be hard at all. So I'm left wondering what is wrong with the SL engine that causes it to hog the CPU and not utilize the GPU as it should like just about any other piece of software does?

The reason is because of the poor programming on LL's part. I don't mind the laughing, I do the same thing every time I think about the GPU code in SL. I imagine 1 coder sitting in a little closet banging out the GPU code and then he gives up with his hands in the air and goes out for a smoke. When he comes back in, he goes to the cafeteria to get some pretzels and a beer. But yeah, that's it. 1 coder. And I laugh at that thought. It's probably true. I honestly sometimes think, that I could relearn C++ and do a better job at the code than what LL has done all these years. They just aren't working that GPU code correctly and I've heard all the debates on why it is, but I have yet to hear the exact reason the code suffers so badly as it relates to the GPU. There are always ways to work around problems. If it calls for a workaround, then give us that tasty workaround. We want it. I wonder if we could start a Kickstarter campaign for this. Anyone think this could work as a Kickstarter item? For those of us that actually care, how cool would it have been if, instead of Sansar, we got a high performance graphics viewer version of SL? That would have been killer. I've been waiting for that for over 10 years. I'll probably have to wait 10 more, just like Ace Ventura tells me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQAcBSO5jC8

Hey OP. I know this is an old thread but in case your still around, the best option may be to open a Jira for this reason, if Jira still exists, or to contact the programmer of the 3rd party Black Dragon viewer. I'm in the exact same situation you are in. I have been building high performance PC's for over 20 years and I am still amazed at why Linden Lab does not see the benefit of retrofitting their software to utilize present day GPU's. If they've ever had incentive to do it, it's now, when they could ride the VR hardware hype wave. (Sansar is a total joke, it should be dropped and those resources should be put back into SL, everyone knows that.) I understand the difficulty in making things not break but it's been so many years you would think by now they would have come up with a way to do it (hell, even offer a high performance viewer, anything). I've had hopes for the Dragon Viewer but it still suffers from most of the same limitations as the regular viewer. Every time I build my latest PC which I always purchase mainly for SL, I am always dis-appointed with the performance of the GPU. I have over 10 years of experience in SL but it's always the same when it comes to the GPU performance in the software. If enough people complain loud enough about this issue, maybe some day it will be resolved, or who knows, maybe a hack is in order, like when Qarl Linden developed the mesh deformer. If someone could look at the graphics engine of SL in that light, maybe they could figure out the exact technical reason why it occurs, and repair it (or allow a tweak, .ini setting change, etc. to overcome the limitations). I know exactly what it's like to have the top of the line GPU and not being able to utilize it when you should. Currently I am using a GTX 1080ti and just like your system, only about 10% goes to the GPU for Second Life. Sometimes I'll be in a club with 10 users and the frame rate will drop to only 5 or 6 fps and the GPU sits at 10%. This is with a $700+ graphics card. It's maddening and I think the main reason is just due to the un-professionalism of the code development process, or lack of dedicated staff at Linden Lab. But, if as a community, we could look at the technical reasons, perhaps a hack could be invented by the user base. The Dragon Viewer programmer has offered quite a few graphics updates that the lab has not. Perhaps some day another user or band of users could do something with the GPU code. (That would be great). Perhaps the Black Dragon Viewer programmer knows the exact reason as well. We should also ask him. Has anyone asked him yet? He must know. For everyone else, sorry for the rant but this has been built up in me for 10 years. LL, get with the program already!!