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Lag lag lag..how to stop it?


KeliahAngelis
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Well, tons of sculpts, prims, particles, lightbeams are all good to slow your fps down, if there are enough of them in view.

The problem is, most of second life is built with tools (prims, sculpts) that are way to poly heavy. Depending on what you see, you might look at millions of polygons at once. Untill most of second life will be build out of reasonbly built mesh objects, there is not much you can do besides buying a better graphics card, or reducing your graphics settings untill you get more fps. But than, probably things aren't look so pretty anymore.

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https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Lag  gives a brief run-down.     The problem is that people use "lag" to mean so many different things, so it's difficult to make general recommendations.

However, it sounds as if you're having problems with your graphics card finding it difficult to render the scene fast enough.   Try the suggestions in that article in the "graphics" section -- if they make a difference, then we know what the problem area is.

If it is a graphics problem, what sort of graphics card do you have, what viewer are you using and what graphics settings are you using (low, medium, high or ultra)?

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I have my settings either to low or medium - depending on where I am. I keep my scripts under 100, and in most cases I keep them under 50. I do wear a scripted collar at all times, so I will not take it off - but as I am keeping myself down as low as possible script wise, I am good. 

I have a brand new computer, but my graphics card is AMD Radeon™ HD 6450, which is not for gaming but for 'every day computing'. Seeing how new it is, I thought that it would be an improvement from my old computer, but I'm guessing not! :(

So...graphics card recommendations?

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Rolig Loon wrote:

Don't blame it on the prim grass or the falling leaves.  They aren't going to do much, if anything, to create lag.  There's something else going on.  You might get a clue by looking at the Statistics Bar ( Shift + CTRL + 1 ).

I have seen grass with resizer scripts in it before...

But yes, 9 times out of 10, lag is caused by avatars - self or others. Most of the remaining cases are vendors or sexbeds.

 

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KeliahAngelis wrote:

I have my settings either to low or medium - depending on where I am. I keep my scripts under 100, and in most cases I keep them under 50. I do wear a scripted collar at all times, so I will not take it off - but as I am keeping myself down as low as possible script wise, I am good. 

100 scripts, or 100kb of usage?

Very big difference.

Look at 'script usage' button in About Land, then the tab for self.

Heavy kb's of usage will hurt the server you're in, regardless of the capacity of your local machine.

- Note also that if the region has script problems of its own, the same applies. But its usually avatars. And someone else with bad scripts in the same region as you will cause a problem, no matter how good your machine or their machine is...

 

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What do you wear that needs 100 scripts? I normally wear about 10 scripts, for a total memory load of less than 400Kb, and I could do without some of that, if I'm being honest about what I "need."  Viewers have good radars, flight assists, and AO's built in to them these days (better than the separate ones, and certainly less laggy), so you don't need half of the HUDs we used to.  Hair now has one resizer/recolor script instead of one per prim, and you can even get rid of that one (after all, how many times do you need to resize your hair?).  Same thing with bling in jewelry -- one script per necklace, not one per bead. I have a hard time coming up with ways to hang 100 scripts on my body, and I really have a hard time thinking of 100 that I "need."

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Oh, that's the sim limit on avatars for the sim I RP in. I never wear that much either. The only thing I ever wear that's scripted is the collar and I always hover between 30-50 scripts because of my Open Collar scripted collar. I don't wear huds save for my AO unless as needed, like if my character is doing something in RP. I delete resizer scripts after usage. I don't wear bling - its awful. I don't use sound scripts or wear things like walker sounds or anything. I try to keep myself as minimal as possible because of the scripted collar.

I don't have issues on sims until I run into places that are heavily sculpted, done all out with light beam pims, or have lots of detail. There might not even be any other avatars around, or there might be tons around. It has to be my graphics card.

I did pull up my statistics bar the other day and when I went into one of those areas with the grass all over, prim fog,  and the glowly lights my FPS dropped down to like 1.2 from 20. This was on low graphics with minimal draw distance. 

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On bling scripts: you can actually delete the scripts the bling effect will remain, or so I've been told and had tested last time I wore bling, in 2009. Do it with a copy.

To OP: Test your script -memory-

What's that come to?

You can have 1 script and use insane memory, or a bunch and use little.

If you have 50 scripts, you are using at -least- I think that times 16kb, or maybe it was 64kbs. Might want to remove the collar thingy when no in a RP-sim.

 

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Yeah, most of the times it's all the geometry, and huge texture loads from prims and prim heavy AVs what brings fps really down.

As for graphic cards recommendations, the bigger the better, like always. Though, I still use a GTS 250, and I'm happy with it most of the times, with about 40 FPS on high settings. Though I haven't visited a heavily loaded sim in a while (my home is a Homestead). So I'm not sure how much such a sim would slow me down.

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  • 6 months later...

The easiest way is to go to the manufacturer's web site, put in the information about your card, and let them identify and download the most current drivers to you.

Nvidia Video Driver

  • Latest driver Last checked Feb 6th- Windows: 285.62 (Oct 24) beta: 295.51 (Jan 31) - Linux: 290.1 (Nov 22)

ATI Video Driver

  • Latest driver Last checked Feb 6th- Windows and Linux: 12.1 (Jan 25)

Intel Video Driver

  • Intel driver download page Intel does not have a universal driver set. Please go to Intel's site and select the appropriate download.
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  • 4 years later...

Rolig Loon wrote:
"Don't blame it on the prim grass or the falling leaves. They aren't going to do much, if anything, to create lag. There's something else going on. You might get a clue by looking at the Statistics Bar ( Shift + CTRL + 1 )."

Actually this is FALSE.  Second Life "grass" does indeed cause lag.  This "grass lag" is well-known and has been around as long as the grass has been available.  I've experienced it myself and heard about it from my friends for years, across multiple viewers and using multiple computers.  The effect is easily testable and completely repeatable.  

Example: I have a great, almost new computer, all my settings are on "Ultra" or above and I generally don't have any problems at all until ... I face a field of grass.  Then my FPS drops precipitously, usually down to less than 1FPS!  If I turn even slightly so the grass isn't in my field of view, the FPS goes right back up again.  Coincidence?  I think not. 

So, I have the same question as the orignal poster, which I believe (between the lines) is something like "what can I do to my settings to counter this effect."  

All the replies that claim the problem isn't real or merely state the obvious (reduce your graphics settings) are really no help at all.  The real question is whether or not there is some graphics setting that affects this or whether it's just a "grin and bear it" situation.  

If anyone has an answer I'd appreciate it, as I'm sure the OP would as well. 

 

 

 

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Can you be more specific about the "prim grass lag" you describe?   Is it Linden grass (as I recall there is some) or a particular type of sculpted/mesh grass or what?

Off the top of my head, I would say that the problem could possibly be your gpu and cpu having problems with the alpha sorting involved in rendering lots of grass.  

I have a pretty decent computer and GPU, but nevertheless I find the changes I make to the default settings in my Nvidia control panel can make a huge difference to my experience of SL.    

Adjusting GPU settings is more of an art than a science, and so much depends on the specifc machine you have, so, before anyone asks, I can't really make suggestions other than searching in some of the SL blogs for ideas, and also looking in SLU (where I've found some helpful threads) and playing round with the suggestions you find there.

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When this ancient thread was current, back in 2011, rendering lag due to things like sculpty grass -- mesh hadn't been introduced yet -- was a fairly minor problem.  It's become a lot more popular since then, and I suspect that some of it probably causes more problems, especially for people with older computers.  Some creators tend to design for people with high end graphics cards, ignoring the extra load that it puts on the rest of us.  Short of racing to catch up with the fast crowd, there's not much you can do by tweaking settings in Preferences. 

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Yeah, this is such an ancient thread that it's like a showcase of all the things that have been improved in SL to reduce lag, such that now the lag of a mere field of sculpty or mesh grass will be noticeable. 

Much of that particular lag is due to the alpha-blending process. Set the textures to alpha-masking and adjust the visibility threshold and you'll get markedly less rendering cost. Some textures look better this way, some worse, but it will help the rendering lag and completely defeat any hideous alpha-sorting flicker.

(Note: If they're really ancient, pre-sculpty attempts at prim grass, they may need special attention to physics type, lest their Land Impact skyrocket when the Materials property of alpha-masking is applied. This is quite silly because nothing about that property affects physics in any way, but that's how it is.)

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The "grass lag" isn't anything mysterious.

Panning your camera though dense layers of mesh/sculpt/prim that's textured with alpha textures will make your graphics card work pretty hard - it can easily push your GPU up to 100% load even with a good gaming graphics card.

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