Tip of the Week #12: How to easily boost viewer performance
Thursday, November 22nd, 2007 at 4:44 PM by: Torley LindenFRIENDLY TURKEY AND/OR TOFU TIME! Here it is, just like I promised earlier, quick tips to speed up Second Life on your side. These aren’t all the ways, but in light of recent features we’ve added to heighten your experience, they’re darn worth showcasing!
This video tutorial covers:
- Where to find and use the new Lag Meter
- Statistics Bar basics (how to check viewer framerate)
- WindLight’s quality vs. performance slider
- How to get the most out of Avatar Impostors
To do the “WindLight” stuff featured herein…
A couple things worth noting:
- We’ve been developing the WindLight viewer agilely (everyone loves when bugs get fixed faster) so in the newest update, when Preferences > Graphics tab’s “Custom” is unchecked, all the other sliders & controls get hidden.
It’s our way of reducing distractions & cutting down on clutter, and there’s also a “?” button you can click for help… so don’t be surprised that it looks different from my earlier-recorded vid.
- Rock on Vint Falken, who’s been doing a nice series of WindLight articles, and the newest is a textual guide to the Avatar Impostors settings, a classy complement to my video.
AND WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
I’m giving you 124 sky + 24 water settings for use with the WindLight viewer! These were all used in various snapshots I’ve taken over the last stretch of months,
and now, they can be YOURS, FREE!!!!
Longer-term when WindLight moves to the server-side, we do intend to make skies, water, etc. share-able inventory, but until then, you can trade local files on your hard drive with friends.
Storms pass so we can rock civilization,
Torley Linden incidentally is a Product Manager & more who regularly scribbles on the Official Linden Blog. Torley also created the Guide to High-Quality Photography. See more Tips of the Week!
November 22nd, 2007 at 5:12 PM
[...] 22, 2007 · No Comments The “Official” Second Life blog has a great tutorial video by Torley Linden on the Lag Meter [...]
November 22nd, 2007 at 5:24 PM
Hmm, a tip or a Windlight entry. Either way, I sadly had to stop using it.
I am hoping the ground textures in Windlight will be fixed. loosing the lowest of the four swatches and the change in the organics has made the ground look quite ugly despite how wonderfull the water is.
Is anyone else seeing the 10Hz flashing of Linden trees that causes unexplained headaches in a few people I have talked to?
Keep up the great work Torley and happy turkey day. Do they make tofu turkey’s with green and red flesh?
/me winks at least one Linden opens their blog.
November 22nd, 2007 at 5:33 PM
good work Torley.
How ever i would like to point out a small detail:
Lindens wrote: ag and drop both the “skies” and “water” folders into the right WindLight directory. This is the usual install directory, yours may look different but similar:
Windows - C:\Program Files\SecondLifeWindLight\app_settings\windlight
Mac - In Applications folder, right-click “Second Life WindLight”, select “Show Package Contents”, then open Contents > Resources > app_settings > windlight
Windows - C:\Program Files\SecondLifeWindLight\app_settings\windlight is the Intel based Mac. It is usually referred to Mac Intel or Intel based mac, Not Windows.
Mac - In Applications folder, right-click “Second Life WindLight”, select “Show Package Contents”, then open Contents > Resources > app_settings > windlight, Is the PowerPC based Macs.
November 22nd, 2007 at 5:36 PM
http://www.flickr.com/photos/18637114@N06/sets/72157603251893246/
November 22nd, 2007 at 5:38 PM
OH MY GOD this is great!!!! Lag reduction!
Honor to the lindens that created these options!
and off course to Torley for the tutorial!
November 22nd, 2007 at 6:01 PM
Ctrl-Alt-Shift-H
hippos!
November 22nd, 2007 at 6:04 PM
“I’m giving you 124 sky + 24 water settings for use with the WindLight viewer!”
Awesome!! Thank you Torley.
November 22nd, 2007 at 6:17 PM
Thanks Torley.
One thing I really hoped for is possibility to make graphics settings presets. Instead Low, Mid, High, Ultra it should be great to have drop-down menu /with those four as system presets) but also a possibility to save my custom settings for later use and quick jumps from one to another.
November 22nd, 2007 at 6:33 PM
… and one more thing… those two stripes in the upper right for network activity and lost packages were very useful. They disappeared in RC and FL viewer. Can we have them back as an option? (Or maybe we do but I cannot find where to turn them on?)
November 22nd, 2007 at 6:38 PM
Thanks for the great Tutorial. Fast and too the point with recap at the end. Very good video. Your tutorials are what keeps me using SL. Also please the guy programmers know that this is the kind of ease to use type functions I want more in SL. Just as long as they keep the “Custom” box for the tweaking when I learn more of how to use the tweaks in the viewer. Where I live my internet service has problems and I watch the Stats viewer to see if my viewer is still getting data from the net. Great tool. BTW I notice your internet speeds are very high. What are the speeds your provider offering you? I have 4000 kbps down and 700 kbps up and still have issues with connections.
Keep up the great work Torley! (and the rest of the Linden team)
Capt. Jack
November 22nd, 2007 at 6:39 PM
hahaha!!!! At a little more than 1 minute remaining, check out the d00d to the right of the guy on the pole
LOVE the Missing Texture Leisure Suit ;P
November 22nd, 2007 at 7:33 PM
[...] We spoke earlier about how to improve second life performance and this one is a short addition to that. Actually, it is a shameless theft of wisdom Torley shared in his new Tip of the Week video. [...]
November 22nd, 2007 at 7:52 PM
I wish there is no support for ASUS EAH2600XT/HTDP/256M and I am not able to play with it little bit more.
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3401
Best Regards,
shaq
November 22nd, 2007 at 9:03 PM
Great tutorial! a) I learned about the new lag meter) to experiment with on performance, and saw objective data on FPS change controlled by client preference settings. I saw more explanation of the new windlight graphics settings including avatar imposters.
I have two questions: First, what things will make the lag meter go red on network and server? And second, does rendering windlight load the client harder. Oh wait.. I guess I can test that myself now… yay!
Thanks Torley!
Site
November 22nd, 2007 at 9:13 PM
This is all wonderful, but here we are, another long weekend, and SL is on its lips. Why is that? I can almost count on it. Every time there is a long weekend or holiday, this place goes to pot, Lindens are off on holiday, and I can’t use what I pay over $125 US a month for.
This is really getting old.
DRD
November 22nd, 2007 at 10:15 PM
The Lag Meter is cool. I saw I have all set to GREEN and 15-35 FPS but I see often network problems like 10% losing packets… and too high bandwidth set up…
Best Regards,
shaq
November 22nd, 2007 at 10:19 PM
Oh good, a lag meter. I was hoping you folks would add this to the Client as I usually just do the Control Shift 1 command and just keep the statistics window open at all times. Hehe, now I guess I do not have to, huh? Nice. ^^
November 22nd, 2007 at 11:41 PM
The video seems to be no longer avaible.
November 22nd, 2007 at 11:57 PM
Kudos for the new graphics quality slider. Really looking forward to seeing in in the main viewer.
I’d suggest making it more accessible though rather than burying it under Prefs>Graphics Quality.
November 23rd, 2007 at 12:02 AM
Dandelion raised a point that others have raised to me too, and I agree with it: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/11/22/tip-of-the-week-12-how-to-easily-boost-viewer-performance/#comment-531303
The two “barlets” where the search box is now was VERY useful, and let you monitor the network without the real estate that the ctrl shift 1 console needs.
PLEASE can we have it back?
Otherwise, I think Windlight is amazing! It only works under Linux for me, apparently an issue with the new NVidia drivers, but there it is DEFINITELY my Viewer of Choice!
November 23rd, 2007 at 12:21 AM
hi torley,
great tip of the week
i use the lag meter but it shows me a red CLIENT. And the reason it shows me is “too many picuteres loading”. what can i do?
greetings from germany
xphile
November 23rd, 2007 at 12:30 AM
red client button….too many complex objects or objects loading when everything has loaded???
November 23rd, 2007 at 12:34 AM
@ 21 XPhile Boucher
That “too many picuteres loading” is just misleading. Basically, it just knows your FPS is low and shows red. You can reduce your draw distance or get a better graphics card.
November 23rd, 2007 at 12:56 AM
Oh, and since we’re talking about performance. I noticed if I REDUCE the Graphics Card Memory setting in Preferences->Adv. Graphics, my FPS stalls less. I only have 128MB card (and set it to 64 there), but I’ve heard other people suggesting it, even from LL I think. I would call that a bug and it is submitted as such in jira (https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2763). Try it and if it helps, vote for the issue to be resolved
For the little bandwidth meters, vote at https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3156 and there is also a patch attached if you can’t wait for the next version where I hope we’ll have it back (maybe even improved:))
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:23 AM
Is there anyway of seeing the tutorials in text, us hard of hearing dont get to monopolise on these tips
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:45 AM
I got a trick for people with not-so-super net connections to that will help with the view when exploring
1. Just before you TP, turn draw distance to 64
2. Teleport and wait for the place to appear before doing anything, then
3. Turn up draw distance just a notch until as the increased radius of virtual reality around you rezzes.
4. repeat step 3.. as high as you like it
5. Before TP to another place, start at step 1 again
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:49 AM
[...] Wie man seinen Viewer grafisch optimiert erklärt Torley Linden hier. [...]
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:58 AM
[...] man seinen Viewer grafisch optimiert erklärt Torley Linden hier. Posted by Dings Digital on Nov 23 2007 under technisches, SL-Entwicklung, Usability, [...]
November 23rd, 2007 at 2:36 AM
Next tip of the week
How to get a compensation from LL for tier, classifieds & lost revenues.
Put WL on hold please please please! And stop promoting it so heavily with every blog article.
“Network issues between our facilities at amateur town & screwup city, but please use the time to get a first look on windlight” — coming next?
Sorry Torley, your article is great. But you should be very happy, sl is running smoothly at present. Otherwise you´ve had a lot of people in your neck again about overemphasizing WL (again)
Knocks on wood, all comments will be used up b4 sl goes down the drain again tonight.
Good Weekend
November 23rd, 2007 at 2:46 AM
Yaaaay! WindLight tips!
My Second Life just gets better all the time! ^_^
November 23rd, 2007 at 3:57 AM
Hmm actually the windlight viewer is a lot faster then the other viewers, i got at least 15FPS more with the windlight viewer.
Slider on mid settings, then custom and draw to 160 meters.
(use 160 meters also in other viewers) and the water blinks and looks yes super. (changed some other settings to but forgot)
He to many to remember so a safe settings to invent or so maybe!
I think they rewrote a couple off routines for this viewer and this speeds up for sure!
November 23rd, 2007 at 4:06 AM
I rather like Windlight actually… my SL experience is so different between home (where my PC will work windlight) and work (where my PC won’t).
Whilst I agree that Windlight shouldn’t overshadow things such as grid stability and performance … it is good that a feature that has many definite advantages is getting the attention it needs. Please keep up this interest in other ‘less shiny’ features.
Broccoli
November 23rd, 2007 at 4:27 AM
Good stuff, Torley, thanks. It’s good to know that you are trying to make people’s experience better, and it makes me more sure that everyone at LL is trying, in their own way, to do the same.
To people who would complain about projects like WL taking away from whatever thing they are most irritated about, be aware that not every LL programmer can work on exactly the same code, and that not every LL person is a programmer.
Torley, you mentioned that WL is being done in an “agile” fashion, and went on to say something about fixing bugs.
The programmers in my company actually do use an Agile approach, and as managers we find that it *prevents* bugs quite well: most are fixed before we ever give things to our customers. I would be interested to know just how LL actually does work on things. It might help people understand why things happen, and it might be that people inside LL could learn a bit from the companies out here who have actually improved their results.
Just a dream …
November 23rd, 2007 at 5:11 AM
Best post yet, Torley. Very very useful. Thank you so much. Hope you enjoyed your turkey/tofu/tequila! ;D
November 23rd, 2007 at 5:23 AM
Great Video, as usual, Torley. You are one Linden that makes me feel you care about users
November 23rd, 2007 at 5:46 AM
Ironic that the key to improving your SL experience is to limit your use of its features. Still helpful - ty Torley!
November 23rd, 2007 at 5:48 AM
We love you, Torley
November 23rd, 2007 at 5:52 AM
How nice. I have a Radeon X1300 with 256 memory and 756 computer memory and I NEVER get over 10FPS! What the heck??
I will try some of this..lets hope it works?
November 23rd, 2007 at 6:20 AM
@3, Rascal Ratelle:
No, C:\Program Files\blablabl… is Windows only! This has nothing to do with Mac whatsoever. I have an Intel based Mac, my harddrive is not C:\ it is Macintosh HD.
Second Life runs from the Applications folder and I do have to follow the Mac instructions. People on Windows do have to use the Windows instructions.
You may confuse Intel being Windows-only or something, it is not. Mac OS X on Intel is nothing different from a G5 running OS X.
Second Life for Mac is a Universal binary, that means it’s made for both PPC and Intel Macs, so you have the exact same piece of software on both processors (this is the reason why the Mac viewer is twice as large in filesize than the Windows viewer). Therefor you need the exact same instructions to install the WL presets.
November 23rd, 2007 at 6:25 AM
great work Torley, i’m really getting a lot from your vid tutorials, thanks heaps!
a tutorial on how to create groups of inv items, for example clothing or body parts, to instantly change your appearance without having to wear each individually, would be great.
November 23rd, 2007 at 6:31 AM
You are great. Your videos are great. I am happy bunny.
And did anyone notiice Torley did this video on Thanksgiving Day?
Wonder how many others would work on their holidays.
Twelve Pink and Green stars.
November 23rd, 2007 at 6:40 AM
One thing i’d like to point out is I was in a crowd of 102 people (sim was a little overfull
) with a ton of apps open and ULTRA setting.. I maintained about 5 - 8 FPS which is good for that crowd all in one area.. and My windlight only pushed up to about 800 megabytes usage..
Great Job on that part
Also my video card would screw up with the old one (2 died while using the old one) and the new WindLight client spares my video card - Thank you again for this because obviously the graphics enhancements are well needed if 2 video cards died using the old client
I for one support windlight…
For anyone who is saying ’stop work on windlight and fix the network’, LL has teams, each specializes in something.. Somebody who specializes in graphics may not be proficient in networking - by employing somebody who isn’t proficient in a field to do a job is counter-productive..
November 23rd, 2007 at 6:43 AM
Thanks Torley. Another awesome video tutorial. Still loving WindLight!
November 23rd, 2007 at 7:02 AM
@Torely
Sorry about being offtopic in 15. Caught me at a bad moment with the prior blog about network issues resolved.
Your vids are great. While the majority of tips are things I know, since I have been here for some time, this one on new feature explanation was very helpful.
A couple of notes on the Release Candidate and Windlight viewers and lag meter.
First - the lag meter is a nice tool. It would be more helpful to many if it were put on the menu bar with the expanded as a pulldown. In the newest viewers the old stats bars there have been replaced with the new search. Love that btw. Also the hints on the lag meter often flash for only a moment, so are impossible to read. Maybe a little delay or have them remain until replaced or the panel minimized??
Second - In both the Release Candidate and Windlight, I am noticing some aberent avi behavior, namely they fold in half downwards. This is very noticable after teleport, but occours with out obvious cause randomly as well.
Keep up the good work with the vids.
DRD
November 23rd, 2007 at 7:16 AM
umm guys i dont know if you`ve noticed or not but with the animation requester flood everytime we hit NO this causes a huge drain on the server feedback which i think is leading to your system failiures - we need something similar to the texture freeze in the client end
November 23rd, 2007 at 7:18 AM
Suggestion for client performance - fix the SL back end so we can log in reliably and not crash all the time. While these are nice ideas, they are useless as long as the backend remains as unstable has it has been the past few weeks, especially this last week.
November 23rd, 2007 at 7:26 AM
The ’suggestions’ in the lag meter about what may be wrong are apparently just wild guesses, based not on observed data from the present session, but rather on “if the numbers are between here and here, tell ‘em that this might typically be wrong…”.
While standing in a class 5 sim with ZERO prims (A freshly-delivered sim I am building for a client) and I was the only avatar in the sim, I was getting feedback that there might be “too many complex objects in the scene”. Yeah… right… one Ruthed Human avatar with no attachments whatsoever, in a nearly flat single-textured terrain field is “too complex”?
What I found more interesting was that it claimed I was getting bad ping sim results intermittently, and yet when I fiddled with settings and told it that the Windows system I was on had half as much VRAM as it actually has, this “ping sim” error condition miraculously vanishes? Hummm. Sounds more to me like the client still isn’t efficiently alocating resources. When the bad ping sim results appeared, the lag meter suggested maybe I had file shaing apps open? Nope. Nothing running but Win XP Pro, my Black Ice firewall software, and SL. And a few moments later, with nothing changed, this ping sim value would return to normal… less than 100, and sometimes in the low tens.
November 23rd, 2007 at 7:28 AM
In the past week 14 blog posts on problems with the SL service, most stating that the problem has been [RESOLVED] only to have another post shortly after announcing the very same problem. It seems that Windlight will be useless when nothing works. If you do not have employees who are actually capable of fixing anything then you should go out and get them and get rid of the ones who do not seem able to do what htey are paid for. And nothing undermines customer confidence like announcing a problem has been [RESOLVED] when it obviously has not been.
LL get your act together, many of us are paying customers, many paying quite a lot, and we are getting fed up with the poor level of service.
November 23rd, 2007 at 7:48 AM
Thanks again Torley. Getting hooked on your videos, as even an avie who’s been around a while like me can learn something new.
@ JetZep: cool idea! I never thought of using draw distance as a way to control the way the world rezzes around you!
November 23rd, 2007 at 8:03 AM
While the particles in Windlight still have lots of bugs, the particle rendering problem seems to have been fixed (maybe?). The number of particles rendered has been drastically increased. Unfortunately, i have hundreds of products and effects designed with the old rendering problems and now windlight will come along and make all my particle effect products look bad. PLEASE come up with some way to make things forward/backward compatible. I am now afraid to create anymore products. What do I tell my customers? Everything they buy might look totally different when Windlight is released. It is so hard to develop when the rules keep changing.
November 23rd, 2007 at 8:30 AM
Thank you Torley for this tutorial. I always used the Statistics Bar before to monitor sim and frame performance, but now I have the lovely lag meter as well. It is simple but gives good information.
One problem I have run into with the Windlight viewer is some kind of bug with my ATI Radeon card. (9700 Pro, latest drivers installed, OpenGL Version: 2.0.6847 WinXP Release) It stretches textures in a circle from a central point making triangles. It also flashes other odd textures on the screen. A helpful person in the forums showed me a workaround for this bug which by the way only occurs in the Windlight Viewer. I had to go into the Graphics tab in preferences and then hit Hardware Options; then I had to UNCHECK the box that said, Enable OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects. This finally makes the bug stop, but also reduces my frames per second greatly. Finally I can use the Windlight viewer; please look into this problem. (here are some other cards that are similarly affected by this bug: Radeon 1600XT with 512 megs of ram and the ATI x1600
Also, with the settings set to Ultra in Windlight, things are still looking over saturated. The sky and water looks beautiful, but my avatar’s face is far too darkened by shadows whether I set it to noon, sunset, midnight etc, it makes no difference. I turn on and off local lighting and see no difference. I use a facelight, and it still makes no difference, lol.
Keep up the good work; if somehow we could combine the lighting of objects and avatars in the old viewer with the sky and water of Windlight, this thing would look great!
November 23rd, 2007 at 9:01 AM
I have a similar problem with WindLight on ATI x1650.
Only happens on WindLight.
I’ve had it several times where half the scenery completely disappears
the other day i was in a building but the viewer showed me walking on grass.
Time before that i was practicing for a fashion show and half the runway was invisible. Took me a while to figure out it was still there, just not being drawn.
I suppose it’s cos we’ve been told to use NVIDIA but my box is new and the card has 1GB on board and is otherwise pretty fast.
Relogging fixes the issue. This occurred with the previous and current versions of WL viewer.
I’m also in now way able to run Voice with any viewer. Been through all my firewall settings and opened up all required ports but to no avail. Still the connecting to voice msg every 5 sec. I know other Vista/Realtek/Symantec AV configs work fine
Second Life 1.18.5 (74061) Nov 19 2007 10:10:17 (Second Life WindLight)
You are at 246931.6, 233647.4, 31.9 in Cariad located at sim815.agni.lindenlab.com (64.154.223.60:12035)
Second Life Server 1.18.5.73200
CPU: Intel Core 2 Series Processor (2127 MHz)
Memory: 2046 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows Vista (Build 6000)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: Radeon X1650 Series
OpenGL Version: 2.0.6590 Release
LLMozLib Version: 1.1.0 (Mozilla GRE:1.8.0.12_0000000000)
Packets Lost: 0/2245 (0.0%)
Viewer Digest: 78614e89-9589-3717-3290-feeb83e37a22
November 23rd, 2007 at 9:03 AM
btw I CONSTANTLY crash if i go into Mouselook while moving e.g. on a vehicle or ride or tour of some kind, 100% of time on WL
November 23rd, 2007 at 9:22 AM
Woot! Thx, Torley. I’ll list your vid as a classy complement to my text tutorial!
*wonders if she should now blush* :p
November 23rd, 2007 at 9:37 AM
I simply can’t understand why i’m the only one having problems with WindLight….My water is good, but skies are yellow nomatter what i do, and i have no sun. The clouds can be either greay or white with no shading. My plants are either black or white. I have now uninstalled WL, and now i have no colors at all on my “old” SL. It looks like an old Brown/white Buster Keaton movie now.
I should never have installed that previewer.
November 23rd, 2007 at 9:47 AM
thanks for fixing the game
November 23rd, 2007 at 9:58 AM
I love WindLight. It’s GORGEOUS! I haven’t even touched the original SL client since I downloaded WL a few days ago. I also have a spare PC that I use for camping when I am using my main PC for other things. It is a P4 1.6, 768 SDRAM, ATI Radeon X800 256MB, and honestly plays SL pretty badly. I figured WindLight, with its added features, stability, less lag, would be perfect for my P4.
It actually ran really well until the update the other day, now I get 1.2 fps. Yes, ONE POINT TWO fps. I set my graphics to LOW and even customized everything so it was as low as it could go. I originally got a boost to 6.5 fps (still lame, considering the graphics card I have) but the more stuff I turned down, the LOWER my rate went. It eventually settled back around 2.0 fps. Can you explain that?
I got frustrated and loaded the original client on my P4 and… wow… 14fps. Until another update for WL is released that fixes my framerate problem I’m forced to use the original client again. If anyone has any ideas on this sudden FPS death please feel free to IM me in-game. XD
November 23rd, 2007 at 11:08 AM
excellent tutorial Torley! .. thanks .. am gonna go play with those tools now
November 23rd, 2007 at 11:14 AM
Torley gotta love you for sharing your windlight settings
Well, tips on the video is great for who don’t have habits to play with settings, i personally discovered thoses things before you post it, but i’m clicking maniac *giggles*
One or two things more,
1st on My desktop computer with Saphire ATI Radeon X1650 PRO AGP version, Avatare impostor are 2 times more slow than real meshed avatare. and on my laptop with ATI Radeon X1600 it seem still no performance difference at all.
@ 51 thoses symptomes are generally caused by gfx memory corruption.
@ 57 btw, more i turn settings low on my X1650 PRO more it seem to be slow, think it’s disable some kind of hardware acceleration.
November 23rd, 2007 at 11:23 AM
I think you can DOUBLE power by enabling 16-bit color mode as an option (since as every computer tech person knows: 16-bit requires half the memory of 32-bit). There’s very little differences in quality for the normal person, but having it as an option would MAJORLY increase FPS by a ton. I have a Geforce4, and my average FPS on a normal client (not windlight) is 5-6 (1 or lower is my sucky level). If what I said is true, a legacy card user would have just as much power as a newer card if the color mode was able to be decreased.
November 23rd, 2007 at 12:10 PM
Windlight oooooh! Now if I could only log in and stay logged in to enjoy it in this *resolved* login situation……..Resolved clearly does NOT mean fixed
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:41 PM
Woohoo, great timing again…Everyone getting kicked, streams going down…just when the night starts…Give me more windlight please
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:41 PM
WOOOT! Cool you rock Torley! Windlight Rocks!
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:48 PM
Okay, I tried it.
Had to turn everything off to avoid the flying triangles..
the communicate window is still broken.
Going back to my Nicholaz viewer.
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:49 PM
Worthless to me, as it crashes at the login screen on my machine. Runs fine on a friend’s identical computer. Its just me I guess.
November 23rd, 2007 at 4:14 PM
All fine and good, but until LL gets around to address the severe freeze up problems which have been dogging many users since the release of 1.18.1 back in August (see http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2051 for details) and related memory/resouse leaks, all this fine tuning is somewhat futile for those affected by such problems.
I apologise for the tone of this post, but I’m sure you can appreciate the frustration of nearly four months of not being able to do anything productive in SL due to this constant freezing of the client!
Matthew
November 23rd, 2007 at 5:33 PM
[...] issues with their viewers, regular or windlight, Torley Linden has posted a Video Tutorial on How to easily boost viewer performance. Again, the tip applies to both regular and windlight [...]
November 23rd, 2007 at 6:37 PM
I tried the tips and promptly have a better FPS now…and I installed the Windlight presets. WOW-there sure are some spooky ones in there, one has this huge fireball sun reflection that eats everything….I see a Flickr posting spree coming up here.
November 23rd, 2007 at 9:49 PM
@6
CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + G “Leaving god mode, level 0″
But how we can enable the god mode?
November 23rd, 2007 at 11:47 PM
@69 btw CTRL + ALT + G bCTRL + SHIFT + ALT + G “ but you must be a Linden i think
or running your own piece off opensim server >> Entering god mode, level 100 geeegeee ^^’
November 24th, 2007 at 1:03 AM
[...] Second Life Blog Tip of the Week #12: How to easily boost viewer performance Quote from the site - Here it is, just like I promised earlier, quick tips to speed up Second Life [...]
November 24th, 2007 at 1:31 AM
Hi I have a problem, why my lag meter on client are red and saying too many objects or image loading. How do I fix that?
November 24th, 2007 at 3:32 AM
ok.. tried WindLight on Ubuntu 7.10. No go. Crashes whole system, locks keyboard no way out but the big button….
Reported in VWR-3426
November 24th, 2007 at 8:12 AM
yeah yeah… nice new features… if only bandwidths could handle them!
It’s incredible how you guys implement new features without thinking how they will affect users!!!
45,000 people online and it’s enough for nothing work!
Before add new features… think about new and more servers spreaded around the world!
Ceiling is the last thing to put in a house for gods sake!
November 24th, 2007 at 8:51 AM
Last weekend about every 2 minutes I’d be completely frozen for about 10 seconds… I couldn’t chat or move - I could see other people chatting… Unable to rez too. Oh, and it’s my land so it’s not someone freezing me.
Ofcourse I opened the lag meter but even when I couldn’t do anything - it was all green. So if it’s not client, not network, and not server… what was it?
November 24th, 2007 at 9:00 AM
Has anyone experienced any problems with their display on downloading new versions of SL? I have gotten 3 verticle hairlines that are a display issue and each one of them occurred on SL shortly after installing a new version. I didnt connect the possibility of the display problem and SL till now so Id like to know if anyone else has encountered a display or monitor problem shortly (within a few days) of installing an upgraded version of SL.
November 24th, 2007 at 9:38 AM
The Windlight is kool and i look forward to making special windlight settings for my island visitors….
Thought unfortunitly unless the current Mac Client freeze bug thats in all SL clients except Onrez and Nicholaz patched editions, i cant use it.
I can for short periods when i wonna take photos.
The Lag metre was interesting. It explained the reason why the client slows to a curl is cos of images loading allll the time…. not sure how im supposed to stop that. Was expecting to be told advice, not be told images are loading.
I’m still guessing there are loads more to be fixed, so untill then i await on the Patched version.
I now have 7 versions of the secondlife client on my mac….
1. Main viewer - suffers from bad 3 minute periodic freezing bug.
2. Release candidate - suffers from bad 3 minute periodic freezing bug.
3. Havoc Beta - Works fine but slower than main viewer
4. Windlight - hardware options-texture memory slider does not work & suffers from bad 3 minute periodic freezing bug.
5. Windows version - works fine, but have to boot in windows,(yeh i know, get a pc) I dont love SL THAT much!
6. On Rez Viewer - Works great also, love the back button - but too much CSI crap and the UI is just too different.
7. Nicholaz Edition - Works really well, just does not have the new search features, but at least that annoying freeze bug is gone.
Cant wait for more versions to arrive.
November 24th, 2007 at 12:47 PM
I am barely able to log-in and my assets are not showing up. Can’t you get SL run right for once on the weekend?
November 24th, 2007 at 12:47 PM
Torley Linden, what are your PC specs?
November 24th, 2007 at 12:56 PM
Fix the asset/network problems. I get tired of the repair blogs being locked and the LIES of claiming things are fixed.
November 24th, 2007 at 1:08 PM
@2 Sean Heying - I am not sure if this is it, but - about the ground in Windlight, there is a bug and I’ll submit it if it is not submitted yet. If ground is low quality, enable the Custom checkbox, do it twice if Terrain Detail is shaded. Then click Terrain Detail High even if it already says High.
@8 dandellion Kimban - I’ll submit that to jira as well. Wouldn’t hold my breath though…
@14 Sitearm Madonna - Network turns yellow @ ping 300ms, red @ ping 600ms. Reasons can be network saturation on your end or the server end or anywhere in-between. 300ms is nothing unusual for anyone outside of US. Server will turn yellow or red when server is too busy to be able to process at normal 45 FPS (server side FPS). It tells you the range of FPS it detect, but there is not much you can do yourself but get out. You can take off any scripts you are wearing to pitch in, but usually avatar updates themselves are more to blame than the scripts, IMHO.
@18 Patcha - Pity it happens all the time. I just reload the page and click again. It works for me.
@36 HatHead Rickenbacker - All games (if SL is a game) have this. They’re designed for the best hardware available and possibly beyond. If your gear is not up to it you have to accept it and turn down some features or settings. Of course we do hope LL will take some time and make optimizations so we can get more out of it.
@47 Ceera Murakami - Most of it are guesses, you are right. I think the only educated guess is that draw distance is too high (probably whenever it’s above 128). The one with images still loading is far off, while images are not loaded yet the performance is better, not worse… Maybe it has some guesses for the server as well but I wouldn’t bet on it. Network - complete guess, though it could check the server statistics and sometimes blame the server itself. But with an empty sim - I agree, everything should be green, most defintely.
@66 Matthew Dowd - I agree, I too would like at least one of the viewer hot issues be fixed…
@72 Guy - How about reading the posts first
Try reducing the draw distance and set the Graphics Card Memory to one below your maximum. Then see if any of the other options have a significant effect. But it’s not about fixing it. It’s not broken, it just tells you your FPS is low. Use the FPS meter to see where you are as you are experimenting. If you get to yellow, you’ll be fine. If your computer is not up to specs, consider upgrading. If you’re fine with how you can move and type, then turn a blind eye on that red light 
@74 Rockas Rockett - Spreading the servers around the world is not as easy as one might think. But I agree LL should work on the network. I wonder how much of it is taken by voice… More efficient texture updates could make a difference here.
November 24th, 2007 at 2:42 PM
Why is the only blog post open to post in? SL is misbehaving as it always does and never a Linden in sight when needed. It is possible to operate a keyboard and eat a turkey drumstick, so where are all the Lindens? They want a worldwide service but operate only for US? I am glad I am a free member, least I am not paying someone to ignore me hehe. Some people pay 1000’s of US Dollars a year for the same contemptiable service. They create the worlds i explore so i support them
I can’t get in for long periods to even use windlight if i wanted to. I curremtly freeze inworld, or it takes ages to get in. But its resolved, wrote some LL as they ran out the door to go pig out on turkey. The concept of staying till the work is completed obviously isnt part of LL culture. Note to Phil for his next “I have a dream” speech.
Some people in here are posting about other SL type Games coming online soon. If the offer even some customer support, then goodbye SL and if they actually think gloabally, something LL is incapable on, then I hope the LL people make the leftovers last from ThanksGiving, cos they will be hungry,
Windlight may be the ultimate “cutting edge ” thingieabob this week but if people can’t get in , plus no support (and an apparant “lie” someone said above), LL credibility is just eroded away.
I don’t post to often, its pointless but i am annoyed at yet again another series of failures. No where else to post my frustrations and knowing nothing is going to be done till after the weekend in the US.
My final point, I LOVE reading the people (linden Alts?) who say the problem must be the users machine , If hundreds of people with all different types of configurations complain of the SAME problem, then the common denominator must be what they are connected to . ( SL for the the ones unable to grasp that fact). Any serious intelligent person would have made that connnection almost immediately but yet always up springs a “LL caped defender” muddying the waters saying, nooooooooooooo your simply the 100000th person whose machine is at fault. Your to blame not the game providers.
UH Huh. To believe in a dream is noble, to follow it blindly, well , sort of sheeplike really.
Why cannot LL set up some login defaults (say 3) , for different spec machines? Does your computer have less than 1 Gigabyte Ram? 256 Megabyte Video Card etc and configure a default setting to run for the options selected. Then let people tweak. Its only the computer nerds who have never been laid who get off on tweaking computers. Most of us real people struggle and just want things to work, something LL is incapable of grasping.
November 24th, 2007 at 3:35 PM
windlight is a cool feature, love it, love SL also
the only problem is that it does not work
November 24th, 2007 at 3:41 PM
and I have set my draw distance to minus 200
November 24th, 2007 at 5:20 PM
Vint spells “impostor” incorrectly five times in the article and makes other hideous grammatical errors.
Anyway, WL might be pretty but even on my high end video card the performance hit is just too much to make it viable. Maybe nice for screenshots, but general use? I’m not so sure about that.
Next week’s tip: How to avoid “Gesture missing from database,” “Object is missing from Database” and the much loved “An attachment is pending for that spot” messages. Right?
November 24th, 2007 at 6:34 PM
@82
Amen to that. Completely agree
Is anyone at LL doing a customer base analysis and concluding a customer retention strategy from it? I just don´t think so. I am with sl for a lil longer than 6 months and i am about to give up. It´s just totally hopeless to run a business here. (except you´re with LL and know the inside outs.) How often to I get shouted at by frustrated customers that once again didn´t get what they paid for and that make me responsible for it. Some even say, I rip them off. How many customers did I lose because of LL´s complete and utter ignorance of the simple facts of (second) life. As a matter of fact, you LL folks are just as far away from the residents as a rl government from theirs.
If you try to run a mall, then it´s normally not competition that whipes you out. No. It´s the uselessness of your product LL and that sooner or later, every one simply thinks, what da heck, i can´t take it no more. Sell the land and leave. If coming back at all, then only in form of griefers to make you people (and everyone else) pay for what you´ve done to them.
No one pays me for sorting out the mess you, LL, create. Some people do have real lifes you know. I create something today, i use a certain number of prims/vendors/scripts on my land and it all works fine. Then you come along and introduce some unneeded stuff like Voice, WL and what have ya and from one day to another, the place lags, scripts screw up and something the majority of sl residents ain´t using makes the grid inoperable. This is piss poor planning and implementation. You´re not yet a major like microsoft, so that you could effort behaviour like that. Why don´t you give a damn that so many users don´t stay for more than a few weeks/months? I mean it´s not just that I could make good money if your product would work, no. I just don´t want to be on anymore after a while, cose problems stay and grow. I see this with lots of other people too. It can really affect ones well being. (And to all you LL butt kissers, oh wl is so great, leave me alone and go watch the sl sun go down or whatever, i am not talking to you geeks)
The only reason some business owners are staying very long is that they invested just to much time and money to give up just like that. But if you´d offer them to refund them their basic investment, the grid would be rather empty in no time.
I wonder how it looks with staff retention. Just cannot imagine that the good people would stay with LL for very long. That would at least explain the patchwork on the patches of the patches.
You are the best example why IT people should never manage themselves but being steered by business people. Not having a customer focus at all is really what´s the biggest issue IT people have.
As bad as it sounds, i would applause if sl goes down entirely. I would lose some, yes. But you too…How stupid is it thinking that? Extremely! But you got me there.
FINALLY SORT OUT THE BLOODY BASICS!
And to those of you, who are saying you cannot put a developer/programmer on every task. DAH! What are contractors there for? Kick the people that work on low priority stuff and get them back in if the time is right. Just like it´s done in any given company on the globe.
Check peoples revenue streams, pick a few bigger merchants and try to involve them into the planning. Screw JIRA, issue tracker and all that stuff. I don´t have time for that. Talk to me in human language and i show you exactly where you´re supposed to be working on. Try that with a few others and you will see themes coming up.
Put WL on hold. Develop something that makes me independent from using the same network resources Voice fanatics use. I suppressed it on my land anyways but i still get the lag from the people using it.
Finally introduce refund schemes, even if it imposes the risk of you making a loss. But that will make you move, i am sure.
Introduce your blog posts into some sort of inworld issues and do that in various languages. This cannot be so bloody difficult. I sometimes wonder how much of your USD spendings in the last 24h are artificial, cose they are double/triple purchases, refunds because of the latter, or simply bugs. Looking at the past few days, i was really surprised there was still a 7 digit figure while the grid was practically down.
There´s so much to say, but you won´t listen anyways or simply listen to do the exact opposite. Is Google or IBM paying you to fool us, so the transition from second desaster to something that works will go quick and painless?
You know, the only thing i don´t get tired off, is bitching at you
Happy Thanxgiving anyways
good night
November 24th, 2007 at 6:50 PM
just one more…
Make it a TOS violation for any Linden employee to have any non Linden alt avs or to have any ties to a non Linden resident and make it an employment contract breach as well.
Difficult to track, sure, but it wouldn´t harm either
November 24th, 2007 at 7:44 PM
I run the WL client on my trusty Commodore 64 and never have any issues. My monitor is an old RCA black and white POS however…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64
November 24th, 2007 at 7:47 PM
A C64?? Wow Mark, try the new Apple IIc…will not burst into flames as often as the C64…
November 24th, 2007 at 11:45 PM
Hey guys, an additional boost to performance is going under preferences, and turning off “Load avatar in Mouselook” and then just scroll in until you are in mouselook…
???
Profit!
No really though, I usually notice a cool 5fps increase and it’s a fun perspective to play around with sometimes. ^^
November 25th, 2007 at 12:30 AM
At the risk of being accused of being a Linden too…
@82 Nikki Bechir - Those saying they were able because their machine is good were just plain wrong (and akin to bragging). The asset failure the other day was one server out of 20 or so, meaning about 5% of people were not able to get in (though my guess based on the stats is one of 5, I am basing the 20 on some vague statement from LL somewhere). If one had alts, he/she could see that one account could log in and the other couldn’t. Making someone wonder why the paying account couldn’t and the free one could. But it was just lottery.
@85 Phineas - Impostors seemed misspelled to me at first and might make the same mistake of spelling it with ‘e’ simply out of habbit. But you are right, anyone publishing things should be careful and consistent and stick with the product’s spelling. BTW, http://m-w.com/dictionary/impostor gives both options. A simple ‘google challenge’ shows 2.1 mil for impostor and 1.8 mil for imposter. I agree the glitches you mention should be addressed.
86 Totally Hopeless - You are right (like many others), for saying one shouldn’t be paying LL for being their lab rat/beta tester. Alas… Thank you for supporting contracting type of employment. It’s not a globe wide thing, I believe it is done in US, the rest of the world gives employees some social rights as well. I think LL is not in a position they would need to lay off people in order to be able to fix things. Instability issues may be ones that have nothing to do with the software itself. And require IT specialists to fix them (and try to prevent them). Developers should continue to work, to provide better software in the future. After all, it takes years to get someone up to speed on a project and months to finish a feature. And you want them to stop working every time a server acts up? We need both, stability and new features. There are also bugs there that will require a major redesign in a certain area, and a new design will spur new features, so features themselves are not to blame. Of course there are also features many users would rather not see at all. And I second that when a feature is resource hungry or when it is not thoroughly designed and tested and causes problems or even breaks existing functionality.
November 25th, 2007 at 3:47 AM
Explain to me again why there’s a Beta grid?
November 25th, 2007 at 6:46 AM
@79 Jaime Hocken
I just stumbled upon this:
http://torley.com/whats-in-torleys-new-computer
… while looking at:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Torley_Linden/Project_updates#.5B2007-11-20.5D_NEW.2C_agile_triage_process
Speaking of which, I DO think LL is changing the focus. But, yes, we’re eager to see the results (the right bugs being solved and no broken existing functionality). So, why all the fuss about Windlight lately? Precisely because it should be better, not worse, than existing viewer. So Torley wants it to be tested by as many users as possible before it is released.
Windlight release will be more than just pretty skies. One could ask, why are some of the performance improvements not available separately? Some may be tied to the Windlight itself. Others are probably too big to be rolled out in a minor release since they require more testing than a short cycle of bug fixing releases allow.
I wouldn’t be surprised though if for example impostors make it to a release before Windlight does. Tested in Windlight, deployed to main. Why not. But it depends on many factors so - let’s see what the future brings us.