Killing The Terrible Lag Monster

Hello folks. Semi-newbie here--- a whole 32 days under me belt!

Wanted to make some general my-2-cents-worth observations about SL, the terrible lag monster, and what appear to be illogical situations in SL that are contributing to that LAG monster. These observations may or may not be valid, but for whatever they're worth...

The first one is the major one:

1. The mandatory prim size limit of 10x10-- was that arbitrarily set? My question: is that a necessary limit? Wouldn't a limit of say, 40x40 be more reasonable? Is a limit even required? The reason I mention this is this: If I want to build a simple 20x20 hollow cube, at this time it requires a total of 24 prims. However, if the 10x10 prim limit were upped a bit, I could do it in 6 prims. The math is simple.... 24 prims or 6 prims? Which is going to cause greater lag?

Now I know some may argue, "Well, if they don't use the prims in building they'll just use it elsewhere." Valid point. Maybe they will... maybe they won't. But if they DO... at least it will be on something more valuable than just yet another wall or floor tile.

SECONDARY BENEFIT: this will also help reduce the upset over the 117 prim per 512 building limit: if we can reduce basic walls and floors, that gives us more prims for other things. Bottom line: increasing the available size of a building shape is a win/win situation. I say eliminate the 10x10 building constriction.

2. EXCESSIVE PRIM USAGE. There are many items in SL that use prims to an extreme... far more than is necessary in a game like SL. As a primary example, I once saw a beautiful diamond bracelet... which contained a total of 216 prims! Now I ask... what good does it do to limit a land owner to 117 prims per 512, when a user is walking around with 216 prims on her wrist?

SOLUTION: Forgive my bluntness please... but perhaps a little less vanity and ego is called for. Builders-- we KNOW you can build amazing things (as a builder myself, I love building). But instead of making a bracelet that uses 216 prims... use ONE prim to make the basic bracelet with a nice, pretty diamond bracelet texture properly applied, and then put 4 or 5 prim'd diamonds on it that can glisten all you want. The bracelet will still look wonderful and you've just saved SL an incredible amount of lag. If we don't all, as an entire SL community, start building with common sense, the lag monster will only get bigger. Perhaps a solution to this would be to start enforcing a prim limit on avatars... which would be an unfortunate situation, but perhaps necessary if players and builders keep abusing prim usage.

3. MP3s, BOOM BOXES and other such. Forgive please, but little irritates me more than for someone to come into a group of people forcing them to listen to his/her particular choice of "music". These devices are lag-causers. They CANNOT BE SHUT OFF other than by turning off our speakers (which also disables keyclick sounds, IM beeps etc, so is not good). Bottom line-- these devices interfere with the enjoyment of the game.

It is perfectly understandable that someone may want to bring a music machine to a local area and start a street dance. Those can be fun. But such music should go through the standard SL sound lines, so each user has the option of STOPPING such music. These devices are lag hogs, are sometimes very irritating (such as when some socially mal-adjusted player plays a continual, irritating loop) and can even be offensive. Bottom line on this one: I submit that these devices are in breach of basic Linden rules not to harass other users or damage their enjoyment of the game. They cannot be turned off, increase lag and I submit, UNLESS they go through standard SL PLAY/STOP mode, should be banned from SL altogether as increasingly numerous griefer devices.

4. Excessive particle use. To be honest, I don't really know how much lag particles cause. And also to be honest, I love particles. I have an av that's won several contests that particles like crazy. But when I walk into a shop or club and there are so many particles I can hardly see where I'm walking-- when I try to Alt-Look to find a friend and wind up following a light beam particle around the room-- then I have to wonder just how much of that is really essential to the game and how much lag it's causing.

What to do about it? The only thing I can think of is the Lindens making the entire SL community aware of the problem, making this a major issue, and asking all business and club owners-- as well as individual users, to tone down on the particle usage. Only ONE of my avs uses particles... my "show-off" av. My other avs-- including my standard one-- use none. If we want the lag monster to die, we all have to be willing to aid in killing it.

These are just four thoughts about the lag issue. I hope some of them are valid. I am sure other users have additional thoughts to add-- things that you know cause serious lag and are not necessary to enjoyable SL play. Best wishes to all!

I was battling the lag moster myself for weeks.. know what i did to beat it?(uncheck) turn off Local lighting in your prefferances.. after i did this i was amazed ..try it

Hi.

Some points, corrections, et. al:

Prim size limits: This may be arbitrary, or there may be code and/or rendering issues involved too. Any Lindens want to clarify this?

Prim Jewewly and other stuff: There is a lot of jewelry and such items that use textures instead of prims. Depends on what the creator is trying to do. Items that are attached to you don't count against a land's prim count but they do contribute to lag. I think this is a current hot-button technical problem that the Lindens are working on.

Particles: are rendered client side. They don't contribute to sim lag by themselves, though multiple particle generators that change themselves every so often might. But excessive particles can still get annoying.

Muteing other people's sounds: I'd take this one to the feature suggestion board. The person in the appartment above mine often plays music, for example, and left it playing when he wasn't connected and oh how many times I wished I could turn it off.

Maybe its that 'new math', but isn't this actually only 8 prims for a 20X20 cube if each cube is 10X10?

I don't understand how we get 24 prims.

-Ghoti

As I understand it, this is necessary due to a 5m "overlap" area on Sim borders. If prims are larger than that, pushing them across a border would break stuff big-time.



Point of clarification - these are not particles, they are semi-transparent prim cones made of the Light material type. Particles cannot be clicked on, or zoomed into with alt-click.

But I do agree that it's almost impossible to rate, IM or view the profile of people in clubs with a bunch of spotlights. Especially if they're dancing at the same time! HINT - if you want people to rate your wonderful clubbing outfit, stand very still in a dark corner!

hollow cube... but it can be done with some interesting cuts, for a total of about 16 prims or less..

There are quite a few threads concerning lag, how to improve it, and such. Drop me an IM in world and I'll drop you a notecard on measures that can help to reduce lag, if you'd like!

I agree that I really don't like bracelets that take 216 prims and such. Especially when attached to the AV - that's kinds of like saying, "Community and server be damned, as long as *I* look good." Its vain and rude. That being said, many people don't understand that these cause lag. Its the people who do understand this - and yes, some are quite good friends of mine - that get under my skin by putting ego above community server resources. This is also not something that can be controlled by the land owner.

I think the 10x10 meter prim limit is good... this actually probably helps reduce lag, and here is how. Prims currently "exist" on the land over which their center is. Some of the ruder among us intentionally use tricks to extend prims OVER their borders onto other player's land. This is quite rude, especially when (for example) its a big rotating sign that goes THROUGH a neighbors house. However, if the prim limit was increased, so would the ability to use this kind of grief, UNLESS more complex math was used to calculate where each edge goes, or ever worse, if rotating, the circumference of the rotation. These calculations would cause much more lag to calculate that balancing the griefer versus prim size by keeping it 10x10.

Regards,

-Flip

Ah, I didn't clarify. I wasn't talking about making a cube out of 8 cubes (which is probably a better way to do it... I'm still new to building). I was giving an example of making a building, using single-plate walls. The 20x20 was just an example... the building could be 40x40 or 100x100. The thought is... a 20x20 cube made out of single plates would require 4 plates per side-- x 6 sides-- for a total of 24. With larger prim size... it could be done in 1 plate per side.

My solution to such a thing would be for Lindens to establish a law (which may even already exist) that nothing from one piece of land may extend over another. Then such rude builds could be reported as abuse and handled accordingly... not only solving the problem but giving the abusing user a notice about his/her attitude at the same time.

Gotcha. I was thinking solid cube where each cube would contribute a 10x10 surface to three sides of the ubercube.

Yeah, hollow is a whole other matter... thanks for explaining.

-Ghoti

While that would definitely be a better solution - and, really, people should just grow up a tad and act a tad responsibly - the problem is the logjam it would cause the Lindens.

Perhaps an option under ABOUT LAND on the return menu... to allow you to return objects on your land that are on another person's land center-prim-wise, but extend over to your parcel. That way, its not CONSTANTLY calculating, but if its a problem done without permission, BOOM, they're gone.

Regards,

-Flip

I know people have prim limits, but I have not noticed a lag issue due to prim count. I have notice a much higher relationship between active objects and scripts.

Anyone have any thoughts here?

Walkerman

VISIT JAVA... We've gone New Orleans!

Count again.

Granted, if you have a sim with 15000 prim boxes with blank textures... it'll run much better than a sim with 15000 light objects each with a script with a listener and a sensor.

That said, in most sims... since script cost / CPU and texture cost / CPU and client calc / CPU are unmonitored - its a fairly safe metric.

Moving forward, we need a system where a prim with no scripts costs 5 cents. A prim with a listener or a sensor? Depending on the frequency of the script, it costs X times 5 cents. If you're wearing an AV with 500 attached prims in an already laggy sim? Auto detach all the prims. Its the only fair way.

Let people paying get what they pay for. Eliminate the middle ground.

That being said, the time and compupower required to do this... and the best methods... well... those will take some time.

In the meantime, do your best. Educate your neighbors to do so as well. IM me for a notecard for tips, trust me, I'm an anti-lag fascist, I'll help.

If you're in a sim with a club that has 40 of the biggest lag creators per day - AVs - then I'm sorry. I'll do my best... but there is only so much that can be done.

Regards,

-Flip

Hey Flip....I heard you were talkin shite about me...Higbee's mine and you'll never get him! bwahaha

Can you drop me a copy of the notecard? I'm putting together a help section at my store and that would be a very good addition! Thanks hun! *hugs*

Hey!

I just told him the truth! You know, about my lack of gag reflex and the fact that I can hold my breath for 20 minutes!

I wasn't, uh, trying to steal him away from you! Besides, Jenn's hot, let's all just go gay for a night.

-Flip

Oh yea! Well, I can....erm, wrap my legs around my head! And, um...hold my breath for 21 minutes! Or something.....aw, fuck it. Why the hell not!

Until they find a way to prevent people from putting up to 50% of an object over the border of two parcels, 10x10 is quite large enough.


Modern video cards can display tens of millions of triangles per second. It's not the prims that's the issue, really, it's more of excessive textures on the prims. This is the same sort of thing the Internet had to learn back in the mid-90s when people would use pictures that were large enough to choke a 56k (or 28.8k) modem.


It's really 2 seperate issues you brought up here - it lagging and it being annoying. As for the latter, check here: /13/9b/27774/1.html
As for the prior, this really isn't a lag-causer; the amount of bandwidth dedicated to sound and music is controlled, and should not affect your performance unless you have a thin pipe (like a low-end DSL).


Yeah, this is a problem because:
(a) the particles move and have to be recalculated constantly.
(b) the partcles are often alpha-channeled (semi-transparent)
(c) the partcles can use textures
(d) many emitters use a lot of particles

I'm running an anti-particle spam crusade... I've got a nospam bracelet that I'm releasing... on command it spews out a couple hundred images of a can of spam under a red "NO" circle with slash through it. Down with particle lag!

But honestly, main lag causes:
- active listen scripts in channel 0
- other scripts that are unoptimized for lag
- excessive physics use
- excessive light source prim use
- high-res textures where they are not needed
- lots of AVs in the same area, especially with complicated attachments

>>>
excessive light source prim use
<<<

Which is, with no doubt, the main lag source. And other than slowdowns caused by an insufficient connection speed (which can be improved by a faster connection), there is no way to prvent from it.

OpenGL and Direct3D have both an 8 light limit imposed - almost all graphic cards have an 8 hardware light limit imposed as well (btw, even with hardware T&L, using 8 lights will usually result in a framerate drop of up to 66% - some graphic cards are more, some are less affected, though).
So - what is the point in using more than 8 lights within the visibility range when only 8 can be seen at a time anyway (and probably one of those 8 is reserved for the world ligt already)?

Pure download-intensive areas I would not classify as "lagging" at all, because when the download has ended, the slowdown caused by this has ended as well - in this regard, the size of textures is a minor, and, if at all, a temporary problem. Since textures are not animated, they do not impose any additional strain on the client system, unless there are more than (graphic card memory size) textures in view, which will then cause additional textures to be stored in the ordinary computere RAM and the swapping back and forth can slow down esepcially weaker systems. However, I have not noticed such a behaviour yet.

The vertex count of items should not be much of a concern either in an average area, the transformation speed of current graphic cards is incredible high and relatively low-polygon items (other worlds have a much higher count), as they are used in SL, would not be too much of a problem. A problem is, though, the option to concentrate the vertex count of distant areas in on area (as in adding up vertex allowances of various areas), and this problem will increase with the presence of avatars (although are skinned, they have more vertices than ordinary items).

I have not conducted any serious test with particles yet and am not aware of the effect of alpha blending - however, the strain imposed by this is probable the same as with a greyscale masked texture (which results in the same, but is another approach). I agree though that the use of particles is in 99% of all cases in appropriate and destroys rather the natural atmosphere of an environment, on the other hand, this depends, of course on the approach one takes to the SL environment (some like it naturally, some like it artifciallly or comic-esque).

So, in conclusion, I see the main factors of lag in the use of lights and in the concentration of vertex allowances (actually, the impact of the latter would be much less when there were bigger distances between builable areas, like 1/2 average visibility), something that could (should) be imposed by the world supervisor. It will decrease the amount of selleable space and such the possible money influx. but on the other hand, what good do as much as possible buildings do when nobody ever goes there since one cannot move even fairly anymore.

I left my old home because of lag. It'd take me 5 mins to get up my stairs.

Interesting thread and take it from an ancient. Your concerns have been voiced widely before Wayfinder.

#1 Reason for 10 x 10 Prims max. Prims location are based off of their Center.

Initially when we were first building in SL we would build across sim borders and think nothing of it till we would walk from one room to another and fall all the way to the ground limit at that point.

Got Lag now? any larger size prim would create major lag because of not only communication between server to server but between server to client.
This is why when planes and attachments dissappear as your flying its because the servers cannot keep up with the activities of the individual user.

Lisse mentioned earlier that there is only an allowable 5 meter overlap from sim to sim if you do the math thats a total of 10meter zone of overlap between two sims. Thus meaning those two servers only have to keep track of the prims in their server and 5 meters into the ajoining 8 servers.

000
0x0
000
X representing the single sim and 0 representing the 5 meter zone in each sim that the x sim has to keep up with.

#2 Setting Draw distance. This is an interesting approach but when you think of the application of how SL operates it makes sense and will reduce your lag.

Max Draw distance is set to 512 meters. Why? primarly because each sim has to communicate with the client. @ 512 meters the diagram I had shown previously comes back into play. Why because at any given point in time with 512 meters set your Client is communicating with 9 -12 distinct servers to obtain information. In addtion to that you have redundancy being comunicated with the 10 meter buffer between each sim. The sheer volume of data being communicated to your PC is overwhelming to think of if your trying to grasp the concept just from a standard thinking point.

But Imagine this its like talking to 9 people at 1 time and understanding each of them clearly and responding accordingly.

So if you reduce your Draw distance from 512 to a range of 65-125 then you have a clouded distance yes because that data is slowly being stripped from the incomming information IE Funneling the info to just what you need to see.

#3 Coupled with the aformentioned issues Lights and other changes create adjustments to how textures are viewed. What does this mean? if your view is set high like the aformentioned 512 meters your client is trying to keep up with the texture changes on 9 simulators at once thus creating the pixeled effect. Eventually the Item will "Rez" in however it will depend on how fast your computer is cycling through the information that 9 sims are throwing at you. Will determine how fast an Item "Rezes"

Anyway I will have to finish this latter as I have to get back to work.

Shadow

Hello.


Don't log in. Your definately safe that way, unless you're on a downer, that'll slow everything down. Ouch, imagine playing SL on downers... Bhiice



According to LL, for the most part, SL is juuuust fine.



Particles are basically handled by your local machine (client side). If you bog with particles, time to upgrade, or turn down the particle count. As for asking, I doubt anyone would listen anyways.



Yes, we would all love the lag monster to die. Wanna know what the biggest perp of lag is? Avatars. Get 40 avatars, stick them in a sim that runs usually at 1000FPS. Enjoy the slideshow. How do you fix it? Avoid everyone.