Camming causing crashes??

I was good and posted this in the Technical forum, but only got one response from someone saying they had seen similar thing happen, so you wonderful Resident Answer folks get a shot at this.
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I won't swear to the timing of this, but it seems that since I got my new computer months back, the more I cam around, the more frequent my crashes. I can go somewhere with tons of people (or TP to lots of places) and maybe have some lag, but if I don't use my camera much, I can stay online all day/night without a crash. However, if I start camming around a lot - like you do when doing a Hunt or trying to find something in a really large place - then I seem to crash much more frequently.

I do have multiple versions of SL installed, along with a few of the third party viewers.

When using one of the older versions with Nicholaz, I would get the second window come up that tells me that SL has crashed and as soon as I hit okay, that window and the SL window goes away. With the latest Cool Viewer and latest SL that I've started using, I do not get the "SL has crashed window" - my SL session just simply ends - and it seems to happen sooner and with more frequency.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I do not really remember this happening before I got the new computer - or at least if it did, it must not have happen frequently enough for me to remember.


Here are the computer specs:

Dell XPS 630i Dual Core E8300 @ 2.8 Ghz w/ 4gb ram
Win XP Pro w/ SP 3
9.0c Directx
swap file define at 4096-8192 and currently at 4096
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT w/ 512 mb


and the SL versions installed:
- http://1.18.5.3/"]1.18.5.3[/url] with Nicholaz BE-w
- http://1.19.0.5/"]1.19.0.5[/url] with Coolview
- http://1.19.1.4/"]1.19.1.4[/url] with Nicholaz EC-f
- 1.20.17 with Coolview
- 1.20.17 (straight LL version)
- 1.21.6 with Coolview
- 1.21.6 (straight LL version)


Has anyone else experienced anything like this? Any ideas or steps for troubleshooting? At this point, it does not seem to be specific to any particular LL version, though it does maybe seem a bit more frequent on the latest version.

Thanks

I get this sometimes, when I'm on the quad-core Dell. SL works beautifully on that until I get the cam-swing crashes. I'd been blaming Vista - sometimes these crashes are whole-computer crashes, not just SL - requiring a restart from disc.

Wow, maybe I should just consider myself lucky and not worry then -- I have never had SL cause my entire computer to crash.

I'm on XP with an ATI card and I've sometimes noticed that the SL client will start lagging horribly and eventually crash after I've been camming around a busy area for a while. The semi-peculiar fix I've found for this is, if I notice it bogging down, teleporting gets things back to normal. I don't mean actually leaving the area...I just open the map, select a spot right next to me ("Cannot teleport closer to location", and that takes care of it. Something to try anyway...

I have had this on 2 seperate occassions in the past. As a builder i am forever caming so drove me nuts. First time I had a brand new PC. Spent 3 days going through a process of eliminatation and in the end I found it was the graphics cards. I have 2 GeForce 8800 GTS cards installed. I removed one card and the problem went.

1 year later (quite recently) I had the same problem with cam crashes. Only took me 20 mins to solve this time and turned out to be the graphics card driver. I had just updated to the latest version and this caused the crashes. I reverted to my older driver and that resolved it. Even to this day I cannot use both my graphics cards when using SL.

That definitely sounds odd, but with SL glitches, I am used to odd, so I will definitely try that.



Well this is definitely something for me to keep in mind. I still have my 8800 GT from my last computer and have been meaning to put it in.


BTW - I don't really talk Windows very well. How do I find out exactly which driver version my video card is using. I see people talking about version 176 or something like that, but when I run dxdiag, it does not give me any numbers anywhere close to that -- it says:
Version 6.14.0011.6912, dated 1/14/2008

I've gotten the same thing with XP on a quad core. It's probably not Vista.

It isn't OS-Specific. SL does crash more often, on both Mac and Windows XP, (that I can personally vouch for), if you pan your camera around and move too fast.

Here's one reason why:

Every time you pan your camera, it causes HUGE burst of data from the asset servers and the sim, as it recalculates what you can see, what is obscured or blocked from sight by what else, and all that. Every new prim that swings into your cone of vision, to the limits of your draw distance, has to be reconsidered.

Turn off occlusion culling, and the problem should lessen considerably. Your overall framerate will go down some because every object is being drawn in every frame, but stability should improve since the total data set will remain relatively constant from frame to frame. There will be far less loading and unloading for your video card to have to worry about.

Generally speaking, occlusion culling is a very valuable feature. But some systems do have trouble with it. If SL hangs or crashes when you rotate your camera, difficulty with the occlusion culling process is usually the culprit.

/me coughs

Just stand still causes crashes with me..

wow thanks for that, while camming doesn't crash me it does bog me down to the point where I log off and back on to get rid of the lag. Now if I can manage to get the map open I can just tp hehe

and thanks Chosen, I will try that as well

Cam-crashing had decreased for several RC versions but seems to be back with a vengeance for me with the latest RC. Nothing in my system, connection, or use has changed, only the RC version.

*shrug* I just figure it's one of those SL things.

[ETA: In addition to cam-crashing is a resurgence of VWR-2051 in JIRA - this is the "everything freezes for a few seconds" thing. Again, for me, it's only with the latest RC.]

Me, too.

How do I do this? On my Advanced menu, under Rendering, there is something called Object-Object Occlusion -- is this what I want to turn off?

Thanks all.


/me wanders over to vote on the Jira for short term freeze-ups, again glad it is not just me.

I get it occasionally as well. I don't recall if it's happened yet with the 1.19 Cool viewer, but iy did happen once in a while with the Nicholaz BE 18.5. One crash actuall gave me a BSOD, my very first with XP. I figure it may be my little Radeon X300 is finally paking it in.

Yup, that's it. They must have changed the name somewhere along the line. I haven't had any camming problems in a long time (knock on wood), so it's been a while since I've looked for it.

OMG - Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!!

I have just managed to spend quite a few hours camming around stores to shop and do hunts without a single crash - it even seems that those little freeze-ups are not happening much anymore. While it has always seemed that lots of camming caused these crashes, it just really really seemed so much more frequent lately and I was beginning to get super frustrated.

lots and lots of hugs and kisses.

/me does happy dance

We aims to please.

And i thought it was just me.