Is there a way to track the source of Lag?

Are there any tools that can specifically locate an object that is bogging down the performance in an Area?

Lag can mean many different things, each with their separate cause, and frequently not even the same thing to different people so unless you can be a little bit more specific about what's actually happening on the sim it's hard to give any suggestions on where to look .

Time dilation will give you a general idea of how (un)happy the sim is (0.9x-1.0 is normal), and the Time section will give you a breakdown of how much time is being spent doing what for each (sim) frame.

(And keep in mind that total frame time and time dilation/sim FPS are merely different ways of presenting the same information)

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If it's a private sim and you suspect a badly scripted object somewhere then you can use the estate tools (and look at collisions as well if there are any excessive ones). If it's mainland all you can do is put in a ticket for a Linden to come have a look.

The estate owner or manager can easliy tell you where the lag is coming from. I am sure you can find gadgets in world or on slx if you dont want to ask

There are several available to private sim owners. For example a screen in the viewer that shows script processing time. I have not found much of that sort for use on the mainland.
Go to the support portal

https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417

and search for lag.

One of the biggest causes I've found is temp-rez prims. Of course every Sim is different and your mileage may vary........

Several. In Help > Lag Meter, you can track the general lag situation for yourself. You can get more detail out of Ctrl-! (ctrl-shift-1).

In most cases, network lag is either caused from too little bandwidth and cache for too long of a draw distance. I go with the maximum cache size, and set my bandwidth to about half of what my connection tests out to be in real life (I'd divide this half by the number of SL users that will be on the network at the same time to be on the safe side if you have multiple SL residents in your 1L home).

Client lag is usually caused from having your video settings too high for your hardware. In particular, the default for particle count tends to be really high (wait until someone is particle spamming, then turn down your particle count until you stop lagging: This is usually a fairly small fraction of the default setting). Turning down various details also helps: experiment with your graphics settings to find a combination that gives you decent frame rate and doesn't look that bad. If you experience lag in crowds of avatars, turning on Avatar Rendering Cost and muting avatars with high ARC (ie, 2000+, the red numbers) starting with the highest first and work your way down in numbers until you're not lagging so much.

i have been having lag issues for ages.... and it wasn't until the new avatar rendering costs that i finally found out that "I" am causing my own lag. my hair is evil.

i have had so many people come and try to help me figure it out, and all along it was ME causing it.

Thanks.. that is the info I was looking for....


I knew about the lag meter and I looked at some of the consoles but that info made no sense to me.

I once counted attachments in a club where the mangament and the 12 security idiots were running around telling all the people there to stop using bling and other stuff ...

turns out the idiots that were telling everyone that they were causing lag had each an average of 115 attachments on therir Avatars..

I'm really hoping their next paycheck was their last in that case. Nobody that unaware of how SL works should not be flexing their authority on technical matters in such a way...

Which region are we talking about, VonGklugelstein?

Any region. Seems like some are worse than others. I sell textures so I am curious what else there is.

I have 2 locations with similar product and one lags badly for me, while the other does not. There are not a lot of people in the sim.. usually around 10 max so its not a crowd issue.

Maybe someone is running a bunch of temp rezzers or it is my vendors .. I would like to find out.

Like others have said, "lag" can mean a lot of different things.

In general, IMO, any region that's got less than 20 people in it should stay pretty close to 45 sim fps, the frame rate that a happy sim will run at.

If you post the name of a region that you think is more laggy than it should be, I (or somebody else) might swing by and try to spot the problem.

Thought I posted this earlier, but don't see it. ack.

We should start a Wiki page on this subject, since it comes up so often, and it's nontrivial. Anyone interested in helping to contribute?

...as the lag Master and the I cant go to my own club guy

I can say... I kinda get lag. really on my sims I experience no lag...none. on any of them even the open space sim..when we WAY are maxed..and most of our stuff is scripted

What I do know is this.. guy hair sucks ass. flat out.. most of it is A)ugly or B) sooo many torus(how do you pluralize torus..no clue.. so I wont try) really I go from.. 0 rendering..to like.. 695077290475260745

its ugly..or I am.

the reason I dont go to my own club? well 1) I h ate clubs....and its not me. its not fun..while I get the point of them..and really..if you know us at all.. you get why its important..even though... really many think I am fictional ..and.. my business partners alt and then 2) while the build is.. nice. its not mine and it really is all.. 1024s...and.. my machine is NOT bad..but the castle kills me I cannot handle not being..... current. really clubs suck ass..and I am always found.. just building

really lag makes me.. live on my build floor. (on the other hand..has made my textures awesome..cuz they are mine..and I cant handle texture shopping in most places)

This is potentially a big topic so I'd rather it started as a forums thread to hash stuff out a bit before moving to the wiki.

I like mediawiki but it's not really good at holding any kind of discussion..

I went to both places in your picks (Gourdneck and Brithys) and there was no obvious sim problem on either, no rezzing problems and FPS was the same I get anywhere else.

Once again, if you're having a specific problem you need to explain what exactly you're running into. "Lag" is just not a description that really means anything.

Are things slow to rez for you, you rubberband when you walk, scripts working slow, your FPS is low, etc, etc.

I don't go to wiki much but truthfully the info on stats I don't get personally it would be nice to see better explanation of this somewhere that it actually be seen.

Sure

I'm not sure if we can get a wiki area set up for Forums wiki-stickies, but that would be a good place for it to eventually reside. But anybody can start the page and we can all add to it, and move it later if a better home is found.

Once we get started, we should track back some history here, as well as pointers to anything currently in the wiki.

And we need an expert user of the Estate tools... I remember Des saying something about getting script lag effects from attachments from seated avatars (only). But being a Mainland geek, I sorta ignored all that.

But this comes up often enough that it would be nice to have someplace to point people, and it's intricate enough that it's easy to leave out important things.

In the meantime, maybe we can use this thread to post stuff to collect into the wiki article... and any ideas about how to structure it. (For maximum utility, I kinda like Kitty's approach: like a bottom-up troubleshooting tree of symptoms, rather than top-down from causes... although that makes it more difficult to write, I think.)

Sure -- good thing about a wiki is you can go both ways.

The SL wiki would be the best place, even if it's not my favorite wiki software.

First thing is to identify the different kinds:

client lag (low display frame rate)
- view is choppy even when you're just trying to cam around
- when you try to type in chat, characters are slow appearing

server lag (low physics frame rate)
- movements ingame are slow in reacting, but you can cam around with no problems

script lag
- scripted objects are slow to respond, e.g., menus don't pop up right away

chat lag
- when you chat, it takes a long time for it to appear in the chat after you hit return, and lines are often reordered.

download lag
- it takes a long time for the scene to rez
- when you change a texture or play a sound or animation, it takes a long time for it to happen -- though this can also be caused by script lag if it's happening via script.


Of course, they often come in bundles, which is typical in a place with too many avs with lots of attachments.

Are there any I missed?

Some existing wiki pages that may be relevant:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Statistics_Bar_Guide
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Simulator_statistics (possibly wholly superceded by above)
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Region_Performance_Improvement_Guide (estate tools)
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Simulator_Physics_Statistics

maybe links to video tutorials:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Avatar_Rendering_Cost
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Video_Tutorial/How_to_easily_boost_viewer_performance

I can tell you that a lot of it comes from San Francisco, if that helps any.

He said LAG......

Controversial!

thanks for checking that out.. very much appreciated

the problem is that I freeze often at Brithy's to the point where I cannot move for a minute or more sometimes. I also crash sometimes when I freeze like that. Lag Meter shows a below avg frame Rate due to textures loading or too complex of objects in the scene. I always start out being able to move flawlessly and things rez fairly fast for me, but the longer I stay there the worse it gets.

one of my suspicions is that somehow, because I am working with a lot of textures my cache is filling up and is causing problems somehow. I clear it occassionally and also run cleaning utilities to get rid of memory dumps which seem to happen a lot with SL..


Besides the obvious time delay of loading textures there, I have not hear any complaints from shoppers.