Huge and Sculptie Prims - Laggy?

I'm using alot of both and I'm walking around wondering why my place is laggy (well it's mainland so...) could it be all the huge 40x40 prims or the sculpties?

I could say yes, most likely. Sculptie textures are typically more intense then a standard texture. and mega prims, well, thats a whole other issue that I won't even bring up.


or I could say theres one sure way to find out. Remove them and see if performance improves.



Then again, I heard that there are issues in world right (map not working, TP failures...the usual I guess for a pre-rolling restart day day) now so it might be that also. Have you always had issues ? or just recently?

I've always wondered about Huge prims, I love water land especially if its right up to the sim edge and my view is forever unblocked. I'm thinking of maybe using docks and ships rather than huge prims to walk on.

Could you bring it up- just a little bit? I'm still learning here and knowing of potential pitfalls helps

I agree...I still have no idea how they are created.

Mega-prims were created long ago; new ones cannot be created now, so there's a fixed number of them that can be copied and carved up in various ways, to varying degrees of success. When not phantom, they can make the physics engine work extra hard to calculate possible collisions--and not always correctly. Even when phantom, some unexpected effects may obtain, mostly dealing with camera behavior and the ability to rez where one might expect on top of them. The non-phantom effects are shared with some regular-sized prims, too, when skewed, or hollowed, or etc.

As for lag, unless these megaprims are non-phantom and statistics show physics lag on the sim, I'd be much more suspicious about the sculpties, regardless of the size prim to which they're applied. At least in my viewer, just a few sculptmaps will dramatically slow rendering (even after they've rezzed), and the more sculpt maps in the scene, the worse the effect. (Seems to be more about the resolution and number of different sculptmaps than the number of instances per sculptmap--but that's all subjective, and details may be a function of my Windlight-on-Linux viewer.)

/me hisses and crosses his fingers, falling backwards onto the floor

So essentially, you are saying that mega prims, when not used in "phantom" (like as screens and dividers on property) can cause problems with the sims.

and since most people use mega prims for floors, ceilings, walls where "phantom" has to be turned off, then there could be problems with performance.

When you mention it causes the physics engine to work extra hard. I've been told that the impact on physics is more detrimental on lag than anything else. One such example a person used was hair that had an over amount of prims.

Sorry for the double post but how do you guys track down lag? I've done the thing where I turn on the lag meter or stats bar and walk around but it's nor very evident to me. I wish there were some program that analyzed items in the area and reported what was causing the lag.

I'm not completely sure, but the 20x20x.5 that is usually used isn't too bad on the physics engine. It's when you go over the 20x20x20 that things start getting a bit loopy on that end. The bigger the mega prim, the more problems it generates physics-wise, which is also why they say to never turn on the physics and whenever possible to turn them phantom instead. Actually, turning any prim phantom can possibly reduce physics lag.

Well I removed the huge and sculptie prims and it made a big difference in lag.

The thing to do now is put one of them back, see if there's a difference, and then put the other back, and see what difference that makes. Or one at a time. It's be interesting.

What I want to do now is have docks built (or berths?) where I will put my pirate ships. I really want the mall to look like a pirate town.

Another thing to consider about huge prims is the texturing, wouldnt a 512x512 texture on a 20x60 megaprimm be equivelent to a 1024x6144 texture? isnt a texture size based off the default max size of 10x10.. seems to me the load time would be huge

sculpties cause about the same server lag as a twisted torus (extra texture load to transfer vs extra bounding box info to calculate) but can cause a large performance hit on the client side (sculpties are client side), similarly flexi's can have a big client side effect.

as for megas, even LL isn't 100% sure if they cause more lag than the appropriate number of normal prims to replace them (according to andrew linden, in a post or three about them in building tips), with the exception of them crossing multiple sim boundries, or being physics enabled (all the physics stuff is hard on sims)

there are steps to making sure the have the least possible inpact, such as making sure their cut sides are facing away from the most likely point of contact (down for floors for example), making them phantom even moreso, don't make them move, don't enable physics for them.

I wish there were some took that analyzed every prim on your parcel and reported what load it was putting on the server.

yeah, I'd like a tool like that also.

for something like that I would pay *holds pinkie in his mouth* ...one million Lindens!...

ok...maybe not 1 million....but I would gladly pay a large sum for a handy tool that could point out scripts and show me their performance stats and whether or not they are a mjor contributor to the the sim performance.
...maybe color coded to show which ones are the worst.


on another note...I'm glad that you got your lag figured out. Now try what the other poster suggested...lay one back out one at a time and see which one is the worst...or if they all just contribute equally.

I built a nice low prim, weathered dock that you are welcomed to have a copy of. I'll send you a copy if interested.

I'll just..."SAY NO" to huge and sculpie prims I managed to sneak on during lunch and rez my 3 pirate ships, now I'm looking at hiring someone to build some docks.

As far as the sculpties go, i would suggest looking at the sculpt maps themeselves especially any sculpties that are 6 mos or older and before the lossless options came in, anything larger than 64px square is not needed and will add to the client lag factor.

Have you seen some sculpties that rez slowly and look blocky while rezzing? this means its probably a 1024px sculpt map i would get rid of them to reduce lag.

As far as mega prims go i would not expect they would not cause client lag any more so than regular prims, allthough often to get an acceptable detail in texturing the mega, a 512 px image ususally is not enough, so it could be the texture on the mega that is causing the problem. Server lag may be another issue, especially with physical megas which is a no no in my books. Check the statistics bar under sim physics if you suspect anything.. should run at 45fps most of the time. Also very large megas should not be used at the edge of the sim, even as phantom. from what I understand, the fact that people in neighboring sims can see them adds to both thier server load and yours.

When I have had lag issues it has been either one of two things.. a very large texture in the immediate vicinity.. a neighbour has uploded thier digital photography direct at 5 mega pixels or something.. lol not so easyto locate at times. Or a physical object, a stray basketball for example that is stuck in the ground or against another object... that can bring the sim to its knees, but would also be very evident in the statistics bar.

-w

I guess that depends on what your old ones were. But the list in the referenced product is just a sampling of different cuts and dimples of a handful of base megaprims--probably the same ones you already have.

I have one of those

I once was HIGHLY upset with a tringo game that spoiled my haven of a mainland beach spot. I acted inappropriately with mega prims and was quickly given a 2 day ban

Hi Some good advice in previous,I switched all megaprims and stuff that did not matter to phantom and am skipping around for me.cheers Blot