Chat Lags your Second Life?

Hello Everyone!

I was working on some new scripted gadgets when I encountered a interesting phenomenon, chatting decreases Second Life Viewer FPS by leaps and bounds, and in some cases nearly halving viewer FPS. This effect only lasts for a second or more at best when the viewer receives incoming local chat. This effect seams to stack on itself too, more chat, more the FPS drops.

EDIT This issue is only observed while the communicate window is open, and not when local chat is sent directly to the screen. ALSO Length of chat has no observed effect on the phenomenon /EDIT


Reproduction:

1. To observer the FPS drop open up the Statistics Menu (Ctrl + Shift + 1) - Make sure Basic sub tab is open.
2. Open the communicate window.
3. Type into local chat OR Set up a basic script to spam chat, this bug is non discriminating towards different types of incoming local chat.


This seams to be largely a viewer side issue, and although this is not a show-stopper, any Second Life location with ANY amount of local chat may be inadvertently affected.

Vote for http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-14971 to keep your precious FPS!

Weird.

Does it happen if you have chat going to a window or just onto the screen? Does muted chat also do it? Is this just from other avatars or objects, too? What about IMs - same issue? Does the length of what's being said seem to matter?

This seems to be a new phenomenon with the last viewer release or two. I've noticed it a lot - and things totally freezing up for a few seconds when a new IM window pops and things like that. At first I was blaming it on my big old 47K inventory like I blame a lot of the new window stuff, but... it does seem to be more real the more I look into it.

Just tested it, looks like it is only the communication window that is the culprit, dose not lag when the chat is sent to the screen vs the chat window. Objects & avatars cause this problem.
No idea on muted.

Chat logging can be expensive too, it blocks and can hurt if you send it to a slow drive.

This has been an issue for awhile, having windows open, such as communicate, chat log, inventory, etc drag the frame rate down tremendously. It did seem to get better for awhile but not surprised it's back. I upgraded my computer not long ago, so I can't really see the effects anymore. (130+ fps is hard to drag down)

I've never observed that effect with text chat, but recently with an attempt at using a three-way group IM, we had to give up on it and use open chat, because the three-way private IM conference slaughtered my frame rate.

On a related subject.. did anybody ever check to see how the number of friends on your list affects performance? I was told it makes a big difference, but am not sure

large groups with IM's open used to cause this... I'm so in the habit of closing them that I don't know if it's still in effect, but I wouldn't be suprised.

I normally get between 0.3 and 4 FPS (which is how it's always been).
I have a few times seen 12 FPS on an sim devoid of people and prims,
but that was more than a year ago. What computer gets 130?
I didn't even realize it could go that high!

I've noticed the Communicate window slow things down, too.
Although it's hard to tell most of the time if anything is slower
than anything else.

I run with minimal settings, no Windlight, and 96m.
(Tried 64m, didn't make any difference.)

Dual Geforce GTX 285's running in SLI, with a Intel Extreme I7 CPU at 3.7ghz and 6 gig memory. 130 fps with all of SL's sliders set to max.


It also cooks a mean egg.

P.S. It's also interesting to note, on that same system, running World of Warcraft with all the sliders set to high, I only get 23 fps. I guess either their rendering engine is doing a lot more, or perhaps it's because the draw distance is so high, a ton of items are being rendered. I haven't looked into it so far, as 23 is still sufficient to play.