SL runs like a snail on a modern machine

Hello all, I'm on my 7-day trial which i've enjoyed pretty much with everyone here. All is good, except for the technical details of SL that annoy me enough to not reside here permanently. Let me give you an insight into them...

first off, the net lag. im on 0.5 MB connection so im pretty limited in my downloading. unfortunatly, SL like to redownload things again and again and again and again and... you get the idea. I set the disk cache for 1gig+ to spare my poor narrowband connection from burning up, but it seems that SL cleans that cache everytime i log out (the folder never exceeds 37MB), so when i log in its the same again... take a coffeebreak so everything can download. And this limits me pretty much, i cant even wander around before getting stuck because of a invisible wall, wich becomes visible several minutes after I've bumped and smacking myself into it. That, and the lag, decreases my enjoyment of SL *A LOT*. Its bad enough i have to waste my life by waiting through traffic, now i have to waste it waiting for things to download? *frown*


And the second issue... Let me introduce my pet, athlonzilla. AMD64 3.0GHz+, 1GB RAM, Nvidia 6800GT. And it runs smooth, drivers up to date, system is optimized and the machine dosent have a lot of apps to share its cpu (in other words, it focuses its power on the focused application) and runs most modern games swiftly. but, SL runs in... slow....mo....tion.... Its ridicilous, I avoid places with crowds because of the graphical lag, and I avoid new places because of netlag.

And I see this product is past beta release (version 1.6 and all) so I was expecting something running smoother... am I doing something horribly wrong? or is it like this for everyone? if it is, how can SL run with a profit?

BR,
"K"

Second Life *demands* a really good broadband internet connection. As for rendering issues, please remember every other graphical deal and game is, for the most part, made of pre-constructed chunks and thus many shortcuts can be taken. These shortcuts cannot be used in Second Life for reasons that should be obvious.

Yes, it's going to be slower than your usual run-of-the-mill 3D games. That's the price you pay for 100% dynamic content.

But this is not to say that SL is well optimized, because it isn't. They could probably make it run better, but it's not really a priority.

I have a setup pretty similar to yours, and I get around 40FPS most of the time. But .5MB download really won't cut it.

Out of sheer curiosity, what kind of download speeds do you guys with fat pipes get from SL? I've set my Maximum Bandwidth to 1000 but SL insists on downloading only 600 kbps. Something doesn't seem right there and I've never figured out why, since I've well exceeded 1000 kbps on many, many other sites.

No, really, though.


We're not here because it's fast and fierce and you can "kill" people.
We're here because it's an everchanging yet persistant 3-D world, resident-built, and filled with some of the most creative, funniest, kindest people you'll ever meet. Lag? Meh. It's a pain, but it's (usually) easily bearable. And it'll get better, too. Just ask Anshe ~ she's in charge. (Er, um, strike that last. I don't know where the hell THAT came from.)

Mine will peak at 900KBps, but that only lasts for a moment or two. Things stream quickly at that rate.

Torley, it could be your geographical location. You might not have a very good connection somewhere along the line, and be bottlenecked there.

Keknehv, I've noticed the same phenomenon—I'll quickly dash into a saturated area and it will peak at 900 kbps, but then go down to 600 kbps. I've heard of some Residents that live right near Linden Lab also see the same thing, although I don't have much conclusive data. I wonder if this is a cap from the system.

I can certainly download the SL client at max sustained bandwidth.

Wonder what else there is to it.

Maybe that extra 300kbps is the preliminary object data, like locations and names and such. After that, it takes longer for the server to arrange the other data that you need, so it slows down.

Of course, this is pure speculation. We'd need a Linden to really know.

Seems the more people in a sim, the slower your download gets, i never seen it stay at over 600+, however i seen it drop to waay lower the more people in one sim.

precaching a new sim, clean cache
Play on 2 mbit cable 600+ ish
Played on 155mbit oc3 , 600+ ish

600+ ish seems to be a magic target number. Glad it's not just me... hmmm... I've done it with several bandwidth meters too.

Ok the normal fps in SL is way way way lower then you will get on anything , due to constant downloading and rendering it will litterally crawl to 5 fps on even the best systems when you got alot of traffic and avatars.

a 10-15 fps is decent in SL, under 10 is slow slow slooow, 15-25 with little avatars

yeah the buggers "our avatars" can be a impressive polygon count wich is so high not even the most detailed game out there has even close to it ;p

Not to count the 100.000.000 texutures in this thing that need to be streamed down (would love to see a figure on this Lindens! , how many pictures/tga/textures do you actually have now ?

Keknehv Psalter, exactly. SL is not optimized at all, in fact I even did a test regarding the rendering. I went to a club with 10 people and I stood facing the other way (that means, they was behind me and I was facing a wall) and guess what? SL still ran sluggish. I belive SL suffers from "constant rendering", that is its enough you're standing in one area, and it will render everything whether its on the screen or not.

And no, SL isnt the average shoot / hack n slash game and we all know that, thats why we're here. But really... That dosent mean we should accept a flawed code.

I think SL does this, too... But for me it would be crazy, if turning around in an area meant i got hung up with another 500 MB texture/polygon download. I appreciate that I first get a "fuzzy" rez, which later optimizes, but everything within my visibilty range is there. I have this set dynamic, so I don't force my frame rate TOO low, 15 FPS is comforatble for my machine (2.2GHz Pentium, GEForce 5200/128MB, 3000kbps DSL).

Try setting that down, or up, if SL is going dead on you in new areas.

SL doesn't clean the cache, ever (1.7 will introduce the ability to "Clear the Cache"). Are you sure you're checking the correct folder?
C:\Documents and Settings\YourUserName\Application Data\SecondLife\cache
You will probably see a number of files in that folder, if you click the properties for the folder it ought to be just a bit bigger in size than your cache is set for (for instance I use a 500mb SL cache, but my folder size is 553mb).

Something seems pretty goofy if you're cache isn't working right.

As for "narrow band" I run DSL ("unlimited" which actually means "0-1.5k, flip a coin and hope you're on the high end."). I get around 500-700 typically. And I have SL set at 500 max, I never experience much delay. Certainly there is download delay, being a dynamic game and all, but the download wait doesn't seem extreme to me.


Similar system on my end, homebuilt amd64 3.5Ghz, nvidia 6800GT, high-end everything else.
SL runs "like crap" if I have settings high. But that's expected -- I also don't think it's optimized. Plus (and a big point, as others have stated), it's dynamic -- it's constantly d/loading and drawing textures and such, cached or not, this isn't going to be a fast process such as a pre-rendered game can offer.

I suggest turning your nvidia settings AA and Ansio down (I use 4x for both when playingSL). My "Image Settings" (nvidia setting) is "Quality" (2nd highest).
In SL I have:
Ansitropic ON
Local Lighting OFF
Shadows OFF
Disable Far Clip OFF
Shiny ON
Bump Mapping: "Bump Mapped"
Terrain: "Some"
Adv. Graphics:
AGP On (duh)
Large Cache
256mb mem
Object Detail Slider - Max'd
Tree Detail - Min (sometimes I raise it, but usually I dump it)
Avatar Detail - Max'd
Avatar Vertex Program ON
Draw Distance 96
Fog 1.2
Drop Draw Distance if FPS < 15
Bumpiness Draw Distance 8
Max. Particle Count 4096
Outfit Composite Limit 7

I just spun in a circle in my shop (everything's cached no doubt, no lag).. 59-73 FPS. :)

I probably average around 30-40fps though, less as more and more avs are around.

--Bos

nice post, Bosozoku Kato. Indeed, you're correct, the temp files was stored under docs & settings, i only looked under the program folder. And I've adjusted my graphics even lower, and the flow right now in crowded areas is acceptable, so thats one thing less to stay bugged at. FYI, I didnt have neither AA nor AF on, so I had plenty of horsepowers to run the graphics well i thought... bump mapping seems to have crunched most of the power anyhow

Reduce your "Draw distance" setting to something more local, you don't really need to see what anybody else is doing in another island, which means SL will draw to that max and of course that means more bandwitdh needed;
Lag will neve disappear unless LL can broadcast or upload at higher rates and therefore players can download as fast.

Shutdow any other programs using your bandwidth heavily, and check your firewall to see if there's some applicattion running behind your back doing something its not supposed to.

And most important of all...
Have fun! yes it gets laggy sometimes, but its agood game to be and interact with others