Shiny objects causing video lag?

I ran into a very odd problem early this morning. I was sitting at my place talking with a friend when both of our framerates plummeted to under 5 FPS. After a moment our framerates recovered, but within another 15-20 seconds it happened again. This continued to repeat itself for about an hour.

During that time I attempted to fly around the sim and figure out if it was a client or server problem. I've attached a few screenshots of the sim stats and the frame console when the problem struck.

The first pic shows this problem at its worst. The frame console indicates massive UpdateGeom usage -- so much that the video lag actually affected my network latency. (Every time my framerate dropped, my ping would spike.) The second pic is similar, with me in a different part of the sim while wearing a Ruth avatar and no attachments but a flight enhancer.

I set my video options to the minimum to see if it was my client. The only one that made any difference was, of all things, Shiny Objects! With shiny off, this problem vanished completely. With it on... bam. Framerate suckage.

The third screenshot shows one other interesting piece of data: the "Verts Relit" statistic. It was the only stat in that window that consistently spiked along with the UpdateGeom numbers in the frame console.

I have no idea what would cause this problem. I haven't changed my video settings or drivers in at least a month. The build I was sitting in hasn't changed for almost as long. My friend and I were just talking, no scripting or shooting guns or anything of the sort. The build itself has a fair bit of shiny objects, but when I rezzed a copy of it in one of the sandboxes... no lag. I don't think it was the build.

I suppose I could just turn off shiny, but that wouldn't really tell me what caused the problem, especially since it affected my friend's client, too.

AGRHRHRHRHRHRHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

UPDATEGEOM LAG REARS ITS FREAKIN' UGLY HEAD AGAIN!

I hate this. I really do.

Glad you posted this Sean, I never made a correlation to shiny before. HOWEVER... if you read my past thread:

UpdateGeom massive lag problems?
/111/ee/31063/1.html

I didn't even think to suspect shiny, but next time the freakin' thing happens to me, I'm turning Shiny (as beautiful as it is) off and gonna ride the storm out.

Thanks for pointing me to the other thread, Torley. I'm glad to see there's a genuine problem here instead of me just losing it from too many late nights in SL.

Some more thoughts after looking through the other thread:

I didn't think to try the fast timer console (control-shift-9 I think). *smacks forehead* If I run into this problem again I'll definitely call that up and get some screenshots.

I did try Show Updates a few times. I didn't spot any massive amounts of red or blue halos, other than those generated by my own avatar moving around. On the other hand, I may have been too far away to see some things rezzing if temp-on-rez items are indeed the culprit.

I don't think it's complex prim hair. I've been in crowded places (30+ avs) and never gotten lag like this problem. Even then, the frame console showed more even distribution of rendering, not big bars of UpdateGeom. Also, the screenshots I put in my first post show me in places with nothing at all nearby -- I was a couple hundred meters in the air.

I don't think it's local lighting. I don't use it except in those rare instances when I need colored lighting for screenshots. For everyday SL stuff it stays off.

Toggling Disable Far Clip didn't appear to affect this problem, but I'll specifically test for that next time the problem strikes.

I'm gonna disable Shiny for the first time in a long time next time this crops up for me inworld, and I'm going to see what's up.