Texture Loading in Choerom

Over the past couple weeks, a severe texture loading problem has appeared in the region Choerom. Upon entry to the sim, it takes 5-10 minutes for them to load. Yes the cache has been cleared, yes (fill in common "fix".

I have contacted two separate liasons over this, and they are reluctant to restart the region due to the high number of campers in the sim. However when the sim crashes on its own accord, texture loading will be fine for a couple days.

This sim needs some serious looking at. I've been to many choked and lagged out sims with no problem whatsoever. This issue is making it IMPOSSIBLE to get any meaningful work done.

Hello Miles, and a warm welcome to the SL Forums!

Out of curiosity, I had a look. It appears the problem isn't region-specific. It if was, for example, if you click on Time (ms) it might display a very high number next to Images Time and you would probably notice the stats being unstable and shaking all over the place. When I arrived and stayed (right now), the stats were healthy. Time Dilation is 0.99 and Sim FPS is 45... sustaining and not flopping about.

It looks like the issue here is actually content-related. There are a great many textures in the plaza nearby--including larger 512 x 512 ones--and since all of those take time to download and display, it will slow your experience in a manner consistent with some of what you describe.

There are several things you can do about it. One of the easiest is to go to EDIT menu ---> PREFERENCES ---> ADV. GRAPHICS and set DRAW DISTANCE to 64. Depending on the direction you look and how much you zoom in the camera, things will also get faster.

Another suggestion is a simple Before/After test: press CTRL-ALT-D to get DEBUG menu up, and then select DEBUG ---> RENDERING ---> TYPES ---> SIMPLE. This hides simple objects on the client-side (your end). While it looks unsightly, you should be able to notice the performance difference. I often toggle CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-9 (Volume) for temporary situations in which I need a performance pick-me-up to chat faster.

Another technique: DEBUG ---> RENDERING ---> HIDE SELECTED and select prims to temporarily hide them. As a result, their textures won't be displayed, they won't be loaded in your graphics card's memory, making it easier to compare.

Ultimately, at the root: I recommend education when using textures. There are ways to economize usage and make things snappier for all avatars, such as this Textures Zone tutorial by Julian Fate I recently came across. Smaller, fewer textures when possible is also a general recommendation. It can look glitzy to have so many big textures displayed on an even bigger wall, but unfortunately that results in sluggishness for all who look at them.

Best of hope getting things up to speed.

Further info on how to read the Statistic Bar Guide:
http://secondlife.com/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=GuideDebugStats