down to 2 FPS when using local lighting

Back in ver. 1.6, I used to turn local lighting on and enjoy the nights with several chinese lanterns around my buildings and garden. It's been less and less enjoyable with each updates. With this lates update, my FPS goes down to 2 FPS. The sim fps still run at 45, but the viewer fps has become intolerably slow when local lighting is on.
I upgraded my video card sometime after ver. 1.6, so I should not have any probs there. I have a 2.4Ghz with 2Gb ram.... SL is running slower with each updates...

I'm really starting to run out of justification for spending $50/month for a 3D sandbox I enjoy less and less. Please fix it.

Pratyeka, I've had similar experiences. Local Lighting in 1.6 was better for me--on a much slower computer! I've since gotten a new system, expecting great gains, but haven't gotten them with Local Lighting on. BTW, what does your frame console look like when Local Lighting gets really slow for you? Does it look anything like this?

No Torley, the screen is clean. Just everything slows down. Even selecting anything in the menus. The sim FPS still runs at 45+. The only way I can improve anything is to lower the draw distance below 100m. But my land is longer than that... Its really sad that the features that makes SL so remarquable visually can't be used just because they make too much lag on the client side.

That's pretty weird--if Local Lighting is slowing down your system and using considerable CPU, it should show up on the Frame Console. can you please post a screenshot of what your Frame Console does look like at the coordinates in that link? (All the specific instructions are there.)

Thanks Torley, did exactly your setup and I broke my personal record for low FPS: 1.3!

Now I can't even attach a picture to this post??? WTF?

anyway, my screen looked just like yours, full of blue bars. What is that screen for?

Pratyeka, welkies... and yeeesh that is low.

Things like Frame Console and Fast Timers in DEBUG are meant as diagnostic tools. E.g. when someone says "I'VE GOT LAG!" this shows *what* kind of lag. Severely underrated and undocumented (I have no idea what some of those words mean) but useful nonetheless to show to LL devs and QA, who can make deeper sense of it all.

I hope someday that an EZ version of those displays will be available; one of the biggest killers here, as you've no doubt surmised, is tracking down and pinpointing elements like this, and many Resis don't even know they can do it!

Please, please send in a bug report about this! You may want to do it live and direct when you get the blue bars too, and attach the screenshots. This has been going on awhile but not enough people have sent in bug reports.

Hmmm... I was able to attach an image fine here. See if an external host like http://www.photobucket.com or http://www.imageshack.us will do ya good?

Not to appear ungrateful for your encouragements, but I find this situation less than acceptable. I have been here 10 months now and the performance of SL overall has gone down, not up. I have upgraded my PC with a better, faster video card and doubled my DDR ram to 2GB. I run Photoshop and music and watch TV while copying DVDs all at the same time and my PC doesn't even hesitate. But when I get in SL with the local lighting on, the software chokes!? I read the forums, and I'm not the only one complaining. Several other have sent bug reports for the same thing I experienced. So, no, I wont send a bug report. Local lighting has been buggy for a long time according to what I have read. Why is it not fixed yet? This ship looks like it's full of holes and there are not enough fingers to plug them all.

I'm done complaining. I'll stick around for another couple of months. But my first anniversary will be my last if things don't improve drastically around SL.

I have a new machine I build with AMD and Nvidia bits and pieces. Top of the line stuff. I can't compare the local lighting effect to previous versions, but I did decide to leave it off because it seemed like an enrmous performance hog for a minor effect. Typically with it on lots of random surfaces light up incorrectly and one person can essentially grief an area by dropping bright and highly saturated light sources around.

Performance on Local Light is down the drain, hardly worth having on anymore , really really suck cause it make SL look alot better, but now it seems you have to have quite insane pc to even have it on in sim with barly anything in it.

But no LL looks like craap, and utter slow to update, whats going on with it?.
hardly how it was a few months back, now its just killer slow.

Guessing this isnt a future not much looked on, havnt seen it get much attension since not to many use it?, seems software based to since it all goes to cpu.

Feel free to correct me , : p
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I have to agree. if i turn on local lighting, my game basically grinds to a halt.

I'm not very good at SL's technical side, but i am a techie, so if any linden wants to contact me with info on what to do i'll happily jump through hoops and give you as much info as possible

I'd really like to get this fixed cause at the moment the games allmost to dark to play in some area's without any local light.

1.3 FPS? Sheesh, I've gone below 1 FPS just from having a lot of avs around.

But, yeh, local lighting is pretty pointless. It doesn't seem to have a great deal of effect when I turn it on, and it really clobbers my FPS. A lot of that seems to be people who have used "Light" as a material type to get the effect of full-bright back before full-bright, or who didn't know that Light wasn't just another material type and set it just for grins (there's a common vodka-bottle object that's light instead of glass for no reason I can tell, for example).

In the graphics options, there really needs to be a couple more options:

1. [008] Number of lights to use.

Only the closest N lights would be used. Lights further away would just be full-bright with light-glow (if light-glow is on).

2. Reduce lights if FPS drops below [03] FPS.

There will be a major update to local lighting in a future version. We know that there are problems with it!

Please watch the forums for news on the next few versions after 1.9.0 for announcements about the changes to local lighting. I encourage you to hop into Preview for the version including those fixes and help us improve the experience!

I have not upgrades my machine. It has half the RAM, a low end CPU and a video card that would impress very few people these days. Over the same period during which you have experienced a decline in performance, my experience has been nothing but clear improvement. Of course I have everything that is marked "slower" turned off and a handful of other things turned down.

I typically hover around 35-45 FPS and rarely seem to drop below 20. (I believe it is around 15 FPS in the Welcome Area.) If Second Life is the only program that is giving you trouble you might find that you get more bang for your buck just turning things off rather than upgrading hardware.

BOOYEAH

I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS... I AM TOTALLY BIASED BUT I CAN STILL SAY IT!!!

Is there a webpage somewhere with more details about the frame console? Even just a few examplary screenshots with short explanations ("this is what it should look like", "this is RenderGeom lag", "this is XYZ lag" etc) would be very helpful. I tried looking in the support wiki but no luck.

i hope the obove mentioned update resolves the local light issue.

ive a high end pc and SL is the only software where i get performace issues.

its the code not your pc.

i noticed sl is going generally slower since the arrival of the revolution function on toruses, the reason is pretty simple, with the whole explosion of the hair design "hobbyism" using a great deal of twisted torris - the sl shape that generate the biggest number of polygons - (usually hairs made by persons that haven't a single clue about what is a realtime environement)
we come to a point where a "detailed" haircut is containing as many polygons as a full level of doom3, monsters included (i know it is a little exagerated)

SL's rendering engine is probably not the best, nor the fastest but the real problem reside not in the engine itself but in the content. SL allow us a great freedom of creativity, but making a build that will be smotthly useable even with local lightning (avatars too) mean optimisation and simplification. some avatars in sl are half way from "realtime" polygon count to "precalculated" (wich is what we use to make non interactive animations).

the everchanging state of SL is preventing the 3D engine to use many of the shortcuts today's games use (BSP trees, Occlusion culling, etc...) so to me , maybe the engine speed "MIGHT" have degraded a bit, but its most likely the userbase becoming bigger and less knowledged in realtime modeling that is driving the fps down. Avatars become nicer sure, more detailed, buildings become more complex and elaborated, but all this has a price, unless you can afford a top class computer, this price will be less and less fps.

Since i am in sl i always kept my drawdistance to 64, to keep things smooth, but even by optimizing the SL 3D engine to the max of it's possibilities, i think the best way is still to get a better computer.

You can try to edicate peaoples too... but hm... it's not gonna be easy (how to convince someone to give up his 200 prims diamon river necklace for a 50 prims one that use textures - as good as they can be - rather than blingy 3D diamons?)

So, you know there are 'problems' with local lighting, and there IS going to be a 'major update' in an unspecified 'future version'.

Ok, no time frame, so, it's on the back burner like so much of SL that's broken or severely bent.

But WHY is Torley encouraging people to submit bug reports about it? As you already know about it and have consigned it to the back burner, what's the point of people wasting LL resources submiting bug reports on it?

Maybe you guys should talk to each other occasionally...

Well, as godly as many of the Lindens are, they are not mind readers. Unfortunately, when the grand software developer in the sky was handing out abilities, it never forsaw the need for this ability and feels terrible for this mistake.

Now having said this, bug reports are one of the few metrics that Linden Lab has to see what issues are occuring. Sure, we see a few posts here and there about issues, but overall, these are only a few "reports". The more we report an issue using the bug report tools, the more it becomes apparent to LL that the problem is more widespread then we know.

In short, bug reports provide a clear metric and trend to which problems are causing the most impact to the user base. If we murmer about our problem, sure, it gets added to the list but becomes hard to quantify how much of an issue it actually is. Bug reporting gives LL hard numbers to understand whats going on.

I've worked in IT for over a decade now. Its hard to say how bad a problem is until people start reporting it. Often, we have priority priorities. Kinda sounds funny, but with finite resources, its a mantra developers and support staff live by.

"This system sucks. XYZ bug stops me from working and its been around forever."
"Have you reported it to the helpdesk"
"Ummmmm, no"
"Well, its not a problem until you tell us about it."

"Why aren't you guys fixing XYZ bug?!?!"
"Well, its on our list to do, but unfortunately, we have some more pressing issues at the current moment."
"How can this not be pressing"
"Its a priority, but we are getting more reports of problems with XYZ. We need to fix that first, then we can look into it."

What Trimda says gladly applies to what's happening. The metrics.



What's up! I'm right here, you can ask me directly, I'm not remote from the SL Forums!

Simply: it's a shame how some bugs are overstated verbally but not formally reported. So, those words sadly get lost in the wind, and I don't want to see that happen! There've been numerous times when I knew a bug was going to be fixed, but debated over whether I should file a bug report. I checked with those who knew better, and they assured me that I should send the details in, just in case there was anything else. And sure enough, at least in my personal experience, I end up finding NEW bugs that are related or lateral to the original one which aren't on the radar yet.

Rather than assume, I'd like to communicate that I had "so-and-so issue" or "this-and-that problem".

Each person has a voice that counts here. And it's kind of like sitting in a circle around a sculpture. Think of the sculpture as the bug, and how each person will have a different perspective. Well, put all of those slices together, and you get a more accurate whole that can be ultimately dealt with and understood effectively.

The information is appreciated!

Thanx.

I see... several reasons why people don't use the report bug feature in world,
1- It's a tedious and lenghty form to fill. Few have the patience or the technical vocabulary to describe the problem.
2- There is a choice between ranting in the forums (immediate relief!) or filling a bug report in-world (feeling of useless effort). People will choose the forums..
3- The feeling that the bug should have been OBVIOUS to the LL programmers, so if they missed it, they must be incompetent, and it's not my job to report bugs....

You're a great public relation person, Torley, but we need actions from LL when stuck with a bug we know is not the fault of our hardware. And those actions are lacking. When I was on the cliffs of Achemon back when I had the Zen Gardens, I could set my draw distance the full 512m with no fog, and the view was incredible with no lag. Now, I'm lucky if I get 256, at reduced details. And there is not that much more content at that location. As I said, a software should IMPROVE with time, not the opposite. It nice to have bells and whistles added, but PERFORMANCE is more important. Fix the performance, then add the extras... please.

I wish I had some sort of magic barometer to be able to "see through the eyes" of someone else having probs as you describe, Prayetka.

And actions are happening all around you! Known Issues is going to keep ramping up, with more and more of those issues hopefully disappearing as new ones come up.

I know it's easy to be discouraged, but it's also easy to do things. Little things that add up over time. If you ever needed any proof: the fact you think I'm a great "public relations person" when I come from a very antisocial background. It is frankly quite weird I'm thought of as such a happy person here. Things can change, positively. Each person can better themselves wonderfully!

As for your points:



I don't have much of the technical vocabulary either! OMG. I simply describe the bugs in a way that I could tell a friend, and they could understand. If need be, I'll use terms I've learned, or I'll consult someone who knows better. For those who say they don't have the patience--I think higher of them than that.

If Torley can do it, how hard can it be?

(The actual form is limited to a certain # of characters, so no need to get too verbose either!)

O... I have a very short attention span too. ^.^



Ranting takes time and energy too. I provide the info, each person can make the choice. And there's been more communication lately--including the recent popup form that comes up when you fill a bug report. Don't expect a reply, but do know the bug hunters are hard at work, and if I know anything I can add, I'll respond--here on the SL Forums!

In all honesty... I've done BOTH ranting and filing bug reports. (Those damn foot shadows...)



I feel this a lot myself! LOLEX... as Trimda alluded to earlier, sadly, psychic powers aren't more common.

Noone lives Second Life like Resis do. A lot of things that don't come up during rigorous testing because they are emergent and unexpected. Sometimes I'm almost tempted to say "I wish SL was more predictable, more mundane"--and how that Local Lighting prob quacked the heck out of us--but I do know that, aye, this is really quite parallel: Second Life is a place to express oneself.

I agree highly with your observations, and am saying they were all also true for me at one time. But, meh, I got sick of not seeing the changes I wanted.

I decided to be the change.

Mmm...maybe LL can develop some sort of list that list name of everyone who fire similar sort of bugs? And once that bug is fixed, the list will get announced...you know...like the Bugzilla of Mozilla? Or maybe have some sort of occessional automate reply to the bug submitters the current status of bugs -- whether they're in queue, acknowledge, or being fix? Well, at least they'll know somethings' happen from their bug report, not all goes quite...

The major reason that people don't use bug reports is that there is absolutely no sign of a response in 99% of cases.
Were there any form of feedback, other than a standard 'bot eMail, people might feel that things were being achieved. I'm not expecting a one to one discussion with a developer type here - but some sort of bug 'league table' for instance, possibly notification that a given bug has been escalated due to increasing reporting frequency

The present system leads one to suspect that bug reports, along with support requests, are filed in the Enron Filing Cabinet.

Anyway - a local lighting fix? FORGET IT! At the rate things are being broken by the most minor and insignificant 'upgrades' these days it's all LL can do to keep the wagon creaking along.

Virtually everything since the infamous 1.7 update has degraded the client performance further, to the point where only those with killer PCs and Macs have anything like an immersive experience.

We have gone from a usable, though a bit buggy v1.6x to a slow and incredibly buggy 1.8.4 (7) in a series of very uncomfortable steps


At this point in the 'development' of SL only one thing matters - and it isn't 1.9!

SL requires a ground up rewrite with the adoption of all the promised technology and a proper scalable modular design.
Somewhere out there someone is doing that with their own virtual world software, if LL do not get off their corporate asses they are going to be 'Second' forever...