OMG! - Local Lighting was the cause !

I was just about to go insane when I had 0.2 fps in a club, and was unable to move at all. Yet, other people there didn't seem affected.

I turned off all graphics features except local lighting and it didn't help.

I then tried to turn off local lighting.....

BANG, KAPOOF, WOW, went from 0.2 fps to 25 fps, could move like an angel and all the missing textures just whacked in!

There you've got it folks, try that if SL is like walking through water (frozen that is).

Linden, please fix this, ok ?

It's not something that needs fixed. Local lighting isn't recommended unless you have a REALLY powerful system. When I upgraded from 512MB to 2GB RAM, I turned on local lighting to see if the RAM had helped, and sure enough, things were as smooth as they were with 512MB and local lighting turned off.

Local Lighting has been like that for awhile now.

Unfortunately it happens to be so CPU-bound, as Aaron points out.

I'm just happy to hear how things got so much better for you, Raphael!

Local lighting is indeed much more sluggish than in 1.6. A fix will be in 1.7.2. I do not have an ETA for 1.7.2.

yes, now local lighting devour my 512 ram under 0.5 seconds.. and its asking for more!

Bumping for emphasis!

If you want local lighting, get MORE RAM!

Lots more ram...

Cram it in there as full your MoBo can take...
Then get a 'plexed daughterboard to handle more...

Then, maybe, if you are good and say your prayers at night (To whomever you hold dear...), maybe you can turn on Local Lighting...

But only if you have 1.5G or more.
2.o is better...
And if you are one of the lucky few that can cram 3.0, do it.

Thanks for the info, Brent. I'm glad to hear this problem has been acknowledged and that it's being worked on. I was really afraid local lighting would no longer be an option for me. It had worked fine for me in 1.6, but in 1.7 it slows me down to anywhere between .5 and 2 FPS.

SAME DAMN THING happend 2 me!

When i went to the maingrid.. it lagged me to hell, when i stayed in my sim it was all good and pretty.

Im thinking is that most of sl (on maingrid) have not yet changed "LIGHT" to "BRIGHT" so its just so much light in the maingrid that lags especially in clubs!

They need to announce it, for ppl to make a switch!! Cuz Local lighting is fun!

Stupid question: what the hell does "local lighting" do exactly and why does it devour resources like a foo'?!
And if it's users' fault not to apply the script updates... Force them! \m/ \m/

Off topic as hell, but wth...
This reminds me of some of those "will keep yuu awake at night questions" : So here's a few more to cheer you up until local lighting works again :
- If nothing stick to Teflon, how do they get it to stick to the pan ?
- If you're travelling at the speed of light, what happens when you turn on your headlights ?
- If 7/11 is always open then why do they have locks on the doors ?

They don't. The teflon is held there by millions of tiny mortice-and-tenon joints.

Maybe I don't have a good enough video card to even get "local lighting", because when I turn it on NOTHING CHANGES. What does "local lighting" do?

Local lighting attempts to let objects turned into "light" material actually "cast light" on their surroundings. If you want to test it out, try going up somewhere high and away from everything. Turn local lighting on, make a blank white sphere and set it's material to "light". Walk around it a bit. If at this point you still can't discern the difference turn local lighting off and walk around the light some more.

if you're in a club somewhere that has every other prim set to be a light then you are just going to see tons of avatars fully lit from every side in a very horrible way and hence, ruin the effect a bit.

edit:

the reason this uses so much processing is that it fills the RAM trying to update every affected objects texture constantly and dynamically. It's basically baking shadows into every texture around over and over each time the light or object move.

the preceeding may have been total malarky and i invite anyone smarter than me to explain this better if need be.

Well this is lousy news for me. I've been making lights lately. Oh well.

However, if it's of any interest, I've found that on login when I'm on "land" (in a relatively quiet sim), the lag is sometimes horrendous... possibly a result of a build that uses some offensive pink lighting that spills everywhere. It's only when I go up to my shop in the sky that the lag diminishes. And of course, all my lights are in my shop.

It's (I suspect) because your skybox is far enough up that none of the stuff on the ground is being drawn or streamed at all, due to being outside your draw radius. Textures, scripted objects, lights, shadows, avatars with a billion scripted attachments ... none of it. Or very litle, anyway.

OK, I get it now, I was toying with the "light" material a while back.
The main problem with game running slow with local lighting on is that all the textures are on the server, so it's essentially slower than getting a ready texture from your hard disk and doing all the T&L stuff to it.

hmmm, i think i need to check if my local lighting is on :-/ ...i dont even know how to do that, but im sure i'll figure it out )