Testing the new graphics features

NOTE! NOTE! NOTE!
These instructions apply to 1.12.1.13 only. 1.12.2.x users should edit the 'secondlife' script to enable/disable potentially-troublesome graphic features.
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Where supported by both your graphics card and drivers, you should since 1.12.1.13 be able toggle the following graphical features: Shiny, Ripple Water, Anisotropic Filtering, Avatar Vertex Programs. None of the above options are likely to positively affect performance, but they should all positively affect the graphical quality of Second Life to varying degrees.

Occlusion culling is used by default where available now, and should boost graphical performance in enclosed areas.

If you experience stability or rendering problems, try disabling the corresponding graphics options and please report whether this helps.

As a last resort, you can disable ALL advanced graphics capabilities by setting the LL_GL_NOEXT environment variable to anything.
For example: LL_GL_NOEXT=x ./secondlife
If this resolves graphical or stability problems for you then please report.

Finally (purposely not documented in the release notes), AGP+VBO support is now possible on Linux. To enable this, ensure the following two lines are in your user_settings/settings.xml file:
<RenderUseVBO value="TRUE"/>
<RenderUseAGP value="TRUE"/>
Note! This option can greatly improve your SL performance. Or it may do nothing, or slow you down, or crash hard - it depends on your system. Please report any results along with your graphics card/driver!

I'm certainly seeing shiny - and looking around for everything else.
What's VBO? I'm going to enable AGP, but not sure what VBO is.

By wikipedia:

VBO, an OpenGL extension for faster rendering of triangles.

AGP support sounds like improvement for me

Note that you should enable this for testing by editing your settings file as detailed above - don't try to do it through the user interface or it may not 'stick'.

I'm doing it by editing the file, and for some reason the AGP value still isn't sticking.
I set AGP on in the file, load SL, and I get this in the output:

2006-09-28T18:34:01Z INFO: GPU is ATI Radeon X800
2006-09-28T18:34:01Z INFO: Setting GPU Class to Class2
2006-09-28T18:34:01Z INFO: Applying Feature Mask: Class2
2006-09-28T18:34:01Z INFO: Applying Feature Mask: ATI
2006-09-28T18:34:01Z INFO: Warning! Couldn't allocate AGP memory!
2006-09-28T18:34:01Z INFO: Disabling AGP!
2006-09-28T18:34:01Z WARNING: Attempting to allocate AGP memory when AGP disabled!
2006-09-28T18:34:01Z WARNING: Attempting to allocate AGP memory when AGP disabled!
2006-09-28T18:34:01Z WARNING: Attempting to allocate AGP memory when AGP disabled!
2006-09-28T18:34:01Z WARNING: Attempting to allocate AGP memory when AGP disabled!

When I quit SL, and check the settings file, the AGP setting is gone.

Neither option crash my client, with the following specs:
Kubuntu Edgy (unstable/testing)
ATI X800XT PE (256mb)
fglrx 8.29.6 (latest version)


The VBO option seems to lower performance, and the AGP option (besides not sticking and generating that error above) seems to very slightly lower performance. AGP card, by the way.

The two options must be applied together. It's quite possible that VBOs do lower performance on some ATI cards, as this is something which I believe is seen on Windows systems also.

Ok, another update:
Anisotropic Filtering is working nicely, and certainly makes things look a little better - and doesn't seem to impact performance here. Not sure what I'm supposed to be looking for with the avatar vertex thing, the alt-tab fix works perfectly (KDE), the snapshot-to-disk works fine (screenshots now look shiny! ) using both the "Snapshot to disk" and "Take a snapshot / Save" dialogs.
Need to test the ripple water, though.

Tofu! You have definitely earned a hug or two ... thousand!

I can enable all graphic effects without any problem, but one: Bump and Cloth. If I enable that I crash when the black screen disappears and the world is supposed to come on. I also noticed that every other run the client just freezes on startup. File upload looks rough but it works Put your files in your user profile folder within the SL client tree and name them "upload.bvh", "upload.tga" and so on

More information as I keep testing! Shiny! Shiny!!!

SuSE 10.0 on AMD64 3200+, 1GB RAM, GeForce 5700 FX Ultra, 256 MB VRAM, NVidia driver 87.56

Ok, ripple water and file upload works!
Awesomeness

i'm on kubuntu dapper, geforce 6200 using nvidia drivers

the client seems working well for me, with both default and raised-up graphic options.

i added the two lines about VBO and AGP but it crashed. i saw no interesting error output.
note that i paste the two lines at the begin of the settings.xml file, after "<settings version = "101" - when i edited the file again, the AGP line wasn't anymore in the file, while the VBO line was in the middle of the file (seems strange to me, i also may be wrong...).

i removed the VBO line and now it works fine.


by the way, i also got this in the console messages:
WARNING: LLDir_Linux not fully implemented
(is this an error or just a message i can ignore? see http://stux.wikiinfo.org/LinuxClient/ErrosAndWarnings for further details)


(may you suggest some SL place where test and enjoy these new graphic features? i recommend Svarga)



great work !

Yeah, VBO causes a silent crash here too, on my 6200 using Mandriva. Apart from that, everything is beautiful, ripple water makes such a difference when you have a riverfront property!

Enable Bump Map / Shiny: only insignificant frame rate changes
Ripple Water: only insignificant frame rate changes

Avatar Vertex Program: only insignificant frame rate changes
Normal: only insignificant frame rate changes
Bump Mapped: only insignificant frame rate changes
Bunp Mapped and Cloth on: Crashes

Sun & Moon only: small performance boost
Terrain Detail low: massive performance boost (doubles FPS and more)

Object Mesh Detail low: small performance boost
Flexible Mesh Detail low: insignificant frame rate changes
Tree Mesh Detail low: mediocre performance boost
Avatar Mesh Detail low: small performance boost, the more avatars, the more boost

Anisotropic Filter off: strong performance boost

<RenderUseVBO value="TRUE"/>: strong performance boost
<RenderUseAGP value="TRUE"/>: does not stick, gets removed from XML file by viewer

ALSA audio: works, but after some time it simply fades and is gone. More testing will be done later.

AMD Sempron 2800+ in 64-bit mode
NVidia Geforce 6600 (latest drivers) over PCI Express.

AGP gets disabled, but I think I have a 5 fps bump using the VBO extension.

Enabled everything, slight drop in fps, SHINEY !!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111

scary thing is ansotrpoic filtering onlys costs me a couple of fps - w o w

Turning on AGP+VBO just about doubles my frame rate (have to enable both) -- very nice. FX5200/AGI

VBO kills the client about when it is ready to start drawing the world. AGP seems to work, shiny is nice to have, and the water ripple is awesome.

Graphics Card: GeForce 6600 GT/AGP/SSE/3DNOW!
OpenGL Version: 2.0.2 NVIDIA 87.62

Tofu -
If I didnt think prim babies were silly, I'd totally have your virtual baby! Shiny is _awesome_...

Well, shiny/ripple water work, avatar vertex doesnt crash me.

I haven't noticed any difference with AGP with/without VBO enabled.

NVidia FX5200 w/64MB/AMD K7 1Ghz/256MB RAM

I assume the mouse grabbing on alt and control was removed? It is working great here for alt and control etc in 1.12.1.13, thank you.

I enabled VOB and AGB, I saw this in the debugging output,
Allocated 0 bytes of AGP memory
and the AGP option vanished from the settings file. I didn't notice any performance difference with both of them enabled or disabled. Performance is in the single digits.

Linux Distribution: Debian AMD-64, (but run in 32 bit chroot)
Desktop Environment: fvwm window manager
Kernel: Linux Pulsar 2.6.17.8 #3 SMP Thu Aug 17 21:04:23 CDT 2006 x86_64 GNU/Linux
X version: X.Org version: 7.0.0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: RADEON XPRESS Series Generic
OpenGL version string: 2.0.6011 (8.28.
ATI Radeon Xpress 1100, 128MB allocated to video card
model name : AMD Turion(tm) 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-50
cpu MHz : 1596.088
cache size : 256 KB
1928980KB ram, 2008116KB swap

2006-09-29T03:51:06Z GL_RENDERER GeForce 6600/AGP/SSE2/3DNOW!
2006-09-29T03:51:06Z GL_VERSION 2.0.2 NVIDIA 87.74

Avatar Bump Mapped & Cloth causes avatar to explode (best way to describe it) and then prompt crash to console.

Tofu, another data point for you...

X locks as soon as the first frame comes up. Setting LL_GL_NOEXT allows it to run although the terrain is now really fuzzy.

Graphics card is and ATI Radeon X700 using the official ATI drivers version 8.28.8

I just realized, rescaling the window turns off my antialiasing.

All of my shell script kludgery ruined, the horror!


...oh look, shiney! (runs off)

Quite right

In my case, enabling AGP in the settings.xml file doesn't work - it gets deleted when I start SL

Enabling BOTH in settings.xml - SL just about starts, and ... vanishes

I added JUST the AGP value, and when SL started, I got MUCH higher FPS - but the value is still gone from the setings.xml. It also did some kind of reset - my normally filled-in login was blank, and the windows was at 800 x 600 - which I stretched to my normal 1152 x whatever....

Curiously, even though the AGP entry was not in the settings.xml any more, the box "enable agp" was still checked in preferences...

All the rest works - shiny, bump mapped & cloth, you name it, its on - and WORKS!!!

Fantastic!

Tofu wrote:
Finally (purposely not documented in the release notes), AGP+VBO support is now possible on
Linux. To enable this, ensure the following two lines are in your user_settings/settings.xml file:
<RenderUseVBO value="TRUE"/>
<RenderUseAGP value="TRUE"/>
Note! This option can greatly improve your SL performance. Or it may do nothing, or
slow you down, or crash hard - it depends on your system. Please report any results along with
your graphics card/driver![/QUOTE]

So is there a way to keep the AGP setting in the config file? I'm really anxious to get better than 5 fps

Of course the high packet loss may have something to do with it. The packet loss seems worse now than the previous client.

Hardware stuff:
Slackware 10.2 + Gnome
OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce FX 5700LE/AGP/SSE/3DNOW!
OpenGL version string: 2.0.2 NVIDIA 87.74


[Update]
Even though the AGP option is gone the log file still says it's allocating around 32MB of AGP memory. That's a good sign So I guess it's working though I don't get a performance boost...

Dell Inspiron E1505 with
256MB NVidia GeForce Go 7300 TurboCache

First few attempts to start the client locked X up hard; had to use the power button.

export LL_GL_NOEXT=x
Got the client going and I was able to log in. I changed a few preferences and quit.

Next, I rebooted to get a fresh start and logged in without using LL_GL_NOEXT=x; it then worked.

Client locks hard again when using:
<RenderUseVBO value="TRUE"/>
<RenderUseAGP value="TRUE"/>
I'm not sure my card supports VBO?

Hope that helps some. Sorry, I didnt' keep the logs; just thought of it.

When SL starts, I get this in the log:

2006-09-30T06:53:13Z INFO: GPU is NVIDIA GeForce 6800
2006-09-30T06:53:13Z INFO: Setting GPU Class to Class2
2006-09-30T06:53:13Z INFO: Applying Feature Mask: Class2
2006-09-30T06:53:13Z WARNING: Unknown feature mask NVIDIA
2006-09-30T06:53:13Z INFO: Warning! Couldn't allocate AGP memory!
2006-09-30T06:53:13Z INFO: Disabling AGP!
2006-09-30T06:53:13Z WARNING: Attempting to allocate AGP memory when AGP disabled!
2006-09-30T06:53:13Z WARNING: Attempting to allocate AGP memory when AGP disabled!
2006-09-30T06:53:13Z WARNING: Attempting to allocate AGP memory when AGP disabled!
2006-09-30T06:53:13Z WARNING: Attempting to allocate AGP memory when AGP disabled!



AGP is on, though.

Or is there something I need to check?

cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status
Status: Enabled
Driver: AGPGART
AGP Rate: 4x
Fast Writes: Enabled
SBA: Enabled

But if AGP is not recognised by SL, that COULD be why it crashes when I enable VBO...

----

edit: new test

Adding the AGP and VBO lines to the settings.xml - AGP memory is allocated.

On starting SL, and before logging in, both the AGP and the VBO lines are still in the settings.xml.

After logging in (and crashing before the screen can rez ), only the VBO line is still in the settings.xml file.

Adding ONLY the AGP line to settings.xml results in the "AGP disabled" message quoted above.


Last lines of log when it crashed:

2006-09-30T07:15:00Z INFO: Sending cached texture data
2006-09-30T07:15:00Z WARNING: LLVolumeMessage::constrainVolumeParams() - forced to constrain incoming volume params.
2006-09-30T07:15:00Z WARNING: Bogus volume parameters in object c3f72e13-7333-9009-c516-26c8c93138ac
2006-09-30T07:15:00Z WARNING: { 242944, 250624, 0 }
2006-09-30T07:15:05Z INFO: remove_marker_file()


Last lines of log when it didn't crash (no AGP, no VBO):

2006-09-30T07:17:13Z INFO: Sending cached texture data
2006-09-30T07:17:14Z WARNING: LLVolumeMessage::constrainVolumeParams() - forced to constrain incoming volume params.
2006-09-30T07:17:14Z WARNING: Bogus volume parameters in object 7c158ecc-7872-643c-7f5d-9491c7547943
2006-09-30T07:17:14Z WARNING: { 242944, 250624, 0 }
2006-09-30T07:19:59Z WARNING: LLAudioChannelFMOD::cleanup error: An invalid parameter was passed to this function

It would be nice if AGP & VBO worked. This would give me REAL bragging rights

-----------------------------

Last edit, I promise

The card I have is a 6800 GS AGP with 512 MB - however, the 6800 GS is NORMALLY a PCIe card. NVidia also issued it as an AGP card, for us old timers; there are sometimes problems with recognition as an AGP card, possibly because of this.