Voice and lag

There's been some comments about lag being worse since voice came along.

In my own case I have seen the client suddently get laggy and the framerate drop but having done some investigation it looks like the problem is client side rather than server side.

When I encounter this, it appear that the reason for the apparent lag, is that my CPU usage has suddently shot to 100% thus slowing the whole computer down, and the culprit appears to be SLVoice.exe (and this is even in voice enabled areas where no one is using voice).

However, this morning when voice was down, the client behaved and performed well.

There was a comment in one thread that the advantage of voice in SL over skype was that you don't have skype hogging the CPU and memory. Well, so far my impression is that the child program that the viewer spawns to handle voice is no better (possibly worse) in that regard.

Matthew

...and OMG this means ... what? I've also seen windows notepad shoot to 100% cpu useage and that's definatly LL's fault. Come on. Gimme something real. Like the other day i softcrashed at at meeting and voice continued righton trucking.

I couldn't move, couldn't get a typed messege out, red minimap, could alt mouse all around you know the symptoms eh?

Yet i could hear (and yes with the spatial effects in full force) and talk to others.

This is firsthand evidence that(hold your breath),
Voice is brought to us from completly different servers.

If ya don't like SL, GET OUT and you won't have anything to complain about.

Yep, the same thing happend to me yesterday. I was force-teleported after a teleport, then hung supended in ... somewhere, and all the time (at least until I finally crashed) was able to talk to my partner via Voice.

The Voice in itself doesn't cause lag. The Voice servers are independant from the Grid.

However, LL's integration of teh Grid and Voice may be causing lag due to improper coding/setup *puts on mask for look of shocked surprise*

A far simpler solution to Voice is to jsut use Skype or Ventrillo, but that would make too much sense so LL has to make a completely complex and unnessicary "feature" and add it to a system that needs troubleshooting before expansion.

Oh, and not talking to the OP, but if you don't like listening to problems and questions then get off the the Forums and you won't have anything to complain about. Pot. Kettle. Black. Any questions?

~Jessy

It was meant as a suggestion of things to look out for if you are finding problems with the new SL viewer. Given that the server side setup for voice is independent of the SL grid, one possibility, and it appears to be in my case, is that the extra processing on the client being performed by voice is the culprit, and given I'm on a core duo it may well be a bug in the new client code rather than the processing required per se - however, on older hardware the processing of voice per se may also be a factor.

If you aren't interested in helping others resolve the problems they may be having using SL, can I suggest that you GET OUT of these forums!

Matthew

Client side or server side, does it really matter? My business is on a sim that has very little population and since voice has been enabled for everybody, it turned from fast to lagmeister.

Congrats, Linden Labs!

I find it extremely hard to believe that people can post things like this, and yet Colette and her croonies don't jump all over them. But for some reason, my honesty and curt opinions are cause for more flame than George Forman and his little grill. I mean this guy makes me look like Ghandi...yet no one flames him. Me? I say deaf instead of hearing impaired, I get a four course flame.

for one thing, I have no Croonies or Cronies.

Secondly - perhaps its becuase I dont read every dam post in this Forums all the time.

Third, George forman grills are electric they dont flame.

Fourth he hardly makes you look like Ghandi. Your inability to recognize why the things you say come off the way they do is not my fault.

And finally I never flamed you for saying deaf instead of hearing impared.

Zen dear. If you don't understand what the OP wrote, read it again. If you still don't understand, ask someone a bit cleverer than you to read it and explain it to you. That should help you avoid making a fool of yourself next time.

Perhaps it's voice-related. That new-fangled text-to-speech technology might help.

Well yes - if it is client side, then the fix is simple revert to an earlier viewer or switch voice off.

If it is server side, then there's nothing anyone outside of LL can do.

Also, working on the assumption that LL actually want to get voice working well - they need to know if there is a problem where it is so they can fix it!

Unfortunately if the problem resides in SLVoice.exe rather than the viewer itself the opensource community can't help as that part isn't open sourced.

Matthew

look out for what?

what do you want help with?

The lag that's caused or not caused by the cleint or by your hard ware?

Did i miss something?

OMG, ladies...he likes our abuse so much that now he's actually trolling for it BEFORE it happens.

Mike, dear...your masochistic streak is showing.

Voice.exe spikes on my system also, causing freezing.

That was me-it was really weird, he was hanging there immobile under the ceiling, couldn't do anything, but we kept talking....

@Colette: You don't have croonies? People singing in a funny voice around you? See, that's why you need Voice...

I do have an honest question about this: I think I've read somewhere that using SL plus Skype sucks up the bandwidth on my cable internet connection, and that SL plus Voice does not, because the two are integrated. I'm a computer/internet tard, so can someone clarify the truth/untruth of this statement?

I manage 2 sims that are under development and have very little traffic
the voice has been on for a few weeks (since I started using it)
and no additional lag noticed...

I turn it on, or off, sim runs the same.. no one complains about lag or notices any difference.

I find skype utilizes my resources more than any other voice program
has nothing to do with integration

skype states in there user license thing, that they will utilize your resources to supplement others.. so they are using it even when you are not, if it is turned on

Ah... so does that mean that Skype straight out says that it's going to hog resources/bandwidth? (Just clarifying, I don't care one way or another.)

yep
look in their user license, I posted it here somewhere on another thread, but yes they do state they will use your resources to supplement others

edited to add

from skype.com
"4.1 Utilization of Your computer. You hereby acknowledge that the Skype Software may utilize the processor and bandwidth of the computer (or other applicable device) You are utilizing, for the limited purpose of facilitating the communication between Skype Software users."

the advantage of voice in SL over skype* was that you don't have skype* hogging the CPU and memory.

*and 14 other voip apps

: )

Voice chat shot my dog and griefed my mother.

This forum is called "Resident Answers" - I was giving people who are experiencing lag-like problems with the new voice client some possible answers as to things to look out for as possible causes.

As you don't seem to be minded to actual offer any help, may I suggest that this is not the right forum for you?

Matthew

Skype is known for using your resources, although people milage vary as regards how much this impact things.

As regards integration, you have to take this with a pinch of salt. If you look closely you will actually find two programs running seocondlife and slvoice. The latter is started by secondlife automatically and is the Vivox VOIP client. The secondlife passes information sent to it by the region as to which VoIP server the slvoice VoIP client should use.

As such, running secondllife and the Vivox VoIP client is going to more or less the same memory, CPU etc. than running secondlife and any other VoIP client.

To be honest, even if the VoIP client was fully embedded in the secondlife viewer the impact would not be that much reduced - all VoIP client use codecs for compressing the audio which tend to perform about the same in terms of resource impact and bandwidth use.

Matthew