Trace Cause of SIM Lag?

i would to to know as well..... we have about the same in our sim though we have 3 lil mall type. area's. but regardless of the shops. the sim was great low lag etc.... now its so up and down ....one day you cant walk the next its ok. but it has never gotten back to where it was before the 1.8

I don't know if this will help or not but... make sure any texture that does not contain an alpha channel is not saved as a .tga. It takes longer to process alphas IW, from what I understand.



MarCat

Thank you for the suggestion Martin. It seems to me that the image format issue would only cause initial slow loading. This is a constant lag issue.

Something in the sim is making the graphics work harder than it should. Here at work I have a top of the line system with a T1 connection. However, the SIM still lags.

Perhaps there is a developer tool that can trace the memory hogs source. Something Similar to the “possesses list” when you hit Ctl+Atl+Del for your system memory.

Hit shift + ctrl + 1

this brings up a handy dandy set of stats

down near the bottom is something that says time click that
it will expand to show you exactly what kinds of things the sim is working hardest at. Will give you a direction in hunting the lag source be it scripts or textures etc.

some other hints
textures do cause continuing slowdowns. particularly the sixe of the texture. 256 textures wherever possible will result in much faster running sim.

alot of exotic shaped, twisted or cut prims also can bog a sim down fast

with scripts avoid sensors timers rotators and listens as much as humany possible

I am totally anal about hunting down lag sources on our island which is why I run at 50-90 FPS here almost constantly

edit:and never forget the biggest source of lag is the AVs themselves

yes it can be a part of it
the bigger part is the size of the image. a 1024x1024 is much laggier than a 256x256

Here's a similar thread with some good discussion. And here's another one.

Not entirely true. Yes, it takes longer to render a texture with an alpha channel than one without, but the TGA source format has nothing to do with that. Everything in SL is saved as JPEG2000, regardless of what it was before you uploaded it. A JPEG2000 is a JPEG2000 is a JPEG2000. The format the image started out as on your own hard drive will in no way affect its speed in SL.

The correct thing to say here would have been make sure images without transparency are saved as 24-bit, as opposed to 32-bit. A 32-bit TGA contains and alpha channel; a 24-bit one does not. TGA is the best source format to use though, regardless of bit-depth, so stick with it. See the "Why TGA" section of the stickied Transparency Guide at the top of the texture forum for more information this.



Yes and no. As stated above, the image source format has nothing to do with anything in SL, but the physical size of each image in pixels will directly impact your performance all the time. Every 512x512 image consumes either 768K or 1MB worth of texture memory, depending on whether it's 24-bit or 32-bit, respectively. Every 256x256, on the other hand, only consumes 1/4 of that. The links Shack posted have a lot more info on this subject, so I'll refrain from repeating it all here.

Always use TGA as your souce format for quality purposes, and always keep your canvas size as small as possible. There's almost never any reason to go bigger than 256x256. Poor texture size management is the single biggest source of low FPS in SL.


Is it the sim that's lagging or is it the client. Open up the stats bar in SL to help determine the answer. There's a good page on the Wiki with an explanation of what all the numbers mean. Sorry, I don't have time find the link right at the moment.

Its nice to know that Im not the only one and that its not all in my head.

Same issues here. We live in a Sim where there are only 3 others island owners (one of those lag free sims situations ya know mirk.

Before the Last 3 UPDATES, OUTAGES (laugh) and etc, there was no lag. None. Zilch. The First update last week came and OUCH it was absolutely HORRIBLE. Things would be running just fine and then suddenly BOOM there it was............Lag lag lag. Then UDPATE B came along and wow, running smooth, no issues and FPS was much improved. However, this didnt last long because of the "Outage" (cough) issue and servers went down. Back to stage LAG which seems alot worse and alot more spuratic than before. FPS would be at 25 and then very, very suddenly plummet to 2-3 FPS upon movement and at this point I already have ALL of my settings eitehr Low or off to try and accomidate as best as possible for the lag spikes which turned permanant.

Whats SO very annoying is holding down that ALT key and adjusting your cam. God forbid you should aim it at yourself because once you do your FROZE OR when your have to turn object detail off completely just to move. Im having to keep it as low as possible which gives me my highest FPS of around 25, but once I turn it on to half way Im back to 2-5 FPS. It wasnt that drastic of a change before this last update.

Ok so all of this grief at home in supposedly a pretty much lag free sim (yes Im aware there is bascially NO such thing) but then we hit a highly populated bar lastnight with up to 30 or so people in one concentrated area and guess what? Very little LAG.

Its not a JPG's, TGA's or scripts issue because circumstances have proven it not to be. Its obviously a SERVER issue and one that needs to be investigated very badly.

It is comforting to know your not the only one. Not a texture problem here, I do all our outside textures, and these are never as large as mentioned. We use in-world textures as often as possible. Tried eliminating anything we can think of, and the problem still exists. Yet, visiting a club, or highly populated/scripted/designed area later, results in amazingly smooth transition. What gives? Its a little backwards.

Not to mention, clothing doesnt seem to want to appear today, at least not without alot of coaxing, taking off, putting on again. While yesterday, clothing loaded without a seconds thought.


Someone stop the madness! Or get a new hamster for the gears.