Second Life Viewer Problems

Slow Render

I’ve been seeing slower rendering of scenes in Second Life™ for some time. It’s like taking 4 steps better-forward, 2 worse-back, 1 back, 1 forward… changing often with each viewer release. It is hard for me to tell if it is me/my-computer or actually the viewer changing. Now others are mentioning that things are taking a long time to render, which suggests it is more the viewer than it is me. Enough so that a developer asked at the Third Party Devs’ meeting if there had been any changes to the interest list processing that may have slowed things down.

254. Eyes Wide Open

Eyes Wide Open by Scarlett Loxingly, on Flickr

Oz Linden answered there have been no deliberate changes to the interest list. He also points out that as complicated  as the SL system is other changes could affect the interest list processing. So, Oz wants to hear about misbehaving render.

With such reporting there is the problem of sorting out fetching, rendering,  and factors of attachment issues that can slow rendering. So, it is difficult to get clear reporting on pure render issues.

One can use the Big Bird RC Viewer to weed out some of the attachment issues. That RC Viewer still needs some server side tweaks before moving ahead. But, it can work for testing eliminating whether attachment factors are affecting scene render time.

If you are seeing slow scene render times and are willing to do some serious testing, your help is needed.

I’ve been using Black Dragon 3.7.27 (34575) and switching back to the SL Viewer 3.7.30 (302599) I find scenes rendering noticeably slower.

Inventory Fetch Stall

The Lab is working on the problem of inventory fetch stalling when one changes their group tag shortly after login.

Disappearing Avatars

For some people avatars that sit down disappear from their view. Others can see them. If that happens to you, cam to the 0,0,0 corner of the region. That 0,0,0 corner is the SW corner of a region. You will find them there, if this is problem is biting you.

This happening because the viewer is out of sync or does not yet have the chair location. Without a chair location the viewer math calculates the avatar position as 0,0,0 and renders the avatar there. Once the viewer gets a location for the chair it can correctly calculate the location of the avatar and render it where it is supposed to be. I am unclear on when that update occurs. I suspect the avatar may have to stand and re-sit to force an update.

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6 thoughts on “Second Life Viewer Problems

  1. re. avatar at 0,0 – there seems to be several related issues causing this, or at least we see it for different reasons. The most effective solution is to cam to where the avatar *should be* seated. Never fails to snap the avatar off 0,0 for me.

  2. This happens all the time, some sims will never rez.
    Latest today, 10.00 am CEST, at SL12B. The sim with the landing point was okey, it was realy fast but when I xed next simxing it was all grey.
    Some areas is slower the others sutch as, Second Norway and areas around Fishermans Island. The midpart of Blake sea is okey until I reach the old parts in west.
    My computer and internet are more than capable to manage SL.
    I use Mc OS 10.10.3 on an iMac and Alchemy version 3.8.0.35816 and Second Life version 3.7.29.301305.
    I found another mystery that might be linked. A couple of times the viewers wont start at all. It´s only a white screen. The solution to that problem is to trow the whola cache-folder, folder and content in trash. Then the viewer start as normal again. Both viewers affected. It looks like the Cache-folder itself gets corupt. Empty the folder doesnt help

    • CDN adds a new level of fast and slow. If you are the first in your RL area into a region, you will load slower than in the past. If bunches of people in your RL area have been there, you should be much faster.

      Your Mac no-start problem I have not seen or heard of. Save your log files after a no-start failure and send them to the Lab in a BUG report.

  3. The disappearing avatar issue can sometimes be solved by setting draw distance to zero, panning the cam out as far as possible then hitting escape. Reset the draw distance and things return to normal.

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