Textures rezzing very slowly

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Snoots Dwagon
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Re: Textures rezzing very slowly

Post by Snoots Dwagon »

The viewer not working correctly makes sense. Firestorm said in a recent JIRA they've "fixed" this and is to be released. (I could really go for "release now".) :mrgreen: But after all these years I honestly don't trust it's actually been fixed. It may have been improved, but I have a sneaky feeling that when tested the results will be about the same as they are currently.

Ilan, the explanation you give above makes sense to an extent, but falls apart when one has enough viewer cache to store a megaworld (with 1.5 TB of hard drive space, I can allocate all the graphics cache the system allows)... and when one is standing in one space without moving and that texture window is still going mad. Makes me think, "Is there an internal DDoS still going on here after all these years? Is that what's slowing down texture-on-demand?"

That was the case on SL in 2005-2010 when an SL tech and I specifically pinpointed SL's texture problems: reloading the same exact textures over and over and over (up to 32 times in a row), creating their own cascading DDoS on their own asset servers.

But I also wonder about priority logic of texture loading. It's often been pointed out that texture-on-demand loads are simply put in cue and don't have any kind of priority over other texture loading. My coder-minded question to that is: Why is that? Doesn't it make sense that someone clicking a vendor to see a product or trying to get a texture to rez on a prim would be higher priority than some set of random textures loading in the background?

In such direct-user-interactive situations, it would make sense that the on-demand texture request would immediately go to the top of the cue. The background textures can wait. In experiments we've conducted it's been discovered that a texture given top priority can usually load in less than one second. That's not going to significantly bog down either the server or viewer... and would give the user involved a far more fulfilling interactive experience. Imagine clicking a vendor and having the next texture show up instantly, every time. Or building a house and having every texture applied instantly appear. Or double clicking on a texture in inventory and having it instantly show on one's screen-- because it is a direct, user-present, on-demand asset request. Of course... due to griefers a reasonable throttle would have to be implemented, but that's easy enough to do. (Allow say, only one on-request prioritization per user/device per second.)

I wonder if Firestorm might listen to that recommendation. On-demand texture requests get immediate priority... because an avatar is present and actively involved in the request.

.
Last edited by Snoots Dwagon on Sat Mar 06, 2021 11:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Textures rezzing very slowly

Post by Ilan Tochner »

There are many (many, many, ...) things that the viewer does in a non-optimal way. The reason is probabely because it takes time to optimize things and the developers who developed that code had a lot of other features on their todo list and release deadlines that they had to meet.

This is a viewer issue, one we've already researched and for which we developed and submitted a patch to the Firestorm team. We've made server-side changes in Kitely to try to mitigate its effect but those can't completely fix the issue, for that you need Firestorm to integrate our patch and make sure that there aren't any other bugs or additional inefficiencies that are contributing to it. We're not going to spend any more time looking into this issue ourselves.
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Re: Textures rezzing very slowly

Post by Snoots Dwagon »

Thank you for the info Ilan. That is certainly understandable. I envy neither grid owners or the Firestorm team in working with (what I've heard is) nightmare code. :geek:
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Re: Textures rezzing very slowly

Post by Kim McCabe »

Well I read through this whole thread. Glad to know that Ilan has put in a request (problem solver) for a future firestorm upgrade. The new upgrade is a disaster for me. While the upgrade before last had a lot of crashing issues when I uploaded mesh, this new upgrade makes it impossible to work on my sims. The textures take forever to rez. My Animesh are not working correctly now either. Everything just seems so much slower. I had no problem with that before the upgrade. I'm holding out for the new upgrade, but I haven't really been inworld for the last couple of months, it has sucked the joy out of it for me.
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Re: Textures rezzing very slowly

Post by Selby Evans »

I have not seen any such problems on SceneGate:
http://downloads.infinitemetaverse.org/ ... er-windows
It only runs on windows and does not have all the features of Firestorm. It is simplified for beginners. But It may help some till Firestorm is fixed.
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Re: Textures rezzing very slowly

Post by Kim McCabe »

Selby Evans wrote:
Sat Mar 06, 2021 9:00 pm
I have not seen any such problems on SceneGate:
http://downloads.infinitemetaverse.org/ ... er-windows
It only runs on windows and does not have all the features of Firestorm. It is simplified for beginners. But It may help some till Firestorm is fixed.
Thank you for the response, It's not advanced enough. I tried it. like I said, I'll hang on for a while, pay for my sims. But really, I can't deal with the viewer problem. I'm not able to enjoy my time inworld anymore. I'm building a large sim with storylines and hunts and can't see my progress to even move forward. It's frustrating, but I'm holding out for the next upgrade and hopefully that will work for me. Thanks again
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Re: Textures rezzing very slowly

Post by Ilan Tochner »

Hi Kim,

Do you have HTTP assets enabled in your viewer? Have you tried restarting your router? Are you connected directly to our site our via a VPN?
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Re: Textures rezzing very slowly

Post by Snoots Dwagon »

What Kim says above is the main reason I brought this to attention. "If the 2D don't work, the 3D don't work." Of course, this isn't Kitely's fault. In fact, as Ilan states above he and Oren have traced the problem and come up with a solution. We're just waiting on Firestorm to implement it. But right now, one person is working on the Opensim version of Firestorm. Which brings us again back to the severe need to monetize Opensim viewer development. sigh... vicious circle.

As I mentioned before, this problem has existed ever since SL opened. It was brought to their attention (in the most direct way possible) in 2005. The two main issues here:

1) User frustration. As Kim very pointedly (and accurately) states, builders and creators can become so extremely frustrated with texture load time (and other issues, such as object Contents load time) that they simply give up. Hang in there Kim, at least until the next update of Firestorm. Nevertheless: sooner or later this matter is going to have to be seriously addressed, with all due professional correction. The evidence: virtual worlds as a whole have not significantly grown for years (not as the industry considers growth). Problems like this are the reason.

2) DDoS. The same textures loading over and over. We know for a certainty that we can look at a texture in my inventory, close that texture, then re-open it 30 seconds later and it starts from scratch from the asset server. That means the cache isn't working, texture loading isn't working, and grid wide this problem is repeated over and over. This impacts asset server access. World servers are over-taxed. This is the problem that was brought to Linden Lab's attention... and very evidently this problem still exists.

Most companies would not consider such "acceptable operation". Imagine if every time one did a search on Google it took 24 SECONDS for the results to pop up. How long would Google stay in business before some other company ate their lunch?

Those are the issues, in bluntly-stated black and white. I really wish Firestorm would fix this now and put out a new release, because this particular issue has been a major problem for virtual worlds for over 15 years. Honestly if this were World of Warcraft... heads would roll. :mrgreen: <--- appropriately green emoticon
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Re: Textures rezzing very slowly

Post by Alexina Proctor »

I will be patient, but want to mention that changing the terrain textures to spring on Wellspring was painful. I had to actually apply the textures to see how they looked together. It was painful because how long it took for each texture to Rez in the texture box. Applying the texture to 64-regions once it rezzed was extremely fast, all due to Oren and Ilan.
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Re: Textures rezzing very slowly

Post by Kim McCabe »

Snoots Dwagon wrote:
Sat Mar 06, 2021 11:46 pm
What Kim says above is the main reason I brought this to attention. "If the 2D don't work, the 3D don't work." Of course, this isn't Kitely's fault. In fact, as Ilan states above he and Oren have traced the problem and come up with a solution. We're just waiting on Firestorm to implement it. But right now, one person is working on the Opensim version of Firestorm. Which brings us again back to the severe need to monetize Opensim viewer development. sigh... vicious circle.

As I mentioned before, this problem has existed ever since SL opened. It was brought to their attention (in the most direct way possible) in 2005. The two main issues here:

1) User frustration. As Kim very pointedly (and accurately) states, builders and creators can become so extremely frustrated with texture load time (and other issues, such as object Contents load time) that they simply give up. Hang in there Kim, at least until the next update of Firestorm. Nevertheless: sooner or later this matter is going to have to be seriously addressed, with all due professional correction. The evidence: virtual worlds as a whole have not significantly grown for years (not as the industry considers growth). Problems like this are the reason.

2) DDoS. The same textures loading over and over. We know for a certainty that we can look at a texture in my inventory, close that texture, then re-open it 30 seconds later and it starts from scratch from the asset server. That means the cache isn't working, texture loading isn't working, and grid wide this problem is repeated over and over. This impacts asset server access. World servers are over-taxed. This is the problem that was brought to Linden Lab's attention... and very evidently this problem still exists.

Most companies would not consider such "acceptable operation". Imagine if every time one did a search on Google it took 24 SECONDS for the results to pop up. How long would Google stay in business before some other company ate their lunch?

Those are the issues, in bluntly-stated black and white. I really wish Firestorm would fix this now and put out a new release, because this particular issue has been a major problem for virtual worlds for over 15 years. Honestly if this were World of Warcraft... heads would roll. :mrgreen: <--- appropriately green emoticon
I'm for sure holding on till the next update in firestorm, especially since IIan said he sent them a fix for the problem. I agree with your analysis regarding "acceptable operation". I have a hard time accepting that after 15 years, no one has gotten a handle on a proper viewer. I would even be willing to pay some sort of monthly subscription fee to have an awesome working model.
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