Textures rezzing very slowly

[Snoots Dwagon]

UPDATE. Yesterday (11-26) another resident contacted me and stated it was taking 24 seconds for him to see a texture rezzed from inventory. At that time I considered it an aberration and didn't think much about it. Hours later however I was building a sign, and it did indeed take a full 24 seconds for the texture to rez on the sign when applied. This has increased considerably from the prior 15-17 seconds (which was the cause of the forum). I have no ideas, opinions or guesses at this time as to what could be causing this, save for what's already been mentioned as possibilities.

[Alexina Proctor]

Hi Snoots,

Determining if this issue is caused by the viewer interaction with OpenSim/Kitely or is a viewer-only issue is among the top things on our to-do list. If it is caused by something that we can fix then we'll do so.

[Snoots Dwagon]

We've developed and submitted a patch to Firestorm that solves most of the slow rezzing of textures from inventory problem (but not all of it).

See: https://jira.firestormviewer.org/browse/FIRE-30559

Now we have to wait for them to include it in a future Firestorm release.

[Snoots Dwagon]

Thanks Oren and Ilan for reporting this... along with a solution. It may take a bit to see this implemented, but once it is that will be a major accomplishment in making Opensim far more user-friendly. It will receive applause from builders, scripters and in-world shoppers alike (well, just about everyone really. This has been a top-of-the-list major issue from when it was first pointed out to LL in early 2005). That Kitely has provided a fix is wunnerful awesomesauce. Two paw-thumbs up!

[Snoots Dwagon]

I did some additional testing today and noticed something very interesting.

At Kitely Welcome Center, once I've logged in and everything is rezzed and I stand in one place, the TEXTURE STATS WINDOW (ctrl-shift-3) shows static figures:

#Objs/#Cached remains stable
Other figures on that stats window also remain unchanging.

They don't change unless I move. Texture loading from inventory (double clicking on an inventory texture to view on the screen) is very fast.

When the same test is run on Wellspring, the Objs/Cached figure is constantly changing at a very rapid pace. It never stops. Many other figures on the stats window also never stop. The texture loading status bar display pretty much never stops loading, even though I'm not moving. In contrast to Kitely Welcome, texture loading from inventory there is very slow (15 to 24 seconds average), even if I'm not moving at all and have been standing in the same location for quite some time. The same holds true for Tessin and most other worlds I visit.

If I move to the edge of Wellspring world and look out into void space, as would be expected almost all the figures in the texture stats window stop changing and texture loading drops to none. However, the #Objs/#Cached figure continues to change constantly, and while inventory texture loading speeds up a bit it still takes an average of 8-10 seconds to load a texture from inventory.

I know there's a big difference between how Kitely Welcome and Wellspring are populated, but am curious about how Kitely Welcome texture stats come to a complete stop whereas Wellspring stats never do. It seems to have a very significant effect on texture loading.

Thanks in advance for your time.

[Snoots Dwagon]

Hi Snoots,

The viewer doesn't prioritize inventory texture requests over other forms of texture requests so if your world is constantly changing or loading different LOD levels as you move around then the inventory requests will wait in line. Does your world use a lot of dynamic textures or other forms of content that gets periodically updated?

[Snoots Dwagon]

Does your world use a lot of dynamic textures or other forms of content that gets periodically updated?

Hmmmm that's a good question. It's hard to tell whether a world is updating textures or not. Does that apply only within draw distance? to my knowledge there are no nearby textures that are being updated. But that #obj/#cached figure is constantly changing like a stopwatch on crack. However it doesn't change on Kitely Welcome once all textures load. So I'm trying to figure out what might be triggering our texture load so significantly that it would actually slow down inventory texture requests.

This is important not only to the world itself and the end user... but also to the asset server and world server, since (possibly) these are being accessed constantly every time one of those figures changes.

[Ada Radius]

That depends on how many unique textures and objects exist in your world, if the number is high then the viewer may be constantly thrashing the cache. Kitely Welcome Center is highly optimized with the majority of unique textures being in the merchants showcase and the worlds showcase areas.

[Snoots Dwagon]

What does it mean "thrashing the cache"?

Access of textures and use of caches should be centered around draw distance, yes? Or are other things involved? I've noticed the above described effect even when standing in the middle of a huge, empty sandbox or as stated, at the edge of the world looking out into void space.

[Snoots Dwagon]

The viewer queries for textures in a very inefficient way that's also effected by other types of viewer queries. This problem becomes very apparent when the amount of content in a world surpasses the cache size people set in their viewer. There are worlds that contain many gigabytes of assets that need to be downloaded and cached by people's viewer for the world to be fully rezzed. The problem is that some worlds contain so much content that assets are constantly deleted from the viewer cache in order to free up space for other assets to be downloaded. In extreme cases this can lead to situations where the entire world can never be downloaded and stored in your cache at the same time so the viewer will have to continue downloading other assets when you move around the world, or even when you're standing still as newly downloaded assets displace other cached assets in the viewer's draw distance.

TL;DR don't use multiple gigabytes of unique assets in your world if you want people to be able to download it all into their viewer cache (in order for the world to rezz quickly as they enter or move around it).