WindLight/Office Hours/2008-02-26

Pastrami Linden: hey all, IM me questions
Pastrami Linden: [8:06] norritt Xi: I guess I re-encountered the crashbug from Windlight 1.19.0.79185 / 79647 ... I also might have some hints on what it could be caused by: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-5089. Is there any news about that are you working on this? It is really important since it in most cases freezes the whole system up. Only reset helps then.
Feynt Mistral: Woot, Chef Kirby.
Pastrami Linden: norritt no major work has been done on it-
norritt Xi: I also watched the debug console today
Maldavius Figtree spams pastrami with questions
Pastrami Linden: we are holding off on the big crashers/freezes until our crash reporter is fixed, which will be soon
Pastrami Linden: [8:07] Maldavius Figtree: Are there any plans to allow a resident to see the script time of an object in the general tab description of said object. Currently only a sim owner can check the script time of your object which means that 90% of the grids coders are doing it blind. :3
Pastrami Linden: Maldavius, I'm not sure, but perhaps Jeremy knows
Jeremy Linden rereads the question.
Maldavius Figtree: Alright, honestly an implementation like that would make huge waves in the scripting community
norritt Xi: I repeatedly saw the follwing Warning (not sure if that might be related to the memory leak): WARNING: LLDrawable::makeStatic: Drawable becamse static with active parent!
Maldavius Figtree: and increase efficiency grid wide.
Maldavius Figtree: Because then the average coder could see how efficient he was
Jeremy Linden: My understanding is that even region owners can only see the top 10 scripts in their region... am I wrong?
Maldavius Figtree: Only region owners can
gtable: rezzed. click to remove
Maldavius Figtree: not the common resident
Feynt Mistral: No, region owners can see significantly more than 10 scripts now.
Maldavius Figtree: A region owner can see all the scripts in their sim
Feynt Mistral: We see 1200+ scripts in Serenity Woods. ^.^
Jeremy Linden: Ah. I'll have to update that in the Knowledge Base.
Gramma Fiddlesticks: oops
Gramma Fiddlesticks: so sorry there Annelin. Didn't see you.
Jeremy Linden: I don't think there's any way for Residents to check on their scripts' performance, but as a scripter myself, I can see how that would be a very useful tool.
Feynt Mistral: Might want to talk to Periapse about that one.
Carl Omlet: Yeah. That would be very helpful.
Maldavius Figtree: Exactly what I was thinking, if we could all see our performance we could correct it.
Jeremy Linden: In fact, *nudges Pastrami* it would be great in our initiative to educate everyone on efficiency best practices.
Maldavius Figtree: And people would know whats lagging the sim without an estate manager
Maldavius Figtree: or sim owner
Pastrami Linden: :)
Maldavius Figtree: Along the same lines nobody can read how much script time an avatar is taking up :P
Maldavius Figtree: not even a sim owner
Maldavius Figtree: so attachments are impossible to check
Yenwen Fall: if anyone would like a seat pls do. plenty for all.
Jeremy Linden: Heh. I can almost imagine script-discrimination wars now :-)
Maldavius Figtree: True <.< but in the end the most efficient would win out <3
Feynt Mistral: It'd probably be a new fact to list on vendor windows. "This AO has a script run time of 0.01!"
Maldavius Figtree: Exactly.
Jeremy Linden: That would be a good selling point, for me, at least :-)
Yenwen Fall: i dont even want to know how many scritps i am runing. lol
Carl Omlet: Well, that might be misleading. The time would be elongated if the sim was busy and processor speed, etc.
Feynt Mistral: Ctrl+Alt+Shift+U.
Jeremy Linden: Unfortunately, we're getting away from WindLight topics, though... have you entered this into public JIRA yet? I'd vote for it!
Maldavius Figtree: Cutting down sim lag as well. If its easily accesible then everyone will be able to change their code to get lower numbers.
Maldavius Figtree: Im going to now :3
Feynt Mistral: Right, viewer questions. >D
Carl Omlet: lots of unknowns. your 0.01 might not be 0.01 somewhere else.
Pastrami Linden is Offline
Feynt Mistral sends his question off to Pastrami.
Pastrami Linden is Online
Feynt Mistral: Who just crashed. o.O;
Jeremy Linden: Whoa.
BigPapi Linden: We will soon have similar functionality to see the rendering costs of all avatars in the scene.
Lestat Dibou smiles
Feynt Mistral: I didn't do it!
Pastrami Linden: back
Jeremy Linden: Oh, good point, BigPapi. That would help to determine whether someone's 400-torus hair was lagging people visually.
Jeremy Linden: ...for example.
Carl Omlet: *laugh*
Yenwen Fall: lol
Feynt Mistral: Woot.
Feynt Mistral: I imagine most furries wouldn't pass that test.
Jeremy Linden: I haven't seen one of those in awhile, though. I think designers are more conscious of it, now :-)
Feynt Mistral: Not really.
Feynt Mistral: I saw 38 sculpted prim hair the other day.
Pastrami Linden: [8:15] norritt Xi: Dependent on the view distance settings WL starts to hide objects at a certain distance. Though I envountered objects that are more distant than others being still displayed while some that were more close have already been hidden. There is a screenshot: http://norritt.bytefortress.de/sl/distance_bug.jpg. You see the buildings walls/roof disappear while stuff inside is still visible.
BigPapi Linden: Yeah, it's color coded too so you can see a numerical representation of how "laggy" their avatars are.
Feynt Mistral: Most of it was centered around the back of the head, and it was a tied back look. >.>
BigPapi Linden: AND you can visually mute any avatar
Carl Omlet: woo
Pastrami Linden: norritt we will be looking at some point at object transport
Pastrami Linden: how objects are transmitted down th epipe
Yenwen Fall: object not found on that link
Pastrami Linden: remove the period
Ryan Linden is Online
Pastrami Linden: [8:17] Feynt Mistral: I remember back in the day, when hardware lighting was just being implemented, that we had shaders to cast drop shadows and do per pixel lighting. Everything looked awesome and it displayed nice and fast on my old Radeon 9700 Pro, but some people (I'm assuming the Intel Graphics crowd) complained about it crashing their clients, so it was removed. Any chance we can get those shadows back?
Pastrami Linden: shadows are coming
Pastrami Linden: we all want em
Pastrami Linden: we all need em
AngelfromMe Semaphore shouts: SORRY
Pastrami Linden: [8:17] Carl Omlet: Are there any plans to release a dazzle + windlight client any time soon?
Feynt Mistral: Ignore the complaints of the Intel Graphics crowd, they can leave the shadows off! >D
Pastrami Linden: Feynt, yes, that would be the right way to do it
norritt Xi: pastrami: So no reason to file a JIRA report on this one (the object distance issue)?
Feynt Mistral wishes that was the way it was done in the first place. >.>
Pastrami Linden: the problem we have is as features are added and the top end of hardware improves, our gap between the masses and the techies widens
Pastrami Linden: no norritt, not now
norritt Xi: Okay
Pastrami Linden: so we need to support a vast array ofhardware
Pastrami Linden: WL is a perfect example
Pastrami Linden: we had to still support old school rendering
Feynt Mistral: Ooh, now that I'm reminded of shaders...
Pastrami Linden: Carl,
Pastrami Linden: dazzle is now entering first look
Pastrami Linden: WL is coming out of it
Pastrami Linden: eventually the two shall meet and play together
Kitty Tandino: woot
Gramma Fiddlesticks: Gramma loves Dazzle!
Zante Zapedzki: the masses have to become tech savvy ;p
Carl Omlet: Oh, I was unaware WL wa going out. Great.
bilis Afarensis: hey
Kitty Tandino: so windlight is being made into the main client now?
Feynt Mistral points out that the masses can buy a $20 card off of eBay and get a better value than Intel's offerings.
Kitty Tandino: "sorry had to ask
bilis Afarensis: kb fu
Yenwen Fall: if not playing on a laptop.
Jeremy Linden: It's a play on Kung-fu, bilis :-)
Pastrami Linden: [8:20] Yenwen Fall: still alt pan crashing. please help. at least 5-10 times a day.
Carl Omlet: Yeah, a lot of laptop owners dont have a choice.
Ryan Linden is Offline
bilis Afarensis: what?
Feynt Mistral: Yes, if not playing on a laptop, but even then some laptops have replacable video cards.
Pastrami Linden: Yenwen, we will be looking at crashes soon once the crash reporter is working again
Jeremy Linden: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_fu
Feynt Mistral: >some< laptops
Tofu Linden is Offline
bilis Afarensis: i know what kung fu is
AngelfromMe Semaphore shouts: lets have a yard sale!
bilis Afarensis: are you doing any style?
Jeremy Linden: KB is short for Knowledge Base.
Pastrami Linden: any more questions? IM me
Tofu Linden is Online
Jeremy Linden: grammarian style!
Pastrami Linden: [8:24] norritt Xi: Speaking of WL and hardware: I read you're notes on the web about the performance to be expected on certain system components (especially gfx cards). Though WL somehow feels too slow on my system regarding the hardware. I'm running WL at maximum settings (200m) view distance but only get about 15-20 fps right now. Is this really normal? (Graphics card is GF 8800GTX/768MB, CPU: Intel Q6700).
Pastrami Linden: norritt, what res?
norritt Xi: 1280x1024
Carl Omlet: The only complaint I've had with windlight is the atmospheric shaders are slow, but seem to be on by default.
Pastrami Linden: hmm, oS?
Pastrami Linden: OS
norritt Xi: Got also 8x FSAA on by driver settings, running on Windows XP newest Detonator
Mikasi Nakajima: i actually get better performance on WL than the current main client on my 8800GT
Pastrami Linden: FSAA is your cuplrit
Pastrami Linden: ^culprit
Feynt Mistral: Ditto Mikasi.
Carl Omlet: Not hard to turn them off, but it should probably be off by default on older cards.
Pastrami Linden: Carl we're tweaking the GPU table to default it to off for the right cards- what do you have?
Pastrami Linden: [8:24] Yenwen Fall: still haveing things wash out in bright light. might just be me.
Carl Omlet: x800 XT 256MB.
Pastrami Linden: Yenwen, you mean noon or because of local lights?
Yenwen Fall: noon
Carl Omlet: turning it off increased the frame rate quite a bit.
Tofu Linden is Offline
Tofu Linden is Online
norritt Xi: Will this become better whith the planned integration of FSAA into the WL client?
Pastrami Linden: Yenwen, please run it side by side with old client,
Pastrami Linden: at noon
Pastrami Linden: the colors on most surfaces are nearly identical
Pastrami Linden: just make sure to note if there are any local light sources
Carl Omlet: Yeah, the wash-out look seems to have been fixed.
Yenwen Fall: i have a white building platform witha grid texture on it and cant see the grid at all. i set the color to gray and that fixed it.
BigPapi Linden: norritt: better how? 8X FSAA is expensive on all hardware, the new client isn't going to make it less expensive.
Pastrami Linden: Yenwen, I'd say at present noon is about 5% brighter than the old client
Pastrami Linden: we had to add just a hair more to make it look sunlit
Pastrami Linden: but soon estate owners will be able to change all of that
Pastrami Linden: and a market for WL skies and waters will be born
Pastrami Linden: :)
Pastrami Linden: [8:24] Feynt Mistral: Is there any chance of a future version of the client that will allow custom shaders to be written, uploaded, and used by the masses in a particular parcel or sim? This would allow people to create exactly the kind of experience they would like visitors to have when they visit their homes.
Yenwen Fall: ahh that i can help on. the skys
Tofu Linden is Offline
Mia Linden is Offline
Tofu Linden is Online
BigPapi Linden: Feynt: Not going to happen. It would be a security hole and a performance risk to allow user created shaders to be uploaded (actual shader code)
Feynt Mistral: Ah nerts.
BigPapi Linden: The material system that will be coming will allow more powerful shaders to be defined piecemeal out of a user's requirements
BigPapi Linden: but no actual shader code will be defined by the users
Feynt Mistral: Custom bumpmapping too?
Carl Omlet: Thats probably a better way to go.
Pastrami Linden: [8:25] Kippie Friedkin: Now that we have both Windlight and Dazzle versions of the Viewer, if there a plan to combine them at some point and turn them into the release candidate? And if so, is there a timeline for their release?
Pastrami Linden: WL is coming out of FL
Pastrami Linden: dazzle is entering it
Pastrami Linden: once it's done
Pastrami Linden: they'll be together
Pastrami Linden: :)
Pastrami Linden: [8:29] norritt Xi: What exactly is the debug option: "Client -> Rendering -> Run Multiple Threads" for?
Pastrami Linden: only use it if you're into sewing
Kippie Friedkin: got it
Carl Omlet: lol
BigPapi Linden: Yeah, double stitching works much faster that way
Pastrami Linden: I'm not sure, I believe Runitai wrote that
Pastrami Linden: I'd have to check with him
BigPapi Linden: Your garments will have a higher tensile strength quotient at the seams
Yenwen Fall: i looked to get a good improvment with the multi thread option.
Carl Omlet: I think its multithreaded VFS?
norritt Xi: Framerate increased slightly for me when enabling that.
Yenwen Fall: ant texture load time for me.
Pastrami Linden: and stitch viability
Carl Omlet: Its slower in some cases and faster in others. So its off by default.
Carl Omlet: As far as I know, anyway.
Pastrami Linden: btw Carl re: your atmo shaders point
Pastrami Linden: we'll be looking at framerate stats again soon,
Pastrami Linden: if we're finding the X800 is below the avg. before
Doug Linden is Online
Pastrami Linden: we'll turn of atmo by default
Carl Omlet: Well, it may be a mac-specific slowdown?
Carl Omlet: Even with it on, its not much slower than the standard client. WL is much faster for me with a few things turned off.
Pastrami Linden: cool
Pastrami Linden: then that might be why
Carl Omlet: Yeah.
Pastrami Linden: our "algorithm", so to speak, is:
Pastrami Linden: A) get the framerate to be at ro near the old viewer, with as many features turned as possible that still permit the first point
Pastrami Linden: B) this does not really hold if your avg. from before was at or above 30, as we figured you could spare some fps and would prefer more lovelies
Pastrami Linden: C) profit
Feynt Mistral: Mmm, lovelies.
Pastrami Linden: [8:37] norritt Xi: Any news about the glow issue we talked about last time? I think Jeremy mentioned it became an internal issue. Do you still need more input on that? Screenshot: http://norritt.bytefortress.de/sl/glow_bug.jpg (the greyed areas is the oepned start menu, you see a glowing shadow of it as well as a shadow of the task bar in the scenery)
Carl Omlet: Yeah, 30-45 FPS is a decent range.
Pastrami Linden: lemme check norrit
Jeremy Linden: I commented on that?
norritt Xi: I'm not sure I think it was you...
Pastrami Linden: lol
Jeremy Linden: Heh. Maybe you're thinking of Torley :-)
norritt Xi: Maybe =D
BigPapi Linden: na. blame jeremy. more fun that way
Jeremy Linden: !
Alfrik Northmead is Online
norritt Xi: LOL no poor Jeremy I don't want to blame anyone just trying to help imporve WL here as we all want to.
BigPapi Linden: ;)
Jeremy Linden: All in good fun.
Mikasi Nakajima: oddly when i set WL to "Low" graphics quality, the framerate stays the same as when it is Ultra mode, although the gfx look like crap
Pastrami Linden: Norritt,
BigPapi Linden: Every bug you've ever seen in the viewer was accidentally coded by Jeremy!
Jeremy Linden: :(
Janine Cummings: :)
Pastrami Linden: we have a similar issue internally
Pastrami Linden: let me comment that you have issues too
BigPapi Linden: ;)
Matthew Linden is Online
norritt Xi: So there are basically 2 rules? 1. If anything goes wrong Jeremy is responsible. 2. If Jeremy isn't responsible rule 1 applies?
Carl Omlet: lol
BigPapi Linden: lol
Jeremy Linden: Giving me code any lower level than LSL is taking your life into your own hands.
Maldavius Figtree: XD
BigPapi Linden: Mikasi, what's your hardware?
norritt Xi: *gg*
Mikasi Nakajima: Q6600 with 8800GT
Mikasi Nakajima: in both low and ultra modes i get 20fps here
Feynt Mistral: >D
BigPapi Linden: Sound's like you might be CPU bound somehow
Yenwen Fall: just about the same as mine. i have the 8800gtx, yes this game is cpu bound
Feynt Mistral: Sounds like Jeremy should be kept away from Mono then. >3
Jeremy Linden actually likes Mono. From the Resident-side.
Mikasi Nakajima: eh its only using 20%.. is WL multithreaded?
BigPapi Linden: If that's the case, leave it at Ultra and enjoy the "free" eye candy Mikasi. :)
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BigPapi Linden: WL is *not* multithreaded
Pastrami Linden: lol, what I was thinking
Pastrami Linden: you're showered in lovelies
Mikasi Nakajima: any plans to multithread in the future?
Alfrik Northmead is Offline
BigPapi Linden: Plans: yes
Pastrami Linden: [8:37] Gramma Fiddlesticks: If plan is to combine windlight with Dazzle into one for eventaul release as main clinet, won't that be an waful lof of change at one time to which users must become familiar?. I'm just thinking that Windlight is pretty large change and so is Dazzle! [8:37] Gramma Fiddlesticks: the two together could be pretty overwleming for some!
Yenwen Fall: cool. guess i will have to get a quad.
Pastrami Linden: I'll let the audience answer this one
Pastrami Linden: :)
norritt Xi: Yenwen: Windows Xp has problems with the process scheduling on multicore systems. So it might help to assign WL to only one core via task manager. There's also software that fullfills this task on startup for you so you don't have to do it manually.
Yenwen Fall: how much memory can sl take up?
Pastrami Linden: this much
Pastrami Linden: :)
Carl Omlet: Windlight is going main viewer soon, gramma.
Mikasi Nakajima: WL is using 400mb RAM here
Pastrami Linden: 575 for me
Jeremy Linden: 920 for me
Feynt Mistral: WL seems to use a little less than the amount of video memory you have.
Gramma Fiddlesticks: OK. Guess I misunderstood what was said. Thanks
norritt Xi: LOL well my paek memory usage was over 2.2 GB ram then the WL viewer crashed.
Yenwen Fall: i am runing on vista 32. vista 64 semms to crash with sl.
Feynt Mistral: o.O;
Mikasi Nakajima: i dont think the original client went above 200 for me.
Sue Linden is Online
Feynt Mistral: The WL client reaches about 280 megs for me, and I've got a 256 meg card.
norritt Xi: Theres a big memory leak there
Feynt Mistral: When I had a 128 meg card, it would hover around 200.
Pastrami Linden: [8:45] Net Antwerp: Certain ATi users, including myself, are getting vertical/horizontal lines in every screenshot we take in high resolutions, such as 1920x1080 - like this example: http://jira.secondlife.com/secure/attachment/14805/Example+Snapshot+1.jpg [8:45] Net Antwerp: JIRA link: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-4825
Pastrami Linden: hmm, this old bug again
BigPapi Linden: Memory usage and video memory usage are 2 separate things, don't confuse them
Yenwen Fall: 786 megs atm for me.
Mikasi Nakajima: maybe it'll be better when i can use my other gig of ram ;)
Feynt Mistral: I'm not confusing them, BigPapi, but it's a correlation I've noticed.
Pastrami Linden: I'll have a look, Net
norritt Xi: Sure though you can limit the video mem usage as you wih, you can't do that with the RAM usage so only RAM is really interesting isnt it?
Net Antwerp: Thanks
Yenwen Fall: wish i could get it to use more ram. i got tons of that.
Mikasi Nakajima: speaking of limiting video ram
Mikasi Nakajima: WL defaulted my 512mb 8800GT to 256mb
Gramma Fiddlesticks is counting the pennies she has in her coffee can to see if there is enough yet for new computer. =)
Kippie Friedkin: woah
Kippie Friedkin: what was that?
Feynt Mistral: Alright, which one of you Lindens decided to build this place next to an airforce base? >D
BigPapi Linden: Mikasi, in *most* cases you want to leave any default we set for texture memory alone
Carl Omlet waves.
Yenwen Fall: has anyone else tried runing sl on vista 64?
BigPapi Linden: Keep in mind that video memory is also used for other things in addition to textures
Pastrami Linden: hey Net you there?
Net Antwerp: yes, I'm still here
Pastrami Linden: here's something interesting from our internal issue-
Pastrami Linden: High res snapshots will not have seams provided "Keep aspect ratio" and "Show UI" are not checked.
Pastrami Linden: care to confirm this for me?
Net Antwerp: k, one sec
Net Antwerp: .. "keep aspect ratio" was taken out since 1.19
Mikasi Nakajima: ok, but the framerate dropped by 2fps when i put it back to 256
Pastrami Linden: seven more minutes all, so send the questions
BigPapi Linden: I wouldn't keep it at 256 Mikasi, I'd drop it some (especially if we defaulted it to lower)
BigPapi Linden: But you're free to do as you wish
Feynt Mistral sent in questions. >O
Mikasi Nakajima: i'm just curious as to why you suggest that, when all i have gotten was improvements by raising it. thats all ^^
Jeremy Linden: At exactly one quarter the speed of light, how much would you age on a trip to the sun and back?
Pastrami Linden: [8:29] Feynt Mistral: Given that there are tutorial pages out there for using OpenGL with multiple lights (see Paul's Projects: http://www.paulsprojects.net/opengl/manylights/manylights.html), I'm curious why the client hasn't adopted this approach and given users the option to scale up or down the number of lights visible. [8:43] Feynt Mistral: Oh, having been reminded of "ultra" setting, the Linden trees at the moment will cause momentary client pauses on my computer when they convert between full res and "two plane" versions, and it seems like the client will only keep full res trees up to 20-30m from the camera. Is there any progress on SpeedTree, which hasn't been mentioned in ages? >D
Feynt Mistral: Woot, two questions at once.
BigPapi Linden: Because some scenes with LOTS of heavy vbo usage could then cause VERY, VERY bad performance if it causes you to exceed your video memory
Mikasi Nakajima: fair enough
Net Antwerp: Pastrami, though there's the "constrained proportions" option.. having it checked seems to solve the issue, but then the screenshot doesn't have the nice AA'd object edges
Pastrami Linden: yeah
Pastrami Linden: Net we'll be looking at screenshot issues soon
Pastrami Linden: Feynt, no work has been done on SpeedTree yet
Pastrami Linden: and we may be working on some stability before that
Feynt Mistral: D:
Pastrami Linden: I knowz, I knowz
Pastrami Linden: [8:54] Yenwen Fall: will we ever see direct x in sl?
Pastrami Linden: eventually, yes
BigPapi Linden: Feynt, the multiple lights method linked (and most of them that aren't done through deferred rendering)
Feynt Mistral: Boo?
BigPapi Linden: Would NOT work with second life
BigPapi Linden: In fact they are impractical for most REAL uses of OpenGL
BigPapi Linden: As they require either multiple passes
Yenwen Fall: if we get multi core and direct x i think we could see some real nice frame rates.
Pastrami Linden: [8:57] Kitty Tandino: sorry to bother you.. but i had a question..are we allowed to ask others here to vote for a new feature? it is one located here : https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-5160 . it is one i feel would be a great addition.
BigPapi Linden: (one extra pass would DOUBLE the renering complexity of the scene)
Kitty Tandino: u rock!
Pastrami Linden: Kitty, there you go :)
Kitty Tandino: :D!
Feynt Mistral: So I'm guessing there's no way of getting the client to produce static light maps for distant lights then?
Kitty Tandino: love u dude!@
Kitty Tandino: l;ol
Maldavius Figtree: :D
Kitty Tandino: WOOT!
BigPapi Linden: Nothing we can just drop in Feynt (not with user generated content that is always changing)
Yenwen Fall: humm. this is odd. just siting here my memory use has gone up another 100megs
Pastrami Linden: any last questions?
Tofu Linden is Offline
Doug Linden is Offline
Yenwen Fall: can you hit me with your frying pan?
BigPapi Linden slaps Yenwen with Pastrami's frying pan.
Yenwen Fall: lol
BigPapi Linden: :)