Remove "Realtime" Probe Detail from Advanced Graphics window.
Zanibar Darkstone
To preface: I am not advocating for the total removal of the feature, only for it to be relegated to a debug option as it is a very useful feature but should not be immediately exposed to users who may not know the implications of it.
After doing quite a bit of troubleshooting for other users, it's become apparent that leaving the 'Realtime' Reflection Detail in the Advanced Graphics panel from project testing has caused issues. It's ended up being interpreted as 'max' for that setting, when in reality it is an option that PCs 10 years down the line won't be able to handle in all but the most curated scenes. I have had people get upset with me saying that the viewer is awful because they can't 'max it out' ie enable 'Realtime Probes'.
For context: Realtime causes the nearest Dynamic probe to update every frame. This essentially causes the viewer to render the scene 6 more times. As far as I'm aware there are no known hardware configurations, base or overclocked, that could render common scenes in SL at any reasonable framerate with that enabled. Anytime I've used it I had to make a very highly optimized scene to manage reasonable performance, and I'm on a RX 6800 and Intel 14700K!
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hinaichigo Xaris
In Firestorm, I always use the 'Reflection Detail' set to 'Realtime' the whole time and have no FPS issues. I’m using a GTX 1070 — a graphics card that’s over 5 years old.
So I think you're facing an isolated issue AMD-related.
SL has historically been more optimized for NVIDIA GPUs, partly because many graphics features (like deferred rendering) were initially implemented without prioritizing AMD compatibility.
Although most major issues have been fixed over time, there can still be subtle performance differences — or even significant slowdowns — in specific cases, such as:
* Dynamic reflection probes (Realtime reflections)
* Advanced shadows
* Driver-level forced antialiasing
* Multiple render passes per frame
This could be one of those cases where a specific feature (like Realtime reflections) hits a RX 6800 much harder than a GTX 1070.
I would like to go with you in world to check your scene and compare with my setup and find the problem :D
Rheia Silvercloud
hinaichigo Xaris To be honest, mirrors do rely upon the idea of dynamic reflection probing. There is also the somewhat nebulous question of "acceptable" frame rates. A good example there is that I am personally willing to find my framerate stoppered down to 10 or so FPS because I'm not playing in a "shooter game" environment, and thus it isn't critical (plus I come from an age where SL ran like a slide show anyway, so anything better is an improvement).
The fact that the rendering engine however is forced to essentially re-render a single frame six or more times however points to poor optimization of the engine, or some other, deeper problem.
While I am not 100% in Zanibar's court as to making the "Realtime" option a debug feature, I AM however in favor of having it flag up a warning and confirmation box to advise the user that this may severely negatively impact their experience.
hinaichigo Xaris
Rheia Silvercloud You are right, and showing a warning is better than "hiding it".