secondlife / secondlife/viewer

Regular and high frametime spikes on mac

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#3,904 3 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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bug team:viewer
Dominant language
C++
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Description

By observing the fast timers console, i noticed big regular frametime spikes (those frames have a double duration compared to other frames approximately).

The spikes happen with a shorter period when reflection coverage is set to manual vs none (with the option set to none, this is the sim general probe that is updated, so it happens less often).

This doesn't happen on Windows, or Linux.

I joined a couple screenshots, one with reflection coverage set to none, one set to manual only.

note 1: the frametime in ms indicated in the fast timers window isn't correct on macs with Apple silicon. But it's not very important here, what matters is the shape of the frames over time.

note 2: you might notice my disk cache is set to a low value. This is intended, and has no impact in this current test.

https://secondlife.canny.io/admin/board/bug-reports/p/regular-and-high-frametime-spikes-on-mac

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reproducing the issue on a Mac with Apple silicon using the fast timers console, comparing reflection coverage set to none and manual. Done means identifying the cause of the regular frametime spikes and confirming that the spike pattern is corrected on macOS without regressing Windows or Linux behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
desktop, performance
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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