High Processor Usage(Chrome)

I also experience high cpu usage constantly and now hopefully solved the issue... funnily enough is was pretty easy. I just toggled off every browser extension on chrome restarted the browser and toggled the extension back on again, restart browser again and the issue was gone? o_O I am not sure, what the heck was going on. maaaybe an solution for some of you?

1688677719

Pro

Last Friday I had another session.  I was able to function with my one laptop running ONLY Roll20 and my other laptop running everything else needed for the game.  We off for a few weeks,  maybe I'll give it another try then.

1689094147

Cancelling subscription. This issue has been on-going for months and no improvement or feedback from the powers that be despite this thread that is over 300 posts long. This thread is not even pinned to the technical issues forum. I hate to make the observation as some others already have, but it does seems to not be a priority at all for Roll20. Since it has been a problem I have not DM'd once because I don't want my laptop to be damaged from overheating. There was a time when this wasn't an issue and I'd run games several times a week... Now is the time to withdraw funding this site because there has not been one serious attempt that I can see to address this problem despite the promises of transparency.

1689108022

dgrossjr

Plus

Tried this.  I'm on a clean Win11 build with nothing on laptop but D&DB browser plug in and Bitdefender.  Tried with and with out extension, AV, etc... nothing.  2 Fridays ago R20 was so bad, that our adventure party moved to running Voice/Video with MS Teams and use R20 for VTT only.  R20 is still unfortunately dogging the session but slightly less so that we can play.  Have to start looking for alternatives as this is really crushing game night. Tamara B. said: I also experience high cpu usage constantly and now hopefully solved the issue... funnily enough is was pretty easy. I just toggled off every browser extension on chrome restarted the browser and toggled the extension back on again, restart browser again and the issue was gone? o_O I am not sure, what the heck was going on. maaaybe an solution for some of you?

1689426596

BigOzSn

Pro

I wouldn't cancel my subscription right now solely due to high ressource demand from Roll20, but it gets gradually worse with time since the Windows & Doors Update for me, just as a feedback. This might be just a coincident, however - when I'm a player in a campaign run by a DM without any subscription, I also get performance issues. They are a bit less worse there, however. On my campaign with Dynamic Lightning, Macros and other gimmics in all shapes, forms and sizes, R20 CPU-Usage spikes at around 70% from time to time. On the campaign without any DL or similar content, it doesn't get higher than 50 %. Currently, I am willing to endure it for a while, since I really like the work done on Dynamic Lighting, Macros and the overall flexibility of usage potential. It will become frustrating if it continues to worsen, however.  I would be willing to have no Windows & Doors for a while until the problem is solved, in exchange for not having a melting PC. (:

1689445135

Mr. NumNums

Pro

Be cool if we could boot up with all that stuff just removed. Or get to a point where It runs smoothly enough that myself and my players and even use it. ><;

1689704719

James NFA87

It's been 7 months with unfortunately no improvement for me. I feel it has actually got worse with each passing week. My work laptop, is now also struggling to keep up and sounds like it is going to take off with the fans running constantly. Afraid i now have no option but to look at alternative and cheaper vtt's as Roll20 is too much of a drain on my system and my wallet to justify waiting any longer for a solution. ☹️

1689705897

Robert M.

Plus

It was suggested I cross post this from reddit My groups has been using R20 for years now, and three of the 6 of us have paid memeberships... but this last few months it has been less and less useable. One of our 2 games we have had to turn off all audio/video and talk through discord, and last week even that didn't work I had to play through JUST discord and keep roll20 open on my phone for my character sheet. A few of us don't have "gaming" computers, we have basic walmart laptops... mine is less then a year old. But now mine and 2 others are overheating and over using the processors. I was told to go into task manager and turn the web browser to low priority, but even that wasn't working... last Saturday I was running the game and the other player having the issue turned off his camera, shut all other programs and hooked an external cooling unit up and it still was choppy audio. I have gotten to the point where I wonder if just useing a die roller on discord would be better, but I like the maps and organization of R20... what can I do?

1689708118

KS Backer

TBH, with Walmart laptops, it looks more and more likely that something is going on with integrated low-end GPUs. My old laptop had that, and I saw almost identical issues. 

1689731774

Katie C. said: TBH, with Walmart laptops, it looks more and more likely that something is going on with integrated low-end GPUs. My old laptop had that, and I saw almost identical issues.  There have been numerous suggestions as to what could be factors in this. The problem is there has been literally no evidence of work happening on this despite the exclamations of transparency etc etc. It would be a lot better if the company were upfront and told us it's not on their priority list - that would at least let us know where those of us who've pumped plenty of money into their company over the years stand. The not knowing only breeds resentment through frustration.

1689771524

Adam Caramon

Pro

Adago said: Katie C. said: TBH, with Walmart laptops, it looks more and more likely that something is going on with integrated low-end GPUs. My old laptop had that, and I saw almost identical issues.  There have been numerous suggestions as to what could be factors in this. The problem is there has been literally no evidence of work happening on this despite the exclamations of transparency etc etc. It would be a lot better if the company were upfront and told us it's not on their priority list - that would at least let us know where those of us who've pumped plenty of money into their company over the years stand. The not knowing only breeds resentment through frustration. My guess, based on my years of experience on this platform, is that there is some kind of company policy about never admitting fault or providing direct confirmation of any policies / practices that might show the company in a bad light.  Roll20 devs dance about most subjects and use vague language when describing their actions.  Its as though the company was founded by a lawyer. As that doesn't seem likely to change anytime soon, your only option is to vote with your wallet. -Adam

1690422898

Yuri

Pro

Last night I was DMing my PF2e campaign in a cave system with tons of dynamic lighting and if I ever opened up anyone's character sheet (PC/NPC) my R20 session would lag like hell.  Soon as I closed the sheet perfectly fine.  Two weeks ago session was fine no issues I had about everyone's sheet up and minimized, yesterday was terrible trying to do rolls and look up stuff. Now I do have a gaming PC with 32gb RAM, RTX3090, i9 CPU.  If this is hitting me this hard I can't imagine what it's like with a Walmart Laptop.

1690423588

Forum Champion

Marketplace Creator

API Scripter

Hi Yuri! First, there does not seem to be a direct correlation between high processor usage and computer power. This is one reason that the devs have been having such a hard time fixing this. For instance, I don't have processor issues on a dinky old Chromebook. Reports in this thread have been all over the power level spectrum. The best thing that a user can do to help combat this is to fill out the form in this post , to provide data for the dev team. The more data points they have, the more information they have to combat the issue. As an aside, since you specifically had issues when opening character sheets, it could possibly be a different issue. Are the characters in question heavily loaded with spells? Like over 30? A huge number of spells on a sheet dramatically bloat the size.

1690479588

KS Backer

An FYI: Chromebooks are engineered within an inch of their wee lives to work well with anything browser-based. I work for a company where the vast majority of our users (students) are on Chromebooks, and it always surprises me what we can get out of their machines. So they're not the best option for low-end benchmarking unless you KNOW that's what your low-end is going to be. 

1690484428

Forum Champion

Marketplace Creator

API Scripter

Thanks Katie! I just assumed that at the price and construction quality, they had to be on the low end of performance also. I don't get a problem on my M1 Mac either, but that's a much newer and more powerful machine. My suspicion remains that it is something specific (like a graphics card or cards) that doesn't play well with Roll20. Going back to Yuri: Have you tried reducing Roll20's frame rate (available on the graphics section of the settings tab)?

1690745312

FWIW, my issues seem to be when the map is zoomed in. So maybe GFX scaling is a part of the issue? Zooming all the way out (often so the map can't be useful) appears to settle things to a reasonable extent. I mentioned this a while ago but, alas, no feedback.

1690830319

Edited 1690830343

Andrew McLeod

Pro

I was totally failing to DM a game the other day. CPU usage of 600%+ (on a pretty good laptop; Ryzen 4750U and 48GB RAM). Eventually after giving up on the voice/video, I disabled Explorer Mode and suddenly everything was fine (i.e. slow, but normal Roll20 slow). I used to have no problems with Roll20, and I pay for Pro. If they've basically made the game unplayable unless I turn off features that used to work fine, then I'm not sure what I'm paying for...

1690834060

Pro

These conversations are pretty stark: I've never been able to *enable* Dynamic Lighting, so disabling Explorer Mode is out. I reduced the frame rate to 30fps a long time ago. It's kind of driving home just how few of the new features Roll20 has been focused on have even been available to me because of performance issues.

1690840393

Forum Champion

Marketplace Creator

API Scripter

Hi Robert! Have you filled out the form in the quoted post from the beginning of this thread? The dev team have said that this problem has so many variables that it is difficult to diagnose, and all data points help to identify common causes. You listed a couple of things, but have you also checked through the list here , particularly toggling Hardware Acceleration?

1690911402

Mr. NumNums

Pro

Robert O. said: These conversations are pretty stark: I've never been able to *enable* Dynamic Lighting, so disabling Explorer Mode is out. I reduced the frame rate to 30fps a long time ago. It's kind of driving home just how few of the new features Roll20 has been focused on have even been available to me because of performance issues. Yeah sadly I haven't been able to enjoy any of the Dynamic lighting for a long time either. Lags too much.

1691360467

missionz3r0

After running some profiles on an empty-ish game, the only thing I can think is the problem for myself and others having issues is that Roll20 requests redraws. Whether they need one or not. Whether items have moved or not. Every render loop, Roll20 requests a new draw. For a computer that has a graphics card, this won't cause as much of an issue since the card could easily handle it. But, for computers that don't have a dedicated graphics card this just tears into their CPU. My suggestion would be to only request frames when something changes. In a game where things are constantly moving, I could see running at 30 fps or 60 fps. But when things are mostly static and animations are the exception rather than the norm, redrawing the page continuously is overkill.

1691390247

TheMarkus1204

Pro

I don't understand that either. Just using static images and the fans on my PC go havoc when playing on Roll20... NO DYNAMIC LIGHTING is used, just images and sometimes FoW...

1691555557

Quinton B.

Pro

This is becoming infuriating. If I am in a game by myself setting up, it's all fine and good. Once people start hopping in, my laptop begins to scream and Firefox slows to a goddamn crawl. The screen goes fullscreen briefly and then firefox eventually crashes without me doing anything.

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Edited 1691590981

Jason K.

Plus

Marketplace Creator

Could this also effect graphics on the screen as well? Intel i7 10th Gen with UHD onboard graphics. While in game as a player everything would look fine for a while, but then maybe when CPU spikes and cannot handle, my machine flashes and map area turns white except chat UI and token bars still display. Avatar pictures still remain. I must refresh chrome to have things come back. Sometimes when spiking the browser may get stuck on the black loading screen when rendering roll20. Thats when I have to restart chrome. On Task Manager windows 11, my GPU spikes up to 83% while on roll20 tab. When I switch to another tab in chrome it will drop down to 2%. 500gb internet. When map area turns white GPU drops down to 1%. All drivers are up to date. Chrome is all up to date and reset to default.

1691596787

KS Backer

Jason K. said: Could this also effect graphics on the screen as well? Intel i7 10th Gen with UHD onboard graphics. While in game as a player everything would look fine for a while, but then maybe when CPU spikes and cannot handle, my machine flashes and map area turns white except chat UI and token bars still display. Avatar pictures still remain. I must refresh chrome to have things come back. Sometimes when spiking the browser may get stuck on the black loading screen when rendering roll20. Thats when I have to restart chrome. On Task Manager windows 11, my GPU spikes up to 83% while on roll20 tab. When I switch to another tab in chrome it will drop down to 2%. 500gb internet. When map area turns white GPU drops down to 1%. All drivers are up to date. Chrome is all up to date and reset to default. I've been seeing this, too! Except it's on a gaming laptop, so it SHOULD be okay. I thought I was losing my mind...

1691680395

Just had a game on Owlbear Rodeo. Absolutely no problems or issues with computer resources. They prove it can be done so it's up to Roll20 as to whether they want to achieve similar performance...

1691693649

TheMarkus1204

Pro

Adago said: Just had a game on Owlbear Rodeo. Absolutely no problems or issues with computer resources. They prove it can be done so it's up to Roll20 as to whether they want to achieve similar performance... Even PlayRole does not have the performance issues there are with Roll20... And you have Audio / Video there also...

1691736717

Parou

Sheet Author

In a few months it has been an enitre year in which none of my group could play on Roll20 comfortably. Is there any foreseeable progress in sight? While I like Owlbear as a temporary replacement, it lacks features and the comfort that Roll20 always brought and that's without almost a year of changes to its UI and added features that none of us were allowed to try out because of this issue.

1691757735

KS Backer

I know that this sort of issue is difficult to test, but I'm 100% willing to be part of a task force of some kind. Hell, I'm even a web-dev, so I can dig pretty deep on my end as to what I'm seeing.  I really don't want to start telling players that they have a minimum hardware requirement to join my games.

1692062546

Jaylin

Plus

While it's not a problem for me, multiple players of mine are having this issue, making it basically unplayable for them. Please stop putting out useless UI updates and fix your backend, I'm begging you.

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Edited 1692302478

Vini D.

Plus

Hello there, I was suggest to bring my issue here as well. I have already filled the form, Roll20 suddenly became completely unusable on chrome as of this tuesday, as soon as I load into any of my games, even new ones with zero stuff in and no maps, my entire computer lags, my CPU usage jumps to nearly 100%, I've been using R20 for a few years now and was excited with the new changes, but this might actually be what forces me to switch to a new platform

1692306960

Forum Champion

Marketplace Creator

API Scripter

Jaylin said: While it's not a problem for me, multiple players of mine are having this issue, making it basically unplayable for them. Please stop putting out useless UI updates and fix your backend, I'm begging you. I totally sympathize with your players, and agree that it is one of Roll20's toughest issues to solve, but note that there is not one team of devs. The ones working on UI likely have nothing to do with this issue. The platform continues to evolve in multiple ways without being bottlenecked by one (admittedly serious) issue.

1692312533

KS Backer

The platform continues to evolve in multiple ways without being bottlenecked by one (admittedly serious) issue. I'm not only a dev, I'm one who manages the pipeline for a rather large project. And... I get it. People want features. Features make you look good to management. Features get you press. Features get people to actually open marketing emails. But sometimes, you absolutely have to shut down the pipeline to find the leak. Three times, I've had to shut down the pipeline in order to solve a larger issue. In the end, it was always worth it, even if it meant I had a dev or two sitting on the sidelines for a few weeks while the engineers ripped the framework apart. You don't want your platform to die a slow death because you ignored something that was solvable. And yes, performance bugs are a huge pain in the rear to diagnose... but they're not impossible. I've had people ship us computers that were showing the issue, we've set up test environments, we've made virtual machines that we choked down as hard as we could. It CAN be done.  I love Roll20. I recommend it to all of my friends. Hell, I know I'm personally responsible for getting at least a dozen people on paid plans over the years. But I really don't want to have to start worrying about this lingering issue that didn't go away for me  until I bought a gaming laptop.

1692366875

Edited 1692367111

Pro

keithcurtis said: I totally sympathize with your players, and agree that it is one of Roll20's toughest issues to solve, but note that there is not one team of devs. The ones working on UI likely have nothing to do with this issue. The platform continues to evolve in multiple ways without being bottlenecked by one (admittedly serious) issue. As a dev manager myself, I get what you are saying, but the last time a Roll20 Team member contributed to this thread was in June. I'm beginning to feel like, regardless of how many teams Roll20 has, "not one team of devs" is working on this problem.

1692367796

Pro

Katie C. said: I've had people ship us computers that were showing the issue, we've set up test environments, we've made virtual machines that we choked down as hard as we could. It CAN be done. As someone who spent all of May and June swarming a performance issue with my team; I'm found it kind of weird that no one from Roll20 reached out and said, "Hey Rob, can you try ...".  I was posting details of what I was seeing and trying and got radio silence.

1692370348

KS Backer

Robert O. said: As someone who spent all of May and June swarming a performance issue with my team; I'm found it kind of weird that no one from Roll20 reached out and said, "Hey Rob, can you try ...".  I was posting details of what I was seeing and trying and got radio silence. SAME! And if they contacted me today, I would still 100% help! I have the old laptop upstairs, so it wouldn't be a problem to crack it open and do some debugging. 

1692373484

Consequenz

Pro

I agree that the most frustrating thing is the radio silence around this particular issue . It's one of the biggest threads, I see a lot of people giving feedback as to their experience and set-up and yet.... Nothing.  Just the community banging their heads on a wall of silence.  I understand the need for UI improvements and clickability from a marketing standpoint, don't get me wrong. I would LOVE to use all these things to improve my games.  But imagine    the frustration of seeing these announcements of UI updates when I know there is no way for me (or my players) to actually have a go and try them just because the base functionality isn't up to scratch.  I keep checking in every once in a while to see something has improved, but I've basically given up hope and have started to set up my games using alternative platforms to make sure I have some stuff worked out for when my subscription on roll20 runs out.  I'd love for it to be otherwise, because not only have I spent quite some money and time into this, I really felt you were going the right direction when it comes to UI and integration, but due to these ongoing CPU/gpu issues I have no intention of resubscribing because when it comes down to it I'm not getting anything for my money anymore. 

1692387465

dgrossjr

Plus

For the first time since being on R20, I am dreading tonight's game.  My buddy who has not had any issues with the CPU/GPU issue said he is now seeing the same issue I'm having from his Chromebook.  This fire is spreading and getting worse it seems.   I'm greatly disappointed in the R20 team communications and involvement on this.  I have seen little more than "Fill this form out" from them.   I have offered to send in either of my 2 laptops for testing.  I as many others have posted tweaks and system settings and many other posts over the last months as well.  R20 has a serious PR issue, Communication issue and as we all know development issue. As I read in the posts, I'm starting to look for alternatives and will be hard pressed to renew my subscription.

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Edited 1692812786

Riley D.

Roll20 Team

Hello everyone! First off, I want to apologize for the silence on this issue recently from our side. I know that's frustrating, and we'll do better in keeping this thread updated going forward. One of the discussions that we've been having a lot internally at Roll20 recently is how we can improve performance across the entire platform. There are a lot of exciting new things that are coming out, but it's important not to lose sight of what makes Roll20 special, in particular our mission to be easy to use, which means being performant and snappy right in your browser. There are a few things coming down the pipe that I think will help with this in general: We are currently doing some work to instrument better visibility for us into performance issues across the platform, especially on the VTT. This will help us better identify long-term trends so we know if new problems are happening or if something we did causes issues to many users across the site. We are in the process of embarking on an endeavor to revamp the internal underpinning of the platform and move everything onto Babylon JS. Some of the newer parts of the VTT already run on this but lots of it is still in legacy code that runs on much older libraries that are simply not going to keep up with what we want to do going forward. We have an internal prototype of this and the performance increases by unifying everything onto this one modern solution are very impressive. Particularly for Mac users, we have identified an issue with the Voice and Video chat that is causing a much higher CPU load than it should be, and we have a fix in the works for this. I wish that there was a magic wand that I could wave and get all of this work done immediately, because I know that having a bad experience when you're just trying to play your game is terrible. However, especially the Babylon rework is a major undertaking for us and it will take some time to complete (months, not years, but still not next week). I will be sharing more details about it on the blog as it gets underway to keep you all posted.

1692818373

Forum Champion

Marketplace Creator

API Scripter

Thanks for the update! I know this has to be the number one most frustrating Roll20 bug(s) to address.

1692834717

dgrossjr

Plus

Nice update Riley D.  thank you.  Looking forward to see this threads issue disappear for everyone!

1692895771

Pro

Riley D. said: Particularly for Mac users, we have identified an issue with the Voice and Video chat that is causing a much higher CPU load than it should be, and we have a fix in the works for this. I'm pretty sure this is my entire problem: works fine, gets slower with each new player Video Chat player that joins.  Anything I can do to help?  Like, can I help test?

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Edited 1693916536

Consequenz

Pro

Hi Riley, Thanks for the update, looking forward to the specific blogpost addressing this particular issue. I'm not sure whether I will be around to experience the implementations you are talking about seeing as  you seem to be implying that the product Ive paid for won't be viable again for months (!) My subscription will have run out at that point.  Don't get me wrong. I want you to succeed. I ve had loads of fun on this platform, and recommended it to loads of friends because it suited the needs I have to run my games.  I understand the difficulties in implementing a new system when you have an old architecture in place and you want the product to remain viable in the time it takes you to actually go live with the new system.  Bugs are notoriously difficult to fix, especially if the common denominator that underlies the bugs is as illusive as this apparently has been.  We (maybe more then others) understand that magic wands to fix things are objects of fantasy. But the options you are giving me and my players is that for our subscription we get to either play our games on different platforms and (maybe?) return or pause our hobby indefinitely untill you've figured things out.  I'm sorry. That's just not good enough.  If it were just me having this problem, and my subscription is the kindling that needs to burn to get the fire going. Fine.  But its not just me.  This has been the biggest thread by far. For months. I heartily agree with dgrossjjr. It needs to disappear.  Tell us what we can do to help.

1693490852

Lorewaker

I've performance issues on my chromebook but I've been able to run my games in shorter sessions without consistent problems. I'll be watching this post for further updates and advice.

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Edited 1693918016

Consequenz

Pro

Maybe I should've stated my question more clearly; Is paying a subscription for a product that does not work as advertised the only thing we can do to actually get this fixed? 

1693928674

Adam Caramon

Pro

Consequenz said: Maybe I should've stated my question more clearly; Is paying a subscription for a product that does not work as advertised the only thing we can do to actually get this fixed?  From what I have seen, the answer they have provided is they are working on it but can't provide any estimates of when or if it will ever be fixed.  The closest we have gotten so far to them even admitting this issue is due to a change on Roll20's side is: can we at least get a baseline admission from Roll20 that something that Roll20 changed on their end (most likely the Windows/Door update) caused the current problem? Absolutely! We have made a number of changes that could very well be the source of a number of problems in performance for some people. It's one of the main things we're looking into to try and solve these problems. And, you're right, the Windows/Doors could be the source of the problems. Here's some technical information that might help give you more context. That's about as best as you can hope for here when it comes to direct answers. -Adam

1693934932

Riley D.

Roll20 Team