High Processor Usage(Chrome)

Hey Adam,   I was really hoping they'd catch the absurdity of what they're proposing  as a "fix" but I guess admitting fault would also imply that restitution/reimbursement would be appropriate and I get why that would be a scary thought.  The problem is that, as far as I can tell, that's not what the people on this forum are after. We had a product that sort of worked, we were willing to pay for, and that showed potential. Both players and dm's had fun using it. Now, a lot of us (although I reckon we're not at the point that enough of us have these problems, else they would've been addressed months ago) are back at the point where it just  shows potential but is otherwise unusable for the purpose it's made for.  We went from a  kickstarter product (not finished, but workable and with potential) to a kickstarter goal (we might be able to create a VTT environment that might be easy to use, if you're willing to give us the money, time and benefit of the doubt.)  That's insane to me. But you're probably (and unfortunately) right. These very broad admissions that something might be up in "general performance" seems to be the closest we'll get when it comes to addressing these very specific performance issues.  -Consequenz Edit: this cross posted with Riley's response. And all though I do appreciate the feedback he's/you've given which makes some of the above post redundant, I left it up because other points in it still stand, if you ask me.  Ofcourse I'm looking forward to changes for the better, and I'm very much willing to contribute to a solution, but to state that this will probably take months to fix is not something I can personally work with. 

Intel i9 13900k processor Asus Z790 Pro motherboard Asus ROG 4090 video card 32gb DDR 5 Vengeance Ram 1500w powersupply LIan Li full tower liquid cooled case.   Can run the highest end VR sim racing games on a full motion sim platform at max settings..... Also lags to hell in Roll20.  Was hoping that this monster rig could bully its way past roll20's ongoing problems.   I had this issue with my last PC build as well.  High CPU usage, and super poor performance.  I was running a 1080ti in my old build... do we know if maybe this problem is an issue with Roll20 not liking NVidia or more specifically GeForce cards? 

I'll have a "full house" in my play group tomorrow night for the first time since the summer started.  I guess we'll see how it works out....

Riley D. said: We released an update today that included the new Explorer Mode performance enhancements that I mentioned previously. While the gains here may vary based on your specific game, especially for games using Explorer Mode where you have a large map with lots of walls and lights, you should see a noticeable performance improvement. We shifted a lot of the work that was on the "main thread" (which blocks other activity like panning when it's heavily utilized) off so it feels much smoother. We are continuing our internal test of the Voice and Video Mac CPU bugfix as well, and I'm hoping to have movement on that still this week. I'll keep you all posted. Any word on why a brand new empty game with no additional pages, maps, lighting, or tokens now uses 100% of the CPU and/or GPU doing nothing after the windows update, when before a game could idle at 0-2% usage of just the cpu?

Riley D. said: We released an update today that included the new Explorer Mode performance enhancements that I mentioned previously. While the gains here may vary based on your specific game, especially for games using Explorer Mode where you have a large map with lots of walls and lights, you should see a noticeable performance improvement. We shifted a lot of the work that was on the "main thread" (which blocks other activity like panning when it's heavily utilized) off so it feels much smoother. We are continuing our internal test of the Voice and Video Mac CPU bugfix as well, and I'm hoping to have movement on that still this week. I'll keep you all posted. Interestingly enough,  my session on Friday was the smoothest it's been in a long while (2019 Macbook Pro with Radeon Pro 5500M 8G).  I had multiple people on video and was running all the other tools on the same device (D&D Beyond Encounters, Evernote for Adventure Notes, etc.).  This is the first time in months that I didn't need a second laptop to run Evernote and D&D Beyond.   Looking forward to these other improvements.

Riley D. said: Jake W. said: Any word on why a brand new empty game with no additional pages, maps, lighting, or tokens now uses 100% of the CPU and/or GPU doing nothing after the windows update, when before a game could idle at 0-2% usage of just the cpu? You're saying if you just load into a totally empty game with nothing else open in your browser it's maxing out your CPU and GPU? I just tested that on Chrome on my Mac and it's using like 9% of my CPU just sitting there. What OS/browser are you in? And just to be sure this is when you're just sitting there not panning or scrolling or anything? I am indeed saying that's what happens. I even spoke to someone, I believe his name was Jeffery, via discord and streamed it happening in real time for them, swapping between an empty game on the live server, to the exact same game copied over onto the development servers. Showing him that the live server game used crazy amounts of resources and then the dev server just sat at 2%. I showed it happening in a fully updated Chrome browser as well as a fully updated Firefox browser, both on Windows 10. And yes it was just sitting there, not panning or scrolling. I also showed it with and without hardware acceleration. But I don't think just shoving the workload to the GPU is a solution when it wasn't happening on the development server, and even when hardware acceleration was taking the brunt of the workload the empty game still ran terribly. On a separate note he also asked me to share the link to one of my games where I told him I had to use legacy lighting because it was less resource intensive than the newer version of lighting. Also my groups use discord and play with all the video and voice stuff turned off.

I still have high CPU usage even with Firefox, but not as much as Chrome.  Just got a new laptop, also, was like originally $1,000.  I'm guessing, though, it's because I have 7 of us on video/audio. Although the audio sucks so we use Discord (using more CPU). I'm also trying to stream on OBS. Now, my new laptop has helped me handle all of that, but Roll20 gets laggy whenever I'm using the Integrated Video, streaming, and running Discord for audio.  Been supporting Roll20 since it began but I'm beginning to wonder if I'll have better performance with Foundry maybe? 

Hi Riley, I've posted several times to this thread and am yet to be able to get any direct response, so I'm hoping for at least an acknowledgement of my situation and what I've noticed is causing me issues. I'm on a mid 2015 macbook pro with integrated GFX which will ramp up to very high CPU and GFX loads resulting in high temps to CPU and GFX and max fan usage immediately. This happens on completely new and empty games as well as ones with content. It also happens irrespective of Voice/Video being on/off. The only thing that seems to remedy this is by zooming all the way out of the map, so I believe it's due to GFX effort in scaling/zooming in. I don't know what processes are involved in this from a technical perspective, but I thought it was quite a useful observation wrt pointing you guys in the direction of the issue. I'd say this was a new issue, but given it's been months since it started, it's now the norm unfortunately and makes the platform unusable really. If you could answer this basic questions about mac related issues and fixes you've been working on, that would be a helpful start: Would you expect turning off video/voice to nominally remedy the mac issues you are currently dealing with? NB my high resource useage is independent of video/voice. Riley D. said: We released an update today that included the new Explorer Mode performance enhancements that I mentioned previously. While the gains here may vary based on your specific game, especially for games using Explorer Mode where you have a large map with lots of walls and lights, you should see a noticeable performance improvement. We shifted a lot of the work that was on the "main thread" (which blocks other activity like panning when it's heavily utilized) off so it feels much smoother. We are continuing our internal test of the Voice and Video Mac CPU bugfix as well, and I'm hoping to have movement on that still this week. I'll keep you all posted.

Riley D. said: Jake W. said: Any word on why a brand new empty game with no additional pages, maps, lighting, or tokens now uses 100% of the CPU and/or GPU doing nothing after the windows update, when before a game could idle at 0-2% usage of just the cpu? You're saying if you just load into a totally empty game with nothing else open in your browser it's maxing out your CPU and GPU? I just tested that on Chrome on my Mac and it's using like 9% of my CPU just sitting there. What OS/browser are you in? And just to be sure this is when you're just sitting there not panning or scrolling or anything? Can also confirm.  On a windows pc, with nothing else opened but chrome, in an empty game (not panning/scrolling, mouse at full rest) I'm getting CPU/GPU usage round about 40/80

Riley D. said: Okay. Let me do some digging this weekend and see what I can figure out about these reports. In general the work we're putting in on Babylon should greatly help with these issues, but I'd like to fully understand them to make sure we are actually fixing them.  What would also be helpful to know for folks who are seeing the issue where just being in a blank game is using a lot of CPU/GPU, does changing the setting in the Player Settings under Graphics for capping the framerate make any difference between e.g. 30 and Uncapped? Gave it a shot. (No audio /video connection, blank game, no other players connected.) Uncapped CPU 11 % -GPU 94% 60 MFPS CPU 10% - GPU 83% 30 MFPS CPU 10% - GPU 77%

Riley D. said: Okay. Let me do some digging this weekend and see what I can figure out about these reports. In general the work we're putting in on Babylon should greatly help with these issues, but I'd like to fully understand them to make sure we are actually fixing them.  What would also be helpful to know for folks who are seeing the issue where just being in a blank game is using a lot of CPU/GPU, does changing the setting in the Player Settings under Graphics for capping the framerate make any difference between e.g. 30 and Uncapped? It does not really help.

IT does seem to be a static thing regardless of game size for people who are having this issue. Myself included. It does seem to be ABIT better since the last update for myself at least but just that instead of ripping through my CPU at 80-100% it's at 70-80% which is def a right step and I thank you guys and your team for your hard work so far and going forward.

By the way, just checked the values you wanted in my normal (read: convoluted/disorganised/multiple campaigns played/archived maps/notes the lot) game and basically got the same readings even with me connected to integrated A/V and with music running. (no other players connected)

Riley, Thanks for the response, I've tried to be as descriptive and 'scientific' about this as possible to give you as much info as my intellect allows. In each case I leave the computer to reach a steady state before quickly changing to the activity monitor to screen grab the information. NB my camera doesn't work. 1. Control: Chrome open on forum page. New Roll20 game open on the other tab (as default, no changes to anything). 2. New empty game screen. No zooming, all default settings. Left for approx 3mins to reach steady state. - 30fps - Voice&Video ON 2a. As per 2. but without voice & video. Changed refresh, reconnected and reloaded to make sure change was implemented. Took about 2mins to stabilise temps based on fan speeds. - 30fps - Voice&video OFF 2b. As per 2 [with voice/vid]. but with 60fps. Very quickly heated up and stayed at max fan speeds. - 60fps - Voice&Video ON 2bi. As per 2b. without voice/vid. Marginally slower to heat up compared to 2b. - 60fps - Voice&Video OFF So out of those, the best performing are the 30fps tests (2. and 2a.) by a distance. As i've mentioned before, zooming out to 10% appears to reduce the load on the machine dramatically. So Zooming out for 30fps and 60fps are as follows: 3. As per 2a. zoom out to 10%. As if it's just another tab, so very similar to the Control (1.). - 30fps - Voice& Video OFF 3a. As per 3. but 60fps and with Voice&Video. I left the zoom at 100% to heat things up, but after zooming out to 10% everything cooled down pretty quickly back to levels similar to control (1.) and the 30fps zoomed out (3.). - 60fps - Voice&Video ON So, in conclusion, the level of zoom is the major factor in performance. FPS is significant only when zoomed in at 100%. Video/Voice is unclear as my camera is broken on my laptop and the difference it made to performance is negligible. I could provide more data points at different levels of zoom, but that's more work when I think the trend is pretty clear and warrants some degree of investigation. Is there some kind of inefficiency in rendering the page based on the absolute amount of rendering needing to be done? I really have no idea, only you guys would know more. It would be great to know if anyone else here can replicate these results on other machines possibly? Obviously, the platform can't be used at that zoom level, but I think there's a clear direction for improvement, certainly in my situation. Riley D. said: Adago said: Hi Riley, I've posted several times to this thread and am yet to be able to get any direct response, so I'm hoping for at least an acknowledgement of my situation and what I've noticed is causing me issues. I'm on a mid 2015 macbook pro with integrated GFX which will ramp up to very high CPU and GFX loads resulting in high temps to CPU and GFX and max fan usage immediately. This happens on completely new and empty games as well as ones with content. It also happens irrespective of Voice/Video being on/off. The only thing that seems to remedy this is by zooming all the way out of the map, so I believe it's due to GFX effort in scaling/zooming in. I don't know what processes are involved in this from a technical perspective, but I thought it was quite a useful observation wrt pointing you guys in the direction of the issue. I'd say this was a new issue, but given it's been months since it started, it's now the norm unfortunately and makes the platform unusable really. If you could answer this basic questions about mac related issues and fixes you've been working on, that would be a helpful start: Would you expect turning off video/voice to nominally remedy the mac issues you are currently dealing with? NB my high resource useage is independent of video/voice. See my above response for more data you can give to help with this, but also just noting, if under the Settings, Audio/Video, Chat Tech you choose "None" (the game will reload if you had anything else selected), and you are still seeing that issue, then the Voice and Video for Mac fix we are working on would not solve your problem.

While I appreciate that there is finally serious progress to be made, it sadly also speaks for the sentiment of this entire thread that it took almost a year for a single team member out of multiple to finally read what was mentioned multiple times here (that it's happening in new, blank games, too), as well as in the feedback form that was posted back in the starting days of this issue, and suddenly find the likely source of the issue because of it. Still thankful for the text updates, though. I'm looking forward to hopefully see a fix for my group in the future.

Tonight I ran a "Among Us" type scenario using dynamic lighting and with all players on video.  Had to use Chrome as Firefox was too slow but this was WAAAY better than before.  I was never able to use dynamic lighting at all.   Still work to be done but at least one major problem (Mac support) is much better now.

Riley D. said: Robert O. said: Tonight I ran a "Among Us" type scenario using dynamic lighting and with all players on video.  Had to use Chrome as Firefox was too slow but this was WAAAY better than before.  I was never able to use dynamic lighting at all.   Still work to be done but at least one major problem (Mac support) is much better now. Glad to hear it! Thanks for reporting back. I also wanted to update this thread in general so it doesn't get stale. We have a prototype of the fix that I mentioned that we should begin testing next week. At this point we are planning to roll this out ahead of the general Babylon rework, assuming we don't run into any show-stopping bugs that make it impossible to do so. I'll keep you all posted. Thank you! Thanks for the heads up, looking forward to it!  Hoping the bugs will keep/crawl back to their murky homes instead of showing up.

I was pointed to this thread from a thread of mine asking about performance, as I'm seeing high CPU utilization in Chrome on Windows 10. I haven't been able to go through all of the posts in this thread, but can someone tell me, am I potentially experiencing the problem being discussed here? Mine is a brand new game, and I haven't done anything with any kind of lighting, explorer mode, etc. In fact, all I have are a few maps and a few tokens, and all we've done is a session 0. But when I launch the game, my CPU spikes like 40+% in Chrome and everything gets super laggy. Are there any workarounds, like using a different browser, or stay away from dynamic lighting for now? Thanks all!

Steven B. said: I was pointed to this thread from a thread of mine asking about performance, as I'm seeing high CPU utilization in Chrome on Windows 10. I haven't been able to go through all of the posts in this thread, but can someone tell me, am I potentially experiencing the problem being discussed here? Mine is a brand new game, and I haven't done anything with any kind of lighting, explorer mode, etc. In fact, all I have are a few maps and a few tokens, and all we've done is a session 0. But when I launch the game, my CPU spikes like 40+% in Chrome and everything gets super laggy. Are there any workarounds, like using a different browser, or stay away from dynamic lighting for now? Thanks all! That was basically my issue when I started this thread. I was having the issue mainly in chrome, but also in Firefox. It was in any game, even brand new ones that had nothing in them and lighting was turned off. This all started immediately following an update that added "windows" to dynamic lighting walls, and at the time pro subscribers had access to the development server which was a version or 2 behind the production server which is the main one everyone uses; And the issue did not exists on the development server which did not have the "Windows" feature on it. That was the workaround I was using with my players until they got rid of the development server for some other reason. After that the only other option is to use hardware acceleration to have the GPU lighten the load on the CPU. But in my opinion that isn't a solution, that is a stopgap. Fortunately or unfortunately over the past few weeks I just happened to get a new computer that isn't having the issue. I'll keep this open in a new tab and check it as much as I can.

Jake W. said: That was basically my issue when I started this thread. I was having the issue mainly in chrome, but also in Firefox. It was in any game, even brand new ones that had nothing in them and lighting was turned off. This all started immediately following an update that added "windows" to dynamic lighting walls, and at the time pro subscribers had access to the development server which was a version or 2 behind the production server which is the main one everyone uses; And the issue did not exists on the development server which did not have the "Windows" feature on it. That was the workaround I was using with my players until they got rid of the development server for some other reason. After that the only other option is to use hardware acceleration to have the GPU lighten the load on the CPU. But in my opinion that isn't a solution, that is a stopgap. Fortunately  or unfortunately over the past few weeks I just happened to get a new computer that isn't having the issue. I'll keep this open in a new tab and check it as much as I can. Well, blah. OK, I'll keep my eyes open. Planning on session 1 next weekend, but not sure how well it will go if performance is terrible.

Just in case it helps anyone else I was getting memory out errors and extremely high CPU usage all over the place. My GM and I finally worked out it was the Turn Marker 1 APi that was the culprit, might help some of you.

Tony W. said: Just in case it helps anyone else I was getting memory out errors and extremely high CPU usage all over the place. My GM and I finally worked out it was the Turn Marker 1 APi that was the culprit, might help some of you. Interesting. I use that one too. Just to test things out, I just disabled that script and launched my game in Chrome (I'm the GM), and I'm still getting big CPU spikes when I touch anything. I also noticed last night that when I launch the game from, of all things, Microsoft Edge, I don't have the same CPU issue. Gods forbid I have to run my game from Edge, but just FYI to anyone listening, it seems like that might  be a workaround. I don't have a session until Saturday, but I have a lot of game prep to work on this week. I'm going to try to do it in Edge just to see if it continues to behave well there.

Joining the club here. My Roll20 maxed out a few weeks ago. I've done nothing different to usual and don't play the sort of games where I need all the fancy widgets (not yet anyway). For me, I can just about manage to set things up but, as soon as anyone joins the game, CPU & GPU max out, fans go into overdrive and everything takes like 10 seconds or more to select and redraw. My connection also drops out whilst this is happening. It's basically unusable for me at the minute! I've tried all the help file solutions and read through this entire thread. Nothing seems to fix it. Like I say, I've changed nothing my end and it was fine so I'm a bit flummoxed. Hoping there's a solution soon.

Adding another to the list.  CPU crawls with no HW acceleration.  When HW acceleration is on, GPU runs at or near 100%.  A couple players in my group are experiencing the same thing.  We've spent hours of game time trying different browsers, graphics settings, etc. with no appreciable difference discovered to support a work around.  Our campaign has stopped until we find another solution.  If I put my software diagnostic hat on I'd consider a few things: 1. Independent software features may be running on the same "thread".  Voice, video, and in game performance crawl to a halt simultaneously while other windows function do not appear to be directly affected. 2. Something is iterating as fast as it can taking up processing resources, regardless of need and it seems to get worse over time. Possibly a re-entrance problem or something is supposed to be synchronoua or periodic but isn't. 3. Suggest running real-time thread analysis tools and look for thread safety issues on a system that can reproduce the issue. 4.  As always, look for dead code that seems innocuous...  I hope this gets addressed soon either through a fix or workaround.  It is a longstanding problem for a significant portion of your customer base and customer confidence is a serious metric for any business.  Good luck. J

Just checking back in on this issue since safari broke for me with the new page folders update. Chrome is still broken and unusable for me. Empty game spikes up cpu/gpu and causes lag on everything in a regular game such as clicking on tokens, opening a character sheet, rolling dice, scrolling the map, etc. Macbook pro 2015. My wife, who recently bought a top of the line gaming laptop has no problems now (but her previous top of the line gaming laptop from 2018 did). I was using safari as a workaround since chrome has been broken since the windows and doors update, but now I can't use safari either. I actually don't think I can technically run my game on roll20 anymore, but I'm going to be trying workarounds instead of prepping for my game today.

Hi Robert! Can you verify that you have tried toggling Hardware Acceleration while in your browser? FWIW, power of the PC does not seem to be the deciding factor in who is suffering from this issue. I have not experienced the symptoms reported, on Mac (M1 or previous) or Chromebook, on any browser. I absolutely understand that it is happening to the people in this thread, but I would hate for people to throw money at upgrading their PCs for this, only to discover that it's not the deciding factor.

Upgrading CPU/GPU just gives Roll20 more power to use up :P

Ha, I spoke too soon about my wife's new laptop. Top of the line gaming laptop and it does have some lag here and there in game. Comment sidebar scrolls really slow. But definitely much more usable than previously. For me, I found a workaround. I was able to get safari working again by toggling off the new UI. I forgot that was an option, but it allows me to switch pages again so back in business. For chrome - yes I have tried all the things. 6 months ago? Has it been that long now? Anyways, still broken.

Just cancelled my subscription and am considering moving to another VT due to this issue.

Steve B. said: Just cancelled my subscription and am considering moving to another VT due to this issue. you may not be able to answer my question since you dropped your sub, but which VTT? I'm considering the same. I run two different 5e Games and it's getting tiresome to deal with the CPU issues to the point of having to use Discord on my phone instead of my PC just to help trim as many apps as possible while playing.

Hi! We're nearing a year since this thread was started ... It's been about five months since roll20 acknowledged something might be up, and over a month since the supposed fix was going to be tested.....  Any news?

Uhnk13 said: Steve B. said: Just cancelled my subscription and am considering moving to another VT due to this issue. you may not be able to answer my question since you dropped your sub, but which VTT? I'm considering the same. I run two different 5e Games and it's getting tiresome to deal with the CPU issues to the point of having to use Discord on my phone instead of my PC just to help trim as many apps as possible while playing. Using discord on my phone is what i had to do as well. :/ It really sucks. I haven't been able to record my games for almost a year. It's gotten abit better though lately. So i do see some progress. I just hope one of these updates will be the one that really streamlines it.

I have 4 regular games and 2 intermittent ones and I have had this same GPU issue on all of them. We've all moved over to google meets or Microsoft teams instead of using the integrated voice/video. But deactivating our voice/video does nothing to solve the issue. Any time a Roll20 window is "on screen", it immediately starts using 100% of the GPU. My wife and I have Microsoft Surface Pros/Books. My PC doesn't have this issue, and is also a windows machine, but we don't regularly play without our laptops. I am certainly considering moving over to Foundry VTT. They have some great looking features, but I've been holding off changing platforms all year because I am quite loyal to Roll20. But this issue not being fixed for a year has been hard to deal with. Roll20 is only half functioning, and only when I minimize the Roll20 windows for long periods of the game, so my computer doesn't overheat. Super bummed about Roll20's inability to solve this, and may switch to Foundry VTT if it's not solved before 2024. I hope they fix this soon!

Same for me regarding the GPU! My "Workaround" is that I simply switch Tabs until it cools down (as long as I don't need the tab open)... AND it does NOT matter if there is a map or not. I do have this even in an EMPTY game!

Also facing this issue. It turns Roll20 almost unusable for me :(

Any update on these issues? Last ticket they told me to check our computers, but we never had these problems until circa-February 23 Integrated audio-video chat has become literally unusable, and any video chat program does not have a "private" botton, which is one of the greatest features imo.

Seems that there is not that much to say from Roll20. Too sad. I invested in this platform but losing players because they cant play will eventually get me to other VTTs without the CPU/GPU issues. I am really upset. This should be a priority.

Would be cool to get some update regarding the previous news about a possible fix. At this point, it's cruel torture to receive Roll20 newsletters without any chance to enjoy any of the announced content for a year now.

Back to the wall of silence. Thoroughly disgusted by this whole thing by now.  Had a brief surge of hope when they admitted they dropped the ball on their end, but instead of picking it up it feels like they kicked it away and started looking over the horizon to New Babylon. My subscription will not be renewed. 

We hardly enjoy the game since 2023 upgrades, is there any chance to go back to the 2022 platform? Maybe to give the option to use one interface or the other while you try to solve the issue? As a lot of fellow players here we are just frustrated and can't get over the fact that this problem was caused by a platform update and it seems that it's not addressed as it should.