Please make the chart refresh rate settable

[Trader_55]

I apologize if this has already been done, but I can't find it in the settings and the last thread I found from this forum indicates that NT still has a locked-in refresh rate of 250 ms for every chart.

Guys, not to be insulting, but this feature is ridiculous. I had to fight tooth and nail to get you guys to make NT7 settable on a per-window refresh rate and explain to you why that was important, and in creating NT8, you just went back to the same wrong decision you made in the first place.

Now, I know that your excuse for this is "well, we don't want people setting the refresh rate too fast, because that might cause system performance issues, so we lock it at 250 ms". That's great, but has it occurred to you that not being able to SLOW DOWN the refresh rate causes the exact performance issues you are trying to avoid?

Has it occurred to you that someone might want to plot weekly and monthly charts alongside intraday charts, for example? What if someone has one monitor with longer-term monitoring charts open (say, 30-40 weekly charts, like I have), alongside maybe a few intraday charts?

Obviously for the intraday charts you will want a refresh rate of 250 ms, which is pretty fast. But why oh why would you want your weekly or monthly charts refreshing at that rate? You might not want them refreshing more than every 10 seconds or so, right?

Has it occurred to you that your silly locked-in refresh rate causes the system to refresh those charts literally 40-50 times more than is really necessary, thereby causing performance issues?

This would all be fine if NT 8 was great with charting performance, but it's not. In fact, it is undeniably worse than NT7, and that's pretty amazing considering it's a newer product. In fact, with my setup of 35 weekly charts , another few daily and monthly charts, and 12 intraday charts, the program is close to unusable. And that's on a 3930K Intel CPU, which is a 6 core beast overclocked at 4.4 GHz. Task manager shows the CPU spiking on NT8. I also have next to no indicators on the charts, literally just a line plotted with the last traded price, and some vertical lines to separate every hour/day/month. NT7 runs more charts with way more calculations and does not stress the CPU as much.

Bottom line, locking in a refresh rate of 250ms for every single chart is just plain dumb, and is causing the very performance issues you are trying to avoid. If you want to make the minimum 250 ms, fine. But allow us to put any maximum value we want in there so we can slow down the rate on non-critical charts and free up the CPU for other things.

I can't believe that I even have to bring this up, this issue was already argued in NT7, and it is so incredibly obvious. Please just do it immediately as a top priority... thanks.

P.S. As I said, I apologize if this has already been done, but if so you can direct me to the spot in the settings where I can change it.

[NinjaTrader_PatrickG]

Thanks for the feedback.

It is not currently possible to adjust the refresh rate of a chart window in NinjaTrader 8, but we are tracking user interest.

I will add your vote to this feature request and update this post when I receive the tracking number.

EDIT: The tracking number is SFT-1536.

[koganam]

Thanks for the feedback.

It is not currently possible to adjust the refresh rate of a chart window in NinjaTrader 8, but we are tracking user interest.

I will add your vote to this feature request and update this post when I receive the tracking number.

Then add me in, and at least 8 other developers with whom I am in contact. Please.

Edit: OK. Just add me. If the others want themselves added, I will let them know and direct them to this thread.

[NinjaTrader_PatrickG]

I've added your vote to SFT-1536, koganam.

[eDanny]

Hmmm, my post was not recorded. Trying again, add a vote. If allowing a longer refresh rate, you should also allow a shorter.

[NinjaTrader_PatrickG]

Added, eDanny

[Trader_55]

Just some more thoughts. When people load up NT for the first time and try it out, they are going to judge your software by how it performs. I can assure you, in comparing your CPU performance against your competitors like Sierra Chart, you are NOT holding up well. Futures charts are especially problematic because feeds like Rithmic are particularly data intensive over something lighter like stock feeds. In other words, you already have issues with this in comparison to how other programs can manage the same kind of data and not stress out the CPU.

Perhaps in addition to making the chart rate settable, you might want to establish a default that is slower for longer-term charts. So for example, for a daily chart, you make the default refresh rate 1 second. And for Weekly and Monthly charts, you make it 2 seconds. This will give better performance out of the box, and give people a better impression right away without forcing them into the settings to figure out what is wrong.

Also, I am not exactly sure why you guys are still "tracking" this as an issue and waiting for more responses. Just what are you waiting for, another 20 complaints? This forum has already had multiple people complaining about this issue in multiple threads, and the last poster said that there were 8 other developers who wanted the same thing. So 10 complaints is not enough, you need more, is that it?

Not sure who is running your company or how they make decisions, but I can assure you that most people aren't going to come here and complain to you about this. They are going to install your trial software, see the bad performance, and never buy a license from you at all. And you'll never even know about it or hear from them because they'll go to another provider. Only 1 out of 10 people will bother to come here and waste their time trying to get you guys to do basic things like this, in the way that I am. That's because I already have a lifetime license, so I am locked in with you guys. If I wasn't, I can assure you that I would not be buying or using your software as-is with this kind of performance and no ability to change it, and if I had to do it again, no way would you be getting my money. This is the exact same fight with the exact same arguments I had 7 years ago with NT7 development, and now we're just having it again.

When 10 people all complain about the same thing, it's a safe bet that 100 more out there are thinking the same thing but just not posting. Maybe someone higher up at your company should think about that... no need to respond, you just might want to forward this to them.

[koganam]

Just some more thoughts. When people load up NT for the first time and try it out, they are going to judge your software by how it performs. I can assure you, in comparing your CPU performance against your competitors like Sierra Chart, you are NOT holding up well. Futures charts are especially problematic because feeds like Rithmic are particularly data intensive over something lighter like stock feeds. In other words, you already have issues with this in comparison to how other programs can manage the same kind of data and not stress out the CPU.

Perhaps in addition to making the chart rate settable, you might want to establish a default that is slower for longer-term charts. So for example, for a daily chart, you make the default refresh rate 1 second. And for Weekly and Monthly charts, you make it 2 seconds. This will give better performance out of the box, and give people a better impression right away without forcing them into the settings to figure out what is wrong.

Also, I am not exactly sure why you guys are still "tracking" this as an issue and waiting for more responses. Just what are you waiting for, another 20 complaints? This forum has already had multiple people complaining about this issue in multiple threads, and the last poster said that there were 8 other developers who wanted the same thing. So 10 complaints is not enough, you need more, is that it?

Not sure who is running your company or how they make decisions, but I can assure you that most people aren't going to come here and complain to you about this. They are going to install your trial software, see the bad performance, and never buy a license from you at all. And you'll never even know about it or hear from them because they'll go to another provider. Only 1 out of 10 people will bother to come here and waste their time trying to get you guys to do basic things like this, in the way that I am. That's because I already have a lifetime license, so I am locked in with you guys. If I wasn't, I can assure you that I would not be buying or using your software as-is with this kind of performance and no ability to change it, and if I had to do it again, no way would you be getting my money. This is the exact same fight with the exact same arguments I had 7 years ago with NT7 development, and now we're just having it again.

When 10 people all complain about the same thing, it's a safe bet that 100 more out there are thinking the same thing but just not posting. Maybe someone higher up at your company should think about that... no need to respond, you just might want to forward this to them.

On the assumption that the figures that were bandied about eons ago when I was in business school still hold, 100 is off a tad. At that time, the thinking de jour was that: "A customer who has a good experience tells 5 people on average: a customer who has a bad experience tells an average of 23 people." So we are likely talking about possibly 230 people or so who are saying nothing to NinjaTrader, but have heard the bad impression.

Just for the record, I have only discussed it with the 8 others of whom I spoke, so I am a tad remiss in spreading the bad impression. I do not generally bad mouth NT to the general public, so it will probably stay that way.

[gurko]

Adding in my continued very stong interest in this. I had brought up the topic (obviously again) in March this year. While my use-case and reasoning was for a shorter refreesh interval, I now see that there are perfectly compelling arguments also for the opposite. So there's a multitude of different reasons coming from different users to request the same thing, which has obviously been debated for years, with a very unsatisfying outcome to date.

The refresh rate has to be configurable per chart.

Note I cannot use a minimum of 250ms, I need at least 100ms or less, as described before. In my setup, exactly one chart would run at the maximum refresh rate, all the others would be ticking at a lazy 1 sec or slower. If it helps, I'd need this refresh rate for the chart only, not for any attached indicators (which I don't use except for volume).

I appreciate the hard work that went into fixing so many bugs in the recent 8.0.7.0 release. I consider SFT-1536 not a feature request, but a critical bug report, as it critically impacts the usefulness of NT8 for my trading. Looking forward to see this bug fixed in 8.0.8.0. Thank you!

Oh, and I also happen to know 3 people who have not spoken out here, but have complained privately about this.

Kind regards,
gurko

[NinjaTrader_Brett]

Trader55,

Would you have a quick moment to write me at platformsupport at ninjatrader dot com ATTN: Brett. I'd like to get your workspace and the name of the connection technology you use. If you don't use any third parties as you mention then I'd like to run your workspace on some test machines here. Since I'd like to see what you mean by high CPU / unusable on that setup and furthermore if/as I confirm that setup does have performance impact I'd like to run tests to figure out what that exactly is. Since it may be related to refresh rate, it may not be.

Some background info if its relevant for you:

- We believe in simplicity over complexity.
- We believe that the majority of users should not have to play with such 'complex' settings...and in principle it should just "work".
- We get countless support tickets in NinjaTrader 7 from users experiencing bad performance in NinjaTrader 7 only to see they've adjusted the refresh rate down on charts. Users looking for 'faster charts' instinctively reduce the number not realizing they actually increase CPU load and hence actually make performance worse. (We even put a modal dialog warning when setting it lower but found users just ignore the dialog)
- Hence there is a strong feeling that the exposing of the property in NinjaTrader 7 overall made us worse off then it helped us. Hopefully you can see the 'conundrum'.

I'm just sharing in case it was helpful for you to see the other side of the coin. Though the fact still remains you report bad performance in your workspace you use on a daily basis. This is what I want to research and look into first. We then could decide if the feature of settable chart refresh is the cause or not.

[JerryWar]

Brett,
Some good points. My two cents - Add the feature but add a displayed Yellow warning in the log file on start up if one of more charts are below the setting you determine to be acceptable and may impact performance. This way the user is hit with it everyday on startup.

[koganam]

Brett,
Some good points. My two cents - Add the feature but add a displayed Yellow warning in the log file on start up if one of more charts are below the setting you determine to be acceptable and may impact performance. This way the user is hit with it everyday on startup.

It will also make it much easier for your support staff, as the now almost mandatory submission of logs will immediately show that the user has cranked up the refresh. No need to go looking remotely.

[gurko]

Dear Brett,

your insights into the other side of the coin are indeed most valuable, very much appreciated. In fact, I suspected as much.

Trader55,
- We believe in simplicity over complexity.
- We believe that the majority of users should not have to play with such 'complex' settings...and in principle it should just "work".

I agree. I also understand that the default answer to a request should be "no", as not having some functionality usually means less complexity, less code, less bugs, less support cases, less cost.

- We get countless support tickets in NinjaTrader 7 from users experiencing bad performance in NinjaTrader 7 only to see they've adjusted the refresh rate down on charts. Users looking for 'faster charts' instinctively reduce the number not realizing they actually increase CPU load and hence actually make performance worse. (We even put a modal dialog warning when setting it lower but found users just ignore the dialog)
- Hence there is a strong feeling that the exposing of the property in NinjaTrader 7 overall made us worse off then it helped us. Hopefully you can see the 'conundrum'.

I can see the conundrum. However, not meaning any offense, I would like to take the stance of a customer and state that not having this property does not help me, on the contrary, and that is what is important to me. The software does not do what I need it to do. So I may have made a mistake in choosing it. If you have to optimize for the majority of users and for lower support load, well, I quite understand.

I wonder if there actually is a technical solution to this conundrum and the "should just work" principle. It doesn't make sense to refresh a chart faster than the market updates are coming in. It doesn't make sense to refresh a weekly chart 4 times a second. And it doesn't make sense to refresh it faster than the CPU can cope. Now we know when market data comes in, can we also know if the CPU is "idle enough"? I could probably live with aperiodic/irregular chart refreshes, best-effort-style, provided this will be faster than 250ms most of the time (and not much slower all of the time). I am sure you have already discussed this internally.

Kind regards,
gurko

[NinjaTrader_Brett]

Yes thanks for the input, all discussed internally at length and then some, appreciate the structured feedback. It helps with shaping the product.

There's two cases here we're discussing:

1) Chart refresh we want to update 'faster'. This is a valid suggestion and feedback which we would take into account as we spec and develop future features and functionality. We're tracking this feedback and have incremented that count based on your post.

2) Chart refresh we want to update 'slower'. This suggestion is coming in since performance is not in acceptable range with a setup and we're looking for a solution to improve performance. I want to understand why performance is bad in the first place before moving forward which is the point I was trying to get too in my post.

Thanks.

[brucerobinson]

Well I just happened to stumble upon this thread and add my vote for this feature.
My blood is now back below boiling point, so I'll chip in my 2 cents.

I looked at 8 with a view to migrating when it was supposedly out of beta.
I found several features I use in 7 missing and quickly stopped that project. My 7 setup has been pretty stable for some time, but only after a huge investment of time and little value-added guidance from Ninja. Now it ain't broke, so I don't fix it. To get it to do what I want my setup to do, I had to do (amongst other things) exactly what Trader_55 points out - 'customise' chart properties' refresh rates APPROPRIATE TO THE CHART in order to efficiently use resources.

Recent increase in market activity caused 'load on PC' problems occasionally, so I looked for some value-added guidance from Support. 'Take all your indicators off and start from scratch' sort of stuff. Never an enquiry or mention of what my setup is and what might be consuming resources in order to gain insight and provide value. So I stopped that project.

It is all very well drawing the conclusion Users have inadvertently caused problems Support have to respond to by, for example, speeding up refresh, but they are not changing for no reason, they are doing so to get the product to do what they want it to, and other products offer. Support are having to deal with the 'aftermath' - there is scant information from Ninja , the standard 'Help' document on performance issues is pitiful and hasn't changed since release. Full extent is approx 'Calculate on Bar Close if set to false is CPU intensive'. Wow, 8 years of cumulative corporate product experience available at my fingertips. How about some useful Help - if you crank up this setting and have lots of charts...., having this setting faster than your chart speed is pointless and will use PC resources un-necessarily which may lead to performance degradation. For 5 minute charts we recommend.... and multiples thereof.......Perhaps you should look at WHY people are doing this.

Support suggested I looked at 8. Still doesn't have features I need. Looked at 8 stability. Not pretty reading. Not going to be migrating any time soon by the looks of it.

In your 'conundrum' between faster and slower refresh, in my experience many traders of many styles and instruments use multiple 'speed' charts whether that be time-based, tick-based etc. and also trade and (wish to) have multiple instruments' charts open at the same time

Whilst I'm not a developer/programmer, I think I would be on fairly safe ground in saying refresh rate is significant wrt resources consumed (I know it is for my setup).

You have a product for a customer base that uses different chart 'times' (in refresh terms) where there are constraints on resources. Why on earth would you want to 'force' a 250ms refresh rate allocation of resources on a Bund (slow as treacle) Daily chart, yet limit a DAX (mad as a badger) news scalper (no, I'm not) on a 10 tick chart to 250ms? This is, IMHO, flawed thinking and shows a lack of understanding of how the product is used 'in the field'. Many, many, many traders use a 'fractals' approach i.e. higher time-frame drilling down to lower time frame or speed whether position traders, swing traders, intraday, scalpers etc whether stocks, indices, forex, futures whatever. So, unless they're reading the tape AND don't have charts your one-size-fits-all is bound to be inefficient in every case.

Will you get performance satisfactory such that 8 will support a fixed 100ms refresh on maybe 4 or 5 charts per instrument for several instruments on EVERY chart? From what I can glean, it would appear we won't be troubling the scorekeeper for a while yet....

Unless 8 is 10x more efficient with use of resources than 7, I won't be spending time trying to setup 8 to find it grinds to a halt because every chart no matter what speed is hogging 250ms refresh worth of resources, but my fast charts aren't fast enough when I need them to be.

The only thing more infuriating would have been to have tried to do so, and found out the hard way this functionality has been removed.

Dodged a bullet I guess.

What is pitiful, in my limited experience looking at migrating, is Ninja boasts of the '500+ enhancements...' requested by Users. Who was it that asked for which 7 features to be removed?

Who was it that told you 250ms was fast enough? How did you come to that figure? A survey of users? It isn't fast enough for Gurko. 8 developers, I know he's not alone.

Maybe that was 10cents, not 2.
But it is all here below already.