Make chart refresh rate faster than 250ms possible

[Lucero]

The current 250 ms lag is totaly unacceptable . Can not trade fast moving markets such as CL. If this is not addressed I will be changing platforms.

Couldn't agree more. This makes NT8 pretty useless for fast movements. With 250 ms the charts are 10x slower than the DOM.

I'd like to clarify that this is not an 'issue' or 'bug'. This was a purposeful change by the Development Team.

What was the purpose of this change, may I ask?

[NinjaTrader_Brett]

In platform design there needs to be balance, there is only a certain level of performance available from the CPU and GPU which needs to be used in a controlled way. If we spend too much of those resources rendering then less becomes available for processing. Right now we are going forward with a bench tested profile that balances these rendering and processing requirements. We are keeping an eye on this and have some more possible changes in the future, we do appreciate everyone's feedback which helps shape future design.

[Zeos6]

Thanks Brett, but the lag issue does need to be a priority. This is problematic with alll fast moving markets, even NQ at times. Please add my vote to this as well. Thank you.

[Lucero]

In platform design there needs to be balance, there is only a certain level of performance available from the CPU and GPU which needs to be used in a controlled way.

Making the refresh rate adjustable would exactly help to balance the CPU & GPU load, according to everyone's needs and resources, wouldn't it?

[jcrza]

In platform design there needs to be balance, there is only a certain level of performance available from the CPU and GPU which needs to be used in a controlled way. If we spend too much of those resources rendering then less becomes available for processing. Right now we are going forward with a bench tested profile that balances these rendering and processing requirements. We are keeping an eye on this and have some more possible changes in the future, we do appreciate everyone's feedback which helps shape future design.

Can we be real here? This is 2018. Our graphics cards can render a complex well-lit scene in 3D over 144 times per second.

What you're really saying is "We screwed up so bad when designing this program that it will perform like a slideshow when trying to render some lines more than 4 times a second".

Frame it any way you want but that's reality.

[habibalex]

add my vote to this as well. SierraChart can render charts in 10ms, and Ninjatrader is at 250ms. I use my charts as a DOM and price looks like it moving through sludge on NT8

[NinjaTrader_PatrickG]

I added your vote to SFT-1536, habibalex

[brucerobinson]

Just to put some values to jcrza's comments, for perspective.....

I have a single low- to mid-range graphics card (in today's terms, @ 4 yrs old) running 2 x 43" 4K screens. The active Workspace has 9 charts active, (more in tabs in the background not being rendered) of which fastest is 15 tick (YM) and 25 tick on NQ (hardly a slow-moving instrument).

GPU Load currently is 1 (yes, ONE) percent. See attached screenshot

I don't think this suggests we're in much danger of bumping our heads against the ceiling of my graphic card's rendering capabilities any time soon.

My CPU is of similarly very modest spec, processing 9 of the aforementioned Workspaces concurrently at around 30% load. See attached screenshot. This is with the US Equity indices Workspace, at this moment quite active, and load temporarily inflated in the screenshot due to use of the Windows Snipping tool.to capture the screenshot.

Kind regards
Bruce

[smalltrader35]

NinjaTrader needs to get this refresh issue fixed. 250ms refresh for any type of intraday trading in this market is totally unacceptable. I own a lifetime license for the past 10 years but I still have to use another 3rd party software to insure Live Orders get filled without slippage. With 250ms refresh it makes NT8 Chart Trader unusable for Live Trading. Your basically trading with DELAYED DATA and all your new additions to NT8, Footprints, Profiles etc are ALL but useless in a Live Trading environment. I am STILL on NT7 and I know quite a few live traders that either still use NT7 or have made the switch to sierra charts. I ran my own custom NT7 Footprint along side NT8 Footprint and Volume Profile into the close today and NT8 was seriously lagging NT7. How on earth are Live Footprint Traders suppose to make the correct judgement when price reaches X when the NT8 Footprint & Profiles are showing DELAYED PRINTS due to this 250ms chart refresh interval. My NT7 custom Footprint was already showing exhaustion at X while NT8 Footprint was STILL printing Volume. The NT8 Chart Trader and DOM must be in sync. How can NT allow this major flaw to continue. NT should listen to their customers and implement what their customers needs and wants are like most other trading applications today. We the customer pay NT bills at the end of the day. If nobody buys/leases your product you wouldn't be in business so do the RIGHT THING by your customers and allow each client of NT to adjust the refresh rate to their own trading needs. Using NT8 with a chart refresh rate of 250ms versus either NT7 or sierra where you can adjust to 0.25/0.5 etc is like turning up to a formula one race is a mini. Your race is over before it has even begun.

Finally NT8 Volume Profile is NOT printing the volume traded at the H/L of the price bar. This is NOT happening on all price bars just a few. If Ninja require a video or screen shot I can provide one.

NT8 has a Rithmic connection available to their European Server which pings 11ms versus 120ms in the US. Will Ninjatrader please update NT7 to allow this same Rithmic Connections to their European Server. Ninjatrader should be aware that there are quite a lot of European traders that DON'T use NT7 or NT8 for this simple reason. It will NOT take a huge amount of time, effort to make available Rithmic Europe for their NT7 user base.

Thank You

[Trader_55]

NinjaTrader needs to get this refresh issue fixed. 250ms refresh for any type of intraday trading in this market is totally unacceptable. I own a lifetime license for the past 10 years but I still have to use another 3rd party software to insure Live Orders get filled without slippage. With 250ms refresh it makes NT8 Chart Trader unusable for Live Trading. Your basically trading with DELAYED DATA and all your new additions to NT8, Footprints, Profiles etc are ALL but useless in a Live Trading environment. I am STILL on NT7 and I know quite a few live traders that either still use NT7 or have made the switch to sierra charts. I ran my own custom NT7 Footprint along side NT8 Footprint and Volume Profile into the close today and NT8 was seriously lagging NT7. How on earth are Live Footprint Traders suppose to make the correct judgement when price reaches X when the NT8 Footprint & Profiles are showing DELAYED PRINTS due to this 250ms chart refresh interval. My NT7 custom Footprint was already showing exhaustion at X while NT8 Footprint was STILL printing Volume. The NT8 Chart Trader and DOM must be in sync. How can NT allow this major flaw to continue. NT should listen to their customers and implement what their customers needs and wants are like most other trading applications today. We the customer pay NT bills at the end of the day. If nobody buys/leases your product you wouldn't be in business so do the RIGHT THING by your customers and allow each client of NT to adjust the refresh rate to their own trading needs. Using NT8 with a chart refresh rate of 250ms versus either NT7 or sierra where you can adjust to 0.25/0.5 etc is like turning up to a formula one race is a mini. Your race is over before it has even begun.

Finally NT8 Volume Profile is NOT printing the volume traded at the H/L of the price bar. This is NOT happening on all price bars just a few. If Ninja require a video or screen shot I can provide one.

NT8 has a Rithmic connection available to their European Server which pings 11ms versus 120ms in the US. Will Ninjatrader please update NT7 to allow this same Rithmic Connections to their European Server. Ninjatrader should be aware that there are quite a lot of European traders that DON'T use NT7 or NT8 for this simple reason. It will NOT take a huge amount of time, effort to make available Rithmic Europe for their NT7 user base.

Thank You

I hate to agree with you, but basically NT 8 is a worse product than NT 7 for reasons like this. NT8 also doesn't work well at all with certain mid-range video cards because of the way it renders, making it essentially unusable in those cases (i.e. extremely high CPU load). I am adding my comment here not because I expect them to improve NT8 (this issue has been complained about for years and they are doing nothing about it), but because I am urging Ninja to never consider dropping NT7 support as long as NT 8 is the only alternative available. Maybe if NT 9 comes out and actually becomes a better product than NT 7/8 we can all finally move on, for now I am stuck with a lifetime NT7 license as well, and it is the only piece of software Ninja offers that is actually useful to me. This is just a note to NT in case they are ever tempted to force everyone to "upgrade" to NT8... I expect my lifetime license to continue functioning with NT7 and be able to place live trades going forward no matter what code changes are necessary to keep up with data feed and/or exchange API alterations. I expect a lot of others feel the same way as well, and there would be a revolt right now if they ever tried to force us all to NT8. I have completely given up on NT8, sadly... hopefully the next version will be better.

[James108]

Please add my vote to this

James 108

[brucerobinson]

Not really sure what I can add here by posting that hasn't already been said other than to add 'pressure' FWIW.
I don't use Order Flow or any other resource intensive features, and I use the DOM for trading, not Chart Trader.
However I encounter the same problem - I take my trades based 'visually' off the chart, and use the DOM for trade management. During high activity, I can see that the chart lags the Dom, so encounter what is reported - if I take my 'cue' off the chart, I get slippage & get an entry I wouldn't have taken. So I end up watching the chart but trying to 'double-watch' the chart and Dom to see whether what I've seen as an entry on the chart I actually want to take on what 'is' the situation real-time on the Dom. A nightmare.
So what am I to do? Migrate toward trading off the DOM & ignoring the chart & changing my trading?
It isn't the case most of the time on most instruments but it is a REAL issue that, IMHO, Brett's anodine, and IMHO obfuscating response, doesn't give a respectful response to.
Acceptance of the reality of the problems the approach adopted, along with a roadmap & timescale would be more respectful, IMHO, rather than denial.
Yes, we understand the approach of protect users from creating problems of their own making (& that Support then have to deal with), but there is real problem with the approach manifesting in issues of usability.
I am a long-term user that couldn't care less about NT's flexibility for coding, nor my sunk cost in a lifetime licence (it's irrelevant in terms of opportunity cost of lack of confidence to use the platform for live trading). Sunk cost in time trying to get to a state of usability is a 'pressure' toward abandoning in favour of alternatives which I see proposed such as Sierra. However the tension in that decision is in 'devil you know'.
Reaching the end of my tether on this.

[Tremblinghandtrader]

I had been a 10 year user of NT but finally gave up 2 years ago because of this. The performance of nt8 was meant to be a better product but its far from it.

I have moved on to the other product mentioned above and cannot believe the perform and stability. Only regret was wasting the 10 years on NT hoping for better.

[glennts]

+1 if you don't mind.

In NT7 I will trade off a 15 Sec chart with the bars plotted inside a Data2 5 Min box. This chart refreshes at 15ms. For context I have 15 Min, 60 Min, 360 Min and 1440 Min charts with refresh rates ranging from 5 Sec to 60 Sec. There is no reason at all to spend processing resources refreshing charts in the ms time frame that are not needed to execute entries and exits with Chart Trader while there is every reason to maximize the efficiency and accuracy of the "trading chart". With NT8 the efficiency and accuracy of the "trading chart" is compromised with the insistence that all charts and indicators, regardless of time frame, be refreshed at the same instant. This unnecessary processing burden, this speed bump, this bottle neck has rendered NT8 unusable for the serious trader. I remember the early days when NT was touted as cutting edge software made by "traders" for traders. With NT's success it seems the "traders" have forgotten what it's actually like to trade.

[brucerobinson]

NT was touted as cutting edge software made by "traders" for traders.

'by coders for coders'