Rolling update rolling...

About 10 - 15 minutes ago I got logged off in Tompson.

When I relogged I got the 'due to server problems...' and showed up at a terminally lagged telehub, so I did a 'clear cache' (seemed like a sensible move) and a relog.
By which time 'home' was available and I arrived in Tompson.

Same 3-4 minute wait for rez on login (but remember I had cleared my cache) and very poor sim fps. Then, as download bandwidth dropped, a 44fps sim with .99 TD!

AND it didn't glitch much when I panned my view. OK, twirl... not bad, bit of a hit, but not catastrophic.

The acid test - walk! Hmmm, not so good. Not as bad as it was, but walking 100m or so dropped sim fps to 34 and movement is a bit jerky, but not wading through molasses with the three steps forward/one back effect.

OK - it's an improvement. But it IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

My personal fps is 6.5, not the 20-25 it was.
My movement is still jerky.
Distant scenery jerks and flashes in and out of view like playing a fast game with a slow graphics card.
An AV arriving in the sim gives a 10fps cpu performance hit for about 5 seconds

This is NOT as good as 1.6 - and 1.7 is supposed to be an improvement!

So, yes, LL has pulled an improvement out of the hat - after 8 days in which my sim has been unusable - that's US$50 in my estimation.

And don't let the improvement blind you to the fact that 1.7 is meant to be better than 1.6 - it still isn't.

More work needed LL!

UPDATE!

Every time I log in there is still a l o n g wait while textures load. Why?

I log in where I logged out, surely the textures are all cached? So why do I have to wait what seems like forever (4-5 minutes) before they appear? This definitely didn't happen with 1.6 and is another retrograde feature of 1.7...

Thanks for the updates, Doc. I've been anxiously waiting to hear how this is going as I do my RL job. So far, doesn't sound like it's delivering the performance we're all hoping for. Let us know if it improves.

Strange. My personal fps has increased a bit over the last few hours.
However no one will ever sneak up on you again - the sim fps still takes about a 25% hit for quite a while after an AV enters the sim...

It's not at all right, doesn't feel right. It'll do as a quick fix for a few days while they get sorted, but I really do hope LL isn't going to try and fob us off with this as the 'new improved V1.7'!

And so to bed...

I was talking to one of the other developers today -- he had identified two regions that were working very hard processing images and was counting the number of unique textures that exist therein so he could compare them to other areas. He found 5800+ unique images on one of them (I can't remember the count for the other region) compared to something under 2000 on Da Boom.

The very large number of unique textures was causing the simulator to continually cycle through its virtual file system (VFS) because they wouldn't all fit. As you can imagine, the VFS and image pipeline is now a subsystem of the simulator engine that is under scrutiny.

In the meantime a workaround would be to reduce the number of unique textures in builds when possible.

Would this virtual file system that is continually trying to load affect other sims stacked with it?

Thank you for that morsel of information Andrew. First of all, is one of the sims in question Tompson? If so there is something radically wrong with the statistics tool as Tompson only has 1061 textures in it...

I would tend to suspect the accuracy seeing as the total object count for Tompson in land tools is 10590, only 5326 of which are used - while statistics claim BETWEEN 10756 and 10762 (it varies second by second!) are detected...

I do have SERIOUS problems with Tompson, caused largely I believe by the fact that the sim was moved to a different server during the 1.7 update. I originally acquired the sim because of it's excellent performance and developed it carefully with an eye to preserving it's performance - so much so that a grid monkey recently commented on it's exceptional performance.

It is therefore very disappointing to see its performance drop so dismally, even more disappointing that no one from LL is prepared to discuss the matter.

I would appreciate a dialogue on the subject, together with some remedial action, as my tier payment this month is due on 5th November and if some considerable improvement is not on the cards I will have to review my options regarding Tompson.

I'm actually going to jump on the 1.7 sucks bandwagon today. I discovered an easily-reproduced bug that brings any sim to its knees (1 fps, .02 time dilation). This bug rears its head during a very, very common avatar activity. It's pretty shocking something like that was allowed out the door.

odd, i have been very critical of LL recently, and from the texture rezzing only (I havent retested my broken scripts yet) I have to say the rolling update has proven very successful on the 2 sims I have spent time on (including one sim that I had given up for dead in 1.6, prompting me to gobble up some land for sale on said sim, something I thought would be utterly foolish 2 weeks ago).

This is an great start IMHO LL, and I will give credit where credit is due. Todays rolling update far exceeded my expectations. I only hope this solves the problem of my broken scripts as well...

This is not a shot by any means Enabran, but why is it we always have differing opinions?

Is it some wierd symptom of the differences in our political ideology.

Just seems funny, when you praise I condemn, and as you were writing your critisism, I was finally giving kudos

Well, I guess that if we all thought alike, it would be a very boring world.

Not saying I am right or you are worng, just commenting on a personal observation

and perchance, is the problem you noticed related to an AO? I have heard they are a major problem in 1.7. I don't use one, so I have no 1st hand knowledge, just curious

Couldn't tell you. Weird timing. I just happened to discover this problem in the last 12 hours, which has troubled me greatly. Everything else has been snazzy, but I've been interrupted in my building by this very reproduceable bug.

It's actually a little troubling, also, to note the potential for abuse. All someone has to do to grief a sim now is find a plot of buildable land, rez a linked object and do something specific (yet common) with the pie menu. Really sucks.

(I'm not really sure it would be productive to explicitly describe this bug and its reproduction)

I agree, privately report it to support and lets keep the keys to the gun/liquor cabinet locked up

I ran into this too. Major suckage.

It's that fucking chicken dance isnt it? I just know it!

It has to be! I havent done the chicken dance and my home seems ok.

You WHAT? with WHO? I'm bookmarking this page right now!!!
I'm guessing you 2 don't neccesarily "always have differing opinions" after all.
(though - if you're gonna choose a point on which to agree - this particular non-disclosure is certainly a good one)

Oh - and pleeeeeeeeze tell me it's not the chicken dance. I <3 that dance, man!

But, seriously, logging in after the update was an absolute pleasure for me. Remember some of that buzzy caffeine-like excitement you felt when you first got into SL? I felt some of that all over again last night. Good going, LL - keep up the good work.

Last night - clear till 11 pm California time - was not an improvement for me.

I'm getting used to the fact that when I am putting textures on a build - I'm going to sit and wait a minute or two for it to rez.

As for things rezzing farther than in front of my face, I don't even bother to LOOK.

This is HORRIBLE for the people who sell textures!

I'm a hugely patient person, yet I'm now driven COMPLETELY WACKO trying to shop for textures! I'm starting to write it off as just not worth it, no matter how nice the textures are!

I think it doesn't matter if 1.7 is working fine for some, if it works worse for others. This business of putting whole businesses out of business - either entirely, as in the case of the amusement park, or for all practical purposes, as in the case of texture stores and their customers - makes 1.7 a failure.

It is not an improvement. It is a step backwards.

I would say everyone is pretty patient about these things, but at some point, they've got to start improving or it's time to turn back the clock.

And that brings me to my question: The longer the wait to turn back the clock, will it be harder to do? Will we lose stuff? Two week's or more worth of stuff? Does that make it impossible to turn back the clock?

coco

Not impossible to turn back the clock CoCo, but it isn't going to happen...

Having rammed 1.7 through in the state it was, and still is to some extent, LL isn't going to back down now. If they were it would have been right at the beginning when it was obvious there were serious issues.

To roll back now would be a clear admission that 1.7 was released fatally flawed - something LL cannot afford to do for a variety of reasons ranging from loss of credibility to exposure to litigation.

Sadly it's going to be necessary to live with 1.7b while the 'developers' get their act together and attempt to make something that approaches the performance of 1.6 out of it... What this is going to do to SLs userbase and LL's income from SL remains to be seen, but someone is going to have to carry the can - glad it's not me.

Do you know what problems AOs are having? I'd suspect, without knowing definitely or having tested it, that the script scheduler would have serious repercusions for AOs.

no, not impossible, but I have a very strong feeling that LL are on the homestretch now. I think it'll be faster and less disruptive to keep ploughing forward now than to roll back (if I thought it would take another 2 weeks, I'd be voting for a rollback myself)

I also think LL should start thinking about changing the architecture to one that would allow them to upgrade parts of the grid at different times. Instead of having a preview grid, for example, imagine if in the future we could go preview 1.8 on on the previews sims withing the main grid. And when they decided to roll it out, they could do a few sims at a time, monitoring progress until everyone was confident enough to bulk apgrade the rest.

I realise it's a big change, but I don't think there's any reason not to consider it so long, and evolve towards it as and when possible.

Do you want to turn back the clock or do you want them to roll back the version?

They are two completely different things.

To turn back the clock is to load in a backup file (Assuming they even have such a thing from that far back) from before the change... such an activity would negate EVERYTHING that has happened in the period from then until the restore. THis is a drastic act that really would screw things up for a LOT of people. It is unlikely that Linden Lab would take this action. THink of all the business transactions that would be squelched... not to mention RL cash transactions that would have to be tracked and undone.

Rolling back the version (still drastic) is more likely, though still not very likely at all.
Even if they go back to version 1.6, we would still have Greystorm problems, and other cache related issues. We would still have to wait several days for the sims to stabilize. ANd then there would be the detractors who would say that there is no reason to go through all this, since 1.7 is fine, and they want recompense, yadda yadda yadda...

To roll back the clock also means to roll back the asset server about 1.5 weeks.

Do you want that to happen? Imagine all the hard work going poof because you're having a little lag today.

LF

The problem I see with a roll back is $$$. If I 'cashed out' a bunch of L$ will I get my L$ back and sell them for a SECOND time for US$? Even if there isnt a full roll back and only a software change back to the old version (meaning the inventories and everything else stays the same), what about people that bought things that took advantage of 1.7 features? Like HUDs. Do they get their money back?

A little lag today? ROFL!

While you may be fine, more than a few of us are still suffering serious issues which are a great deal more worrying than 'a little lag'.

Like for instance not having been able to do anything useful since the update...

However, you are right, a roll-back is just not realistically on the cards. I just wish they'd halted the upgrade when it was obvious there were 'issues' - like 2-3 hours before restarting the main grid!

Do you mean that going back to version 1.6 would still retain some of the problems of 1.7?

Is that what you mean by Greystorm problems and other cache related issues?

Or do you mean we had those issues in 1.6?

coco