Rolling update rolling...

Rolling back to 1.6.12 or whatever would require a rollback of the asset server, if only because a new asset (HUD attachments) were created, and thus would probably bork the database if they still existed.

Not to mention that the servers would require a complete and total flush of their cache (to prevent further database corruption from moving backwards), and a host of other beasties.

In short, going back to 1.6 would ruin everyone's day a lot worse than it is now.

Lf

It means that if we roll back, we will still have to flush the server caches and that means that all the textures that the servers are currently carrying will also go "away". Just rolling back the SW version is not going to make it go back to the way it was 2 days before the update. There will be all kinds of machine states that would have to be rebuilt by the system. that takes time. During the intermediate time, we would still have slow rezzing textures...

I have a theory that part of the problem is the size of SL now compared to other times... Because the world is so much larger, there are more sims making calls to have their cache restored. The asset server is a bottleneck in the process, sionce it cannot serve all of the sims "RIGHT NOW", and so, although the asset server is adequate for normal day to day use, the process of having ALL of the sims making constant requests for assets that are not yet cached is probably overloading the pipeline. You have to wait longer for your textures because some of them are not yet in the cache.

Also, some sims have on the order of 5000+ unique textures on constant display. Coupled with the unique textures on travelers "just passing through", these numbers could become too much for the current cache settings to keep track of. SO when one rolls off the current cache to make room for this new one that just came into the sim, we see the "Disappearing wall" issue. Then when that person "just passing through" leaves the sim about 10 seconds later, the wall re-rezzes. I have seen this happen a number of times in sims with particularly texture rich areas, and guess at the reason. I COULD be wrong, since I do not know the inner workings of SL.

Alain - every time I log in on my sim I have to stand and wait while ALL the textures rez. I've spent hours wandering about ensuring everything's rezed properly, log out, log back in, huge wait as ALL the textures slowly re-rez. I've cleared my local cache any number of times in case that was the problem, the wait time for texture download with an empty cache actually seems shorter than when I log in with the textures supposedly pre-cached!

That is not how it's supposed to work. In 1.6 I logged in to a previously visited sim and everything was 'there' - instantly.

How many textures in my sim? 1061. Exactly as prior to the upgrade, hardly excessive texture use I'd have thought?

Furthermore every time an AV enters the sim, even if they have only walked a few metres across the border and returned, the sim cpu drops about 25% for a couple of minutes. It's a great warning system - but it makes the concept of 'exploring' SL a joke.

10 clear days since the upgrade now... if it's a server cache problem, just how long is it going to take to resolve?

And even without this, my personal fps is still about 50% of it's pre-update rate and movement isn't smooth, in fact walking in a straight line for 100m will drop the sim fps to about half and dilation into the mid .30s

It's not surprising people are entertaining ideas of reverting to 1.6 - but realistically it isn't going to happen. I just wish the developers would get their fingers out. It can't be long before someone completely looses patience with LL and decides to test the validity of their TOS...

Surprised nobody else has posted about the AO Problem. I do think it has to do with the script scheduler, and the three most popular lines of AOs are scripted as open listeners to work on open channels, so a sim full of women and men wearing AOs causes unbelieveable lag! (last night at Nora's bodyskins sale, my fps was down to .2-.5 and the sim's fps was ranging from 0-20 with about 15-20 ppl on the sim). Last Friday we had a party at our club and there were maybe 6 women wearing AOs, and besides suddenly crashing ourselves, we crashed the sim.

I don't even wear my AO anymore unless I am on my home sim with only one or two other people on the sim, and that still slows me down.

Asset rollbacks or 'timewarps' are NOT going to happen.

They simply can not if LL is to maintain it's philosophy that SL is not a game but, instead, a virtual extention of RL.

The moment LL does an asset rollback they will lose all credibility with ANY RL business venture looking to enter this virtual world. They can't afford that, it would instantly and permanently relegate SL to the class of 'just a game'.

Simply isn't going to happen...period.

Well, I don't understand a whole bunch of everything. To the point where I will have to go back and reread this and also Lordfly's post.

But I think the problem is they made this thing that was supposed to render things faster, by some sort of rotating deal - know what I'm talking about? Something about on demand, or which get done first, or something to that effect.

And I think this just plain old DIDN'T WORK.

coco

P.S. What WOULD make it go back to the way it was two days before the update?

Cause that is what I would like it to be.

What's interesting to me:

I was fishing last night, and people kept commenting on the "lag"

I pulled up the stats box and looked... sim FPS was high. Physics was 45. Dialation was .99. Script performance was over 50,000 ips (Milu, where I spend a lot of time, is often below 5,000) and my FPS was over 20.

So why are other people complaining of "lag" when peformance (for me) was perfect and instantaneous?

I think we need to define "Lag" as opposed to network or client problems, and we need to work to make simple troubleshooting steps better known.

And people need to learn about the auto-drop draw distance function in the parameters window. I set this on both of my computers, and it has been VERY helpful. My FPS never drops below 15 for more than a couple of seconds now.

Low display FPS is probably a major cause of "lag", but if people aren't monitoring their FPS, they won't even know that the problem is their computer, and not the grid.

Sorry? I used to have everything on, draw at 256 and drop at 5fps. Under those settings I used to get 20-30 ish fps everywhere except a few really laggy sims (ott on textures and or scripts generally) and of course those with malls/clubs/casinos/'x'ingo.

Now I have to have local lighting off, the absolute max draw distance is 200 and I'm lucky to see 10-12fps.

It's not lag - 'lag' is just slang for poor performance with many possible causes - this is an upgrade failing dismally to deliver the performance it's predecessor did.

Interestingly quite a lot depends on the spec of your machine and the graphics settings you are used to. If you have a lowish spec machine and thus are used to lower performance and modest graphics settings you won't notice as much of a hit as users of higher spec machines who are used to better performance with 'all the goodies' graphics settings.

This is definitely a... weird time.

But as with all other periods of tumult, this too will pass.

For awhile we had that really crappy period where you couldn't even log in without trying for an hour. Now I've nearly forgotten those days.

Until then, I'm pretty annoyed with some stuff that's screwing with my work.

Using the exact same settings in preferences I used before the upgrade I am losing about 25 to 50 of the client FPS, and still seeing time dilation drop real low for no apparent reason, and seeing the sim FPS drop below what it ought to be for no apparent reason.

Performance for me is still below 1.6 levels.

Sans,
Go into the script of your ao....way at the bottom...there is a listen channel...change it from 0 to some other channel. IM me in game if you need help. I changed mine and it's fine...causes no lag either.
The only one I can't change without breaking it is the new Risque one, but it's not very good, IMO...so no big loss.

There is a very, very specific reason for those slowdowns. I really hope its cause is quickly narrowed down. The action that triggers that mollasses swamping is about as common as zipping your fly.

This from another thread...so I ask...WHY are we still limited to 40 avs per sim...I thought we were going to be able to have bunches more...when will I get to see more than 40 in a sim?

Ahhhh, just give it a few days to settle down and it'll be alright Enabran, stop whinging about it!

ROFLMAO!

Sorry - too good a chance to miss!

I have large simple builds that use only library textures, and they take FOREVER to rez.

For example, I created a group of five 10 X 10 X 0.5 prims with a default texture only on them, flew two sims away (well, at least I can do THAT now), and turned around flew back to my sim. I stopped about 50m from the prims, and waited. It took more than a minute for these simple default textured prims to appear.

Needless to say, landing an aircraft on a runway is out of the question.

It's pretty awful, even with all-library textures. Even with all default texture!

Buster

P.S. I've done all the dumb-downs that are supposed to help. I have experimented extensively.

Yeah, yeah.

Really, though, this update is crappier than what I am used to. Instability on the scale I'm seeing is just pathetic. I'm looking forward to fixes.

Awww...

*hugs Enabran*

Just to reflect on an idea someone else floated...

OK, so some servers have 4 sims stacked on them - apparantly NP with 1.6

And some sims have massive numbers of textures/scripts

What happens to the other sims sharing the server when one of these over texture/scripted monsters causes the 1.7 sim software to misbehave horribly?
Could this be the reason why some sims that used to work fine have now become slow and flaky under 1.7?

Because sim stacking on servers - which probably wasn't tested on the preview grid because it was run on old hardware - is not viable in 1.7?

Hope not, because that leaves three options:

1 the current level of performance (bye-bye SL...)

2 a two to fourfold increase in hardware requirements (um, HOW big is LL's cash reserve?)

3 roll back to 1.6 (which does LL's credibility no good at all)

Hmmm... bit of a bleak prospect.

This latest fix didn't fix anything on my home sim as the pics will show. Both were taken last night after the latest fix.
I have had Lindens over to look at it several times now since the update. All I get is that yes there seems to be some sort of serious problem there, don't know what it is though, it MAY need further investigation.
Unlikely to be an AO causing the problems here, as I rarely even wear one now.






I don't have a ton of money invested in the game, I don't have a store (yet) like others do. But I do own my small 1536 piece of land, which I barely afford to pay for on my income, and with the conversion rates. But I never minded as it was an enjoyable past-time, and gave me a chance to make textures, and build. Something I love. Since 1.7, SL is largely unplayable in my home sim particularly. I can't build, can't change clothes, can barely even move.
In most other sims I have visited I have excellent performance, including going to the skin sale where everything rezzed slowly, but was acceptable given the amount of avies there.

PS Forgive me if the images don't show, this is the first time I have tried posting an image

Is it sexballs?

Well, I posted on the Hotline about not being able to edit linked prims - I mean, I used to have the occasional problem with a linked prim springing back, but now I have the situation where I can work on two linked prims but not the next ten.

Or I can try to texture a linked prim and it just won't work.

I got back a speedy response asking for bug reports and for me to pay attention to anything quirky, like PACKET LOSS.

Well, even I have gotten the idea lately to keep an eye on packet loss, and though it has been sucky (since a week BEFORE the update), it hasn't seemed particularly linked to editing, since I keep looking at packet loss, and also going slowly, so as not to have this be the problem.

I will send in more bug reports about it, with specific mention of packet loss not occurring at the same time.

But you know what, I'm beginning to think the Lindens computers just aren't the same as a lot of ours, as a lot of our problems seem invisible to the Lindens. So I'm just going to conclude that for ME, editing linked prims is no longer an option. Even without concurrent packet loss.

coco

Things like editing linked prims is a server side operation. I've reported on having to texture a prim multiple times before it "sticks" which looks very much like a failure to commit to the database and almost certainly isn't a client side issue.

Similarly, editing linked prims is something that happens on the server side; true, the client initiaties the action, but the action itself happens all inside LL's facility. It could be that the Lindens are attaching to the data center through some other route than all their customers which could certainly cause them to see a different "world" than everyone else (which would be horrible practice anyway), but I think it more like a case of selective blindness.

Even worse than that.

Rather like the way the editing a linked prim used to make it go phantom, which always seems to affect a floor prim for some reason
That was, according to LL, non-reproducible. Odd, just before the update I produced it several times in an hour while flooring a large structure with fiddly edges.
Or the 'non-reproducible' border crossing issues that kept me from getting into Tompson for about a month, caused Prok to ditch a lot of his Portage holdings and effectively emptied several sims in the area...

Selective blindness or a different server connection? Who knows - but the effect from the customer viewpoint is similar and not desirable from the viewpoint of a serious business.

I do sometimes feel that many Linden staff I encounter have been selected for employment on the basis of some rather odd parameters. This tends to give SL a rather amateurish air.

Does Linden Lab work hard? Yeah. Are they good people? Yeah. Do they want the user experience to suck? No way.

But this is going to happen each and every time we have a major update until it becomes competitively unacceptable for that to be true. Again, SL is the only game in town, as it were. Until Linden Lab makes it a priority for the grid to be sufficiently resilient that we don't see this crap happening anymore, nothing will change.

Survival must be threatened to convince people to kill off the unworkable. SL is pretty workable -- except when someone wants to update its feature set. Do we really want SL to stay feature frozen for all of time?

Give it time. And in the meantime, where ya gonna go? There?