I Keep Waiting for SL to Work (Like It Used To)

Yes, and I do believe that picture came out quite nice looking. I had to go all over the grid to find the additional sources...the sunset was easy...the palm tree was a bit of a PITA.

Yes it did!

coco

The problem is that there is a memory leak casusing "Images time" to increase and the sim framerate to drop.

I now use llKey2Name() for my "online" indicator box since the dataserver events are unreliable.

The SL problems keep getting worse.
1. Memory leak
2. Sustainable internet data rate from sims continues to be reduced.
3. SL cache
4. Insuficent ram/hard space for sims to cache all data.

Always wondered why those new class servers have just 512 mb ram. 4 sims to each with 512, that's like 128mb ram per sim. I bet those servers are swapping to harddrive bad. How cheap is ram anyways.

The "presence" thing isn't quite working as it should. I joined a group, then, looking at the members list, noticed that I was not online.

coco

Just had a scene at a live music event with at least 20 people there where the avatars and many objects, like the buildings, flickered in and out of visiblity, affecting the whole crowd.

I don't recall SL doing that particular screw up two years ago.

I am alone in the sim I live on and Time Dilation is just fine.
3 people entered for a few minutes and it dropped to .60. Yes, you read that right, three people.

Has anyone seen on the almighty blog anything indicating a long term fix for this? I cant seem to find it.

I think this blog post on LL's "different and better way of doing work" explains all of the problems:

"Choose your Own Work. Given how dynamic the
challenges are we face, and the opportunity for increased job
satisfaction and productivity, Linden Lab places a high premium on
choosing your own work, rather than being told by anyone what to do. By
choosing your own work, you are more likely to have more fun at work
and add more value to Second Life. By setting your own goals, you are
more likely to meet them. When you commit to a team project, be
prepared to be directed by the team lead, but when deciding what
project you will take on next, rely first on your own best intuition
and the counsel of peers."

When I drive my car I allow each of the wheels go in the direction they see fit.

I think of this in terms of sim FPS, rather than time dilation, because time dilation doesn't seem as universally screwed up as sim FPS. (I'm not sure how they relate to each other, and either one being messed up pretty much ruins things.)

Used to be, shortly after they instituted whatever they did to make the sim fps's be 45, they almost always were. Now they are all over the map.

I posted a question in Second Life Answers about it.

I really think they need to marshall their forces to do something about this, because you really sure as heck can't build or do much of anything else.

coco

I have noticed something odd for the past several weeks.

When I open my inventory within about 20 minutes of logging in, SL streams my inventory to me (I can see the number of items increasing) and I cannot move at all during that time. In fact, I cannot do anything (chat, IM, move, turn - you name it).

That lasts for 2-3 minutes and then clears up.

The fix I have now is to open my inventroy, then logout, login, and do it again - it is much better the second time.

Granted, I have 13K items in my inventroy - but that is not huge as compared to most others' inventories.

Anyone else experiencing something similar? Is this a known issue?

-2fast

nice! probably the best cut I've seen to date about the way they supposedly work. Last time I worked solely on what I wanted to and when I wanted to was when I was doing programming as a hobby in high school. Love the humor

TD occilation issue sucks but really having every Linden working on it, won't fix it. There's probably only a handful of engineers that can diagnose and fix an issue that is affecting the grid like this one is. The key is in finding the commonality in the bug reports.

--Ham

Yep. Happens often, didn't used to. Loading... loading.... loading... the inventory. I don't get stuck, but this didn't used to be. Occasionally it just stops loading and I have to relog.

And the no-rez clothes thing, that is getting worse, too. I avoid changing my clothing at all once it finally rezzes.

My clothes rezzed a couple of weeks ago...so no problem there for me

But yeah..women who change often (which is..what..99% in SL) must have a hard time.

Become a man until this gets better - you won't have to change for weeks and people will still say look great

-2fast

Nah, compared to other women in SL, I never change much. I rarely even change my hair and buying new shoes is an event, lol.

But occasionally I want to show someone a new outfit or try on something new I bought or change because I've been wearing something more than a few days (that is my limit, heh). Not so much right now....

Does that also include the steering wheel? It seems to me LL needs a little direction.

Oooo - I appreciate this tip! I have 13k items in my inventory, too, and this happens to me as well.

Another tip: If it is clothes that aren't showing up, go into "appearance" and then they will pop up for you and those around you.

coco

P.S. You know what, this makes me think: All these new websites popping up, somebody would do well to make a forum of Work-Arounds. Just work-arounds. Like the two tips above.

We're probably going to need more and more of them as time goes on, and it could be the most useful info on any of the various forums!

P.S. Gad - just think of all the things we're now avoiding! Changing clothes, taking pictures, accessing inventory. What else . . .

You know, I really hate it when something that used to be fun is now something I need to avoid.

Cocoa, if only.

I've done this to get clothing to rez:

Appearance, take off then put on, Appearance, take of then put on, log off, log on, have other person log off and on, clear cache, Appearance....

Jeez.

It's been better recently, but I still have problems that appearance doesn't fix like it used to.

I started a business late last year and got a lot of product out in the first few months. Then things began to degrade. Sim performances started to drop, 'lag waves' for no apparent reason, texture loading times totally out of hand, the list goes on. I stopped creating new items because building became increasingly frustrating. I basically took the summer off from building any new items, but now that summer is basically over for me I want to create some of the ideas that I came up with over the summer. Every time I start to work on something, things start snapping back, taking large linked objects into inventory fails, rezzing fails, renaming complex items rarely takes, seems to me these are all related to the asset server. I have my own sim, which with only a few people on it and is normally almost lag free, the dilation will totally drop down to nothing, for no apparent reason. Typically I just don't bother and log off.

I'm frustrated. I was thinking of buying another sim as a sink for my L$, but at this point I'm not about to put more money into a platform that on a FUNDAMENTAL LEVEL does not work properly. All the cool features and personal pet projects of the LL employees are absolutely worthless unless the PLATFORM, the base of all that is SL, works flawlessly. I would like to know from LL why they are building this pretty house on a foundation that is crumbling.

I have lost my will to spend time creating content, because instead of being a creative outlet for me it has become a frustration. I am sure that I am not alone and that a lot of other content creators that rely on the in-world tools, (ie not clothing or other texture related creators) are totally frustrated with the issues that we encounter on a day to day basis. As for texture based content creators, we all know the issues that they face in regards to texture theft.

To me, it basically boils down to one thing. SL seems to be crumbling under its own weight, and the people who create what is in this world are not happy. Content creators have begun to leave (Starax, et al) and unless the foundation of SL, the core functionality, is repaired, people will continue to leave, new signups will defiantly not be impressed, and SL will implode.

LL, stop with the fancy pet projects. Get the devs to focus on fixing the usability issues, tell then what to do, and make them do it. After you get the major issues fixed, you can go back to your utopian, do what you love ideals. I really like SL when it works, it’s a great outlet and escape. Too bad it never seems to work right anymore.

Frustrated and unimpressed,

Dnel DaSilva

You have to try to maintain some humor regarding the situation here or you'll sink into a state of depression.

In all seriousness, I was saddened to see the link provided by Kim, though I wasn't at all suprised. To boast about the absense of project or program management is just plain naive and childish thinking. From a business point of view, its at least irresponsible. Philip can't believe this development strategy appeals to the prospective investors. It has to be based on pure ego. Not to get me wrong, I love the vision. Its the implementation that killing us. SL is like a magnificent house of cards with nothing to hold the house together.

Many of the bugs/problems (texture loading, inventory loading, etc.) we've lived with for the past years (2 for me) are a result of the upload and download capability of the connection between our computer and LL. But, it also requires that the data being passed be handled efficiently on the client and server sides. As Ham says, this is a very difficult issue.

OTOH, issues like "presence", prims repositioning by themselves, autoreturn problems,....et'al, are, I'm sure to a large extent, a result of LL's development methods. I have taken the position that I will not expect any improvement in this situation. This means I will also not be able to rely on LL and SL for anything in the future. When it's over, it's over. All I can say at that time is "Bye, Huggs, sorry to see it , it was fun (most of the time) while it lasted. Hope to see you all at the next Metaverse."

I also faced a similar frustration using the in-world tools. Most of my work is now off-line where I write scripts to suport my businesses, do work in PhotoShop, and plan my projects.

I can get a fair bit of work done from outside of SL now and that is only going to improve with some of my latest projects (I can trigger actions using email from outside of SL, and a lot of day-to-day operations are now automated).

I am glad that I started with SL when I did since I was inspired a great deal when things were working well - enough to work on-line only when I need to do that.

It is unfortunate that I login now mostly to work and instead of explore and hang out with friends, but that is also a source of innovation for me (so both good and bad).

When things improve (not if...when) I'll at least have time to do the things I used to do (explore, hang out, visit a club) while still having (mostly) happy customers

-2fast

Woo Hoo!! Loving the ol Platform tonight.

About a year and half or so ago was the last time I remember the mainland being somewhat barable. For the most part, lag and loading problems have been relatively the same for me as they have been for over a year, except about once a week or so it takes an unusal amount of time to load a texture. So I guess I'm one of the lucky ones, or I just pick the best spots in SL to go.

Well, performance for me has been, as you say, not as good as it was a year ago. But this is something recent and worse.

Torley, in her blog, and in an answer to a question similar to mine on the SL Answers, says that they definitely are aware there is a problem. She says they don't yet know what is causing it.

I am wondering if it is just too many people on the grid, and maybe if more or better machines might help.

Anyway, the good news is they are aware of it.

coco

I would guess the influx of people. 4k-5k used to be max on weekend nights, not 9k+.