Worst upgrade so far?

When I was green to this world, newlyminted in September of 2004, I heard many Resis say about how awful the 1.5 upgrade was and how buggy things were. Having no previous frame of reference, I couldn't really understand. I think I was on 1.5.3 when I started too on the 15th, and by then, some things had already been wrinkled out.

So, I didn't go through that, but I certainly went through 1.6, which was worse to me in hindsight than 1.7, and for all the pain... there's a lot of pleasure.

That being said—I have NUMEROUS little glitches that bug the heck out of me in 1.7.x, and I've bug reported a lot of them. Some have been fixed, most haven't (foot shadows... ongoing problem, not 1.7-specific), and I'm looking forward to more and more improvements.

And then, by the time 1.8 comes 'round, some will be saying we should "rollback" to 1.7... I wish there was a more comforting way to let new Resis know what came before. Digging through past threads can be confusing in the midst of all the other confusion, but maybe more casual wording can be done to inform those new to the world of the problems happening, and that it's not just them! Not just a MOTD in little white text, but a big, clear sign, shining (and shiny) from one end to the other.

I also wonder why the top of the SL Forums isn't used to deliver a newsfeed of late-breaking info. Plenty of room there.

Sometimes the incremental version problems remind me of a Star Trek warp power scale.

1.6 was crap for like 2-3 weeks. You guys need to quit smoking so much weed, your memories are failing.

Multi-select was worth never sorting my inventory until now for. YAY

For the grid as a whole, nothing can beat 1.5.

But except for the 2 days that no one could log in, the Shelter at least muddled thru ok with a minimal amount of complaining thru 1.5.

For me personally, however - this is the worst upgrade yet. At least when no one can log in, its clear that its a global issue. But - these latest image pipeline issues have rendered my sim nearly useless. We've exiled ourselves to a small square of the property that extends into the next sim for the time being. (Come to Wingo - its cozy )

Its embarassing to say the least when I have to explain over and over again why its impossible to move - and say "C'mon... just a little bit further... its much better on the Wingo side!"

I've got experience enough to know that this too, shall pass. In a couple weeks, things will be a lot better. Just sucks more when its you that's the one affected instead of the next guy (or dog).

Yeah! I tried it, then remembered why I didn't have it on! Couldn't see a THING!

My wish-list is just one thing: Please let the textures come up in less than 1-3 minutes time. It is very difficult to try out textures on a house at this rate.

coco

Agreed. Give it a week or two to stabilize.

Multiple drag and drop inventory and prim contents!

Coco - Fullbright.... ooh.... you've gotta love that one for building

What it is, is this:

Previously, if you wanted to light-up a prim, you had to change the object "Material" to "Light". You'd do this in the Edit menu, at the very bottom under the Object tab.

Problem is, setting Prims to a "Light" material came at an extreme 'lag' cost. (Among other nasty things).

In 1.7, they've given us a "Full Bright" checkbox under the texture tab now - which mimic's what "Light" as a material did before. But with no side-effects.

This means that you can make Lightbulbs that actually light up - by just clicking a checkbox - and without all the nasty lag cost.

Cool stuffs!

I've been here a year and for me this is the worst upgrade transistion. My computer ran at +30 fps with high settings before this patch. Now i have everything on low to pull in < 1 fps.

After 5 days my SL is unplayable. I can't move 90% of the time. I can't even talk with out a delay of 10 seconds to 2 minutes on my text. It's not improving at all. What needs to settle? Surely the grid can pass all information it needs to in 5 days?

Something big is borked. At least on some machines. After every other update, 1.5, 1.6, i've been able to at least move.

I'm hoping for a stable 1.7.# soon because if this is considered running well, i'm toast and will have to withdraw to basic untill things improve. I've allready been charged a week for an unusable system.

I think what we're seeing is much, much more users in 1.7 than 1.6 on the same limited amount of asset servers. The load is a lot harder when 3000 people are trying to all request hundreds of megabytes of data from the same handful of servers.

Perhaps the easiest solution - until LL makes the asset server truly distributed - is to simply add redundant data servers to handle patch conditions.

Really ... patches should be a time to celebrate new features ... not to wait a week for things to stabilize.

Although it's not the worst update in terms of problems (I agree 1.5 will take some beating), in terms of new features the last two updates have been pretty thin on the ground and what has arrived isn't particularly in-depth. I can't get excited over multi-select because, well, it's something that should of been in SL a long, long time ago. Fullbright is nice, but it's nothing major. Being able to animate attachments is a nice new addition, although again I'd say this wasn't major, especially in terms of dev work. And most people who've read posts of mine over the past few days will know what I think of the HUD feature set.

What did we get in 1.6? Video on a prim? Quicktime only, still doesn't work very well for a lot of people. That wasn't earth shattering.

The big ones just seem to be on the never-never:

- HTML on a prim
- Havok2 (isn't Havok actually at version 3 now anyway?)

Although the majority of additions are nice tweaks, there's nothing fundamentally amazing that it's pushing Second Life back to being cutting edge. In that respect, 1.7 has been dissapointing for me.

I have experienced the same unfortunately. I think I must have been fairly lucky for 1.6, there was a few problems, but nothing major and they quickly subsided.

Now I can't get to even 25% the FPS I used to have before. I want my smoooth running SL back!

/whinge

@ those who whinge @ whinging

It's been a rocky ride for me too... it's very peculiar... I have some very polar performance issues. Like moments of extreme smoothness and awesome texture loading in busy areas, but there's also some bizarre lag during what should be restful moments I'm striving to pinpoint better in detail that absolutely kills my framerate.

Has anyone else here been getting an inordinate amount of RenderGeom lag when there's not much else going on? That is, to say, when you feel things getting choppy and slow, quickly hit Ctrl-Shift-2 (you need Debug menu on, Ctrl-Alt-D for that) and look at the colored bars. Look for the white on the right... I've had it go off the edge of the screen a lot, when I feel it shouldn't have because I wasn't flying around quickly (meaning geometries have to be rendered as per the name), and just standing in place. Something is very bizarre here which warrants further investigation.

I had an improvement in FPS with the latest patch, but it was minimal. I am a little disapointed as I put performance way above features in my SL, and the preview seemed to deliver that. When I went into an empty preview sim, the performance was much better than an empty main grid 1.6 sim.

Oh wow! OK! You mean, I don't need to do that laggy "local lighting thing" and can still have this? Great!!

coco

P.S. But back to the topic - if they don't get this textures rezzing thing faster, I really don't think I'm going to have the patience to stick with SL.

You mean to tell me - that I could be SAVED all this suffering, and all this sitting there waiting three minutes just to see how a texture I USED TO BE ABLE TO SEE RIGHT AWAY will look on a build - if they would just . . .

. . . add some lousy machines in their office?

THEN THEY NEED TO DO THIS.

If for no other reason, because it would pay off hugely in retaining all these new accounts we are getting.

coco

Full bright works without local lighting, o' course.
I just meant the light spilling all over everything that results from "light," and which is not visible without local lighting, is not a factor in full bright. I think I frequently say things that are unclear and which get interpretted wrongly by the poor souls trying to decipher my meaning - sorry. I'm visual, not verbal.

Sorry, but so far update has sucked for me...Terrible performance. textures still loading slow but better than day 1. HORRIBLE PACKET LOSS RED BAR PEGGED TO TOP

Multi-select in inventory rocks!!!!!

That, coupled with how bouncy inventory operations now. It's like a very flexible kung-fu master who throws pots to sort then and then bends his back all the way to catch more pots and throw them. It's very sight-to-see.

Wrong 1.2 was the most Stable update we ever had. All updates afterward have been unstable.

Hard to get your Gor on when they keep turning the grid off, eh, Magnum?

btw, on the subject of 1.2. It turns out that the Preview Grid has been emitting a chronoton resonance field that has been disrupting SL's hardware all the way into the past, starting around the time when 1.2 launched. I blanche at the thought of ever doubting you. This thing just keeps snowballing into a bigger and bigger problem.

I judge by ONE thing only - I am now paying for a virtual worl i can do NOTHING IN

Since the version update I cannot walk fly, except with the speed of snail, and bounce back or ground sinking, i try to fly and end up nowwhere for 20 seconds then a half sim away in one leap

I cannot SEE the world itsa grey fog of unrezzed texrures and 2-3 patches later its STILL a grey fog of unrezzed textures..

I cannot work, create, see my world, chat takes forever, the game crashes constantly, i cant even see my AV fully and hours later Im still the same. And is there a re-assuring post from LL saying we are aware of this and it will be cured soon - NO there is not!

instead I get an email from the LL magazine saying ....... After much anticipation, a new Second Life is here, featuring optimized frame rate and graphics (gamers rejoice!),,,,,, and more such marketing speak which is in fact untrue cos it doesnt work

and I get charged $390 US dead on time for my month's game play .. of which more than 4 days so far has been unplayable

One question- what are PREVIEWS for.. I think we WASTED our time... cos updates when they appear are always rubbish anyway and never work

and WHEN will this be fixed?? who knows? ... not me...

So I judge this a pretty BAD update. I also agree with Moopf that in fact most recent updates last 6 months have been pretty trivial and that MOST of the real things we want to see, and that were on the VOTE list are nowhere yet. AV making is so outdated now it goes back to the start of SL. Prims have not been improved not server land to prim ratios. Havok 2 keeps vanishing into future. Multiple drag and drop.. well big deal we screamed for that for 2 years or more and now we get it alongside a world that doesnt work.. I am NOT impressed

I think this world is so amazing yet also so short sighted at times. True I do not understand the tech of achieving the virtual future of what it can be or the issues of business but I do understand that vision needs to be harnessed to achieve it and I often think SL is now so obssessed with money and comerce and such stuff and NOT with being what it could long ago already have been...function wise

I think the last few updates have been often pretty pointless and aimed in directions really just distracting and mostly the REALLY great and serious improvements are becoming slower and slower to happen

OK right now i dont feel great about SL cos i love it and i resent being unable to play when the SL marketing is pumping out how great this updated world is yet we sit here knowing its rubbish. Its just like Governments, sayng to you how great things are yet u KNOW they are not...

One thing i do know is THIS ISNT HOW MY SL LOOKED LAST WEEK YET THIS IS HOW IT IS NOW AND THERES NOTHING I CAN DO... SEE FOTO

<Town Crier>

EEEEEEEEEEEE!

Robin Linden updates!

</Town Crier>

1.7's actually worked pretty well for me. I had the texture-loading problems early on, but that settled down soon enough.

Heck, on the same day of the Update or thereabouts, I rode across the grid from north-to-south(Dusun to Abbotts) on a speeder-bike without any major sim-crossing hiccups or even losing my connection, as used to happen.

..And I kinda like the new Shiny effect, thanks.

The brighter prim-outlines are kind of distracting in Edit mode.. But eh.

It could be better, but I'm satisfied for now.