Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't SL used to work a lot better?

When I first joined, things seemed more stable.

Then gradually they started going all herky-jerky, but I chalked that up to LL trying to do too much, like have updates every week.

Now we DON'T have updates every week, and still SL goofs up on Wednesdays like clockwork. (And Sundays, and other days, too.)

Now I'm thinking they just have too many people here, and for some reason or other, it is just . . . too many people.

And that it will suck forever and just get continually worse because of too many people.

Questions:

(A) Does SL seem a whole lot more unstable to you, in terms of things goofing up constantly, game down, game not working right when up, etc.?

(B) Do you think this has to do with just too many people?

And (C) if so, is it hopeless, or is there anything they can do?

I have trouble getting around the concept that there are just too many people, and will be way more people in the future, if things go as they wish, and everything will just get incrementally suckier ever more.

Yet - that is certainly what it is looking like to me.

coco

It's cylical. WHen I first joined it was fine, then it went to pot. I actually think it's a little better now, astonishingly, than it was when I first joined. Though some of the issues that were present 2 years ago are still here now and it's boggling they haven't fixed them.

Everyone thinks the world was better when they where young.

Yes, I joined back in '04 and it was much, much more stable then, and in opinion a lot better of a world to be in. The features they've added since I joined have been trivial, with the exception of flexiprims.

Building once was a pleasure, now it's a pain because prims snap around on their own now, minutes after I've stopped working on them. I also remember being on sims with 20-30 people back in 2004 and things slowed down, but I could still move around and such. Today, when I go to a sim with 10 people I can't move, textures don't load, and I can't rez from my inventory.

Oh, and speaking of inventory! My client still grinds to a halt when I move items around in my inventory. I get 20-30% packet loss when moving multiple items.

So, yeah, things are much worse now than they were when I joined. I miss the old days for me. Like I said, the features they've added since I joined have been trivial and have introduced more negative than positive.

Don't get me started on unverified accounts and what that has done to ultimately destroy the place.

Well, I am only in my third month, so it seems better to me. Plus, my computer sucks, and my satellite ISP is, well, satellite, so I usually get like 3 fps.

I still like it a lot. Maybe you are just being greedy.

I suppose more money could help. Two servers per sim, instead of two sims per server. A lot more horsepower for the asset server. A Highly Available cluster for the asset server.

Then thre is SL 2.0 I have no idea if this project exists or not, but I bet that if LL rebuilt SL from scratch, they would do a lot of things different. Push a lot more computing into the clients, for example.

We could all start our own company, and create Third Life. But then we would be the Lindens, and Prok would yell at us.

I have asked before if more or better machines would help, and Torley said that wouldn't make any difference.

Aaron, I, too, can't go to group gatherings as I once did, and I get way more packet loss than I used to.

Some of this, though, I attribute to my own computer - maybe I have too many pictures stored on it or something. But I think it has more to do (the group gatherings part anyway) with SL changing to require us to have better computers.

So I do try to make a distinction between things which might be just me, or my computer, and things that affect everyone (like building). Those are the things I'm talking about here.

Cyclical, Joshua - I can go with that; I like that theory. But then, it seems like this has been an awfully LONG down cycle.

coco

When I joined, people had a terrible tendancy to turn invisible (especially after using a sit teleporter to high altitude) - they'd just disappear, and all I could see of them was their attachments (shoes, glasses, and bling)... that drove me crazy, and seemed to go on for months. Then, one day, I realised nobody had turned invisible for a while. Guess it was one of those things that got quietly fixed without any fanfares being made.

...and I'm sure script lagging used to be worse before the throtttling was introduced. Admittedly, the whole throttling thing still seems a _bit_ buggy still (texture spikes, anyone?) - but a single uber-scripted blingtard walking into a sim doesn't seem to lag the place to hell like they once did.

Some things have got better, some have deteriorated. On balance, I don't think the place is necessarily worse than it was.

How does SL run on a fresh alt for you? A lot of lag and crappy frame rate I have goes away when I log onto my alt, which is a difference of about 14k items in Inventory. This could also contribute to the "it ran so much better when I first started" syndrome.

I told you to clean up that mess. I'm going to hijack you from work one of these evenings and make you go through your 3973873 textures. And you can give them to me .

I don't remember all your computer specs, but didn't you post a while back about having 256mb rams? That seems awfully little. (Or are you writing about the servers where they run the sims?)

Anyway, to answer your original question - I had some issues mostly with texture rezzing after 1.7, and at the moment there's that irritating inventory lag bug, but other than that I've not seen degrading performance. I do see a lot more client crashes since updating my graphics card from a 5200FX to a 6600FX, but at the same time the performance is now so much better that I won't switch back just to see if the card is at fault.

I don't know if the problem is too many people online; I'm usually online outside US peak hours.

It definitely is cyclical. There have been periods in the past where performance was much worse for me than it is now. The thing is, there's almost always some problem - asset server issues, framerate issues, bugs, texture issues, lag... when annoyed it's easy to look back and feel like SL is going down the tubes. Personally I think that's just psychology at work. SL has always had ups and downs - periods of smooth stability and times when everything seems to be going to hell in a handbasket. I actually consider where we are now to be a period of relative stability compared to some periods in the past.

Yep yep. That's me with only the 512 memory! (Mind you, though, I have already made allowances for that, cause I always do.) But that is gonna change SOON.

Cory, that's a good idea, to run on a fresh alt.

Still and all, I'm coming to the conclusions I am that have nothing to do with me and my computer, inventory, etc.

Do you all think there is any truth to my worry that there is just too many people, and is there anything they can do about that?

coco

I'm hangin' at my group's island. I can set view distance at 512m and still get about 7fps, seeing the whole island and all it's 10000+ prims

No clubs, just shops and some crrrrrrrazy artwork.....

Other than the image-time bug, we've been pretty much in the clear.

Mainland? Different story. Lag. Constant dilation. grey textures everywhere. 4FPS at 64m draw distance, unless sims are like Baffin.

Coco...Phillip is too much of a tight ass to spend the money to implement the equipment to make SL run like it should, with all the people that have joined. I agree SL did run so much better when I first joined and up until the past three updates I had no problems playing.

I have a pretty decent machine but now SL almost cripples it within 30 minutes if I go anywhere that has very many things running at once. The big problem I see is SL is so reliant on your machine to help process things that is puts unnesscary stress on your machine!

Once LL realizes they need to carry the bigger load of processing, instead of trying to force our machines to do a 50/50 job, the game will suck.

Does anyone here even remember 1.5? Okay.

People routinely forget the "bad" stuff in the past; that's why people always lament that "music these days ain't nothin like the 50's" or whatever; they only remember the top 50 best songs to come out of that decade, and they forget the many many flops that was on the radio.

Likewise, people forget the lack of features and stability in SL in past versions, and instead compare it to what they use every day. Of course rose-colored versions are going to seem better than the current version.

Does anyone remember ATI drivers simply not working for SL? I do. I fried my Radeon because of it, I'm fairly sure.

Anyone remember not being able to have more than 20 avs in a sim? I do.

Anyone remember prim hair grinding shit to a complete halt? I do. (If you think it's bad now.... hahaha)

Anyone remember the static main map? I do.

Anyone remember the debacle about servers running on different classes of machines? I do.

And so on.

This version of SL is no better or worse, stability wise, on average, than any other release.

It's not fixed. It still happens to me on a regular basis. Switching my group tag helps sometimes.

Things are a bit cyclical. Texture loading, inventory issues, and crashing, for example, seems to get better and worse with different upgrades. (1.7 was horrible.)

Lately consistent lag and sim crashing (something I remember as not being very common) seem to be the order of the day. I'm really hoping this is a temporary thing. I'd like to see a whole release dedicated to nothing but bug fixes, stability, and optimization.

Yes

I dunno, I hate to say it and I almost choke on the words but Coco has a point. SL has not been running as well since 1.7 at the very least. to my mind it started going downhill when they started to aggressively "optimise" the server streaming.

Specifically,...

- I remember when you entered a sim and all the objects were there. Sure it was a tiny bit slower, but this business of all the geometry appearing and disappearing as you enter and leave places is just ludicrous. Even in the laggiest places like the welcome area, it used to be that when you ressed all the geometry was there and the textures slowly loaded after. Now you can go to a virtualy empty sim with good FPS and you are standing on an empty plain half the time waiting for all the geometry to be drawn around you. This completely destroys immersion for me and the speed increase is minimal at best for that particular "optimisation."

- I remember being able to turn my head in my own home without the back wall disappearing. Another optimisation, "culling" means that all you have to do is slip your camera through a wall or hit the left or right arrow keys and again, bits and pieces of your world are flickering on and off as the server tries to aggressively "cull" your environment. to all those who say this can be adjusted, I have never found the setting, and I bet the majority of the regular players haven't either. Again, this totally destroys immersion.

- I remember being able to set offsets on textures to several decimal places and they stayed that way forever. Another optimisation is that even though texture offsets can take numbers of incredible accuracy, the server automatically rounds them off in conditions of high lag (which is pretty much all the time lately), and worse, if you re-take or save the object, the new "rounded" numbers stay that way forever. This turns building in to a guessing game at best and destroys the ability to really make anything with any detail. Like the other otimisations, "quick and crude" seems to be the order of the day.

- I remember when the slowness of the sim had some relation to what was going on in the sim. If it was laggy as hell, you could find the cause (like prim hair). If time dilation was going nuts, you could see the jerk ressing physical objects and get him to stop. If scripts were going slow you could locate the jerk with the minimal scripting skill and eject him. If the grid crashed, it was because of a concerted attack from a particular member (an exploit), and it was both unusual and exciting.

Now for the past month or two:

- sims crash regularly for no discernable reason.
- the grid crashes regularly not from exploits but from "mysterious server stuff"
- massive time dilation in every sim, even empty ones.

For all these things there is no stated cause, nor reason, nor any communication from LL as to why or what to do about it. Add the "social problems" to this mix and the picture is grim indeed. From my point of view SL is a (slightly) quicker (slightly) better looking but much crappier, crass-er and uglier and more annoying game than when I first started.

SL does seem to be running poorly. I will whole-heartedly agree with that. Is it worse than it used to be? I don't know. What I do know is:

1. My perceptions and expectations of SecondLife have changed drastically in the past two years. What was awesome in October of 2004 would probably suck if I encountered it today. This means it's very difficult to accurately say "yes, things are worse now than they were". Are they REALLY worse or are we just more aware, more jaded, and less enthralled?
   
   
   
2. My Alt Account runs much smoother than I do, just like Cory pointed out. Also, I did notice an improvement when I dropped my Inventory from 14K to 12K, so lugging all that crap around does seem to affect us and of course, two years ago, I wouldn't have DREAMED of haivng this much "stuff".
   
   
   
3. Almost all my "lag" has gone away since I've upgraded my system. I still have trouble, hence why I think SL is running poorly, but it's much better than it was. This is NOT an evil thing in my mind. Every computer upgrade I've ever struggled through was done so I could play a game that wouldn't run, or wouldn't run "right" with the system I had -- starting WAY back in the early/mid 90's with a new system so I could play Railroad Tycoon and Civilation! Two years ago my old system was borderline, so frankly I'm just amazed I lasted as long as I did without needing an upgrade.

whoooaaaa......

>and light feature was enable and intensity was 1 and radius was 10 and falloff was 0...<

Up until 1.8 came out, I would crash almost every single day. I would just randomly crash. No warning, nothing. I tried every trick in the book to try and fix it, but nothing would work. Then 1.8.1(?) came and I stopped crashing. It was a great improvement for me. So, I think SL has come a long way since I stated, but there are still many things that need to be fixed/updated.

I can understand how bugs can creep into the works. What I don't understand is how a bug that they already fixed once can come back. SL crashes whenever I try to send a snapshot to disk. AGAIN!!

When I first started (1.8, I believe), it seemed failry stable. 1.9 shattered that illusion -- but I found 1.10 to be a vast improvement. Still, yes, 1.11 and 1.12 have seems to be plagued with troubles.

Mari

Agreed - 1.5 will probably go down in History as the worst update ever. (At least I hope it remains the worst update ever)

As far as 1.12 being no better or worse, stability wise, on average, than any other release - that's hard to say. I can't remember if it was 1.7 or 1.8 - but one of those two was amazingly smooth.

Regardless, I think any asessment of stability is a subjective one. If you were to take a sum total of all bugs in this version, you're probably right - its no better or worse.

However, some bugs affect some folks more than others. The biggest problem I had with 1.5, was it made certain elements of Second Life flat-out unplayable. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, 1.5 was the only version that Linden Lab actually issued a service credit to everyone for.

Today, we've got a chronic Images time problem in many sims, that's adversely affecting time dilation. It wasn't introduced in 1.12 - its been around at least since 1.10. It doesn't make SL unplayable, but it sure makes it intolerable at times.

If there's any issue that scares new users off the most, its poor performance - and with the big push to hit 1M residents, it really surprises me that this issue hasn't received more public attention from LL.

I guess I'm mainly worried about too many people. Now don't get me wrong, I love lots of people, and love to see the population grow.

But not if the infrastructure can't handle it. Would they possibly make two shards or something if that were the problem?

coco

No. Two shards would be horribly complex. Who stays, who goes? What assets go where?