Notification to technical team of Second Life

As of 8:02 PM eastern, I have deleted my account. Less than 10 hours after downloading the free trial. There was too much LAG on the server for me to actually get to play normally. It took between 1-3 seconds for a single tap of the arrow keys to register if it was going to register at all. I have surmised that this might be because you have only one type of download per system. I use DSL for my connection and it is much faster than a 56K modem. My computer is a PC. I stated when I said for the account to be deleted, that you could e-mail me if you had any more questions. I also stated my e-mail addy. I said the reason was technical difficulties and typed, in depth, my exact reason. I hope this helps to improve the game. It has the makings to be one of the greats.

What's your computer specs?

What sim were you in?

What were you doing to make the lag unbearable?

Do you have the latest drivers?

Is it a framerate issue or a bandwidth issue?

WHat is your bandwidth (actual numbers)?

LF

It sounds like you could be on a wireless LAN. 802.11b isn't well-equipped for dealing with the amount of traffic SL sends, and so, you can get pretty high ping times as well as packet loss.

gotta love it, lag and he deletes the accnt, did you optimize network settings? Maximize Cache settings? What else did you have using internet resources running at the same time?
Did you contact a Linden while in game to see if they could offer a solution? How about this? WHEN did you experience such lag, and do you know what pipelines your DSL runs thru? Where you aware Qwest and AT&T had several pipes down over the weekend due to storming in the NE?


Or did you summarily blame it on the game and give up?

Souinds more to me like he didn't have hardware OpenGL acceleration. Over at the X-Plane.org forums, that's a frequent complaint. It always goes like this:

Newbie: youR progrAM SUX ROX caus its so slow it like runs maybe 2 or 3 secunds per frame

Chorus of responses: Get a better video card/Update your drivers/Stop using an on-board chip

Newbie: wut? my 800mhz Dell Laptop isn't good enough? Well u all suck! i shuldnt half 2 know about crap like OpenGL to use ur game

yada yada yada.... Actually, LL needs to put that in the system requirements: HARDWARE ACCELERATED OpenGL: This means a MODERN video card! I don't think it's actually mentioned anywhere in those terms.

And he would be absolutely correct. This is one of the two most significant fundamental differences between mainstream software (Windows) and software that may be better, but can't seem to break out of the hard-core user niche (Linux.)

I agree moving around is hard but once you get used to it, it's not that bad.

im running on a Radeon 9600-xt pro with 256mb and i get like 10 fps.. whast ridiculus. I have all my settings minimized.. and the latest catalyst drivers.

Any ideas?

OpenGL is NOT a Linux thing. OpenGL is exactly what the name says: an OPEN 3D graphics API. GL was around long before Microsoft started in with its lousy Direct3D crap, and is still going strong despite anything MS can throw at it. Microsoft's only concession to the OpenGL was a software interface long after video card companies had started deveoping hardware-accelerated 3D cards.

Now to say that a user shouldn't have to know about his computer to use it is pure bunk. You SHOULD know about basic security concepts, how a firewall works, basic file system concepts, and what the word "resolution" means. The reason we have posts like this first guy is because people don't take the time to learn about their computers. It'd be like getting on a motorcycle and riding it in downtown LA traffic without even having a driver's license first. YOu can do it, but it's just plain stupid, and it will get you in to a lot of trouble in the long run.

What's your processor specs?

Even with a 2.6 ghz processor you're going to get maybe 20 fps.

It's due to the streaming nature of SL. almost NO rendering optimizations can happen.

LF

You've skipped over my point and gone straight on the defensive here. My comment wasn't about OpenGL. My intended statement was that Windows is mainstream and Linux isn't primarily because the vast majority of computer users are non-technical.

The end user shouldn't be required to understand the technical workings of a system in order to use it. That's the whole point to user interfaces.

My users don't have to know C++ or C# to be able to run my software. They don't have to know anything at all about a computer. It's actually amazing to me in this day and age the number of people I know that still refer to a computer case as a CPU or a hard drive. I know people with CIS degrees that not only don't know the difference between CPU cache, RAM, and VRAM, they wouldn't know a CPU or a DIMM if it jumped up and bit them on the ass. And god forbid you ever hand a screwdriver to an MIS major and allow them to open a computer case.

And your second paragraph is a broken analogy. Your argument is more akin to saying that an individual should be required to be able to rebuild a carburetor before being issued a driver's license. I say they shouldn't even be required to know what a carburetor is, or even where the engine is. They only need to understand the user interface.

Making your user interface or requiring that your users have technical knowledge to use your software accomplishes nothing except severely restricting your target market.

file sharing kills SL