Simple Answers

((Reposted in more appropriate Forum))

Any programmer that has been around sl for a while know the root of all the problems. Textures, lag, scripts, sculpties etc.

You take a server and viewer program, combine them and you get twice the problems.

You take those two and place bandaid patches on them, then heep on added features, then more bandaids, then more features, then more graphics, then more bandaids, then more. At some point the bandaids start to dry out and peal. Your end up with a house of cards to some extent. One peice fails and a whole section fails.

Not to mention your own people are frustrated by the fact they can't take advantage of many new advances because your software will not support it or the bandaid did not work right.

Till Linden Labs takes a core group of programmers and recodes both the servers and viewer from scratch, we can only expect more such problems to crop up. This is a 6 or 8 year old program, still on version 1.xx.

It is time to stop adding to that program and recode to version 2.01. meaning start from scratch, take what you have learned, take from the new technologies what you want and/or need and build a new program.

So many of LL's problems are simply solved if they used newer technology and systems that were not available when the program was first written.

I personally have not seen one recent upgrade that has not given and taken. Given something new and taken away something we had.

Textures are the big crash now. We have tested extensively and script performance is up, actually really up this time. But does not matter, fps as measured against outside constants to ensure it is only sl changes show, fps are down to 1/3 what they were before the most recent network change and the latest server version. Viewers have had little effect on it while there was a drastic change when the new network came in.

Not sure who the techs think they are folling when they say nothing changed. Clearly the way textures load has changed. Clearly something change to force textures to reload everytime you come into a sim. Shut down your scripts, physics, colliosion and then watch. Nothing really changes in fps. Go to the edge of your sim and face in to the center, wait for everything to load. Now turn and face out to the linden ocean and wait. Watch FPS shoot up. Now go back to facing the center and watch them dive again and watch some textures reload even though you have not left the sim.

Since we ping response times in several servers accross the US to make sure internet responce times are constant. We also have graphics tests on three of them. One happens to be right outside SF.

Fact is everything is almost the same, constant, the only changes are when sl is loaded. Performance there is almost exactly 1/3 of what it was.

Now unless SL has reduced bandwitdh on thier new network or throttled texture bandwidth, or reduced graphic resourcez on the sim servers, etc, then the problem clearly has to be the server and to a lessor degree the viewer software.

You take out the scripts, collissions, physics, and your left with the graphics and the textures.

And forget the testing. We have long time users, dozens of them coming to the sims, and now crashing out when these people never used to ahve any problems. I have had user after user tell me their fps is down by over half in every sim they visit. Yet their performance outside sl is the same as it has always been.

LIndens love to point to the client and say it is your computer's problem, your ips, your city. Fact is, when it si thousands and thousands of users experiencing the same drop in fps, it is not us, it us within sl.

Time to look in house for the causes and fix them. First step is to recode the core programs and rebuild a server version that takes in all the advances out there.

samatha

I'm confused. You seem to be trying to say textures are lagging the servers. That's not possible. The servers have nothing to do with graphics. They simply deliver files (texture files included), run scripts, handle physics calculations, etc. Opening the files and rendering them as textures or other visual elements is the exclusive domain of the client. The servers cannot and do not have anything to do with that.

So what am I missing in what you were saying?

Well let me ask you this hun. Ever watched the technical side of textures loading. First off, a Server has to tell your Client what to draw, what textures you need and if you don't ahve them, get them for you. All this hun is server side. The Draw ans Texure process is lagging a whole lot of people. Textures and Draw are way slower than before the "New Network" move. Client side Cache does not even effect loads anymore.

So, considering we are dealign with thousands of users all experienceing the same thing and they have the same viewer they had before, same network access, same everything.

Where do you suggest the problem is??

Clearly something in the way the servers handle these has changed.

Here is a little test we just did with three avatars.

We move our caches to new directorys, this completely clears it etc.

We then logged in and timed the loading time on four sims. We then logged out and then back in, timed the load time on those 4 sims again, tping to them in the same order etc.

Interestingly enough, load time with a empty cache and load time with a cache that should have nothing but the 4 sims we traveled too, all within seconds of each other, no matter whether cache was cleared or not, except one sim, the forth one. Linden Estates Services.

In that sim, load time the second time was 55 to 80% faster than the first time with an empty cache, depending one which avatar was loading it.

All three of the other sims we tested with are sims that we all used to go to and would laod, almost instantly unless we had just cleared cache. Now these three appear to reload textures each time without regard for the cache. Drawing also takes way longer.

Three avatars, three computers, three locations, all with equipment and software that has not changed since the move to the new network and the latest server upgrades. All seeing performance drops of 50 to 60 % since those moves only on second life.

I'd be interested in what your test shows using the kirsten viewer.

i get amazing results when rezzing with it.
dang time is off by hour though grrr.

you can find it by googlin it