Too too too slow

Just wanted to add to your data...it isn't just Windows. I run SecondLife under WineX 3.3.2-1 in Linux and I experience the same horrible performance...0.3fps quite frequently.

Linux (2.6.10 SMP Kernel)
WineX 3.3.2-1
Intel Pentium 4 3.00GHz (HTT, thus SMP)
Intel Bonanza D875PBZ (5 PCI, 1 AGP, 4 DIMM, LAN) (Mainboard)
1GB Coursair PC3200 DDR SDRAM
Nvidia GeForce FX 5950 Ultra 256mb AGP - Seems to be a common thread, nvidia graphics

Had the same problems, nearly drove me crazy.

Solution for me:
- switched off Shiny Objects
- switched off Local Lighting
- cleared cache

- rebooted the PC

Then I logged in and waited a little. After two minutes SL ran perfectly. And I could switch on Shiny and Local Lighting again which slows it down some, but it still works fine.

I don't know if this just Vodoo. But for me it worked.

I can stil do nothing, this update is a total mess

How many days now and if u read the forums you do not see ONE SINGLE POST BY A LINDEN acknowledging that anything at all is wrong


Not hints of future patches it's as if nothng was wrong and all is perfect.

I still cannot function in SL > no walking flying creating or viable gameplay at all.

Nothing rezzes, the landscape is mainly grey fog and trying to move is like swimming against a current then u suddenly jump half a sim sink into ground and get stuck

This is a TOTAL MESS and I just paid most of a week's fees to NOT be able to play. Sure enough I get the email today saying LL debited my card with $390.. I don't see any lack of urgency in the fee grabbing Department

yet the rest of the game is useless to me so far and not a sign that LL intends to do anything about it

here is the scene after 20 minutes of standing still ... useless and unplayable- WHAT WAS ALL THAT MONTHS OF PREVIEW FOR WHEN IT RELEASES AND DOESNT WORK AT ALL

WHEN WILL YOU FIX THIS?

MY FELLOW RESIDENTS

DO NOT GIVE UP YET!!!

Snakekiss y0

Robin Linden has JUST posted about this... check it out... we're all hangin' in here...

Two very good points were made from ALL of these people that have problems.
Why would you try fix it if it isin't broken,
An upgrade isin't allways a good thing.

Well, saying that, things have to progress i understand that,
But one thing i think is understandable also, if my online business bings 10,000 plus
peeps (potential clients) to my site and we decide to do an upgrade, that drasticaly effects the way people can handly my site.
I think the best thing i could do at least is run the software that caused no problems for
90%? of my daily users, which isin't the case here.

Then again why listen to me, i'm just another number on the list.
Only one good thing has happened out of all this for me,
I can get some other work done while absent from SL.

Fantastic!

I use ATI Radeon 9200 SE/128MB video card.
In SL preference, it's now set to 64MB and still crashes the game.
1.7 update's the worst that've been experienced so far.
At times, packet losses're over 40 percent???!!!

CPU:0.13 micro Intel Pentium 4 (2000 Mhz)
Memory: 512 MB
OS Version: Windows 2000 Service Pack 4
Open GL Renderer: ATI RADEON 9200 SE DRRx86/SSE 2

Graphics Tab:
performance options: none checked
avatar rendering: normal
terrain detail: some
gamma: 1.00

Advanced Graphics:
texture cache size: Large
Video Card Memory : 64mb
fog distance: 1.5
drop draw distance: 0
bumpiness draw distance: 5
max particle count: 2816
outfit composite limit: 3

I agree this should have been seen in preview and not released til it was ready. Up until now I have held my tongue as I had faith they would resolve things pretty quickly. It has been days now and Im still having major issues. I have adjusted settings, etc, but I have no where near the performance I did before. I have a Gforce4 vid card and never lagged like this in my life. I own a business and I have been unable to work and my sales up until today have been next to nothing. The fact that today they went back to normal I am hoping is an indication that some people are able to move and see textures now.

Hindsight is 20/20 and Im sure LL realizes this release was not ready. I am going to hang on and see what next weeks update brings. Let's face it eventually it will be as good or if not better than before or their business is shot, so I'm sure they are working hard to resolve.

My only suggestion is next time there is a big new release with preview, dont just suggest we pop on to preview it - BEG US! I think had a lot more of us logged on at the same time to the preview they would have seen this nightmare in advance. Had LL sent an announcement asking us all to please try to log on to preview on a certain day so they could do a valid test I would gladly have obliged.

Im losing money and patience too, and my heart goes out to other vendors who are losing money and time here, but I will not give up. For me, there is no option of switching to another game. I'm not playing one now nor am I interested in playing one. I just want my Second Life back...sniff

Got the latest catalyst driver for ATI card.
At least now it won't crash so far I've staying in sim for an hour.

Url to download: https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=27

I think he may have uncovered part of the mystery here. A few minutes ago, I paid a little visit to my neighbor to the southewest, who is the starter of this thread. I took a screenshot of what I saw. Pardon the huge size of the shot. I run SL at 1280x1024. This shot was done with shiny enabled, local lighting disabled and draw set at 192.

My system configuration:
AMD Athlon 64 3200
2gb DDR400 ram
Asus A8n SLI motherboard
Nvidia GeForce 6600, 256mb, PCI Express
WD 160gb SATA HD

Not many in this thread have posted system specs, but it seems to me that LL may have raised the bar as far as minimum system requirements. I'll have to do further testing with my slower machines. At this point (with my fastest computer), I can move about as fast as I used to in 1.6 as long as local lighting is off.

I think not. Last night I tried, briefly, all the goodies off, the three quality sliders at 50%, and a 64m draw distance.

The PC is a 3.2 Gig P4E, with 4Gb and an Nvidia 6800 ultra 256.

The result was 11fps in my wholely owned sim where there have been no alterations since the update. Prior to update I was looking at 25-35 fps with all the goodies on and everything maxed out at a 256 draw distance.

If they've raised the bar for a useable system, what do I need now, Blue Gene, or a Cray?

A few minutes ago, I went to practically the same spot on a different machine. This is my slowest computer, an old Dell I rescued from a trip to the dumpster.

System Configuration
P3, 1ghz (Coppermine)
512mb PC100 system ram
Nvidia GeForce4MX, 64mb, PCI (could not find a decent low profile AGP card)
30gb ATA 100 HD

This computer is near the bare minimum requirements to run SL. Its on the same network as the A64 machine. I ran with local lighting off, shiny on and draw set to 64. Also, since this computer is connected to a TV, its only running at 800x600. Oddly enough, this system shows really no change in performance after "upgrading" to 1.7. SL is just playable as long as I stay away from crowds. It has become apparent to me that the big performance killler is local lighting. I still have another machine to test.

Thanks Teeny, that is my store you are looking at I WISH I could even see that myself

Well I am VERY disappointed indeed in SL. It's near a week since the update, LL debited me dead on time for $390 and I still cannot even see my AV let alone anything in my sims or do any work or make any L$ or finish any of my projects for customers.

Basically SL is now UNPLAYABLE for me. If you cannot move, fly, walk or see a texture then the world is just a mass of grey unrezzed panels without any use. That is how SL is for me now. The only way I can see ANY textures much at all is to turn OFF local lighting, with local lighting on I cant even walk except in freezes and huge jumps and textures NEVER rezz not matter how long u stay on.

What's most annoying is I read the LInden announcements and I see theres a new patch today/tomorrow and it has NOTHING !!! in it for cure this problem for us, NOTHING!.. it's all about little bugs and other stuff.

So meantime I have had a week where I have had to just give up coming to SL and yet I am still paying for it. I am VERY disappointed and yet again unhappy with the lack of attention to the problem.

This version update is SUPPOSED TO IMPROVE SL, the adverts on site make it sound improved yet all its done for me and many others is KILL access to the game at all

WHEN WILL THIS BE FIXED.?????

Snakekiss, i've been experiencing much the same over at The Forest. We had 2 days of solid grey goo before textures even began showing up. Now we have lag storms that never go away. Time dilation of 0.1 or less seems to be the order of the day and it occasionally rises to something above 0.5. Very little has changed in our sim except 1.7. If anything we've reduced our prim count, switched all lighting over to 'Full Bright' and made an attempt to simplify textures... all to no avail. Our halloween party on Saturday was a blowout: the sim crashed twice which drove everyone away. Yes, we used to have stability problems but for most of 1.6 The Forest was rock solid. Now it's back to crashing on a daily basis. Textures render horribly slowly...

If LL wanted to kill SL off, 1.7 is the perfect weapon.

I completely agree. Not impressed at all with this update.

Much the same in my situation.

I guess this is just a waiting game...except the wait is far too long.

Since the patchup everyone has had there frame rates cut to from 1/5 all the way to my frame rate> 1/16 estimate. (1fps instead of 20).

I have a feeling it is something to do with character rendering.

Guess that says it all about the level of concern for those of us who can no longer play the game yet continue to pay?

Does anyone see a post saying a patch is on the way? or credit will be given? NO.. not me

Or even an encouraging comment. How many Lindens do u have to know before you get a reply in a thread like this I wonder?


Shameful really isn't it. I guess they just dont chose to read the threads about problems.. how long before we can even play the game we are paying for every day?..

I have to wholeheartedly agree Snakekiss. I my case, I have had Lindens looking at the sim pretty much since the update. They agree there is a serious issue, have no idea what it is, and tell me it MAY need further investigation. Then they restart the sim and all is fine for a hour if we are lucky, and it is all downhill again.

Here is a couple of pics taken last night after the latest patch.

Just makes me so sad that the game I love playing is so unplayable in the way I chose to do it. That is stay home and build or make textures.

Hi Snakekiss,
Sorry to hear your having problems, I am to with lag, not seeing textures till I am logged in for 10 minuets sometimes, and the lag comes and it goes. I am sick of this and I hope they fix it soon.

I have been waiting as well. I figured they would work out the bugs etc. My home sim used to be FPS Green, green, green, all the time pre1.7. Now it is RED all the time.

I too experience the grey slow res'ing in of objects, I sit, wait and deal with it.

Last night though, I decided to try and work on a new necklace idea. Oh boy, what a headache. I was lagged, I was bogged, then the camera simply stopped and refused to move anymore. The prim necklace was to have around 100 prims. I started to get an error message while linking saying I could not link them because it was too many objects, this started at 66. I thought we could link up to 256 ?
It turned from relaxing fun into frustrating nightmare. I logged out and went to sleep.


My pc is not a clunker, I can play EQ and WoW with all the bells and whistles enabled.
I use Win2k. Sorry I am not a hardware geek so can not write it's specs out of memory.

It makes me really sad I can not longer enjoy SL like I once could. Is this going to be fixed ?

My home sim in Igbo, while slightly better than it was a few days ago, is still unbearable. And the 'almost but not quite' rendering of textures is driving me nuts.

I just want to add my voice in case people are out there thinking "oh, good, everything's fixed now" (because surprisingly, some people I talk to tell me "hey, everything's okay now!". Because as of this morning, SL is too slow for me to do any real building or work.

Jess

I totally agree with Snakekiss, this update is horrendous. I'm not on a huge account, but I still pay $125/month. I mean, when you can’t even walk straight with out lag - there are problems. While I realize this isn't your typical MMOG I think there have to be some standards of acceptable gameplay - and the last week just hasn’t cut it. If this were any other MMOG, players would be screaming bloody revolution.

LL really needs to adopt a rollback policy if an update goes bad. It’s easy for veteran type players to say 'it will get better within a month', but for new players, who haven’t been through situations like this before, this may come across as amateurish. SL is a great world with a great development team - It would be a shame to see any negative press because of lackluster updates.

Let's cross our fingers and hope they get to the bottom of this. In the meantime, I think we need to address Update policies at the next Town Hall Meeting.

Jeska Linden posts (elsewhere)

However, sometimes events outpace our ability to communicate to our community what is transpiring. A week and a half has gone by since we launched 1.7. In that time a lot has occurred. We have updated the client four times and the servers five times. Furthermore, we have another client and server update tentatively scheduled for next Tuesday, November 8th. At the heart of your question, I believe, is that you want to know where does the 1.7 and its subsequent updates leave Second Life? I have both good and bad news. First the bad news:


BUT WHEN WILL IT BE FIXED??
THAT IS WHAT WE WANT TO KNOW? NOv 8th??. where is my compensation refund?

AND THATS WHAT YOU DONT TELL US?

Biggest thread on this forum section and not a Linden post in nearly 50 posts.. what does that tell you?

I agree with you Snakekiss- this is horrible and worrisome! I have been fairly patient, but my patience is wearing thin. I spend most of my days trying to overcome problems caused by this update. I can't even build, as linking is almost impossible! What does all this improve? Nothing!

They can't tell you when it will be fixed because they almost certainly don't know yet.

It's not like they can say "OK, there's the problem. I see that I will have to write 2574 lines of code to fix this. That means it will take ... 3 days. Go tell the users."

Bug fixing doesn't work like that.


1. Try to find the problem. Duration: Unpredictable.

2. Try to understand the problem well enough to solve it. Duration: Unpredictable.

3. Try to design and code a fix for the problem. Duration: Unpredictable.

4. Recompile. Duration: Somewhat predictable from past experience, assuming that your new code doesn't cause the build to fail (invariably at >75% completion) for no apparent reason. If it does, go back to step 1.

5. Install the fix. Duration: Somewhat predictable, unless the computer is being a pain. Which is itself unpredictable.

6. Test the fix out (if you can ... preview clearly shows that these problems may not show up by any method other than putting them live). Duration: Depending on the type of problem, this might or might not be predictable.

7. When it inexplicably fails to help, or even function at all, rip it out and go back to step 1. Duration: Unpredictable.

8. Put it live. Duration: Twice as long as it takes to annoy both your employees and your customers, nowhere near as long as you should be taking for this sort of thing.

9. Go to 7. All too predictable.


I treat all estimates of when software problems will be fixed to be, at best, 99.9% guesswork. So it doesn't worry me overmuch when I don't get one.

It'll get fixed as soon as the trance from running through the above loop for weeks on end fades, they blink, look up slowly like a post-traumatic patient expecting to be shelled with no warning, and dimly begin to realize that the latest build (for no apparent reason) *didn't* crash, cause the server to explode, kill the compiler, kill the cat, steal your car, your girlfriend, your money, or have an obnoxious party in your house

... and not one second sooner.