Recent client weirdness

Since last week sometime (1.0.3 or 1.0.4, not sure exactly when) I've been experiencing some weirdness in the client interface.

Most of the time I have sporadic difficulty moving. I hit "w" and don't go anywhere, so I hit it several more times and finally move. But I don't quit moving when I release the "w". I've occasionally gone as far as 256 meters+ into "dead land" before the system suddenly yanks me back to the edge of the sim, or some other place along my route.

Sometimes I'll be in mouselook, and the wheel won't pull me out of mouselook like it's supposed to. When this happens, I typically switch back to normal view about the 5th time I hit the 'Esc' key.

Last night I had an even more unusual occurrance. I logged in, tried to move, and went nowhere. Hit "w" several more times and looked around (turning always works) and suddenly I was at the bottom of the ocean, at the edge of the sim.

So I figure it's going to be one of those days. I hit "f" and wait a few seconds. I get the "glow" but never lift up. So I type "test" into the chat box, and it comes back from the server immediately. "That's weird," I think to myself. "The server's getting my data and I'm getting its responses." :-/

So I start looking around. I do a tracert to secondlife.com, and there's no lost packets or unusually high ping values. (Sometimes I do a tracert when I'm having trouble and find that there's a Level13 server in SanFran that appears to be overloaded, but not this time.) The status bars in the client show minimal bandwidth usage, and no lost packets. So I have absolutely none of the typical lag indicators. "Odd, that."

After a couple more minutes of this experimentation, I IM a Linden to come have a look. (I want to make sure someone other than me sees this, I'm 20 meters underwater and not likely to meet any passers-by.) So, said Linden shows up and I start explaining all this. At which point he pulls out a sword and starts whacking on my Av.

Every time he gets in a good blow, my Av moves about half-a meter. Linden says that's odd, because I should either be frozen (won't move at all) or I should get shot about 30 meters away. Linden has no idea what could possibly cause such odd behavior. (Even after he's beat on me and pushed me around for awhile, I still can't move of my own volition.) During this conversation/beating, it becomes glaringly obvious to both of us that there is no lag/packet loss/network latency involved. We can chat normally, and whenever he hits me I move immediately.

So, at this point I re-log, to see if that will fix the problem. I get back and the first thing I do is hit "w". I start to move. "Yay," think I. How wrong I was. When I release the "w" key, I continue to move. Into the hillside. I was about 5 meters into the hill when the client finally yanked me back to the ocean floor.

I type "crap"
I receive a message from Linden that says "This looks promising"
I start trying to explain the other problems I'm having this time around.
Linden eventually walks over to me.
I keep typing.
I send about 10 rounds of chat-text explanations.
Finally I realize that Linden probably isn't receiving my chat (I'm not receiving it back myself) and if he's typing, I'm not getting that, either.
I also realize, after several attempts, that I can't move, at all. This looks more like typical lag. Except that my lag indicators show low bandwidth usage and no dropped packets. :-/

Curiouser and curiouser.

So I finally give up and re-log again.

I come back in, and Linden is still standing there.
Everything is working perfectly. We can chat, I can move. The client responds immediately to key presses and releases. Everything seems to be working just like it was two weeks ago. "Yay!" And this time, it was good.

After some discussion, I realize that out of all the stuff I typed during the previous login, Linden only ever received "crap"

this is very odd, think I.

I logged in three times, within minutes, from the same location, with same network configuration, same options, etc. Each login gave me a completely different reaction, one of which was perfectly normal, one completely unusable, and one slightly less than tolerable.

I'm fairly convinced, at this point, that whatever movement problems I've been having for the past week or two are either in the recently released client or sim software. I've been getting errors for the past week that I never saw during my first two weeks. (I now have the "loading..." error, which I didn't have before. I also have a problem where I open a script in the editor window, and the script is fuzzy to the point of being completely unreadable. I mean I can't even make out the occasional letter. All I can really do is tell where the code blocks are, and that's only because of indentation.)

So, this is primarily a bug report, but I was wondering if anyone else has been having any of these symptoms in the past week or so? I'd like to help LL figure out what's wrong, regardless of who's problem it really is, and get it fixed before it drives me batty.

Edit: I should probably note here that about 4 out of 5 times that I log in now, I have some sort of movement trouble.

I'm also having a problem where I log in in my basement, and some of the prims aren't being rendered at all. But as soon as I move to an upper floor, they're there. Then I can go back to the basement and they're rendered from then on. Not really directly related, other than the fact that it's just plain weird. :-/

forgot to post your specs & connection.

What you say about missing prims at the end - I get that every time I log in. At least one prim somewhere in my building will be gone but eventualy shows up, sometimes hours later. (I do collide with the invisible prim though)

Other than that, I've never seen any of the behaviour you mention. Fuzzy unreadable source code window?? That is truely bizzare...

At a couple places you make it sould like you often have no packet loss at all. I constantly have at least a pixel height or two of packet loss on that red meter. Many times while I am moving quickly, I have a full bar of pixel loss, but it doesnt seem to be overly troubling.

Oops. I meant to do that, but got kinda long-winded and forgot about it.

System specs:
Intel P4 2.2 GHz
512 MB Ram
120 GB 7200 RPM, 8MB Cache HDD
nVidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra 256MB vid card
Creative Audigy sound

running in 1024x768, sometimes windowed sometimes full-screen. Was windowed when this happened last night. the persistent weirdness happens in both modes, though.

Network specs:
100 baseT/Wireless internal LAN (game system is on 100bT)
Cable modem in low-usage neighborhood. I typically get d/l rates in excess of 1.7Mbps. While I have servers on my internal network, none of them actually host anything that external users access.

I almost never see any activity on the packet loss indicator (never have) unless the sim's about to crash, or my ISP (or level13) have been overloaded or have misconfigured something. But this is very infrequent. The recent problems I'm experiencing happen nearly every time I log in, now.

I have a screenshot w/interface that I took last night of the fuzzy script window. When I get home I'll make sure the interface is actually in it, and attach it to this thread (or put it on my web server and link it.)

Oh, and yes, I do still collide with the invisible ceiling in my basement. The prim is there for the physics engine, it's just not being passed off to the vid card for rendering.

Edit: Oops, almost forgot. (Did forget, actually.) Windows 2000 Professional

As promised, here's the screenshot w/ interface of the scripting window problem:

Hello Grim,
That fuzzy script window is caused by either a corrupted SL font or by a video card setting which we are not handling correctly. Try reinstalling SL first. If that doesn't work, try turning off your video card's OpenGL Anti-Aliasing, then Anisotropic Filtering. I am interested to hear which one of those fixes it.

Dan

Actually, I just re-logged and it fixed it.

Unfortunately, that was one of the few sessions I'd had where I wasn't having movement problems. Once I re-logged, I could read the script windows again, but the movement problems were back.