Question about lag in M sims

Ok I am rather curious. It seems that both pre and post 1.2, the three Mature sims I live near seem to be plagued by severe lag (Federal, Stanford and Hawthorne). At first I wondered if it was the builds themselves, it does not seem to be as each sim is different - Stanford has gotten horrible in the past few weeks even after some really large builds disappeared. Is it scripted objects? Is it the hundreds of audio streams we are bombarded with by the stupid jukeboxes when music does not even work correctly anyway? I don't know what it is, but it has made SL quite unbearable at times over the past few weeks.

Other sims which seem just as built up, just as much land usage, etc.. are not nearly as laggy. I took some friends who started SL to Taber tonight because Stanford was so bad, we were moving like we were underwater. I am afraid to ask if moving up to 15,000 prims and removing the height/light tax was too ambitious, but it oes not seem to be that either. I am not sure what it is, perhaps it is a combination of things, but all I know is that Federal and Stanford especially are in lag hell.

I don't know if this is relevant or not but I've had lag hell *in general* since 1.2 started. I keep wondering if it has something to do with some constant and serious re-doing that's going on around the world, or if, like you said, the height and light tax vanishing has caused folks to go full bore that way . . .I dunnno. But its been pretty annoying.

Zana

For the most part, yes to your ideas of what it is.

Mature sims seem to, for some unknown reason, draw in a large number of poorly designed objects, containing usually even poorer designs in scripts.

The particular section of the world you're referring to is notorious for it.

Once upon a time Hawthorne wasn't too bad when it was under Mafia rule. But those days have gone by, and now it's open just like the rest to be plagued with endless amounts of illegal audio blaring, overuse of strange texture animations, spinning objects, and photographs.

I'm not sure why -- but Mature sims have always had a higher concentration of 'photo' textures -- rather than small tiled textures and the like.

The combination of the sounds, textures, and one cannot forget, the Mature sims were always at prim capacity, which slows things down as well.

Hopefully the new northern M sims will not fall into the same problems.

Please ladies and gentlemen (and other avatar things) be resource conscious when you build/script/etc. If you don't know how, ask.

I think Si is correct.

Sound in particular has been a killer for me, there are some areas (including the sims mentioned) where I just don't visit any more.. the audio streams just make it unbearable. The many snow particles and water sprays for fountains etc have an effect too, but not nearly to the extent that audio has.

Yes, my biggest thought is that it is audio. I've never uploaded music to SL, and I pretty much don't listen to it in SL either. I usually listen to Slive.net or my own music. But I always know when music is being played in SL, because I suddenly start to lag, and at times it is unbearable. I don't normally lag, so it gets frustrating when you can pretty much pinpoint the cause of it, but do nothing about it. I cannot even work in my own shop sometimes when the music starts in the sim and the other scripts are pumped in there too.

I don't want the music to go away. I know many people enjoy it and I'd love for it to be there for them. There just has got to be some solution to this lag issue with music scripts (especially the larger ones that seem to involve jukeboxes).

I'm trying to do my part to help with lag, as someone who sells RL pictures in my place. I have learned a lot since I first started and I am redoing my stuff so that my pictures are smaller on upload and therefore better loading texture wise. But I also know from trial and error, that my pictures do not cause the lag amounts that some of these music scripts do.

Is there not anything that can be done about this?

It's been like that since i've been here! 0.2 BETA, I would never go that way. It was a lag hell hole! Like si said, no offence to anyone there... but there is tones of junk around there with some poorly designed scripts too! What I really don't like about that section are the HUGE textures that ppl put up!

** deleted **

I wonder why LL has never publicly addressed the severe audio stream abuse issue. They seemed to have killed music in regards to the fact that I rarely can ever hear more than a short clip of it anymore (which may have just been a happy accident on their part), but it seems we are still bombarded with the streams. Pendari was quite careful in her post, but I definitely would blame the majority of the lag on the audio streams from jukeboxes. There was an evening when someone was monitoring the audio streams in Federal, and it averaged between 250-400 streams at a time. As one audio stream does not even seem to work right (ever get a laugh like 10 minutes later?), imagine the impact of 400 streams multiplied across everyone in the vicinity, which is quite far I might add.

Why LL does nothing about this, I do not know. I have reported it, and gotten dead silence out of them. It is very frustrating when someone else is able to ruin the game experience of an entire sim, and it seems we are powerless to do anything about it. I see those stupid jukeboxes everywhere, namely the laggy sims I was referring to in the first place. And if you are a jukebox maker and you are offended by that, too bad. They have no place in SL when they deteriorate the entire experience for everyone.

Uh maxx... it IS ogg. It is ALL ogg.
Whenever you upload a wav it is converted to ogg first, and you can even select the bitrate in the options. Everything you stream from LL's servers is ogg vorbis.

** deleted **

Well maxx streaming music sucks because the files are broken up into 9 second pieces and there will always be some lag between them. Plus the sound preloading function doesnt work very well. If you have a song, play it a few times until its cached and then it will work better.

It's craptastic because it is chunked up into 10s clips that all get loaded at different speeds. The sound system isn't designed for music. Thus trying to play music with it is gonna be horrible as we all see. (Listen to SLive instead! *shameless plug)

I think I saw 320ish incoming audio streams down there once. Inexcusable.

Well not completely powerless... You can do what I did - tear your whole house down and plant a tree there Then move into your 28 prim 1987 dodge camper van.

- Taylor "can I park my van here a while?" Portocarrero

You tore down your house??

OMG?! Did you really tear down your beautiful house Taylor?!?

If people are not conservative with thier builds and script effects, they will effectively LOSE them in the long run.

Here's why:

I am disabling things which annoy me.

For example, nearly every time I start SL now, I turn off particles at some point during my session and rarely remember to turn them back on again.

Therefore, I will not see even the elegant particle scripts, which may be a major draw for your store or an important visual effect on your nifty new vehicle (for example) that would have been the tipping point to sell that product to me.

I am carefully considering disabling sounds as well. If it didn't require a restart to stop the audio streams, I probably would have them turned off most of the time like I do with particles. Although I've heard that muting audio doesn't really stop the streams downloading anyway, so what's the point?

Over a long period of time, more and more people will be disabling these effects, causing artists, builders, and scripters to reconsider even bothering implementing these effects if few people even have them turned on anymore.

We need a system that discourages the overuse of effects.

For particles, we have some fairly sensible adjustments already, but for sound we practically have no control at all.

We need the ability to mute audio streams from selective objects or from all objects owned by a person.

We need the ability to mute all audio streams without having to restart the SL client. BTW, restarting seems a bit extreme isn't it?

We need the ability to flush our incoming audio stream queue.

The incoming audio stream queue should automatically flush whenever we teleport.

Finally, when we do mute audio streams, they should not only stop playing, but new streams should NOT download!

Thank you, Kex. I agree: ALL that audio stuff is absolutely necessary, and I've said that since I started SL. The current behaviours for all those different systems is completely silly.

Ok I am rather curious. It seems that both pre and post 1.2, the three Mature sims I live near seem to be plagued by severe lag (Federal, Stanford and Hawthorne). At first I wondered if it was the builds themselves, it does not seem to be as each sim is different - Stanford has gotten horrible in the past few weeks even after some really large builds disappeared. Is it scripted objects? Is it the hundreds of audio streams we are bombarded with by the stupid jukeboxes when music does not even work correctly anyway? I don't know what it is, but it has made SL quite unbearable at times over the past few weeks.

Other sims which seem just as built up, just as much land usage, etc.. are not nearly as laggy. I took some friends who started SL to Taber tonight because Stanford was so bad, we were moving like we were underwater. I am afraid to ask if moving up to 15,000 prims and removing the height/light tax was too ambitious, but it oes not seem to be that either. I am not sure what it is, perhaps it is a combination of things, but all I know is that Federal and Stanford especially are in lag hell.

Cris...

Just curious,.if it bothers u THAT much why don't u move? Not to be smartass just really wondered i've seen u complain about it a few times *jukeboxes*

Frankie,

Why should I have to move when someone comes in and puts in an item that lags the entire sim? Is that person not the problem. And if you will do some research about this, you will realize I am not the only person who has commented on this. Should an entire group of people have to move because one person is so inconsiderate to affect an entire sim? I am sorry, you cannot defend an object that downloads hundreds of streams of audio at once.

Cristiano

I know your question wasn't directed at me Frankie, but it does apply to me so I'm going to give my opinion on your question. Running from a problem doesn't solve the issue. If the issue really *is* the audio streams (which I still believe it is), then it will still be a problem for the person who may move into my land when I move. No, moving would not fix the problem. Not even if there were actually any other mature sims to move to (not counting the ones that are there but are not yet open).

I've often out of frustration said I was just going to give up and move out of Federal. The fact is though, I was there before this lag issue started. I have grown to enjoy most of my neighbors. I like where I live. I should not *have* to move. It is also not just something that affects people who live in these sims. It affects visitors as well. And it keeps some from ever wanting to come back. No, what should happen is that whatever is causing this problem, should be looked into and fixed. Compromises to be made, bugs to be worked out, etc. Whatever it takes, the problem itself needs to be addressed.

That's my opinion.

Pen,

You as always are the queen of diplomacy

Cristiano

cris i did do research and yes i know where it comes from and as u know i live in stanford too. Sayin this i deal w/the lag until a sl can resolve it.

Aces, my neighbor and i have talked about this "are u playin music? no! u?" etc blah blah

nothing much we can do but deal..or take your 9,95 and go back to makin pizza

I think the music streams should be limited to 10meters like chat. If you aren't within 10 meters of the music jukebox or whatever, then it doesn't load.

I am in Clyde (PG) and the lag has been horrible since 1.2.
Textures keep reloading and reloading whenever you turn or adjust your camera. I thought they were loaded once and then, unless you went far away, they should stay loaded?

Yeah Camille SUPER good point. Why I have a 1GB cache set and have to constantly reload is beyond me.

And yes I did tear my house down. It's been so ridiculous in Federal the last 2 weeks or so I just cant stand to even go there. I've been spending my time in '0 lag' Shipley at my little dock. Hawthorne and Standford are pretty ridiculous also. I can't believe a XP 2200 and geforce4 cant handle it, so it's obviously not that (after spending tons of time trying to change settings to stop the freezes/crashes since about 1.1.5ish). But, let me tell you something I tested this morning...

FPS at ground level, at my home site in Federal = ~4 if the sim is empty of people and your are walking around/turning.

FPS at same coords at 200 meters up = 17-20, Zero lag

FPS at same coords at 400 meters up = 28-37 (seriously)

In other words... Im moving UP in the world...

I couldnt freaking move out of Federal even if I wanted to right now (no I dont want to btw, I got a solution that works for me). I feel VERY sorry for the herds of people LL is trying to get in. I've seen a ton of new people over this holidays. I challenge you to go find 1 decent contiguous piece of affordable land in the 2048 (or even 1024) range. I flew around looking for a slightly larger place to possibly move my dock to and i found only 1 tiny piece of public land on water, and like 3-4 total pieces, all that were well, not very appealing, land for sale. And these pieces have been (very) highly inflated in price due to the demand and the fact we all got big refunds so theres a lot of money floating around in the hands of veterans, but the brand new poeple get their starting grant and enough stipend that they will NEED to save for a while to even think about buying some trashy piece of 1024 for $5k+.

I hardly think bringing on 2 M sims will fix anything for long either because there are still lots of people who bought (1 or more) Lifetime memberships and have allocations to fill. plus there are new monthlys that are just waiting to jump on decent land.

What I think you will see is when they open these new M sims, people will dump their 16m junk plots they bought up just to get their prim allocations up and go get nice square blocks in these new sims, filling 2 (maybe even 5 sims) right away and leaving behind checkers all over of basically unusable land. What they need to do is open the 5 M sims stat and convert the 6 vehicle sims to usable land, plus Lime too. If this was my company thats what I would do Why? I just looked and there is 1 person in all the 6 vehicle sims (this is typical). I remember at the 1.2 info event with Phillip he said there woud be up to but not more than 10 (I think it was) new sims open with 1.2.

Oh sheesh sorry I kinda got off topic of lag.

- Tay

Now back on the topic of lag... I want to give you some facts to think about. Lag has been blamed on so many things. But I have my opinion and Im pretty stuck on it.

My opinion is it is the SL client that is broken here and it's rendering of graphics, although I could probably test it more, heres what I have seen. (or you just plain have to live with ridiculous low draw distance)

For one, I am in Federal right now on my empty land, and it sucks to turn and look around, like 3-7 FPS. particularly towards Pen's corner of the sim. And, I have Zero audio streams coming in and bandwidth is at 70k (of 500), with no packetloss. So, the problem is not in getting the data to me, whether audio or otherwise. I dont believe that is the cause of the problem. That leaves 3 things IMHO... lots of prims, lots of alphas, lots of scripts, well or #4, SL client issues.

When my house was up, even after I stripped all the furniture out last week, I had lag so bad inside that my computer(s) would just freeze up for like up to a minute. You could ask Serenity or Squeedoo to verify that too I spent lots of time working with Lindens to resolve it by messing with OpenGL settings etc and nothing 'really' worked. I attribute this to the fact that ALL my walls were heavily Alpha, plus plants and trees and other decor with heavy alphas, not the furniture, etc though. Because inside the house sucked totally, where outside only sucked some. But the Lindens explained to me to use Alphas for windows etc to save prims, so thats what I did. Full Alpha walls on every level. We would typically only freeze hard when turning or walking towards Pendari's/BigJohns corner of my house. First I thought it was scripts, so I'd went through and killed every script or particle in my house (but the swing doors) including the apartment rentals that were upstairs. That helped zero.

Also I dont think that there's an 'overuse' of scripts that way. Big John obviously has a few, but my house is gone now and Tony, Launa, Pen, Myradyl, Kenichi, Cris, Marak, Sassy, Gracie have very little scripting, and that makes up most of the sim.

I just now tried dropping my draw distance down to 64 and the frame rate went to almost 20 at ground level looking that way! It went up as the graphics rendered, so this tells me it's not the scripts because Im standing between the azura hotel and club elite looking around.

I seriously think its a graphics rendering problem. This client is rendering things inside these building and I think behind me that I cant even actually see, and rendering moving avs at events etc. I think before we start pointing fingers at people, we should get some response from the Lindens, who we pay to live in this world *wink Launa* about what is the problemo, officially!!??

Okay Im really done this time.

- Taylor

Wait one more thing. People are in Club Elite, and theres 35 streams, but bandwidth is still under 100 (usually its ~70 with no music), so I pulled out my own Jukebox (same one as Johns, I won it there) and loaded up a track. Im standing between 2 of them now and streams went to 39, bandwidth to ~150. Perfomance with draw distance at 64 = Zero lag, at 128 it really sucks though, 3.5 FPS.

SL does need more music controll functions, but also implementing them and making music work great could open LL up to liability, but thats a whole nother topic in itself.

Muting audio does not cancel the streams, I usualy have it muted not because of juke boxes but because I'm usualy listening to other things, for some odd reason though I have *never* had to restart my client for muting audio to take effect, I have no idea why. When you mute audio you should not continue to get the constant streams we have like you do now, this is a feature that should be changed.

I think the lag is a combination of a few things, one of the biggest being the juke boxes (200+ incoming streams going to over 10 people = obvious lag), the others being the amount of people, and maybe object types.

However I doubt it is scripted objects since I have practicly every object in my build scripted in Freelon and the only slow mo lag I've had there is last night when there was an event, which is to be expected, and it wasn't nearly as bad as some of the other lag can get. Of course if everyone had every object scripted that would most probably cause lag, but I don't really think people have that in the areas that are meant here.

Another possibility could be that the servers those sims run on have something wrong with them, or are older than the other ones, its to be expected that some servers would be older than others. The combination of this with the above would do the lag good.

Whatever the problem is many people seem to realize there is a problem, and as it has been said, should work together to fix what they can with these problems. The only problem we all seem to definitly know causes some amount of lag is the audio streams, its just common sense that streaming over 200 of audio data causes lag in SL, and right now it doesn't seem like LL is planing on making SL more music reliant, so figure it out for yourself what to do. But do something.