Darn Resource Hog Casinos!!!

They probably mean to change the way traffic is calculated. Something they should have done 18 months ago, instead of ripping out DI and dwell.

Unfortunately, when you do that you actually increase the load on the server and the client application compared to using more prims.

Yes, really.

Let's take the common case of using a hollow prism to make two or three sides of a room, instead of using two or three prisms. The physics engine deals poorly with concave objects - the intercept calculations are more complex - so the load that hollow cube puts on the sim is actually higher than two or three separate cubes would cause.

When it comes to tricks like using a twisted profile-cut tube to make a spiral staircase out of one prim, you're creating an object that is MUCH harder on the physics engine than a stack of a dozen steps, and it also contains many more polygons than those steps would.

Once you start dealing with twisted toruses, forget it.

You can't treat the prim limits as anything more than a very very rough approximation of the real cost of an object. You'll end up with a build that causes less physics and rendering lag if you use the simplest prims right up to your prim limit than if you try and get clever.

And why is that limit there? To reduce load on the sim!

If you're using llSitTarget, you're making a poseball! That's all a poseball is, a prim with llSitTarget set and (optionally) a script to override the user's sit animation. If you set up a poseball with *no* animation in it, then stop the script... what do you have?

Thanks for pointing that.


You are wrong on this one. SitTarget is a property of the prim, as is hovering text. You may delete the script once set.

I'm helping set-up a mall/club place, we own a good chunk of land for it though, just under 1/4 in a quiet sim. I however would be sympathetic to learn someone was locked out because of our traffic. Yes we want traffic, but we want also want to be a benefit to the simulator, not a hog on every resource available.

I like the ideas for limiting avatar counts, ie a parcel get an avatar limit like it does a prim limit, but with a sensible minimum so small plots can still have friends over and such, or mb a scalable limit, as traffic goes up, limits effectively come down. So if traffic is say 10 avs and they're all on one plot it's no big deal, but if that doubled then the plot's limit may kick in as it gets overloaded.

Same is needed for scripts, but the worry there is that it could cause MORE lag in calculating fair script limits (e.g bigger parcels get more script time, avatars get a portion of script-time each. Overall time available is determined by sim FPS/load.

One of the major problems with scripters is they don't know anybetter or know how badly their scripts can cause lag. The tools are just not there for your average scripter. If you have access to estate tools this will be one of your most valuable tools. There has got to be a way to at least see how your scripts effect a sim. Just have a script with a default and an empty state_entry consumes resouces. it does not even have to do anything. After finding this out I reengineered one of my HUD to reduce script count. when from 102 scripts down to 16. Jsut doing this took a big chunk out of my script time usage. I don't know maybe there needs to be classes on how to reduce your impact on a sim.

Of course, that's the point. You can also delete the pose script from a poseball if you don't want to override the default sit pose, and (just as you say) it still works, without using any script time... and without having people facing the wrong direction when they sit down.

Which poseball script were you using, by the way? Some of them run active listens and take controls so the user can cycle through poses using arrow keys. Those features will obviously use more script time than one that don't have to handle events every time someone chats or hits an arrow key.

None for the moment, but I have some problems with sit direction being not applied every time. I will discuss this further in the Scripting Tips forum. I dont' care then pose, just the direction which makes players have the feel of a human, natural conference. I think it enhances the communication.

As pointed out by Gearsawe, we should try to lower the number of scripts for a same result. I've seen a decorative object with 8 scripts, one to play a sound, another one to play another sound, a third one to animate textures, and so on. Here, the creator was not a scripter and just throwing free, locked scripts he was beleiving necessary. Way too much simple scripts (and objects) released to the public have unnecessary nomod right and can't be optimized.

While controlling scripts and stuff to improve sim performance is nice and beneficial, how does this solve the problem of casino owners filling a mainland sim to the max with AVs? Even if the sim is able to handle more AVs through better scripts and optimized builds, casino owners have shown that their greed and lust to be popular has no bounds. If you up the AV limit to 50 or 60 without impact to the sim, what is going to stop them from trying to get 50 or 60 AVs onto their one parcel essentially still blocking other land owners from enjoying their land?

If we could hit 80 avs in a sim with the same lag as we see with 40 currently, then we could enable the ability to limit # avs per parcel based on parcel size, as a 512 plot would get 3 avs. I'm still not in favor of it, but it'd be almost practicle.

2nd Life on the mainland. I love living on the mainland. So much trouble to get into. On the Mainland there is zoning of the land into Mature and General. Lets add a 3rd zoning.
Residental. Just like in Real life. All the same rules would apply. If its sells, buys or is involve with money. Its not to be found in Residental zoning. And we the ppl of 2nd life can police this by just going in and buying something and then reporting.
Some regions or sims should be set aside as Residental only. Just as some sims are set aside as Mature or General. If I had my wish all the mainland would be set for residental.

2nd can be so much more then just a place for IBM or Cisco to use for there goals. 2nd life should stop worrying about improving the game and work on the quality of life in 2nd life. If you look closely you will see 2nd life is a growing organism. Any think allow to grow should be grown correctly. Take a garden. If u dont weeded out the weeds any thing will grow in it. Can't say that this will solve the lag problem and give the 2nd life time to find creative ways to deal with the LAG,but lag takes all the fun out of the game, and if u take time to look and talk to your neighbors. Its a great way to make contacts that can lead to interesting real life adventures, new jobs, information on things.. the human experience is just starting!

just a question.

Dearly Darlings,

After our first Real Life Home Purchase...I vote for zoning. We always scope out land usage rules as we have the floppy earred ones. I wish the same were true for SL. I'm lucky having found a spot in an older sim...Moving me will take an act of God.

Ever Yours,

Mrs. Showdog Tiger

Does a tip jar at a park in a residential zone count?
If no, then how do you tell the difference between a complicated series of scripts sending messages to one another via link_message, shout, and email, in order to bring about an llGiveInventory triggered initially by a money() event?

If this park pays for advertising or if it things it can live off only tips.. i say let it into the residental zone. But it can't offer anything other than the beauty of the park for all to see. No events posted to the park. Lots of residental communities in real life have parks. Parks in residental communities is a good idea. I must remember to set up tip jars in my home.. thanks for the idea.. keep thoes idea coming and soon we will have residental zoning..

quote:" each of us have a piece of the puzzle, all of us make the whole'

You didn't answer my question.
How do you tell the difference between a tip jar and a vendor from an automated system's point of view?

Script resources it consumes mb? A residential zone should more aggressively reduce script time for parcels that are hogging them perhaps to minimise lag, while other areas try to get a more equal balance of speed to functionality (scripts).

A commercial zone selling objects using standard "sale" boxes may have no scripts at all. A private residence containing a dozen pieces of multi-use furniture, exercise machines, and games may cause more lag than a mall.

Things such as public transport in residential zones can use up more resources than several different vendors. My commercial area uses barely any script time - the toys for visitors, the trams, those take time. Commercial establishments can be pretty much inconsequential for other sim users as long as they aren't based on the idea of having lots of people there at once, and don't use multiple inefficient scripts.

Hi,
Yes a tip jar is allowed in the residential zone. The automatic vendor is a business tool that allows you to sell items or services. A Tip Jar is no more than someone asking you to help pay for there 2nd Life account out of the goodness of your heart. The correlation between a tip jar and automatic vendor is a loose one, if it even exist. (moving on).
Picture a residential only sim on the mainland for a minute. The 1st question becomes one of, is the sim offering better performance. Chances are, not everyone will be home at the same time. Causing less lag in that sim. And if by chance they are all in the sim at the same time. I’m betting they all won’t be involve in some heavy resources script running.
Less likely to fine yourself face to face with a ‘sim is full’ try later message when you get home after a hard day at the real world office.
We could have business zone only sims if that makes you happy. My main point is not against business or big business but one simply in favor of finding ways to get or give a better quality of life in 2nd Life “NOW”!
I know the lag and resource problems will be fix in time. But shouldn’t we start to better control it now than find out later we need to fix this. Even if lag didn’t exist. How many of you would want to build you 2nd life home next to a honking, spinning flashing out of control business. The frustration of buying your 1st land. Only to log on the next day and find you’re surrounded by giant club/business signs. We need regulation.
So you move only to have it happen again and again. Are you willing to take a chance on quality of life in 2nd Life? Of course you are. The question becomes, is Linden Labs willing to take a chance. Residential zoning is a fact of life. Why not Second Life?

That's my point. You can't tell a computer program how to detect this kind of difference (I think it falls under Turning Machines and the Busy Beaver problem of building a Turning machine capable of figuring out if a given Turning machine will ever halt--basically, "if this program will halt, run forever. If it will run forever, halt." Wiki).
Thus, Zoning would have to be done manually and that takes time and people away from more important tasks, such as code optimization on the client and server to reduce lag, putting in more cable to increase bandwith, Bug Hunting...

My advice with Casino neighbors is: Wait & See.

I had one next door to my lil' shop. Constant campers & AFK'ers, lights, scripts "shouting", etc.

Well, I waited it out and sure enough- they left.

Seems folks put up a casino in hopes of making a quick buck sometimes. Sometimes it works. Most often it dont.

So yea, I feel the pain of the OP. I try to keep my stuff as low lag as possible.

My best advice is wait & see. If it's not a BIG popular place, it wont last long. If it IS popular- start hunting new ground (which I've also done).

What could be more important to the ppl that just want a nice lag reduced, visually appealing decent environment? When you look at what we have gotten for all our updates and the optimizations being done. All these technical discovers by the Lindens Lab have done little to improve the quality of life for the little man.
Policing the zone will be left up to the ppl of the community. Don't worry. Business will never be better for the ppl that want to run a business. Once a virtual Wal-Mark or Best Buy moves in to a business zoned sim. The little entrepreneur can set his little shop down along side it and catch some of the traffic heading for that virtual Wal-Mark ,Best Buy or Home Depot. In fact, if the product they are pushing is worth anything they will have the big guy crying “uncle”.

It's Wal-Mart by the way.

And please describe how a community policed residential zone works.

This is EXACTLY what should happen, particularly on the mainland - allocate land according to use, ie residential, offices, industrial. I believe private regions can do this anyway? or they can say 'no businesses'?

It will make it much easier for shopping too with TP'ing as slow and difficult as it is, I would much rather tp to one location and then walk around.. great for 'impulse' buying

Also, why isnt there a limit on how small land can be broken up? I have just seen blocks around my home broken down into 256, and have seen even smaller blocks in other regions...

What we are seeing is a kind of 'lord of the flies' effect.. practically no concrete laws or restrictions mean the people lacking honour are hammering the enjoyment of the game into the ground - ie the whole land baron debacle.

In many cases, the community police is the landowner (who is actually renting v-land from LL). Enforcement is largely being evicted with no warning, refunds, or recourse.

Look to New Caledon for enlightened land stewardship. The very reasonable rules are posted at the entry point, but unsuprisingly the land is full with a waiting list.

That's how things used to be with the telehubs. You could only teleport to telehubs, so the land around telehubs became solid mall. Set up shopping zones, and whenever you wanted to shop you'd end up in a region that was solid mall.

That sounds good, I guess, if you don't remember the telehub era, and how we all begged to be allowed to teleport anywhere so we could get shops spread out instead of being concentrated in one place.

I can see residential-only sims, if someone can come up with a way to implement it on the mainland, but I can't see zoning so strict that it forces shops into "mall sims" again... that would be bad. Really.