Dealing with Chat Lag - Visual Aids to Improve Conversation

Hello,

Since 1.5.0 came out, I think, we were presented with a new "feature" - chat lag. I cannot tell you precisely when it started to appear, but I'll describe it to you.

If you have unusually high packet loss rates - but fairly decent ping user/ping sim rates, and are connected to a better-than-average sim - you get chat lag. This means that messages may come all out of order. Some messages come instantly (ie. under 1 second or so), some after a minute, some even after half an hour or even one hour!

Now this is terrible if you're trying to follow a serious conversation (while it's almost imperceptible in loud club, where people are just randomly going "w00t!" anyway ). You get messages displayed even if people have long gone away, teleported or even disconnected. Since with heavy packet loss there is also lag on animations, you can't even count on the "typing" anim to make sure you're getting the "correct" messages.

Also, since high packet loss are normally just "spikes" on the connection (unless you have a really bad connection!), this means you can have an almost "normal" convesation for a long while, suddenly everybody stops talking, they go back to a normal conversation when the "lag storm" goes away, and then... messages start to appear from things said 10 or 30 minutes ago!

Following 10 or 15 conversations at the same time, when messages are coming at completely unpredictable intervals, is very, very hard. I have recently found out that some people shy away from large groups (they prefer just one-to-one conversations, or very small groups). I wonder if one of the reasons for that is having a difficulty in keeping up with chat lag.

So, my suggestion would be to mark visually "lagged" messages. Since they almost certainly have a timestamp and you know the "current time" on your PC/Mac, there should be a way to identify "very old" messages. Imagine that you colour the name before the message. White, as usual, would mean "recent" messages - under one second lag. It would become yellowish for messages with a few seconds, red or purple for messages with a few minutes. Messages with more than 5 minutes should be dropped entirely, they're too confusing anyway.

I don't think that the message itself should be coloured, it makes it visually hard to read. Eventually just the name, or adding an icon before the name, would be more than enough.

If you always have zero packet loss, you probably don't need this feature at all

I have a better idea. Make the damn chat text more reliable. Thank you

The question, Eggy, is how to do that? Seems that the only way to make it work would be to increase priority on chat on the sims, since unfortunately text works like "sound" and the sims have to calculate who is inside a listening radius.

So increasing priority in chat would mean less priority in doing other stuff Like getting textures, or running scripts, or...

Personally, when chat lag is too high, I revert to "group IM" using a folder with Calling Cards. But it's a pity to loose "body language" that way. You simply don't know who's talking with whom...

Speak bubbles would be an alternative Now why do I think I'll be flamed by making this suggestion?

Because it's too retro?

Actually, although marking the symptoms might be useful in some situations, a better idea is to fix the problem.

As I wrote in another thread, SL has semi-serious plans to take over the world, but obviously that won't happen until it's made scalable so that it can scale. Asset server congestion, teleport blocks even when we've removed all attachments, 20-seconds chat lag, and being refused entry to regions when there's a mere 40 people in them, that's a bad package of indicators.

It's going to take a lot of work to get to the point where we can handle a population of just a million, and that's only a low rung on the ladder. I sure hope that LL has scalability really high on their list of priorities.