OpenSpace Changes -- How do they affect the land market?

Good Luck in your search for land.

I don't think there is anyone willing to take that financial risk just to help others get good land. There are more responsibilities involved with being a sim owner than just the financial risk as well.

If you decide to become that person, good luck with that as well.

Edited to add: Anyone who is uncomfortable with any upcharge is always free not to buy, which is what I tell people in a nice way when they tell me I am charging too much.

Regular regions have a single cpu, so that 4 regions share a quad core server. Regular regions have 15000 prims total, and some number of scripts that depends on what sorts of structures are present (doors, sounds, texture animations, rotations, etc.) - plus anything on an avatar. Seems like a typical sim would have maybe 2000-3000 active scripts on it.

Open space sims, in the new scheme, have 3750 prims per region, and 4 of them share a cpu. Together, the four openspace sims have an allotment of 15000 prims, just like a regular region. Together, there are probably going to be the same total number of active scripts on 4 open space sims of 3750 prims sharing 1 cpu as there will be for 1 regular sim that hax 15000 prims allocated to it. There is no reason to think that 4 open space sims sharing 1 cpu will suffer greater performance strains than one regular sim using one cpu.

Indeed, given that client lag if often most important, and seems to come with rendering of textures and objects, and also given that this sort of lag is better in less dense parts of a region (like up in the sky) there is cause to argue that a person will experience less lag on an open space sim just because things are not so densily populated.

It is simple math: 4 openspace sims x 3750 prims is totally equivalent to 1 reguolar sim with 15000, given that the number of scripts, on average, should be about 1/4 as great on open space sims as on regular sims. There is as much reason to believe that performance will improve (due to spreading out) as that performance would degrade for some unknown reason on open space sims.

That are NOT handled by the sim server. Otherwise any griefer here would attach lagging (on pourpose) scripts and hundred of prims per attach point (that makes thousand..) per avatar and crash any sim just wearing em. Worn primitives and scripts (attachment) aren't handled by the guest simulator. Heavy loaded av's (eg: running particles everywhere, or wearing high prim clothes) will lag clients.



Indeed, i've said (on the other thread) that i didn't noticed any performance degradation (on the server) because of avs.



Scripts (on land, not worn) are executed on the same CPU (in our case: core) of the rest of the sim SIM, even it there's an allocated resource, they can lag a simulator (not just the script performance.. they can lower the FPS (server side.. not your client FPS)).



Well the point is not moving at all etc.. that would be the worst scenario, but in some situations a good (or fair) script performance would be essential (for a performance.. for a game.. or whenever you need something more elaborate than a blinking or a llSay), in my case i mentioned a football playing script, the openspace sim is perfect there: it handle the prims i need, it does handle a good number of av's etc., but the script performance is so poor that you cannot use (reliable) that script (that runs fine on a normal sim indeed).

What's the agent limit on open space sims? If all 4 happened to be full with agents, although not many prims/scripts, then what are we looking at? I would imagine that the agent limit for an open space sim should be 1/4 the agent limit of estate land - 25.

I'm sorry but you're just plain wrong. Prims on AVs take up just as much memory on a sim as prims 'in the world'. Scripts in attachments still execute on the sim, just as scripts 'in the world' do. In fact, the griefer activities you mention *do* happen all the time, i have to deal with it on a semi-regular basis at one of the more popular sims I own. It's extremely hard to pin down, because LL, in their infinite wisdom, don't show attachment scripts in the top scripts list.

Let me ask, if these scripts aren't being run on the sim, where exactly are they being run?

nope, they come set to 40, and can be raised to 100, just like any other sim. I have 8, and Desmond summed it up nicely, what they are capable of. Scripts get very sluggish, but they hold their own.

I wouldn't blame Vittorio too much for not seeing it - the information is buried on purpose kinda.

Well what happened (if I recall this correctly) is that the avatar script load is hidden to the estate tools. I *think* it used to be on there a long time ago but was shut off for reasons I never fathomed (imagine the drama though - being able to castigate people for their script load - heh!).

But there is a way to see it anyway, it's that little inquisitiony witch-hunt trick (which isn't very nice) but worked for a long time - I'm pretty sure it still does.

Make a prim and call it 'hotseat' or some easily searchable prim name in the estate tools script debug list. Have an avatar sit on that, thus making the avatar agent a 'child prim of the linked set' of the hotseat prim. Then just look it up the normal way and see the avatar script load.

A lightly loaded avatar reads something like 0.010 ... all the way up to crazy stuff like 1.500-ish (loaded with badly written scanners/shields) or 3.500-ish (sitting there and constantly firing some heavy, splash-effecty weapon like a Seburo if anyone remembers those) to... just insane crazy numbers depending what they've got. It's been a while - those are the numbers I recall from a class 4 region - class 5 is prolly a bit different.

Some very capable and common avatar scripts are very well made - I remember talking about this 'dirty trick' with Mystical Cookie when she made Mystitool (she was a Caledon person prior to her own wonderful islands and still hangs out with us) and I know Mystitool was checked out for minimum region impact - I think the script was at 0.010 or some other ridiculously low number during idle state.

I didn't invent this method - it was taught to me - I'm pretty sure it was Crystalshard that tipped me off about it. With the advent of Mono however, this info may go the way of the class 2 region and the use of $L as a 'counter' to determine how many prims you've set out in the world...

Yes, but that is filling one of the sims. What about filling all 4 at the same time? It's like sticking 400 avs into one sim. I can't imagine how laggy that could be. At least by selling in sets of four you would know that no one else was packing the other 3 sims.

Exactly right Desmond.....if any estate owners ever wondered why a seemingly innocent low script chair is the winner in the top script window its usually because someone is sat on it and yes...from there its lemonentry my dear Watson.

If you have your 'stats bar' running all the time, you will see the active script count in there does include scripts worn on avatars. I've seen that jump by 100's when some avatars TP into a sim. I had a bit of a revelation of my own while visiting the linden estate services islands - travel over to the four island types they have set up there. All are no build, no script, and there aren't any prims or scripts rezzed in world. Nonetheless, the 'stats bar' will tell you how many scripts are active, and if you're the only avatar in the sim, it leaves only one culprit

-Atashi

You completely right, even if they mentioned a generic "SLS Virtual Machine", i thought (to reply to your last question: where they are running) they meant a top virtual machine that's not gonna impact the simulator CPU (eg: parallel with asset servers or so...). I've assumed that because of the simplicity to "devastate" a simulator loading it with av's where the owner has no contro over it (griefing mentioned before...), so my (wrong) assumption sounded like: "LL cannot be so "stupid" to....". Clearly i were wrong.

Still no answer on what if 4 of these things are full of people. Let's start out assuming that the prims will be maxed out, because they probably will be. Now add in 40 avs per sim. These 4 share one core? So you've got the equivalent of a full sim with 160 people in it. How the heck is that going to hold up?

Yeah, but not that different really from having a Mainland sim and its four neighbors all full: in that case, the one in the middle is getting tons of child agent traffic, too. Actually, the full-neighbors problem is probably way worse because it's got to juggle all that in its very own memory space, process queues, etc., instead of having it nicely partitioned across multiple OpenSpace sims that just happen to share the same core.

I tried to test this once, but... found I couldn't. You see, I've got some 'four packs' of openspace regions, but not all four are on the same server.

Even if I got 400 people together, they would have to find the other 3 openspace sims filling the slot of that core... presuming that core was instantiating 3 others at the time. No assurance of that either!

So basically this falls back onto a 'what are the odds' scenario. Most regions average what... 3-4 people in them at any given time? With openspace regions it is even lower. Maybe a third of an avatar on average... if that, based on usage.

Sure, there is a statistical possibility you'll have a problem - you may be openspace #4 on an instantiation where the 3 other core slots are packed. Well, whack the ol' restart button and off you go - huge odds that you'll end up instantiating your region's simstate on some other core somewhere.

I'm not saying it's impossible to have this condition. But it's sort of like the odds of merging into a solid wall of cars on the highway at 2am in North Dakota.

It's a theoretical possibility... but insanely remote, and if you just wait a couple minutes the problem is solved.

If there even *is* a problem. Since we can't test it easily at all, and nobody's said how it works - maybe there are reserves for 100 avatars per openspace. Much of the traffic is textures - handled by each openspace instantiation itself I think - and then you have a bajillion asset requests - pointers to data, mainly - this isn't so much core intensive as network intensive, if you think about it.

I doubt there has been an incident of a void region choking due to the goings-on somewhere else. Lots of accusations but that doesn't mean anything.

I've got 12 of these voids, had 'em for ages, and I've never, ever, ever, ever seen anything that wasn't either a local problem, or an obviously gridwide problem when I dug into it.

Yes, Des, but if these things are now going to be marketed as being viable for clubs, residences, etc. but clubs in particular, that remote chance got a lot less remote. The 1875 prim limit and the agent limit is what previously kept these things under control. If their marketed use changes I think that may change the picture significantly. It's remote, yes, but... hm.

Everything's moving really fast now in both directions.

You've got class 4's becoming quite rare, Havok 4 coming in, Mono, and the userbase has got to be shedding some of its late 90's/early 2000's client hardware by now, except for a few die-hards.

On the other hand, the network is not terribly different than it was before.

* * * * *

I think what will ultimately define performance is a combination of the network limits and user education (to make things efficient or not).

What really regulates region performance is a purely social thing. People pile up stuff until it gets 'really laggy' for whatever reason, then they cut back a bit. No matter what the real limitations are. Usually this is well short of what the region can technically do, except someone has really pushed hard in some totally unnecessary way (usually texture number and quality).

This is why most full regions sit at somewhere between say, 10k and 13k prims full, if even that many. Prims really aren't the bottleneck - it's the texture serving and the client rendering 99% of the time.

Has anyone ever seen a region near the full 15k prim limit allowance? Or even north of 14,500? I never have - if you know of one, drop a slurl to it, it would be interesting to check out. I'm convinced such cases are quite rare, which has less to do with the prims and a lot to do with the other factors.

I was at a sim yesterday that was around 14,500 prims or just a bit above that. Performance was quite good, I wouldn't have guessed they were near the prim limit but I always keep my stats bar open. I believe the sim was called October Country...

My oldest sim is also my fullest (prim-wise), and the one that seems to have the most sluggishness, although I hesitate to say it is slow or sluggish - perhaps a better way to put it is, least-fast? Anyhow, it's got typically between 10,000 and 12,000 prims used; most of the time the slowdowns are either physics- or scripting-related. So of course, I'm looking forward to havoc4 and mono

-Atashi

All depends on how loaded the sim is before the people show up. I've got a heavily loaded Class 5 full sim. Around 6800 scripts when the sim is empty. With only a few people, everything is functional. It could be faster, but everything works fine with few problems. When 20-30 people show up, what they are wearing has a HUGE impact. If the crowd is wearing 1500 scripts, the sim suffers. For openspace sims with the increased prim limit, you'll have the opportunity to have the same proportionate script load as a normal sim before anyone shows up. I'm assuming that each openspace sim would only have 1/4 the processing power of a normal sim. If you start with a script heavy club and fill it with 30 script heavy avatars and run it with the current server software, my bet is that the CPU will cry out in pain. I trust your experiences with your big crowds in Caledon, but how many scripts were those crowds running? 5000 or 10,000? With 5000, I can believe that there weren't many problems. For 10,000 (which is a very possible number for 100 avatars), I'd have to see it for myself.

I think Desmond is right about people wanting communities, so these openspaces aren't for everyone.

I can also see some people getting openspaces and still keeping their mainland or rental lands. I can see this because I'm one of them.

We'll use our openspace to build a cute little island, but it won't be very sociable, and sailing is still a lot more fun on the mainland or large estates where you can experience some scenery and stuff going on.

I think it would be great if people could just buy them outright, though maybe the current position for Linden Lab is that creating new estates for people with only 1/4 sim in income isn't above whatever line they draw when it comes to support costs or whatever.

It could just be down to map space. I wanted to place our new openspace at a diagonal corner to our store island (so it would be easy to see on the map, but technically non interfering). I couldn't place it anywhere near my island- too many other people had crowded their own islands around us already. Finding a space on the map with a good amount of room around it was pretty tiring. Imagine when everyone (not estate owners) is reserving spots for openspaces outside of regular continents?

Hopefully that's just a technical thing and they can fix it. I think openspaces for everyone is a great idea- lots of opportunities for creating something, even with a small amount of prims (think of the terraforming fun), creating truly private, relatively affordable places to meet etc.

But I think people will still keep a spot on a community or mainland sim too. It's lonely out there

as an end user i think they are a good idea:

started renting small house part a 1/4 sim 300 prims then moved to larger plot on a sim with 900 odd

looking at a 1/4 1/2 or even full openspace now as i would love to create my own small oasis and having built up over time the 3750 would be about right

not looking to build an empire just a bit of room to have things you like local as too many sites are just boxes of land and starts to look like a trailer park

if it wasnt so expensive to buy a sim first and to run it i'd have done it already

$1000 just to setup ? + god knows how much to tier on top - too much of a gap in the market @ present

1/4 openspaces would be 937? prims much the same as a reasonable 4096 plot so imagine the desire for these if it was available

and even 1/2 sized too