Openspaces

I really want to get myself an openspace or two once the new land store arrives, but I'm wondering what the performance issues are with them.

A few people have asked me about larger parcels and building villages and these sound ideal for that in theory but how great is the performance hit as compared to a normal sim? Do they struggle badly if 20 or so people are there?

What are your experiences with openspaces like? Are the new and improved ones much better than the old ones?

Just posted same question.

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Class 5 openspaces - 20 people are no problem. I've seen 100 in them and it was laggy but nobody was leaving. In fact an openspace with 100 people in it is generally less laggy overall than any gathering of 20 people in a regular region back in 2004 or so.

I've prolly answered this q. about five times on these forums - short answer is that they hold up pretty well. Go to Caledon Cymru for instance with 20 friends and check it out yourself (just be gracious and nonintrusive to Viderian who makes his home there).

No problems with traffic (avatars) or whatever, but you gonna face some problems with scripts (they run slower), not a serious problem if you don't have to use em for "sensible" matters (eg: role playing/games scripting), so if it's just a resident/recreation area it's ok.

Thanks Desmond and Vittorio. It sounds as if these are ideal for general usage but the ninjas wouldn't want to move there due to the issues with scripts then.

I don't mean the ninjas land group!

I've been very happy with mine - my only comlaint is the hand-off from the class 4 full sim to the Openspace is really beastly. I mean, much, much more beastly than I've experienced from mainland sim crossings (which have never been good to start with.) I've seen mentions that Havok4 and the Openspaces have challenges, which is on the "to be fixed" list.

Scripts run slower on Openspace????????????????????????



Can you tell me why???????

I would reply to you with a technical (and sure) explanation, but unfortunately i don't have one. I've noticed it when i had to install a soccer engine on a low prim island, so i noticed the difference in performance and i come here to post about my concerns.
I then did more extensive tests on 5 low prim simulator where i have access to, and the result was the same: eveything seems fine, but the script performance is apparently ok with an empty openspace (no prims, no avs), but it decreases as soon you gonna open it to buildings and traffic. Others did similar tests with other tools (Sean mentioned LandSculpter, that on a normal sim it would take 1 minute to copy the terrain shape but on an openspace it takes 5 to 6 minutes... fair indicative i say).
I can only guess here... and i summarized my guessing here:

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Normal sims run one sim per CPU core. Openspace sims run four sims per CPU core. In class five servers, you have two dual-core CPUs. two x dual = 4 cores in the server. So you have either 4 normal sims, or 16 openspace sims, running in a single server.

Everything in the server (RAM, hard drive, bus, network) is divided by the number of simulators. In a normal sim on a class5 server, it has a CPU core all to itself, and 1/4 the rest of the hardware on which to do its thing (serve textures, run scripts, calculate physics). With openspace sims on a class 5 server, it has only 1/16th the resources to do all these things.

Additionaly, since havoc4 came out, there is a memory allocation bug which can cause performance issues in openspace sims. This was supposed to have been fixed in the rolling restart last week, but they have postponed that rolling restart. Once that bug has been fixed, performace should be much better.

-Atashi

p.s. I might not have the technical stuff 100% right, but the gist of it is correct - 16 openspace sims per server, and they all have to share the resources.

Yeah, it was we discussed from the steart in the other thread, but since LL does not provide tech informations you don't really know why really you would notice only a script "poor" performances while the rest seems ok. If was only because of the CPU sharing (with other 15 simulators) you would even notice poor peformances with the whole rest. In example if you load the same OpenSpace with many avatars (we say 80) it would run exactly like a regular SIM, while on the script side it would give out a poor script performance. Since a SIM is shared, the performance would depends on what's running on the other 15 sim's (it's the same for regular regione, but you gonna face only other 3 "opponents" there) that reside on the same phisical server, but again if it's a server loading you would notice general (performance) problem, not only on the script side.
My guess, as i explained in the other thread, is that LL allocates a precise amount of resources on the virtual machine that's gonna impact on the script speedness, because it's the only component of a SIM that you can really slow down without limiting the rest, i mean: you cannot limit the number of avatars on a SIM because you "promised" them (100 max), you cannot limit the number of primitives because you must give 3750 prims on a OpenSpace, *but you can limit the how much CPU a virtual machine must "eat" (each sim runs on a virtual machine), so you would notice immediatly one thing: scripts goes slower.
This is only my guessing, but the point is: OpenSpaces doesn't give the same performances of regular regions. It is an important point, because many users believes that an OpenSpace is just a "less primitives simulator", it's true for general pourpose usages (when you don't need the "rest", it's not when you need to use em for specific things (as i said: gaming, roleplaying.. etc.).
LL does not provide a technical documentation specifing what really make a regular region different, they just say: "we do not reccomend OpenSpace simulators for residential areas...".

Quoth the KB:

"Whereas normal estates run on their own dedicated CPU, the Openspace regions run four per CPU; this limits their performance, as you would expect. Openspaces only ever share with other Openspaces on a server.

It is therefore important to understand what these regions are. They are provided for light use only, not for building, living in, renting as homes or use for events. As a stretch of open water for boating or a scenic wooded area they are fine, but we do not advise more serious use than this and will not respond to performance issues reported should you not use them in this way."

Looks correct as I understand it, for whatever little that may be worth. I did want to add that, sim-purchases being a kind of long-range investment ( ), the prospect of Mono may make the script execution difference less of a problem. An OpenSpace will still run scripts slower than a full-primmed sim, of course, but probably much faster than *current* full-primmed sims. (On the other hand, we scripters will probably devise new ways to use up that capacity anyway. Kinda like Vista. )

A region like this would respond how to strict NAT issues, ya think?

Since SL itself doesn't like me going ANYWHERE it makes sense to me, in many ways, to have my own private little play land. I promise not to kidnap you and drag you off there Ciaran

there are a few OpenSpace Sandboxes out there, i've notived that other then lower prim count they do not run any slower at all it seems.

we've had quite a few ppl (more then 20) in teh sandbox at once, all rez'ing phsyical things and scripting and such to see if it loads it down. it didnt.

they don't seem to have any performace problems at all

I could live with lower prim counts ...