MystiTool and Lag Reduction Questions.

I have a small club and we want to keep lag as low as possible as to minimize disruption to others in the sim. The club as mentioned is small, sparse, We have a Dance Ball, Intan Couples Dance Ball, Party Popper, Contest Wizard, Greeter, and a very simple donation dish. We have no heavily scripted lights, just a few torches and a fireplace.

Now first lag reduction question has to do with the Mystitool Sleeper, been trying all day to ask in world but group chat seems borked for me, so I will ask here. Is there anyway I can limit the sleeper to just the parcel it is on, and not have it affect the neighboring parcels owned by the same group?

What other things can I do to reduce lag when the club is not in operation?

Should I look for a touch controlled contest board as apposed to the RQI Contest Wizard?

Do texture animation scripts cause much lag?

Thanks in advance.

Hi there! To reduce lag you may want to look at these knowledgebase articles:
https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=4426
https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417

As for the 'MistiTool' questions, you might want to contact the creator of the object to get support on it

Thanks Joker. Unfortunate a little fundamental, was hoping for something a little more practical. As for the MystiTool question, I have been trying to ask that one in world all day. Group chat with them was broken. :|

If you don't have a manual for the mystitool, i can send one to you if it would help

Hey Mortus. For the Sleeper/parcel question, I would just drop a notecard on the creator, Mystical Cookie (yes, the same name as the store). You might read the FAQ in her picks first, tho.

Re: performance: are you having problems now, or are you just being proactive about reducing lag? If you are seeing problems, then can you look at the statistics (ctrl-shift-1, I believe) when things are bad and tell us some of the stats? For example:

-- fps (frames per second)
-- time dilation
-- script performance stats

Also, if you are seeing problems, does the sim have any significant number of temp-rez objects active?

With respect to your gameboard, I personally don't know the scripts involved. As you seem to already know, a touch-activated script is going to be easier on the sim than one that listens to chat, particularly if there are often people chatting within 20m of it when the club isn't open. However, whether that is significant in this case, I don't know, and I rather doubt.
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Don't know about the specific products mentioned, but the question about texture animation scripts causing lag has a simple and a complex answer. The simple answer is "no, they don't cause lag." The complex answer is that, on the simulator side, they are almost zero lag because the texture animation is actually done on the client side. The "almost" is because every script while in the running state uses a tiny slice of sim resources each frame, even if there is nothing for it to do. As it happens, texture animation doesn't require that the script remain in the running state--or in the prim at all--once it's been applied to the prim's texture. (Particles are like this, too, among other things.) And then there's client-side lag: animated textures do affect client performance--the less capable the graphics card, the more of an impact. As client-side effects go, texture animation is pretty cheap--certainly compared to heavy floods of particles, for example--but some with less powerful viewer machines may notice large and/or numerous animated textures.

The most effective lag reduction is to keep avatars away, but that's not a great solution for a club.

Thanks all!

Nika, though I did not notice it some patrons and my host complained about lag last night during our opening set, even my wife who lives in the sim and owns the land the house is on has complained of lag lately. So in part it's preventative, and in part it is to solve current complaints. As it is a mainland sim, there is little we can do about others scripts but I for one try to be very conscientious with scripts I write and use. I will check the FAQ as the manual state nothing useful about the sleeper other than its purpose. As for the contest board... Well if I can find a contest board with a modable face that I can set to chat instread of shout I will have on more reason to tell her it had to be changed.

Thank Qui! Will see if I can slim them up just that tad.

I'm going to risk having my head chopped off here by asking a related series of questions: How lag-inducing is the Mysti Tool? Has anyone ever quantified it?

There are lag complaints at the Forum Cartel Hangout, and I have wondered if any of that might be induced by the intense love of that particular product by so many of the visitors there. Would it be worth putting in a Mysti Tool sleeper to see if that helps those who experience the lag? (Yes, I know, off with her head for that suggestion.)

That's a really interesting question. I'm kinda guessing the lag reported at the Hangout isn't a "Massed Mysti Tool Effect" (MMTE) because at least half of Hangout visitors report no lag there at all, and when the other half are mired in lag the sim itself will be humming along at full frame-rate... so I'm thinking the lag must be one or more client-side effects hitting some graphics cards much worse than others, or possibly some different network routing to different client destinations. And MMTE would presumably be detectable as server-side lag.

Unless one has an empty sim to play with, it's really hard to measure sim performance effects of scripted objects. And in this case, one would have to pack in a bunch of avatars willing to wear and remove their Mysti Tools over and over again, and maybe TP in and out with and without their own Mysti Tools attached and with or without everybody else's Mysti Tools active, while the sim statistics were gathered. Possible, but difficult.

But the general question of the lag effects of massed anything is pretty interesting. This is a problem often experienced by scripters of combat meters and weapons: something that works fine with a couple avatars craps out with a couple dozen users in close proximity. (For example, too many listeners on the same channel, doing too much in response to any message on that channel--or, worse, responding on that channel.)

On the flip side, it would be possible (but difficult) to reduce the total amount of lag by distributing the processing among neighboring instances. E.g., neighboring Mysti Tools could theoretically designate amongst themselves which should run sensors, instead of all of them sensing all the time. Sort of Mysti-Peer-to-Peer. (This sounds difficult.)

But, possibly uniquely handicapped at the Hangout, I don't use a Mysti Tool, so I don't know what a "Mysti Tool Sleeper" is--does it suppress nearby Mysti Tools?

A few sims have the sleeper activated. It shuts down all "non-essential" features, and reduces the avatar scan range from 96m to 20m. I have absolutely no idea how much benefit this gives, however.

I've wondered this too, actually. I think people like to be notified when new folks arrive, but to do this each Mystitool (or other AV scanner) is running a sensor scan. It would be pretty easy to put a single AV scanner in place ... in fact there already is one for the forum HUD tool. If we stepped up that scan frequency and made a version of the HUD that simply notified for new arrivals (and possibly departures), we could request that people take off their Mystis and people could still be notified if they wore this new HUD.
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Do not put all the blame on scripts for lag. There is a limit on the number of temporary prims in a region so if your club and other parcels are frequented by lots of avatars with complex flexi hair and complicated jewelry, then that is as likely to be a cause of lag. Of course, they are just the sort of people who are likely to want to go clubbing, so not a great deal you can do there.

I don't think anyone really knows. These boxes almost invariably seem to turn up in sims that have performance issues even when there are only one or two avatars there.

It would be so cool if LL could make some of that system data they collect available in an anonymous way at the sim or parcel level, just some basic system specs and what sort of performance each is seeing in that area. Without any indication of what people are actually running, it's too easy for "everything moves fine for me so the problem can't possibly be my build" kinds of assumptions to hold.

The first thing you should do is find out what people actually mean when they mention lag to you. "Lag" only tells you that the person who uses it is having a negative experience in one form or another, but it doesn't really tell you anything.

Sim lag is easy to spot (if you're around at the time), just use View / Statistics and keep an eye on time dilation. If it drops (far) out of the 0.9-1.0 range then you do have a problem, and one that will affect everyone on the sim.

If it's sim lag, use the time portion of the statistics bar to make a guess at what is actually causing the sim to lag: if script time is unusually high, there are either too many scripts on the sim or too many resource intensive scripts (may or may not be your fault if you share the sim with others). If it's mainland, a Linden should look at it, if it's private the sim owner should take a look with the estate tools. If physics is unusually high (and you don't know of any significant physical objects on the sim) it could be a bad collission somewhere (same as before, ask a Linden or the sim owner to have a look). If net time is unsually high then use "Client / Show Updates" across the entire sim to look for an object/objects that is/are updating itself/themselves repeatedly (anything that changes size, texture, colour, etc is a likely candidate) or there are simply too many people with a ridiculously high draw distance and too many texture intensive areas on the sim (take a look at "Child agents" as well in the statistics which are people on neighbouring sims receiving updates from the sim you're on).

It could be time dilation doesn't show anything wrong, but the sim still feels sluggish (especially scripts) in which case you should look for an usually high script ips time (sim needs a restart or more Linden attention).

If lag actually means "nothing is rezzing" look at pending downloads/uploads which refers to outstanding asset operations. Both should always and regularly drop down to 0, even permanently stuck at 1 it'll be the cause of textures not rezzing, inventory not working, trouble tp'ing to/from the sim, attachments not rezzing, purchases failing, etc. As far as I know there isn't really anything you can do to keep it from happing, but a sim restart will "fix" it if one of the numbers is stuck.

If things rez, but it takes a while (minutes) and pending downloads/uploads is dropping back to 0 regularly, just blame SL .

If it's none of the above, "lag" probably means "client lag" (you can ask someone for their FPS from the statistics window). If they're willing to help (and assuming they don't have overeager preferences set), ask them to turn off particles first and see if it helps make them feel less laggy (in which case you know to remove some particles from your club).
If you have a whole bunch of sculpties in your club, try removing them to see if it helps anyone.

Without knowing what "lag" is actually referring to you'll have a hard time making any difference, so try to figure that out first of all... it's also easier for everyone to give specific suggestions in that case instead of trying to lump 20 things into one unintelligible post like I just did .

We also need to determine what kind of lag it is. "Moving in mud", slow rezzing of textures, chat lag? I almost never have the first. Seldom the second. Occasionally the third. I have noticed at times, the lag complaints tend to come from East Coast and Euro residents, while those of us in the center of the country seem to be working fine. I am usually in bed before many of the West Coasters come on.

Maybe a little "unpacking" of this, because there are good points in here, just a little condensed. First, absolutely: pure script execution can only lag other script execution, so looking for script-induced lag is much trickier than it sounds, and often not worth the trouble, at least until one knows what is making a sim *feel* laggy. There may be some other sim processing triggered by scripts; indeed, just a very few scripts running very few instructions can lag a sim terribly by triggering a lot of physics or flashing a lot of different textures, for example. Looking at script execution time is pretty much never useful in figuring out what's lagging a sim, and script instructions-per-second per se cannot make sim physics "feel" laggy.

Temporary prims (assuming temp-on-rez) can indeed cause lag because it costs the sim some processing to rez the prims, ponder possible collisions, and ship the prim parameters to all the primary and child agents in the area. And not just temp-on-rez, but indeed any prims new to a sim--including those worn by people TPing in--have to get pushed to everybody in the vicinity, so this is indeed a huge problem in large gatherings (and why one wants most attendees to get to an event early, be seated, and never change clothes or attachments while there).

I once spent a lot of time in a sim with a little club that had maybe a dozen "well dressed" (primmy) avatars in attendance most of the time--and a bunch of contest boards with all those huge XYText textures to download. So, it was easy to tell when somebody TPd in: just watch the Images and Network timers on the statistics bar: with each new arrival, a huge sim-crippling spike.

I get chat lag from time to time, and a lower fps rate than on my own land, but absolutely nothing to warrant frustration or spoil my enjoyment.

Apart from "silent chat death" which occurred several times in several minutes on Friday night... but this came hard on the heels of the preposterous downtime / asset server issue that evening, so I'm inclined to believe I was a casualty of more general rather than hangout-specific problems.

My stealth disconnects are usually ISP related.

Thinking about it, I was away and on a particularly wanky connection on a craptacular laptop. I'm surprised I managed to connect at all.

Thank you very much Chris and Kitty for the very enlightening posts.

Kitty, I will certainly follow your suggestions to diagnose the problem.

Chris, funny you should mention that Europeans seem to experience more lag as my host was complaining of lag and she is European.

Marcia and Qie, thank you so much for your input to. I do realize scripts are not the only source of lag, but having tackled most if not all other possibles without making the club a plain box that we as club owner have any control over, scripts are next on our target list.

I know the worst things for sim lag are Scanners (Either over active, or lots of them.), Open Listeners, And mass Dataserv requests. So I try to keep these to a minimum.

Getting back to the Mystitool Sleeper question, as far as I know all it does is to ask the users if they want to sleep. It doesn't force them to sleep.

So don't worry too much about having it affect other parcels. People will use their own judgment about whether or not they'll want to sleep their Mystitool.

Yep, just asks, I've never had mine forced to sleep. It asks, and you can deny it, but I always accept it... I generally only use it for the radar when out and about, which still works (But is lowered to 20m from 96m)

My problem is I live with my wife in the adjacent parcel, having it ask every time we TP home is annoying, and I am sure it would annoy our renters and their guests to.

i wont oppening new thread just wanna ask , can anyone explain what and how myst tool interact with phy. objects , coz i found problem when i using elevator and wearing myst tool on my HUD ... ?
after deataching everything seems fine, i was thinking that i have something physical attached like clothes , but problem is in my hud device ? im sure 100% but dunno reason , any idea ?

Its probably the move lock feature... it will give you trouble in elevators or with anything that tries to push your av.. even some hugs.

.d