Sim Crossings Getting Worse and Worse?

(Warning, long post & a bit of a rant ahead)

Over the past 4 or 5 days I've noticed sim crossings have been getting dramatically worse - whether walking or riding a vehicle, it has lately become par for the course to cross a border then sail halfway across the sim (or occasionally all the way across and halfway through the next sim over) before snapping back to find myself either only a meter or two past the border, or even, back in the sim I was originally trying to leave.

I've been building vehicles lately and it's intensely frustrating to have to wait 15 or 30 seconds for SL to decide whether or not I've crossed the border, while I watch my avatar and vehicle sail off or sink off into oblivion, and hope when I do snap back I will not find myself lodged in someones house or ontop of them.

As I said, this seems to have gotten much much worse in short order - along with it, completely failed sim crossings have increased as well: "expired_region_handoff". It's at the point where it is ruining the immersive experience that is SL.

I've been trying to figure out what is causing it, like if it's from crossing between a 'normal' sim and an 'openspace sim' but that seems to have no bearing on it. Or watching the server numbers, to see if it makes a difference if the numbers are close or far apart, and that makes no difference. I've experienced the problem just as bad when going between two sims that are hosted on the same physical box.

Then the other night I was on with an alt, and discovered I could cross sim borders effortlessly -- the crossings were so smooth, there was no tell-tale bump to tell me I'd crossed, so I thought I was sailing off out of control when in fact things had happened flawlessly. I spend all yesterday trying to figure out why my alt could cross borders so perfectly, when I couldn't. Yesterday evening I tried logging on with her again, but the 'magic' was gone. Her sim crossings sucked just as bad as mine usually did. Then late last night I logged on, and presto, this time I had the 'magic' of smooth sim crossings.

So what was the commonality between my alt's good experience the day before, and my good experience last night? The timing. Between midnight and 02:00 EDT the sim crossings were working great. This morning, between 08:00 and 09:00 EDT the sim crossings are acceptable. In the evenings, say from 16:00 to 23:00 EDT, sim crossings vary from bad to impossible. Talking with some of my friends, I've found that they are experiencing rough crossings as well, so I don't think this is just me, this seems to affect people all over the world.

So, here's my question: I speculate based on the timing that it's a concurrency thing. When we're in peak usage times, sim crossings suck for me and others I've spoken to. What happens at a sim crossing that is affected by large numbers online? When we cross a sim, there is more than just sim A talking to sim B (as evidenced by a rough crossing between two regions on the same physical box). They must be talking to a central server. (Asset servers, I'm looking at you.) Does anyone know the mechanics of a sim crossing, that make them so fragile when concurrency is high?

Or have I missed something, and the problems aren't related to concurrency at all?

-Atashi

It seems inescapable that higher concurrency means a higher load on the internal SL network linking all of the servers.
The internal SL information highway starts to get traffic jams.
Information is delayed or never arrives due to lossy protocols.
The network activity to hand over an avatar from one sim to the next gets slowed down or breaks.

If we TP, we might put up with a delay or a retry. 30 seconds might be bearable.
If we are moving across sims, then even a second or two delay in network activity is going to be very noticeable.

Just find some deserted empty sims - like the unauctioned sims in the East of Corsica.
Try flying arouns them at different times of the day.
The sims have nothing to do but track your avatar. They are not serving up prims or textures. All the delay is in the internal network and in the route from LL to you.

If you want to rezz a vehicle and cross a bunch of empty water sims, you can rezz in the 4096 parcel in the very SE corner of Eldfell sim.
You can whizz about over the oceans there or do a 7-sim run directly South.
If you hang a right and left when you get to Nautilus, you've got a run of maybe 20 largely empty water sims.

I've been seeing the opposite. I haven't had a TP crash in weeks and the Hanja simlines don't eat me anymore. I've noticed slow texture loads lately, especially in stores, but I'm usually more ready to blame my 256 draw setting than anything else. (^_^)

I have seen some regions in seriously bad moods though. Hamnida had a funny issue where we could TP in, walk out, but not walk back in. It almost ruined a perfectly good Q&A event. (=_=)

I have also noticed a few no-rez moments here and there. But no serious clothing or attachment problems. (^_^)y

Same here. I flew the big space through several sims on the Heterocera Atoll over the weekend (Sunday, late afternoon), without difficulty

Mari

This happened last year and got resolved. Clearly whatever was under stress last time is feeling the pinch again.

Frankly, I wish they'd do a nice old fashioned Update Wednesday. At least you KNEW when you were going to have no sensible gameplay experience.

Please don't. I live next to some unauctioned areas of Corsica, I get enough strange visitations as it is

They sorta seem to be getting better for me, too. As a fairly high-prim critter, I'm happy about this.

Nah! You're safe enough with forum-triggered visitations.
Whereas most residents might be "quirky", only a few of us (oops! - of you) are seriously strange.

In any case, if it should happen that sim-crossing are a problem at the time, visors will definitely be just passing through.



Incidentally, I've always been fascinated that when taken on an unplanned flight through a number of sims, I can follow my position on the map, and sometimes get told I can't enter parcels that I am apparently passing through.
Sometimes I get rubber-banded.
Sometimes I could end up inside a building two sims away. I hate that.


I should add that I have found sim-crossing to be way better in general than it used to be in the past. Boot in butt is extremely rare these days. I can normally take a big Trudeau sailing boat through high numbers of sim crossings with out incident.
I haven't tried that at times when concurrency is over 60k though.

The first post was very interesting, as it brought the time of day into it. But then other people have found sim crossings to be getting better.

I'm in the UK, and for the last few weeks the internet has been almost impossible to use during my evenings. The incredible slowness starts around 5 p.m. and ends at around 10:30 to 11 p.m. (UK times) - sometimes the end is very sudden. The whole thing last about 6 hours. I can use SL during the evenings but I'm affected by the slowness of the internet, so I rarely go in.

To see what happens in SL, my viewer needs to receive data, so that it knows what to display for me. E.g. occasionally someone will TP away but my viewer doesn't receive that data, so they stay where they are, for me, until the slow period is over. Sim crossings reuqire the viewer to receive data, so that it knows what to display. Sailing off through the next sim, etc. is due to not receiving the data, and that can be due to the slowness of the internet or something at the server end. I wouldn't automatically assume that the problem is at the server end.

Thanks for all the replies. Now I am worried that the problem is limited only to the regions where I spend most of my time... :/ I will have to get out more and see if I have the same problem elsewhere in the world.

edited to add: Phil, thanks for the description of the sim crossings -- putting it in those terms , it's possible that the problem is clientside or at least ISP-based. When I got feedback from friends who have had similar experiences, we didn't discuss whether all of us had them at the same times, only that we've all had them recently.

Next time the problem manifests (probably this evening) I will run some speed tests on my internet connection and see if I'm experiencing any degradation in bandwidth.

-Atashi

If you are having problems on sim crossings and know you're going to be doing them, out exploring or whatever, primming down will help a lot. The fewer prims & scripts you carry around on you (including HUDs) the less data the sim you're in has to send to the one you're going to.

That's actually status-quo for me - With two exceptions, I don't wear scripted attachments. I do have a Mysti-Tool, and I have a very trimmed-down and optimised AO. Other than those two things, I wear prim hair and a prim necklace, and that's it. I don't even wear prim shoes

-Atashi

If you want to compare... I'll use yesterday as an example. (^_^)

The names I remember for the places I visited are Hanja, Carnival of Doom, Kuula, Hamnida, Bare Rose, Bear Lodge, SLC, Akiba, Littlefield, Purrfect, and a buncha other places I can't remember the names for. I changed outfits 3 times, including a Hello Kitty mini avatar. When I was not in the HK avatar, I was wearing 90 prim hair and 200 prim spiked boots. My Hello Multi, clickables, and HUDs were all attached as usual. (^_^)

I keep my maximum bandwidth set to 500 and my cache at 300. I was on from 4pm to 10:30pm with a dinner break some time around 6. With audio streaming on for most of the time after 8pm. I have Comcast cable internet and a fixed forwarded port through my router.

The only time I had a problem that required relogging was not last night, but this morning. I was orbited in Waterhead and crashed out before I had the chance to TP home. (^_^)y

The trip I mentioned above began a couple sims below Gnoma (I don't recall the name), and went along the road through Gnoma, up to Brythis, and a few sims beyond. I had done some TPing in all this to and frome home, Livingtree, and elsewhere (I don't remember all the stops. I know Justice Commons and Kings Rezzable was in there, an a few others). This was also after doing the big easter/spring event on Livingtree with a sizable number of avatars, including messing with physical objects and stuff.

I was in my usual avatar, complete with MystiTool, ChildMultiTool, and a few other scripted goodies like my hair (the bows change color) and such. I was also piloting the fuel tanker space ship from Privateer Space (the ban lines near Brythis did me in at once point). I do not long my personal prim count, but I'm sure it was 100+

No troubles with sim borders aside from slight "dips" at edges.

Mari

i agree. the rubber band (or yo-yo) effect is really noticeable this week.

Living in New Zealand, I am mostly online when SL is very quiet due to most people being in bed. I mostly avoid all sorts of problems that I hear being described here and in other places.

Am I just gloating? - no - my point is that I think that i avoid most problems due to SL being very quiet at that time of day. That seems to match up with what others are saying as well.

I find when I log in if I am having any kind of major issues that most people during the day found SL impossible to use and there is almost always a blog entry on the exact problem already.

Just a point of view from someone at the ends of the earth

ha HA! see?