Public Service Announcement re: Openspace sims

There seems to be some confusion over the correct uses for openspace sims, so here is an explanation.

People are reporting problems with scripted objects, and when checked, it is found they are living on an Openspace sim, possibly with several neighbors and even a club, with all kinds of scripts running.

Some landlords are renting these without disclosing the pitfalls (or even that there is a difference), and content creators are bearing the brunt of explaining why the item you bought doesn't work.

More than likely, it's because you are sharing resources with whoever is on your openspace, PLUS 3 more just like that one. They are not designed for heavy use.

From the knowledge base:

Normal regions run on their own dedicated CPU, but the Openspace regions run four per CPU; as you would expect, this limits their performance. 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.

In other words, let the buyer beware. If you got a "fabulous bargain" on a huge chunk of estate land, and suddenly your objects don't work right any more, take a good look around. You may be on a sim that was not designed for the load it is carrying.

Add to that, you have no control over who you're sharing your processor with... So, if your "server neighbor" is lagging things up, you'll never know who it is or why. (=_=)

STICKY THIS!!!! (^_^)y

VOTE!!!!

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-8768


http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-8770

/sits on a rabbit with ~15 eps on a void

there has been a thread not long ago saying the exact same thing, only with a twist

people blame the content creators for the simple fact that those same people are clueless and don`t do *any* research of what they`re buying except *cheapcheapcheap buybuybuy!!!*

seen numerous(sp) posts in the land rent/sale forums refering to a void sim but so far ONLY 2 people mention that the sim is for light use

land market is a saturated market and more competition then servers need an hamster, but screwing your customers for a few bucks is sick and works great to keep people...not

if it`s to good to be true then there is a catch... do some research
also, just a tiny fraction of SL users read these forums so landlord will keep exploiting it

as useless voting is with lindens doing what they want, i`ve voted anyway...

To get things straight the performance of one OpenSpace WILL NEVER EFFECT ANOTHER OpenSpace.

Okay, now that is all clear.

You can get a lot out of a OpenSpace, if you are smart about it. But people generally not that way. Think of it as 1/4 a sim, you and your 4 other neighbors live on 1/4 a sim. But because things are so spread out people like to put as much as they can to fill out there space, thus in general people put out to many scripted objects.

I will be doing a thorough documentation of this on my blog when I purchase one. There are so many "myths" flying around that need to be debunked.

Oh, and as to why they will never effect each other? well Linden Lab Virtualize ALL of there sims, each one in a contained container on that cpu. so in actuality you only get about 18% out of it, not 25% accounting for overhead.

But I still hope to do amazing things with that 18%

Other than the fact that the "deal" may seem too good, if I was helping someone determine where to rent, is there any way to know if an area is an openspace sim right now?

Total prims available for the entire region = 3750 should be a clue.

The performance on openspace sims can not be any different than on a normal sim. On an openspace sim, I have 1/4 of the prims you have on a full sim of 3750 prims and 1/4 the resources and of the cpu. I just have 4 times the area to work with. It would be no different than if I owned 1/4 the land of a full sim. I still have 3750 prims and 1/4 the cpu resources. If my 1/4 sim was in the same region as say a club or someone that is using a lot of scripts, then I would see the same slow response.

The only issue with openspace sims is that you do not know who you are sharing your resources with as you can with the full sim and know that the club or other land owner is causing the issues.

I have been wondering if the there is a way to determine the other 3 openspace sims that you share with. I have looked at the IP address of some of the neighboring openspace sims thinking that they may share the same IP address. I found none that were the same.

http://neighbours.maxcase.info/index.php might provide a clue if all the possible neighbouring sims are entered in the database.

Unfortunately I am no sure if the project is still being updated.

This is very interesting information. Where do you get your facts. Is this documented somewhere in the LL information about openspace sims. Could you share a link to your resources.

Thanks.

Instead of OpenSpaces, we should just have a "zoom mode" in the client.

Don't worry about an OpenSpace - just build on a 16384sqm area, then turn on zoom mode, and the client will render everything 4x as big, except avatars.

Do you know what a CPU is? If you do, explain what you mean by "container".

I admit to being years out of date on CPUs (microprocessors), so I'm not saying you are wrong about containers, but I do think you are.

Well, I have been to a lot of openspace sims. They way I dertermine is first open up the window about the land and check the available square meters. Then I look at the number of prims available on the area of land. If the prims are 1/4 of a normal full sim, then it is an openspace sim.

Example: If someone was renting out an openspace sim and divided it into 4 lots of 16384 sqm. Then the available prims would be only 937 prims and not 3750 you would have in a full sim.

Let me reiterate, Linden Lab states the following about Openspace sims:

Normal regions run on their own dedicated CPU, but the Openspace regions run four per CPU; as you would expect, this limits their performance. 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.

According to LL, who is the seller of these products, they are NOT the same as a full sim, and performance issues will NOT be supported if they are used for other than light use.

I guess we just have to keep repeating this over and over until people finally get it...

They won't "get it" until it's in their interest to do so, I'm afraid.

Check maximum prims in the region. If it's 3750, you've got an openspace there.

* * * * *

On the larger topic:

Consumer education is important also, with these - I personally have information in my covenant and some notecards about openspaces. Sadly enough though - you can lead a horse to water but they may not drink. Eyes start to glaze over when you talk about script cycles with people who barely know what a prim is.

At the end of the day, this is a 'you got your peanut butter in my chocolate' issue - consumer education has to go both ways.

I regularly see content-creator products that hog 5% to 10% of a full region's resources, and have seen such abuse for the past two and a half years.

So for any content creator that sells a five prim item that eats 5% of the total script cycles for a region - no sympathy here. For content creators that go texture crazy, pasting 30 or 40 512x512 textures on a single fancy item - no sympathy whatsoever. These things are full-region killers, let alone openspace killers.

I think it's time to remove the drama from the discussion, and let the public see in basic clear metrics not only the performance limit of full and openspace regions, but also the performance impact of created content items.

Something like:


region max prims

region max script cycles milliseconds

region max physics milliseconds

region texture cache % full


item # of prims

item # of k-tris at a benchmark zoom (clientside issue but important)

item milliseconds of script cycles (idle, rough 24 hr avg, peak)

item size of total linkset textures in mb

item # of asset server hits

...and so on.


Some of these are already visible, if you know what you are looking at, in the statistics bar. But we need something like the 'lag meter' for those who haven't written multitasked operating systems and applications professionally.

Of course, there are some people who will never get it, and yes, you are gonna share servers with them.

The ultimate answer will be hard limits to scripted and textured items - yes, you may have prims free, but be unable to place an item because it takes more resources than you are paying for with your patch of land. Guaranteed, we'll see some abusive land barons and some abusive content creators both go out of business when that happens.

My partner and I own an opensim. Aside from a few prim animation glitches, we have no problems. Even with 30 people on site for a house warming party the sim ran well. So it is very possible to live on an opensim, if you own the whole thing.

Thanks for the reiteration. This is LL recommedation and is marketing jagon. Of couse LL does not want people to buy and use the openspace sims for other than light use. But using an openspace correctly, meaning knowing you only have 1/4 the CPU resorces, it works just fine. I own and live on an openspace and have had no issues. Not saying I will not have in the future.

Same reasoning could be applied to owning 1/4 of a full sim. Unless I buy the full sim, it might work now with light use neighbors, but if I had a club move into the region. I would have the some issue and slow response. I see no difference in the two examples.

I am happy with my openspace sim because I have more area to work with and have some water I can play on. But to each there own.

Good luck to you, as performance issues will not be supported, per LL.

As for the neighbors on a full sim, you have the option of choosing if you want to live on a full sim that allows clubs, commercial, etc.

Not an option with the openspaces.

Anyway; this thread was intended as a general public service announcement for everyone,
not as an argument towards people who have had good luck with their openspaces so far.

I just moved from mainland where I had 1/4 of the sim to my own openspace sim. I am very pleased with the performance so far.

It was laggy on my 1/4 mainland and hardly none here.I am not running a club or mall and just have a castle and a teahouse plus 3 guesthouses all asian style along with waves and gardens and such so I don't think I am too hard with scripts so far. I have used about half of the 3750 prims so far.

I am very happy with my new island.
I have followed all these openspace sim threads with interest and from my own personal experiance I knew what I was getting and it was a good move for me.

If your thread helps one person its a sucess. Kudos

Sigh. Not this again.

I don't know why people keep bringing up the old knowledgebase statement, because it simply isn't true. It's like saying, a 1/4 sim (16k sm parcel) should only be used for light use only, not for building, living, in, renting, etc. Which is obviously not true.

There is *one* script that I have noticed running a bit slower on my openspace sim, but when I took the script to a sandbox, it was a bit faster, but not considerably faster. Yes, you have 1/4 the prims and 1/4 the processing power, more or less. It's really not much different than having a 1/4 sim. Sure on a 1/4 full sim you can use all the CPU resources * if nobody else is using it*. And that's the key statement. On a full sim, unless it is governed by a covenant, you never know what your neighbors will be doing, they may be hogging the sim resources anyway. Even if you say, okay well I see my neighbors and they're all nice and pleasant and there are no other laggy clubs...

It's SL, and that can (and probably will) change in a couple of weeks.

on a 1/4 full sim you can see what is causing problems. On a opensim you cannot.... perhaps the other 3 opensims on your server are respecting LL's words and you end up with sever problems. If you are overusing your openspace LL will not help you. Its a gamble.