Very new to SL

That just got me thinking. That sim with 40 people is choking to death from lag and the sim next door is just bumbling along merrily with nobody in it. It seems like we have so much extra processing power out there doing absolutely nothing.

Jeez, if they could have built their architecture differently and utilized that extra processing power, you wouldn't have so many sims ready to die from lag.

Like... every sim could be alotted a guaranteed level of processing power, so a busy club wouldn't leech, but if nobody is in the sim, why not use it?

Seems like the way they built things is horrendously inefficient.

Did you know that if you get 9 women working together you can get a baby in one month?

Well, mid-wives are helpful in making sure things go smoothly.

I just can't help but imagine the plethora of CPUs that are just sitting there churning away with nothing to do. There has to be a way to recoup that. I'm not saying it's possible for them without entirely rearchitecturing their servers and software, but what a waste.

The point is that you're running a physical simulation of up to 15,000 objects in a sim, updated 45 times a second. Everything that is required to perform that simulation including all scripts and geometry information, has to be in memory. Adding another computer to perform part of the calculation would mean that instead of using memory references to access the data needed to perform the simulation, you now have to send messages from one computer to another. So now you can simulate 30,000 objects, but there's a 50 ms round trip between the computers so you can't update the simulation more than 20 times a second... and probably fewer.

Even multithreading the physical simulation will add locking overhead, and you'll get lass than twice the performance... and possibly less than 1x the performance.

Although... they use quad-cpu servers so I hear. Wouldn't the bandwidth between them be considerably larger, to the point where you could borrow processing resources from a CPU on the same server if it's available?

Bandwidth isn't the issue, latency is. You're running a single physical simulation in lockstep over the whole of the sim. Distributing that and still completing a physics frame in 22 ms is a tough job, and it scales up sublinearly.

Let's say with four processors you could handle 30,000 prims, 80 avatars, and 12,000 scripts, instead of 15,000 prims, 40 avatars, and 6,000 scripts. You've quadrupled the cost of running a sim on second life for a doubling of sim capacity, and now you're back with the same bottleneck you started with.

That's not to say there aren't potential solutions to the problem, but they're not easy, and they're expensive, and the result would significantly change the platform.

LMAO *Boggles*.....OMG....I am just *not* smart enough for this. I'll just go shopping....

I wish!

Anyways, the idea of "borrowing" processing power from idle sims has a lot of merit. You've heard of the Folding @ Home project, yes? Same principle at work here. Why can't SL be set up to harness the power being wasted by idle sims and direct it toward sims that are loaded down? This could help SL break the 40-avatar load limit and allow for some real meaningful events.

Good point; but the idea is that if you're going to use distributed computing, then you farm off low-priority processes and housekeeping tasks, along with other things that contribute to sim lag but are themselves more latency-tolerant, like script processing, to other idle processors; so that the main processor only has to deal with the time-critical stuff.

I know of at least 4 clubs that are busy almost 24/7 - but all are women only. 2 of them do that on a DJ/event schedule.

I know of a fourth that might be busy 24/7 which is mixed, a reggae club. Its pretty much the first result in search too - easy to find (Irie Vibes). If you like reggae, that's probably a great place to be. I like reggae and have been a few times, but not enough to solidly speak for its community.

There is also a fifth that shouldn't be discounted too fast: Sexy Nude Beach.
- YES, its a nude beach and gets a lot of newbies (how I found it), and yes its top of search. But near as I can tell everything there is actually there - no bots or camping. And its packed 24/7. And its not a sex club. In fact since its recent move to a different private Sim I can't even find the old hidden poseballs... Unless it got updated again since I was there last. If you're open to nudity, its actually a great place to make some initial friends. You don't have to be nude there, but it helps - and I'd bet some people won't bother to speak with you unless you are, since that is supposed to be the theme (and joining in makes you look a lot less like some random trolling for pickups).

I can send info on the women only clubs, or any other clubs, from within SL. And guys, none of them are sex clubs or nudist clubs nor places to get a 3-some...
- If you want any of that, its usually the first result in search for -ANY- term, especially terms that have nothing to do with sex...

Short version:
- There -ARE- lots of constantly busy clubs out there, and once you find one you're usually on a roll to more. But I think the club scene is very different from some other SL scenes. In my time in SL I've found almost no one who is into anything but clubs except on these forums - we just don't seem to ever land in the same sims.

You mean, like, the asset servers? About the only thing sims are currently doing that can still be farmed off is caching textures... and that's almost always a low impact job: they're using the squid cache and when I was still a full time system admin our squid cache for the whole division was an old Multia... that's a Pentium 133.

And, no, scripts are not something that can get farmed off. Scripts in SL are real-time controls, just as time critical as anything else on the system. They need position and collision updates just as frequently as any other part of the simulation. Adding network latency to the system would be like living with high levels of script lag _all the time_ instead of just when script time is high... *and* the system is tuned well enough that when script time *is* high it causes very little impact on the physics engine.

Good point.

I had to look up the term "dolcett." Now I'm kind of sorry I did. *shudders*

Google needs to implement an "Unsee" button.

mice on rice...laughing

GQ Start *IS* still around, although they have stopped offering formal classes. It's still a great place to go to meet friendly, helpful people.

Caledon Oxbridge is another. It's a newbie orientation area, but a lot of people have liked the place and the company so much that they visit often, even after they've become non-noobs.

And of course, there's the Forum Cartel. Us, in other words, the people who post here a lot. Join the in world group (The Forum Cartel, and don't forget the "The". There is an in-world hangout/clubhouse and you can often find some of the members there, just chatting or sorting inventory or maybe having a little party.

. . . or telling you why you are wrong about just about anything, or thinking it funny to remove the sofa you are sitting on, or complaining that you don't say hello to them before they have even rezzed, or pointing out your supposed personality inadequacies on a minimum of information or . . .

Pep ( . . . or maybe I bring the worst out of people? )

Oh, sure, all of that too. 'Specially the last bit.

Just balancing the viewpoint.

Pep (In the interests of fairness.)

Might I also suggest checking out the Events ->Education tab in search.

There are many many classes on all kinds of things you might discover are interesting and fun.

The one thing I have found to be the key to my longevity in SL is the ability to reinvent myself. SL can and will throw you curveballs be they social, financial, glitches whatever. Learn to roll with the punches and do what you love.

This is my absolutely favorite thing to do in SL!! And over two years, in various SL schools/classes, I still see a group of the same people. Birds of a feather...

Anyone know of any good scripting classes? And I'm a bit cash poor at the moment having just bought some land...

But it has become clear to me, the more I think about it, that if I want to create/invent/sell here in SL I need to learn to script.

Not in world classes, but the lsl wiki has some good basic tutorial.
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Tutorial

you get what you give. everyone deserves (at least) a 2nd chance. try again.