The use of openspace sims

oh i did read all your advertisments However, the fact does remian these void sims are not intended for residential use. Its GREAT that you seem such a good & diligent landlord, pity those that share your resources though...there is no getting away from the fact, despite an increase in prims ..its stated they are NOT intended for anything more than pretty areas, for more space etc...and there is no back up if performance issues arise if you are using them for residential/stores etc. I think that statement by LL says it all, they are not willing to help if youre misusing the space for the intention it was created.

Good estate management is valuable...yet perhaps people should spare a thought for the other 3 void sims sharing your cpu, who have just as much right to performance as each other.

Oh definitely, thats why there is the mentioning of fair use in my text - so no usage that takes more from the pie than what it deserves. You can easily monitor how heavy your own impact on the server ressources is - and act on it if necessary. If you yourself are fully within your limits and are suffering from those you share with, then a SIM restart with server change usally takes care of that.

And well, as I said: LL's definition for low prim SIMs is like ... 3 or 4 years old. I had Lindens at mine, when after H4 performance was totally fucked up for literally all low prims - not one said "oh, but they are not meant for living on anyways, good bye".

im confused though...although you mention *fair usage* how can you possibly monitor those that you share with? Its my understanding that void sims share 4 to 1 cpu...so...for example..a not so dilligent landlord as you seem to be, might not be looking at the usage or keeping an eye on it...so even though you restart a sim...isnt it a bit of a lottery everytime who youre going to share with and what performance you should get? The lindens say they will not get involved with performance issues if those void sims are used other than for their intended use...so...as their use increases i sense this might become a bigger and bigger problem if all ignore the terms of thier use as stated.

I have seen similar problems arise on other void sims...walking in treacle...a restart...it got worse..the owner is also very careful about the use of scripted/high resource stuff...it seemed as if the problem lay in who and what the resources were being shared with at any given time.

Sorry if it appears im snagging you as an example..iam genuinely interested in these void sims, and can see the appeal for more space, but am very wary about performance. Also being a landlord myself, i obviously keep a close eye on the rental market, its annoying the heck out of me when people come to view my stuff and ask why they saw SO many prims on this sim with lots of water & space- of course this is a topic of interest for me, im competing in a whole new arena against people with huge amounts of prims and space and lower costs Its been my experience so far, on the few ive stayed & visited, that compared to where i live and work, the performance is not good and very variable.

I think I'll shall go visit a few more...and possibly think about one for myself to extend the landscaped areas...im doubting ill use them for rentals though at this current time.

At some point the Lindens explicitly stated that openspace sims aren't for residential or commercial purposes. Until they explicitly state something different, you can't reasonably assert they've changed their minds about that - new prims or not. I'm quite sure that if they intend openspace sims to be usable for those applications, they'll say so in so many words.

It was only a few weeks ago when I was at a meeting with Jack Linden. He's still sticking to the original line for using open spaces. Kitty, I think it was, posted the quote in another thread.

Most things go over my head BUT I could buy an openspace Sim build myself a home and either make the rest water or landscape it and thats it?

But if my neighbouring Sims fill themselves with shops, homes even clubs I'm buggered and not in a good way? Also I can't complain to LL?

How much are these Open Sims and how much is the monthly tier fee compaired to the standard Sim?

This is the first I've heard of this so I wonder how many others are breaking the rules but don't actually know they are?

Just had another thought what if someone knows this rule but still fills their Sim up but their tenants don't know about it and the Sim is removed or collapses do they find themselves homeless and trying to retrieve what was on the land they thought they owned or rented?

And I though RL was complicated!!!!

Folks, you've got to consider that 4-openspaces-per-cpu means 16-per-server. And each server only has one hard drive, one bank of RAM, one network card, etc. If only one of those sims goes over the top with script usage, texture cycling, physics whackiness, or crowded events, they can negatively affect 15 other sims.

I very strongly recommend that anyone who lives in an openspace sim wears Max Case's free registratortron, to help keep his database of "sim neighbors" up to date. You can use this to determine WHO is lagging the rest of the sims on your server, but it only works if people wear the HUD, which will automatically "phone home" whenever you enter a new sim.

http://neighbours.maxcase.info/

I once lived in such a region. What chased me out was its script performance, which by my measurement was about 98% slower than "normal." Yes - a script that did 100 things per time unit in a normal sim would do 2 of those same things in my sim! And, of course, as stated, LL refused to look into it - well, I don't know if my estate owner ever actually reported it either!

That situation was unacceptable, so I moved to a speedy non-void sim in the same estate. A little more expensive, but definitely worth the extra cost.

BTW: The "registratotron" thing proved more or less useless.

Sigh, I wish the Lindens could stick to the same story. They have previously stated that the simulator software runs one region per CORE. So one CPU could be running 2 normal sims per CPU, assuming on they have dual-core servers, as previously stated. So one server could be running 4 sims, based on the dual-core, dual-CPU servers they have described in the past. (Class 5) Or 16 OpenSpace Sims on 1 server.

Think about that, just for the bandwidth!!

Max

I don't think that's what the Lindens meant by not helping if the land is used for reasons other than intended. I think what the Lindens meant is that if YOU are the one who's filled your void sim with homes and clubs and shops, YOU shouldn't expect too much help from them if you're having lag and performance issues.

If you're using your sim the way it's supposed to be used, I suppose they would be a bit more helpful.

Zannnzibarr!!

Im not sure if currently you can buy a void sim if you dont already own 1 full sim, my understanding is that you need to own 1 full sim to purchase it. Go to the land pages here and take a gander through the info on openspace sims and the FAQ , it answers most stuff...

As for breaking rules...I dont think its a hard and fast rule you CANT do it...as you already know people ARE doing it...the issue is that Linden Labs have provided these spaces for SPACE not for business or residential use, it actually does state that on the info pages. They also state they will NOT get involved in performance issues if these void sims are being used for residential/stores etc.. You and i both know of one void sim that is being totally overused with scripts,stores and residential, i wonder how long the people who share this void sims resources will put up with it, it must be hell.

I dont think one would be removed for not following the recoomended use..but...i couldnt tolerate living in a poor functioning sim and the lottery of who youre sharing your resources with. I think this issue will become greater the more jump onto the bandwagon and sell/rent them with the wrong intentention that they have been provided for.

Well right now I own 7 low prim SIMs. There was *big* performance trouble after H4 came up, making the 3 I had at this time more or less useless for something else than sitting down and talking. Thankfully, this is history.

Within the last 4 weeks I had to restart the one I'm living on once because of bad performance - can't say if that server was buggy or if one of the sharing SIMs went over the top, abusing the ressources. During the same time I had to restart one of the full prim SIMs I manage for performance trouble, too. In both cases the restart with server switch took care of the problems. I don't know if and if so how often my other low prim SIMs were restarted over this period of time, but I got no complaints from those who live on them.

We are doing skydiving, boating, building, swimming, fishing and other stuff there, and I'm keeping a close eye on performance and statistics (even my keyboard permanently displays stuff like SIM FPS, lol).

One important thing is, that usually less people are on a low prim SIM than on a normal one - that keeps stuff like avatar based prims and scripts low. And if you don't have many small parcels, with everyone running his home security scripts and stuff like that, the general load can be kept at an acceptable level, too. The *ideal* residential use for a low prim SIM definitely is one single resident, but sharing with 2 or 3 others who usually are not online at the same time all the time anyways works, too. On the one I live on we have 3 houses, using maybe 2500 prims now, and our script load (objects) is between 0.5 and 2ms, depending on what we do. Script load on the neighboring full prim SIM with 7 residents is usually in the range of 6-9ms. So I'd say we are at a very acceptable level, using the ressources

Sounds peachy...however..you are misusing what this space is intended for...it states on this web site..they are not for residential/business use...hats off to you if you ARE managing to run rentals and homes on them..i wonder, how many other people like a previous poster to this thread havent had such a good experience of them used in this way...and just left to pay a little more for a proper simand all its resource capacity?

What would you actually do if your performance DID suffer greatly-? say for example you got tied to recurring void sims over using resources (which i imagine might become an issue when so many others do what youre doing) you cant ask for help from Linden Labs , they have already stated they wont get involved in performance issues if these voids are used incorrectly ie:residential.

Over time a restart might not be the great all fixing panecea you think...as more and more people hop on the ban wagon of using these spaces . And despite you being so very careful about YOUR usage, you cant do anything about those that you share a cpu with...or even complain about it or AR it..as they are not meant to be used this way...what then>? Do people leave, move on and these places just keep being turned over and over?

Iam just not wholly convinced at ALL, that assuming because more prims have been allocated to them, you can just assert the notion they are now meant to be used for anything other than is stated by Linden Labs..."extra space"

Still think they are a great idea for wide open spaces though

I think we would have an outcry of people shouting "I was mislead!" here if that was happening in big numbers. Unhappy people usually are not as quiet about their experience as happy people are, lol. About the Lindens view of it: as I said, I did have Lindens at these SIMs, during the H4 deploy desaster, not one said anything about the use. They definitely are aware of that and decided to not do anything about it. .hrugs:.

On a funny side note: I'd be able without any problems at all to use a low prim SIM for what they were meant for in the beginning, adding some nicely designed space for looks and maybe sailing from SIM to SIM, without anything residential or commercial. And still doing so I could totally wreck the SIM performance for this one and the poor sharers. No boat would move, no wanderer would be able to explore the green hills. Heck, I could do that with a full prim SIM, too, lol.

No matter on what SIM you are, to keep the SL experience a nice one for yourself and for others, you have to use your sense of responsibility.

Added: about the changes in performance levels over time: Desmond Chang of Caledon tested, how class 4 low prim SIMs compare to class 5. The difference is gigantic. So it does make sense to open up what you could call "fair use" for them a bit.

However, I'd say that the recent option to *not* have them anchored to an existing sim is an indication that LL is at least considering them for other use.
I suspect LL is currently keeping an eye on the stand-alone Openspaces and gathering statistics, and have deliberately made the acquisition of them somewhat restrictive (going through an existing sim owner rather than having them freely available to everybody) to avoid a sudden rush, using the early adopters as guinea pigs.

Has anyone actually noticed any REAL performance problems with openspaces or is this discussion solely based on a statement of intention that was made 3 years ago ?

I rent out 4 openspace sims and 4 full sims and haven't noticed any performance difference. My openspaces are used for residential purposes, not commercial, so script usage and avatar traffic is generally lower than on a full blown sim. We had a party on one of them with 40 avatars and there was no measurable performance hit. A friend of mine runs a community gateway welcome area on a class 4 openspace that has from 50 to 70 avatars nearly 24/7. Of course it's laggy, but no more than the full sim next door.

Actually, my full sims give a feeling of worse performance, because of the prim density causing client-side lag: rendering 10000 prims in 128m radius is slower than rendering 2500 prims.

Another factor to consider for lag: a standalone sim has MUCH less lag than a sim surrounded by other sims because it doesn't have to deal with sim crossings and rendering child agents.

I'm pretty sure a class 5 standalone openspace runs smoother than a class 4 surrounded sim.

Hmm, they are sharing a processor with other open-space sims, which is one thing that I wonder about; are open-space sims time-sliced so that they each get precisely 25% of the available processor, or do they fight for it? If the latter then you end up with open-space sims being entirely at the mercy of their "companion" open-space sims, which isn't very good at all. I know that obviously a crash can take down all four, but with that now being much less likely, performance is a bit of a concern. I wouldn't like an open space sim unless I was guaranteed to have my fair share of processing power, so if I don't max it out then I'll have room to spare, meanwhile someone with a ton of laggy scripts will have their open space sim crawl completely independent of mine.

Prim and Texture density is a factor most sim designers (especially mall & store makers) never take into consideration, and it is probably the most common creator of lag in any given sim (next would be those laggy 1024x1024s).

Been over this a few times before - quite frankly on a *class 5* voidsim typical performance waaaaaaaaaay exceeds a regular region.

What? Is Des crazy?

Think about it.

Most of the prims and textures are in full regions - unless another avatar is wearing them. I've had one hundred (yes 100) avatars in a void region with .99 time dilation at 45 FPS for the region. Caledon types. Yep, all the fancy stuff.

This is reproducible experimental evidence, not idle speculation or 'I'm sure it works this way'.

BUT HOW?

First off, far fewer prims in the region means far fewer prims *anywhere near you* - the void is 65k square meters of low density build. All the junk in other regions is just plain out of your draw distance. Much of your 'lag' isn't even coming from the region you are in - if you are on the edge of a region, rest assured all the junk you can see next door is loading you down.

Second - most of the impact is on the script side. But void regions typically aren't abused - very few people load them down. With Mono coming in to supplement LSL, I think we'll even see the script-loading weakness fade quite a bit.

Alright, but what about someone doing crazy stuff on one of the other 3 shared slots?

Forget about it. Ever see how desolate a typical void is? Usually one person shares it with a few buddies, and that's it. But let's say the 1 in bajillon chance happens, that all three neighbours are jampacked. Hit restart. The void instantiates on different hardware, and there you go - smooth sailing.

I have yet to even *measure* shared-server lag on any of Caledon's class 5 voids, and it's been a year of trying, to see something - anything.

So does anyone else share the opinion? Well, I've got a waiting list for voids long enough to launch a million square meter continent made of just those if I were to move on it - that's the reaction of residents to the quality of void regions these days. Good stuff.

Well, I've got a waiting list for voids long enough to launch a million square meter continent made of just those if I were to move on it -

I see that as a problem in itself...these spaces are not intended for residential or whatever (feeling like a broken record here) They will be unsupported by linden labs for performance issues...so if say you did launch a million sq meter continent of them...would your fabulous performance be the same? i highly doubt it, whut a HUGE drain on everything having all these voids sims being constantly rejiggled & restarted to stop lag...

From the posts here...all im seeing is *ooo im responsible though so i wont have any issues*...well thats fine & dandy for now...in a few months when these are like so totally over subscribed and all the *responsible* people have rented and re rented and sold and moved on...whos gonna be left clearing up the post party mess?

There is a reason these are not sold as suitable for residential, parties, business premises...wether its an old reason or not...its still here ...i just dont get why no one is abiding by the terms of their use....is it the usual "this doesnt apply to me * thing..or just a greed fuelled clamber to make more money?

I think there are a couple of side issues that can muddy the waters on this whole concept. Firstly, The Lindens are very much sticking to their original description of usage for these open spaces, so those who have had a bad experience will point to that.

The other is whether the growing popularity will lead to future issues, chaos theory if you will, that could have potential repurcussions in the future.

One intersting suggestion (that Jack said wasn't possible) was whether one person could have four open spaces on the same cpu, as a landlord I'm sure many would feel more comfortable if that were the case. I think there may be added value in such a setup.

However as it stands I haven't seen many complaints on the boards about people feeling ripped off over open spaces.

Well, I've got fifteen of them now - that's 983 thousand square meters worth as it is. Eeeeven worse, they are next to a whole raft of full regions otherwise known as greater Caledon.

They do fine. Go check 'em out. Do a blog search on Caledon's 2 year anniversary held in Caledon Cymru also - the main event was done in that void.

Oh, and Nova Civis Caledon. That runs NCI classes left, right and center, constantly. It's not even funny how much that region is put to good use.

So there's your dead-to-rights proof that it's working just fine. Go check the regions out, ask the residents. Nothing to hide. This is also in a community chock full of avatars about as primmy as you can find on the grid.

Nova Civis Caledon, Saint Kitt Islands (our crown colony) and the word 'Caledon' in front of: Lionsgate, Primverness, Carntaigh, Loch Avie, Murdann, Middlesea, Speirling, Sound, Cymru, Greystoke, Kintyre, Glamorgan, Argylle.

Ask anybody how they do and see for yourself. The oldest I've had for 1.5 years and not even a scratch. Never restarted one *even once* due to any concerns of trouble on the same core, and I've been watching performance stats constantly. In fact, I never shut off performance monitoring as I do my daily business, easily 20 hours a week.

* * * * *

There's no way to put 'four of the same owner' on a core, because people can have any number of these things now.

As for the old 'light use' stuff, the sense of performance is left over from class 4 days, when performance *was* rather poor. The current server code really cleans up a lot of problems even on class 4's - the old server code was a bit of a pig, and you bet class 4 voids had hyuuuuge issues back in say, mid 2005. But not so much today.

Incidentally, I pumped 1800 USD that I'll never see again into the voids I got for Caledon in summer 2007 - not counting reserves I need to save (an expense) I make 11 dollars a month over tier in each one of those. Adding in the upfront fees I charged they will break even for me sometime in 2013, counting all my time invested over six years as utterly worthless.

Once you add up trouble, payment glitches, time spent, tier reserve held aside... even a new openspace at 100 USD/mo LOSES me 25 USD the first year.

This also is why I have a long, unfulfilled waiting list for them! Risk 75/mo for the return of... essentially nothing a month. The second year is marginally better, but not a lot.

So no, it's not for the money. If I wanted cash out of SL, I'd be doing tropical beachfront and LOTS of it, squeezing my land baron rep for all it was worth. Seriously. I got them to make Caledon a nice place - an expense of doing business right.

There's a lot of unsubstantiated rumour and old wives tales about void regions, and some people who would load even a full class 5 region down so hard it would cry, then call foul. But when it comes to the reality of the situation, very few have any idea.

Get an alt, check around, turn on the stats performance bar and keep an eye on it. See how your avatar performs. You'll see the truth quickly for yourself.

My experience with newly purchased openspace regions has been fantastic! Very pleased with the land portal as well. It is very encouraging.

Except a proper forest would have 15,000 trees and rocks.

I am a big fan of using your extra prims to lush out your foliage, doesn't seem like you can effectively do that to an entire openspaces sim though.

"Get an alt, check around, turn on the stats performance bar and keep an eye on it. See how your avatar performs. You'll see the truth quickly for yourself."

im not sure why id need an alt to do this? lol

Yes Desmond you have a lot of land..and a lot of void sims.... Im not sure that makes you the be all and end all of everything though...BUT it does give you epxerience so maybe i should all bow to your superior knowledge.

Issues are funny things...ask any resident in SL an opinion on something...youll get a different answer. Ive had experience of void sims TOO! Albeit not on your scale..but its also just as relevant..as is others who dont own as MUCH as you or even do landrental as their living in SL...and its NOT all good.

Its really the same as the monster called LAG...ask residents on the same sim how they are affected, youll get one who has none...6 others who complain daily they cant move for it, it might be down to peoples computers..their settings..the time of day...whatever.

Ive worked with 8 Sims and played/hung out in a few void sims..i see a lot of difference between the two,as have others with me (so no, its not just me lol)

Your epxerience of these also weights pretty heavily on how it HAS been...im going to ask you how the perfomrance is in a few months, when the grid is BURSTING with these voids and everyone has filled them with stuff, ill be around, im guessing you will too

IF and this is a big IF..Linden labs chnages their support on these and states they are fine for anything more than pretty wide open spaces...i might get one.

My opinion, for what its worth isnt based on *old wives tales*, it a collective of what ive seen and heard from people i know with them..and reading the intended use of these voids by Linden labs..ill just repeat what Linden labs states on this very web site...

Not intended for residental or business use...

You think Tropical Beach front is the way to make money? Im not so sure youre right about that

Im glad you posted...your views are always interesting and relevant