I Have Met the Enemy and He is Me. or Adventures in Sim Crossing.

A thread I started earlier sort of evolved into an examination of my main pet peeve with SL. Border crossings. So this morning, I did some experiments.

First of all, I have a pretty good computer. I really don't have all that much trouble with SL. I'm not the type to complain that I can't build or can't rezz or can't tp or move or any of the things that I constantly see complaints about. I learned a long time ago that a capable, well maintained computer doesn't have all that much trouble running an avatar on the grid. And I found that I could indeed run that computer with all settings maxed it it would hardly hiccup.

And being the well prepared avatar I regularly wore enough scripted huds that sometimes I'd have to take one off to put one on Typically I would wear an AO, a sophisticated hugger, a combat hud, and an online tracker. Some things like a spy hud, radar, performance monitor, etc, have been retired or replaced by devices picked up those things.

This morning, I got curious about how much stress I was putting on the grid, took off all my scripted objects and prim clothing, and set my graphics settings down to the lowest levels.

Where I WAS floating right across I sim, suddenly I was moving back and forth without a hiccup.

So, I tried driving a car I built. The border crossings, while not exactly smooth as silk, were typically quick and fairly well controlled. I did experience one issue where I froze in place next to a club and had to lower my bandwidth in order to move on, and I DID finally go offworld, but I spent a long time driving around.

So, I bumped up my graphics to reccomemnded levels, got properly dressed, (ARC of about 250 or so if you must know.) and tried again.

The hiccups were a little more severe with more frequent and longer trips to the twilight zone. But things were still working well.

Then I started putting on my huds one by one and one at a time. And as you would expect, things got incrementally worse. By now, I was beginning to notice that I'd have the same sorts of issues in the same places.

Then, hudless again. I invited a friend to drive with me. She didn't have much in the way of attachments--a mystitool and ao. But she had on scripted blingy shoes that once removed, dropped her ARC from 1900 to 500.

We had a nice drive with a few bumps, but generally recovered without much trouble.

Then, I asked her to put on her blingy scripted shoes again and we crashed at the next sim border.

No I'm not blaming the shoes. Or the huds or anything other than my own practices. I'm not about to give up all my custom viewer settings, or my huds and gadgets. But I WILL be giving a lot of thought to what I really need.

I've noticed the same things as well. This account (Dana) usually doesn't cross borders that well, with many trips to the underworld in the process. Large inventory, high ARC score, and a good assortment of HUD toys that keep it that way. One of my alts, though she also has a high ARC, doesn't even flinch at region crossings because there's no extra scripted items at all. Only a basic stand and walk AO (it doesn't even do sits, runs, flying, or any of that). Not even a MystiTool I know.. it's blasphemy. The plus side is that flying, boating, and driving are consistant and enjoyable again.

That is most definitely NOT properly dressed.



When I get inworld, maybe I'll play with this a bit. Would be interesting, at the very least, to drop myself down to one of my low-lag skin only outfits with no attachments/HUDs and see what a crossing is like -- and how much my extremely bloated inventory effects things.

in particular when a sim is under load if you're wearing lots of scripted items and or huds you'll find you get a 'failed to connect to the region' message. If you take off your huds at least you'll have a better chance of making it through.

I participate in a lot of grid hunts and particularly with the big ones on the first day I'm constantly advising hunters how to get into the sim/reduce their lag etc

Your best bet when doing the vehicle thing is to ditch everything you don't need, simply because the less there is for the platform to move across the sim border the smoother it will be (as you found out Dances )

I know it's a pain but think of it as the equivalent of donning one of those sleek suits if you're a professional swimmer or a spacesuit if you're an astronaut. Neither of them look particularly attractive but they do improve performance and those people don't carry anything they don't need to.

ok those examples probably don't help but you know what I mean.

I was testing with a car I made, but it wasn't just vehicles.

Any sort of border crossing would have me floating halfway across the sim and sometimes into the next. The last time I tried testing that car, I was getting so lost on border crossings that sometimes I couldn't figure out how to get back to the road.

The ironic thing is, I'm someone who KNOWS BETTER. I'm not some blinged out noob who has no concept of frame rate or or time dilation. I've been here a long time and I've seen all sorts of lag. But I had to figure out for myself that I was my own worst enemy.

Other than the one sim crossing by the club, were they pretty much equal in how bad the crossing was? Was there anything else on the sim at the crossing points that could have affected the crossing?

NOW i get why you kept coming and going accross our border this morning. though i haven't walked or driven that part of the road for awhile, i do know that a couple of months ago it was a rough crossing, it didn't matter if it was my heavily lagged self or a "light" alt, i was finding myself under the road. what i mean, is, that may not be the best crossing for tests but rather a project for some roadwork repair.

I had this problem with a re-size scripted hair. When I wore the hair, sim crossings were close to impossible and often failed. Teleports were unbelievably slow. I counted the time taken to complete teleports. With the scripted hair it was 50 seconds, without just 7 seconds.

Thing was, the hair maker supplied a non scripted mod version of the hair in the pack, but wearing this made no difference as it still had all the re-size scripts in each prim. It wasn't until I stripped out all the scripts that I could wear hair and make sim crossings.

I new these scripts were evil, but not this evil.

Shhh, don't let the secret out - people will stop inviting me places!

It's tough when you wear a scripted avatar. I can't help being laggy, I was created that way!

Okay, maybe having the 2 Tiny Empires HUDs attached at all times doesn't help either.

mono compiled scripts are the hardest on sim crossings, because of the way they are handled, items made for huds / attachments /vehicles will probably do better as LSO scripts, unless they rely on the extra speed that mono provides to run properly. it's a know issue.