UNANNOUNCED Scripting Limits? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????

I don't think that scripts are the problem, Arielyn. Physics uses not far off half of the sim's 22ms frame time. It's probably the scripts that are causing collisons, but it's not the scripots themselves.

The relevant guideline in the Statistics documentation is
"* Sim Time (Physics) - The amount of time that frame spent running physics simulations. In general, this should be less than 5 milliseconds."

So if it's 11+ then there could be a noticeable effect on overall scripting performance.

Well your region is using half of it's frame time on physics so script performance is extremely poor. Such as your door that prevented me from entering until I kept trying many times. So yes perhaps your items are what is killing the region. I flew around through a few mainland sims and one had 5 milliseconds of physics time so someone there must have something "physicsing around" a lot.

10 milliseconds is a bit much, If all that physics time is because of your items then the responsible thing for you to do is buy your own region. That way nobody can complain about your stuff hosing your sim. You can view statistics and watch the time. Pick up all of your moving objects and see if the physics time drops to zilch. If so then it is your items causing the issues. If removing your items does not drop the physics time used in the region then must be someone else running a physics intensive activity.

wow, i agree with Brianna AND Ann...

for me, ONE moving scripted animal per 4096 is plenty. ONE.... on the sims I have control over, theses poor little innocent moving creatures are Killers in disguise. (that and dancers with certain brands of boots and skirts who I wont name.)

I hate mainland for the reasons above in this thread. I'll take a easy to control island anyday over mainland.

Mainland... why? Makes no sense. other than being able to walk to another plot.

IF >>>>>> IF, driving and flying WORKED in sl. Only then do I see an advantage in mainland.

/me wishes for 1024 sims to fly in.

So how do we fix the issue if we're high on "physics"? All of our birds that actually fly are physical. So is the answer reducing the number of birds or reworking the flying scripts we use? I'm sorry to sound ignorant about the numbers.

its called static models, with maybe one or two that work... if you MUST have all your birdies pets and what nots out, get your own estate and let them fly. (that would be neat really) But to run even more than one or two is a disservice to your neighbors.

A good start is to pick them up and then set them out one by one to see what their impact is.

The friendly monster I made that follows uses zilch. the one that flies around in a circle also is not even noticeable. Your animals are programmed to go phantom when rezzed right? Phantom = no collisions.

In fact... you want to see exactly whats happening with your animals?

go rent a full sim, even a simple openspace, get estate rights and start setting them out one at a time. write down each ones load or use - remember, cant total more than 22 if Im not mistaken.

then.. for giggles and the true test, set them ALL out as you would on your business plot. the results should give you the answer.

youll be amazed!! I know I was. (I was sure my boobies were bad. But they dont hold a candle to Hair or other resize items. wowserz..)

so..

yes, go rent a full sim - the whole sim, not a part of one. and test. In fact everyone should do that at least once. (maybe LL hould have a rent-a-sim by, say, 6 hrs slots for this purpose. hmmm ideas....) The results will floor you and enlighten too.

Thanks for the CONSTRUCTIVE ideas. Ciera, they all fly differently. The hawk has a different scripting and flight pattern than the pigeons, who behave TOTALLY differently. Some time ago we were able to get a YouTube player and host a vid about our hawks, then project that for customers to view. Eventually, something changed so that the player no longer worked, but the bigger issue was that we could only run ONE vid per parcel. Is there a way to run multiple vids? Would that "fix" the issue with physics (which I openly profess to NOT understand)?

So what am I LOOKING for as I put them out? If it's not the scripting, as Phil said, how do I determine what portion of the sims resources are being used? In other words, where do I need to go to find those numbers?

There is a parcel on the sim which has full permissions and damage physics open to All Residents. Maybe you could try discussing this with the owner to restrict that option particularly as the sim stats menu on Spiazzo reveals the region Spare Time = 0.00ms.

Loco, I will do that. Will that help??

Arielyn, your animals are great but frankly, it's a little scary to hear that you're selling moving physical objects and don't know how to quantify their resource usage. This is really something you should master! Personally, when I buy an animal, I would LOVE for the notecard with it to actually SAY something specific about its low-lag features, if any.

As for your own sim, there are many solutions. Here's a couple of ideas:

> Rez all the animals static, and have a few samples flying continuously. For each static animal, have it scripted so that when it is touched, it automatically rezzes a copy of itself that flies for 10 minutes and dies (derezzes). The scripting to do this is trivial; it means you would have to add a script to make a demo version of all your animals, but once you have the scripts that would be very easy.

> Have a few samples flying, and use an actual holovendor to show the others. That would cut down on prim count signficantly, and the pics would allow people who have their graphic settings low to see your products the way people with GOOD machines see them.

P.s. oh, and running multiple videos simultaneously is possible, but a real pain, and there are a lot of customers who don't even have media enabled in their clients.

Yes it would definitely help. With full permissions on - anyone can (and will) do anything they want, including crash the sim (intentionally or accidently).

Meanwhile - until LL gives mainland owners tools or some sort of test region allowing Estate Manager tools showing script times of each scripted object, the only real guide you have available to measure the entire regions performance is the Statistics Bar. Have a look at this wiki link below which explains some of the numbers...

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Statistics_Bar_Guide

Well I found some bats and bats are good for my place so i grabbed a 3 pack.

The bats each use about 0.1 to 0.2 milliseconds of physics time.
The bats each use 0.015 milliseconds of script time with peaks to 0.150 milliseconds of script time.

So to get to 10 milliseconds of physics time, assuming they all pretty much do the same stuff, you would need around 50 of the critters buzzing about. with 50 you would be using 0.750 milliseconds script time average (about the same as 2 or 3 typical avatars hanging around) with peaks that bump up pretty high on a random basis that could smack the sim pretty hard from time to time.

So to be polite I guess you would need to limit to around 25 critters flitting about assuming they all behave in a similar manner to the bats.

Oh and I didn't need to see a demo since it was fairly obvious whoever made it knew how given there were numerous flying critters around.

Thanks Ann....that's exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for. Our bats, hawks, eagles, love birds, etc. all work on that same type of script, though each has slightly different behaviors. 25 shouldn't be difficult to pare down to. Now we also have things in our Christmas display, like blinking lights and trees. Do those have ANYTHING to do with what is apparently the issue on our sim?? Are those scripts resource hogs?

well the critters are banging up the physics time pretty high and thus your scripts are fighting for time. Drop the physics time down by reducing the critters and most likely things will dramatically improve. It takes far fewer of the physical critters to eat up the frame time than the other various static scripted objects. Obviously the physics time is what grabbed LL's support staff's attention since all they have to go on is the same info posted earlier about physics needs to be less than 5. From their point of view they hear complaints, see physics at 10 and book says 5 max. You can figure out what comes next.

Umm , since when does LL actually warn us about anything they are doing?



This definitely sucks major.

I came into this business when I met my parter, who already had a storefront. The only birds he sold were hummingbirds, which were scripted back in '06. I thought it would be a good idea to add to the collection, so I went in search of a scripter. We were able to BUILD the birds, but the scripting was something we only had a cursory knowledge of. We hired a scripter who, at the time, came highly recommended, and we counted on him to provide scripts which were efficient. We discovered, somewhere along the way, that many of the scripts he had created were a little clunky. We then found a new scripter who has done some wonderful things for us. We tell him what we'd like the bird to do--he does it. Neither of us have ever professed to understand the physics of the game, and trying to find information written for us less than technical folks is difficult to come by. You know, I used to do editing for engineers, and some of what I read regarding scripting, physics, etc. is equally as difficult to "translate". I would LOVE a user-friendly explanation of physics and the moving of physical objects in world. PLEASE, those of you with the ability to think logically and then get those thoughts onto the page--write a manual!!! I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I know I'm not alone. Many builders in world hire scripters and trust them to do the most efficient job possible. Nika, you tell me it's frightening that I don't understand how to check usage, and yet you never offered the information so that I would be "enlightened." Ann's explanation gave me useful info that will hopefully allow us to streamline our business. In fact, I see a GREAT opportunity here for someone with some chutzpah. Contracting out as a consultant to lower resource usage would be an incredibly lucrative venture. Many of those here who understand the subtle and not-so-subtle dynamics of the viewers, clients, etc. forget that you are in the minority!

It wouldn't just be builders who would buy it. Many estate owners would love a simple concise manual.

Thanks so much--just saw your post. I will check out the wiki.

It's worth emphasising that when you look at the Time section of the View Statistics that:

Physics time is the time that *the sim server* spends working out collisions etc for physical objects
It's *not* the time spent running user scripts that move physical objects around.

The scripts *in* your physical animals might be super-efficient, but you don't really have any control over Physics time other than reducing the number of physical objects that the sim server has to track.

So what you're telling me is that the number of scripts is irrelevant--it's simply the number of MOVING birds/objects that is the issue? Does this include simple rotating items that might be physical?

Is it possible that there was a bad griefing attack on your sim while you were offline and LL switched it off as an emergency measure? or that the problem was on somebody else's parcel?

Sling, thanks for posting the info about script time. We need much better script management tools on mainland. I found this JIRA ...

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-835

I think LL should at least try giving us the tools to manage our own script usage before they implement script limits.