Lots of stuff in Inventory = lag? Yes or no?

Is there any relationship between the amount of stuff you have in inventory, and the amount of lag you experience? At least on a personal user experience level?

For example, if I had two accounts, both wearing the same hair and avatar and clothes, both being run on the same computer... if one of them had tons of freebies and textures and clothes and other stuff in it's inventory, and the other had almost nothing, would the one with the lightweight inventory folder run faster?

And if there is a difference, does it negatively affect others in the sim, when someone with a bloated inventory folder enters the sim? Does having a bloated inventory harm others in some way?

Just wondering... No empirical data to go on, since I have only one account. It just struck me that SL seems to be getting slower and slower for me, and maybe, just maybe, it was due to all the freebies and other junk I have collected along the way.

Anyone want to test the theory? Is 'the stuff in my purse' weighing me down?

No. Why would it? How does it affect the sim?

I have seen my alts move hella faster in comparison than my main, and the only real difference is one has upward of 5k items, and the other has... um... 10 total?

Yes.

Although 20 Kool-Aid drinkers will come in here and tell you no.

I don't notice much difference between alt and main, but I'm not doing a scientific study with controls, etal. And I don't think I have that much in my main inventory, either, as compared to some people.

Does this count as dribbling Kool-Aid down my chin and all over my grimy t-shirt?

No. You didn't make it seem like anyone who did not agree with you was a liar.

Yes it DOES lag you, but *only when fetching*.
I have more then 16000 items, and if I need to make a "search" and it starts fetching, sometimes it even makes me crash. But once it's fully loaded, it shouldn't make any difference I believe.

Yes, my 21,000 item inventory lags me while my alt moves with flighty ease.

no!

YES!!

ok maby, my 2 cents is when the inventory window is opened it lags your network sending the data to your computer, while it is open its sucking down some extra memory, keeping all that suff loaded up (in the inventory window) just incase you decide to use object b or shirt a

not that ive sat down and spent my life researching it, but it shouldnt effect you unless your messing around in it

now wheres my koolaide and sippy cup!

Hasn't affected me.. now number of -attachments- on has

I really want to know this too because I'll feel mucho guilt if I find out I'm causing OTHERS to lag when I come in their sim. Doesn't bother me if it's just lagging me, but if it affects others...??? anyone know?

Informal experience indicates that the inventory itself doesn't "lag" you, per se.

However, there will be a long pause as you intially open your inventory on each log-in, and naturally searching 15,000 items takes a bit longer than 1,000. I don't believe this lags out other people, but it does put a larger strain on the asset server and the effect of many people with huge inventories certainly harms performance for everyone.

Moral: clean out your inventory every so often!

OK, taking a page out of other 'gaming environments' here... Ever play an RP adventure game, like Baldur's Gate, fill your Inventory, and take care of that by stuffing less valuable things back into known 'treasure chest' locations, as a weapons cache or a stash of extra armor, or whatever?

Let's say I make a box, tuck it away somewhere safe on my land, and stuff all the things that I don't think I'll use any time soon into it, and then delete them from my inventory. That should clear them out of the way as far as my inventory is concerned, but if I ever want those things, I can go 'open the treasure chest' and take out the stuff I want.

Would that help, do you think? Taking the various gadgets, vehicles, odd avatars and the like and putting them into my own 'freebie boxes', essentially? Of course, if I stick a no-copy item in a box like that, I take a chance I might lose it. But generally if it is a no-copy item, I probably want to keep it handy anyway. So at least for the free or easily replaced stuff, would this idea work?

This does work. The downside is, it's really easy for a prim to get corrupted, so as said... don't do it for anything you'll miss.

I have 11,000 textures and have NO idea of the amout of other junk.

I think its one of those questions that is answered with ' it plays part of' the reason for lag.

My alt doesnt seem any different around my store but if i log into my game on my partners PC i cant move as the PC isnt as as loaded with RAM and a good graphic card.

Plus we have 9 meg band width as well as 1 gig ram it all helps

Yes. I am convinced it most definitely makes a difference. And I don't care what technical explanation y'all care to give as to why it can't possibly be the case.

I have 3 accounts. The main has approximately triple (maybe more) the amount of inventory the second has, and the 3rd is just about inventory free, save for the crap they put in it to start with and some stuff off help island.

The difference - which is considerable - between these three accounts running on any of my machines is just about the same, percentage wise, every time. On my main, most of the time I can barely move. I can't cross sim borders properly, stuff from inventory can take ages to actually notice you asked to rez or attach it (attach especially), building tools behave erratically etc.

Things also go downhill from the moment you first open your inventory window. Obviously there is the loading lag as it populates your inventory, and that really is crippling on the higher item account, for several minutes. But the lag that you get as a result of opening your inventory window at all never actually goes away - that is to say that if you log in with your inventory window closed, let everything around you load etc (like, for 10 minutes or so ), then measure your performance, then open the inventory window, let it load fully (like for, 10 minutes or so ), close the inventory window and measure your performance, it is noticeably worse. If I ever have to log in my main, I really try not to open my inventory unless I positively have to, because I know it's all going to go pear shaped from there on.

On the second account, it's quite considerably better performance all round under exactly the same conditions - I even wear the same avie as my alt. Moving around, it's visibly an order of magnitude better, and a lot of other symptoms clear up - the sim crossing and non responsive tools issues are far less prevalent on my alts, and when I attach stuff... it does. Almost immediately.

On the third account, things get even better - SL would actually be playable. Except for the fact you dare not put anything in or out your inventory

As far as I'm concerned, the only condition that is different is the inventory. The hardware and connection are the same, and as I say, the difference in performance between the accounts is consistent across multiple pc's. On each, I see, literally, a 50% improvement between account 1 and 2, and probably another 20% between 2 and 3.

Sad as it may seem, I've run multiple experiments like this under various conditions, because I have some weird ass SL related problems. One example - a certain vehicle in SL would crash me to desktop the moment I accelerate on it, consistently, every time. Any copy of the same vehicle, including a new one direct from it's creator. People said it was my graphic card/drivers and potentially the particle effect that this particular vehicle emits. Except I can watch other people drive the vehicle on the same account. And - get this - it doesn't crash me to desktop on other accounts.

So I guess you could conclude that my findings above are invalid on the grounds that my main account is in fact cursed, but still, for me at least, there is a measurable and drastic difference when the only real change is sheer volume of material possessions.

Go figure. Or shoot me down with your theories and geekoid facts about SL architecture and why I'm wrong, but you'll never convince me otherwise

Hang on a minute, you are trying to tell me that my 2000+ skins and 2000+ hair and over 10000+ clothes in my 33000+ inventory are why I lag?!

Oh the price of vanity

I dunno. Gimme your password and lemme try your account. If you're like three times slower again than my main, we'll know.

HOW MUCH INVENTORY?! I thought mine was bad!

And I have in my experience found no corelation between a large inventory and lag in world. Only a large inventory and loading time for the inventory.

therefore, I must conclude large inventory does not equal more lag.

FINE, you look at the naked pics of me that are situated in Textures > Myself > ZOMG NAKIE > Blackmail

You are DEAD!!!!!

That's interesting. How much memory is SL using at the time it crashes, how much does it go up by when you load your inventory, how much do you have and how much thrashing is your hard disk doing?

Reason I ask is that when you run out of memory (as in, *actually* run out, including swap) it's very common for programs to crash. Writing OOM safe code is incredibly awkward, and as a result virtually no-one does it.

I suspect that it has a lot to do with one's video card, as to how noticable this effect really is. I have a Mac Mini, and the built-in video card (non-upgradable, unfortunately) only has 32MB VRAM. If got have lots of VRAM and a fast computer and lots of memory... you probably wouldn't notice the difference.

A friend came over late yesterday and logged on to SL using my computer with his shiny new account, just a few days old. He just had help-island goodies, and hardly any inventory. He got MUCH better performance than I do with my loaded avatar. on MY computer! The only difference was the account used and the inventory load. (We both had on complex Furry avatars for the test).

Time to weed out my closet, I think...

I dunno. I have an Nvidia 5950 Ultra 256mb and a Nvidia 6800 256mb and a humble lil Geforce 440mx 64mb and the effect is the same on any - one account is around 50% laggier than the other for having more than twice the inventory. Obviously the overall performance is different on the different video cards, but the lag difference remains pretty constant between them.

I don't think it would make much of a difference. All the item names/types/permissions must be downloaded but it would only be an array of records or similar. At the very most it might be a few megs and they probably keep that in RAM not on disk. It shouldn't have anything to do with videocard.

I only noticed slowdown whilst it's loading, once you have it all using it or searching it seems instant.

Now all the inventory interactions on the server might cause database slowdown but that's a whole different problem.

I agree with this statement 100%. And I don't even really like Kool-aide...