No more adding features until basic bugs are fixed

I like Second Life. I believe in it's potential and significance in the history of computing and communication. I've used it longer and invested more into it, than any application in my multiple decades (sigh) of being involved with computers.

But something happened around 1.8 and with every release, it just keeps getting worse.
I'm often running on a less than super high bandwidth connection. When I first joined 18 months ago, I would have difficulty doing things like flying across the grid withmy view set above 192m, but for the most part, if let my cache settle, I could build whatever I wanted, explore the neighborhood, and generally settle into my second life.

I could use physics (as well as they ever worked), have lights and shiny turned on, keep my draw distance out a bit so I could at least see what's going on around me. I could fully participate in the community, which is the whole point of this.

Now, I can't do anything without constantly having problems and I can't be the only one.

Second Life is now just a constant battle with:
* Sitting on objects and getting sent to 0,0,1 of the sim for over a minute.
* Flying off with no control whenever I cross a sim, then getting logged off.
* Having to inch my way using a single keypress every ten seconds, less I overshoot.
* Freezing for no reason, then just getting logged off, being link dead for a minute.
* Seeing things I say in chat show up again 5 minutes later in the stream.
* Not being able to teleport *anywhere* without getting logged off 9 out of 10 times.
* Attempting the editing of objects and not have the contents or scripts show up for 5 minutes.
* Changing clothes or attachments and having nothing happen.
* Logging in and not seeing other avatars, except for hair and shoes, for half an hour.
* Unable to be in a sim with more than 3 people without locking up.
* Avatars that move in stutters and stops, flailing arms and melting into the ground.

Yeah, I know. Get faster net. Turn everything down to minimum. Go play someplace else.

This is nonsense. I've *never* used any software that works as badly as Second Life does now. Every week I'm expected to download a bigger and bigger distribution, that's now above 50Mb.
50 Meg?!!!?!!!??

If they are all so talented at Linden Lab, can't they find people that know how to program well?
Is an incremental update process that hard to figure out?
Can't they figure out how to write C++ without producing bloatware that can't get out of it's own way or write code that has some degree of performance without having to go back later and reduce features (level of detail and hiding) just to get the ill-designed object-oriented cleverness to run halfway decently and not totally swamp the client and server apps?

I don't know who the chief architect is at Linden Lab, but whoever it is, they should be fired. Today. There's no excuse for these kinds of bugs ands dismal performance, especially considering that the graphical appearance of Second Life looks like a game that was written years ago. It's coming up on 2 years now for me and the only visual improvement in the game has been ripple water and some minor lighting updates (which many can't see).

We're almost all running on machines that have tons of ram and > 2Ghz processors.
We run other games and they are smooth and graphically rich. Yeah, I know that it's different in SL compared to Half Life 2 for example, but come on. Half Life looks *magnitudes* better than SL. Same with Guild Wars. It's beautiful. Breathtakingly so in some places. I can run those games with everything cranked up all the way and get great frame rates.

For example, consider something simple like the sky. It's not dynamically updated by the users. It runs on the client. It looks like crap. No clouds, no weather, just a gradient shader, a single sun object and moon object, and some star dots. Same thing every day. Totally lame. A missed opportunity that could be a daily gift to all the residents, just like the real world. Something that affects daily life and would add a dynamic to all of the "user-created" work we've done.
MS Flight simulator did it better 10 years ago on less than 400Mhz P2's with 8Mb of video ram.

Doesn't anyone at Linden Lab look at other games these days and feel completely embarrassed and out-classed?
I suspect not. It appears that they are too busy being impressed with themselves in their own world, being led by an ego blinded Philip Rosedale and a chief architect that blames everything on "the issues" instead of poor coding and architectural blunders and poor art direction.

But it's all dynamically updated they say...
Then what's that 140Mb app and gig of cache doing on my drive?

I don't really expect things to get better. The user community will chastise me for not having fiber net to my house, not having all my settings set to minimum, and a quad Xeon with a $600 video card. Or... they'll say "it's just a game, go out and get some air" or "it's not a game, it's a ground breaking experiment and a privilege to pay for the experience". Linden Lab, of course, will say nothing. Concentrating instead on getting the user numbers up so they can sell out and the 3 or 4 people that are in line for the big cut can leave with full pockets.

Even though it'll be ignored, here's my suggestions for the developers:

* Put a moratorium on adding significant client side features for 4 months.
Do an assessment on the lines of code in the client and commit to reducing it by any means possible by 33%. No excuses. You're that good? Prove it.

* After that's done for the client, do the same for the server side.

* Run the client on a lesser machine, being fed by a net connection that's no
faster than 128K. Observe the many bugs that result from packet loss. Fix them.

* Have a 2 developer team write a solid method for incremental update.

* Hire me and put me in charge of the sky and weather.

If they can't handle that, then open up the code and let others fix it.

These could be seen as drastic steps, but it's either that, or go out of business within a year as SL collapses under it's own weight and you spend the next years handling user and investor lawsuits and ruminating on what could have been.
And how close you came.

--
Lumpy Tapioca

ok capn'!

After reading your report, I can only say, there must be something really seriously broken on your machine and network. Teleport, sim-crossing and movement trouble is usually related to packet loss and at most of the time caused by faulty hardware on the client side. A simple thing like a broken / unsheilded cable can cause issues like this.

The sky in fact has clouds, and pretty beautiful ones, as I may say.

If you have the chance, try running Second Life on a friend's machine and network to compare. You most likely will see it working much much better than you describe here.

Check all your components for flaws, swap them with other components, get a friend to borrow you replacement parts to find out, where the broken piece of hardware is.

Good luck with getting back to the usual quality of Second Life!

nah...I like new features. But thanks for all that text.

I couldn't agree more, for inorder to really enjoy myself I have to eplore completely empty sandboxes.

Well, Lumpy is not the only one having problems. Myself and a lot of others are too. I have a system that far exceeds the minimum requirements, one of the best graphic cards available, 2 ghz of ram, and a high speed DSL connection, I have check packet loss and it is very low to none. I am still having rezzing problems (last night I was in the Blaze store, and each time I would move I had to wait for the next area to rezz. The sound had a delay in almost every sims I went too. Each time I would tp to a different sims it took a long time to rezz. When using the find function, not all tabs worked right. Look at profiles not at the pictures showed up.

I have defragged my computer, cleaned out the cache on sl preferences, did everything I could. I have taken lighting off, no water ripple, etc.... And I know my system is good, it works perfect on all other programs.

I agree 100%, the bugs need fixed before they add anymore extras. And I don't care whether my grammar is right or not, but I do care if SL is right. I too have a lot invested in this program and expect it to at least work most the time.

I had these *exact* problems back when I was limited to about 60k/second as my connection speed, and was getting over 10% packet loss per second.
Once I bumped it up to about 300k, all these problems just went away.

Check your internet connection!

I ran a DSL speed test last night after experiencing these problems:

Download speed. 1.7 ghz
Upload 1.2 ghz

o.O

I pay a lot for my DSL connection and it has been great. I have two friends in SL that have the same problems, both have fantastic DSL connections, one has the newest Dell XPS gaming system loaded to the max, the other one has an Alienware fulled loaded gaming machine that cost him over $7,000.00....I know these both are well over the required minimum and they are having the same problems. I say fix what we have first.

I know how fast my net is.
And I know how SL used to run a year ago before they implemented the lazy packet update method.

My point about packet loss is that if they fix things screwing up when bandwidth is less than optimal, then it should be perfect when you are running on a fast line. Writing and tuning against best case is not the best way to go.

Zi Ree says: "The sky in fact has clouds, and pretty beautiful ones, as I may say."

Let me pop into Guild Wars and SL and take quick screen shots of each.

And these stills don't do it justice. It's all dynamic and multi-layered.

I've looked at clouds from both sides now.
They really don't know clouds.
At all.

I think we really need to take a very hard look at your hardware, your software setup, and their interaction with SL.

I see none of the OP's listed symptoms to the degree mentioned, and I'm on the other side of the world from LL. My ping rates to US game servers is in the 300-400 range normally.

I still get delays in clothing update, but it eventually does complete, it's done in well under a minute. Avatars load in acceptable time. The Ahern welcome area also completes loading in under a minute.

For some of the symptoms it looks like there is a serious data choke point between you and LL, if not a choke point, the data is taking a very inefficient route to you or is even getting dropped packets. A traceroute is one of the things that needs to be checked.

@Lumpy

We can't compare GW and SL. GW fully loads the region before it lets you in and once loaded it's static. In SL the region can't be preloaded all the way because people rez stuff left and right. The content itself can change every few seconds.

@George

Your DSL speed is measured only between you and your ISP. We need to find out if there is a choke point along the datapath between you and SL. Given all the ISP wars going on recently I won't be surprised if that recent tiff between the two largest backbones in the US is responsible for your problems.

@Everyone

Make a check to find out which internet backbone you are connected to. Also find out what ISPs your data passes on the way to SL. A traceroute (tracert.exe) can reveal waypoints where your data gets delayed.


REFERENCE INFORMATION:

My traceroute reveals that my data is passing through Verizon. My ping is a very low 170ms (considering my distance, that's low).

Thanks Aodhan,will run the tracerexe tonight and see what is going on. I am using Frontiernet.net as my isp and have been for several years. Never had this problem until the past three updates, at least to the extent I am now. Last night was the first time I was unable to see pictures on profiles or have rezzing problems even going from one room in my house to the other once one room had fully rezzed, or not being able to use all the tabs on the find function which was really bad. Will run the test tonight and see what I find out. Thanks again.

The actual size of the download is 25 MB. It was 20 MB befor the mozilla browser was included.

I did read Philip saying that he would look into a system of only uploading changed modules.

SL uses UDP packets rather than TCP/IP. UDP does not guarantee packet delivery but TCP/IP does. On the other hand, UDP is inherently much faster, so the whole thing depends on having a good connection.

Ed

Good. I'm not one to assume causes of problems outright, at least not without appropriate investigation. I just want to be sure that we're not talking about lost packets or inter-ISP communication issues. If it is, then the person to reach are the involved ISPs. If not, then we can confiendtly narrow the search to your system or LL's servers.

@Lumpy

The content of SL is NEVER static. Each *avatar* (especially the highly decked out ones) is not static. Even if the residents don't change avatars, their coming and going makes the environment dynamic by default. Avatars can have hundreds of prims on them, consider them very mobile and animated architectural content for purposes of data. Don't count just the buildings. A firstland can support 117 prims but a single avatar *attachment* can go as high as 255. And we have a lot of attachment points.

The thing is, many of us are not encountering the problems you are seeing. The Ahern welcome area is a busy one with lots of prims and a good number of avatars at all times. Yet the place loads for me in acceptable time.

You see, until we can verify that it's NOT the datapath, we can't make the assumption that the problem lies in your computer or SL's servers.

On the topic of clouds, keep in mind that the clouds inside of Second Life are not only dynamically generated but are also controlled by a weather emulation system.

The clouds in _________ (insert any other typical 3D game with clouds) are simply layers of textures that are perhaps animated and, if you are lucky, blended so you might get various effects such as changing weather.

That being said, the clouds in SL could be replaced by pre-generated layers and I bet all of 8 residents would notice.

Reportedly, there are prim _hairstyles_ in SL that contain more polygons than an entire halflife map. That's what kills our fps.



I don't think you've researched your assumptions. According to previous linden posts on the subject, SL's clouds are simulated server-side, and run a "cellular automata" style algorithm to control density. Current cloud cover, wind velocities etc are then streamed to clients. It's got the potential to develop into a really sophisticated weather system, but the physics system isn't up to it quite yet (I think they tried something in snow sims, but snowflakes coming through your ceiling with no respect for solid matter isn't fun).

Of course, with static maps (as used in other MMORPGs + FPS games) you don't have to worry about stuff like that, as you can pre-calculate "no fly" zones for your precipitation. Creating "real" weather for a dynamic world is much more difficult.

...SL's clouds are simulated server-side, and run a "cellular automata" style algorithm to control density. Current cloud cover, wind velocities etc are then streamed to clients. It's got the potential to develop into a really sophisticated weather system...

That may be, but the end effect is a layer of the same white puffy textures, clustered around 200m, with a sort of useless wind vector that rotates around in a consistantly semi-random vector day in and day out. I don't care what they call it or how impressed the developer was that implemented it. The end result is one notch above nothing.

And why no phases of the moon? Oh, I know... the SL moon algorithm is based on a shochastic feedback Bayesian filter connected to an ionizing power matrix that provides the optimal lunar spectra while preserving the correct phased dissipation of photon coherency for each individual sim.

If there's anything truly remarkable about Second Life, it's that they have managed to gather the largest group of excuse making, co-dependent customers in the entire history of computing. Even more than Apple, although it's doubly frightening when you realize that many run SL on a Mac... (as do I)

@Lumpy

Would you mind focusing on the problem of your SL instead of attacking everyone who argues with you?

You pointed out that you have data transfer problems manifesting in the form of things taking forever to load (or never), also with prims that stay for a long time at the sim corner when it shouldn't.

Fact is that there are many people who are not experiencing the problems you face to anywhere near the magnitude that it's happening to you. I reiterate, I live halfway around the world from Linden Labs and I do not have the same problems you do.

Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that someone so far away should be seeing something worse than what you describe?

You definitely are not alone in that problem, but before you blame something, investigate. The fact that there are people who are not experiencing that kind of problem means that there may be other factors in play.

I'd like to see your problem solved, but you have to meet people halfway if anything is going to get done.

Some random thoughts.

The wind is not useless if you're in a sailboat, or if you have some flex prim flags flying.

Thge clouds are ok by me, but a better sun and moon would look nice. Snow would be awesome but I can see where it'd be hard to implement.

What's the big deal about the size of the client? I have a normal cable connection and it doesn't take me more than a few minutes to download a new version. You should get up and stretch once in while anyway... didn't you hear about the gamer (I think he was a gamer, maybe a coder) who died recently from a blood clot due to sitting still too long?

I had no idea attacments could have so many prims. Hmmmm.....

There's a program called WinMTR that may help find out where (between you and LL) bandwidth problems are.

Actually, Second Life is the least static of any online world I've ever been in. In our world, users can build whatever they wish, texture it however they want and script its behavior however they want. One of the reasons that Guild Wars (which I play) and other MMRPGs tend to run more smoothly is because the content IS pretty static and it's carefully designed and tested to run within the developers' standards. Those developers don't have to code for user-designed self-replicating prims that can bring their grids down. They can have a large number of textures, yes, but they try to re-use existing texture sets in a zone so as to lower the impact on the client cache. SL cannot do that nearly as effectively becase the content is unpredictable.

Frankly I'm shocked that a world that is this wide-open to user uploads runs at all, much less performs well enough to actually allow us to move around and interact.

There is room for much improvement, I agree with you Lumpy, but let's be more fair when we talk about what the unregulated content of SL means to the server guys.

It's more than a coincidence that some people have reported degraded performance since about 1.7 -- wasn't that when LL started adding code to isolate and prevent users from taking the grid down?

actually, its Linden Lab