Sim Update Announcement

Ben Linden made an announcement today regarding the upgrading of older sims.

Is there a online or inworld resource to help one determine what the current sim class ratings are prior to this new upgrade effort?

Thanks!

Salazar Jack

if they can be used for pc's i think it would be cool if ll auctioned them off to residents. (wild idea)

It would be nice to have a list as to which sims will be updated.

They did say they were going to the Preview Server Grid in the sky (or something to that effect). My vote would be for more ocean void sims.

Fill up some of those grid holes!

(please)

I like this idea much. It would be excellent to have the Great Lakes to boat around or fly over without any builds in the way.

As far as im aware its not possible for you to tell what class of hardware your currently running on, well the lindens know but you cant tell from the simxxx number etc. your sim is uaully in a pool and will be assigned the same class of hardware, and only get a lower class if the current pool is empty

I think they should use the old systems to fill those void sims that could be basic open water. it would solve some of the telehub issues where your on the wrong side and have to fly around the void, it would also allow for more water sports and recreation.

Damn! Great idea! I love the void sims, but haven't seen too many more pop into existance lately..

This is something I've never understood. How come the ocean just ends? And you have to fly around? Why isn't there just an entire contiguous world? Why can't I fly off and to our private island?

coco

Because beyond it doesn't exist - there is no server to host you.... it is literally 'the edge of the world'..

Void sims were an idea to solve this - because you couldn't build on them, and there was nothing in them, they could host several sims worth of space on a single machine.. A nice solution for filling in spaces without having to buy LOTS of machines that weren't going to turn a profit for the company..

There are a few around, but I never really saw a whole BUNCH of them pop up -- nor did I hear any performance results.. but I assume the experiment worked because the void sims that were put down never went away.

Siggy.

Um . . . o.k.

Don't understand it, but it sounds good, lol. (I still wish it were all contiguous.)

coco

Me too.

yeah, but i'd think at some point there are going to be more sim going "obsolete" than there are uses... so i think selling them would be cool

I thought that was what Salazar was talking about using them for.

I'm sorry. I was just practicing an old Jedi mind trick.

These aren't the droids your looking for.

Move along.

The color sims will be the first ones to go - the oldest sims, named after streets in SF, had already been upgraded. After that, they will probably upgrade the southern continent, where sims were named after coastal towns.
http://history.secondserver.net/index.php/Color_Sims
http://history.secondserver.net/index.php/Coast_Town_Sims

Sims still "kind of" rotate what kind of server they get put on.

You can tell what kind of server you are on, somewhat, but bring up sim stats. If it says "1.00 SIM CPU" you're on an old, old server. My guess is these are the remaining ones to be upgraded. If it says "0.50 SIM CPU" you're on either a 2.8 ghz HT processor, or one of the 1337 Opterons (although I can't figure rhyme or reason to tell between the two anymore, it used to be any sims above sim450.agni or so were Opterons).

The "Class 1" sims Ben described are the ones reported at 1.00 SIM CPU... I believe they're 2.26 ghz machines.

Class 2 are a 0.50 2.8 HTs, I believe.

Class 3 are Opterons, I believe.

If someone can correct me on any of this, please do. And thanks Lindens! Those 1.00's were getting a BIT painful.

-Flip

I am learning something new every day. Geesh, I need to spend more time in the forums!

Mine says CPU 0.50

What does that say about my sim?

SWEEEEEET!!! The city sims need new servers so so so badly.

CPU 0.50 means you're on a good, if not great server.

Both the 2.8 HT servers (good) and the Opteron servers (great) report 0.50 CPU.

I'm not sure if this is still true, but if you go to HELP ---> ABOUT SECOND LIFE, you'll see what machine your sim is on. It will be reported as such:

sim###.agni.lindenlab.com

The ### numbers used to be:

1-75 or so = 1.00 CPU, OLD server
76-449 or so = 0.50 CPU, 2.8 HT server (good)
450+ = 0.50 CPU, Opteron (GREAT!)

I'm not sure if that number convention still holds true. Basically, if you're on a 0.50 CPU machine, you're on a machine that should handle a simulator just fine as long as residents are responsible in how they build and script. In my opinion, a simulator with 1 agent in it should report 800-1200 sim fps when basically in "idle" mode (save for the 1 agent). This means when it gets up to 20 or so agents, it wouldn't be getting completely crushed. If you're in a sim with 0-250 sim fps with only 1 agent, its going to get laggy fast once more agents appear. (For this discussion, BTW, an 'agent' is essentially an 'avatar')

Regards,

-Flip

chromal brodsky and I did alot of the grunt work of finding that info out back late last year, the threads can be dug out of the forum archives... basically the class that is being retired were a set of older machines based around early pentium 4's with single channel, relatively low speed memory (possibly rambus, perish the thought) that was significantly hurting their performance in SL. Probably what would have been a 'high end' p4 system in mid 2001 or so, when the first traces of the SL grid began to be assembled.

LL has been working to slowly re-assign them away from user sims and its great to hear those old guys are being officially put out to pasture where they can hopefully help out with some low stress development work.

the basic sim rankings are as follows: oldest machines, sim1 through approximately sim.. 60-80ish? mebbe.. we were never able to get a firm border line there.

The hardware then was significantly helped by dual channel, new motherboards, and somewhat faster chips, and this mid grade, the so called 'tier 2' goes from that fuzzy 60-80ish border, up through sim450 give or take

now this class of machines *ALL* runs sl well, and significantly better than that bottom class...

theres a newer class of machines, tier 3, that started with abuot sim 450 and goes through now we're not exactly sure... potentially sim 720ish to mebbe 750ish... this class is dual opterons..

they are abit faster than the pentium 4's were but its not as significant as the transition from tier 1 to tier2... and that can be mitigated slightly by two machines eventually using *some* of the same hardware (the motherboard)...

in this basic setup the real problem here has been the tier1's.. their performance is just too far behind tier2's, and its good that they are being retired.


now there is a 'possible' new tier 4 thats been hinted at, starting probably somewhere in the mid sim 700's... the best description i can make out is that they are '4 core' opteron servers.. now whether this means they are running 4 seperate cpu's, or continuing with the dual chip architecture, but running two core chips... i have absolutely no idea...

these are very *very* new and probably only came online in the last week or two, potentially 'silently' with 1.6.5... overall there have been some teething problems.. it seems like there have been some performance issues of late with three sims accidentally being assigned to two core servers, as a crash recovery, or just a code glitch...or possibly if they are dual core chips, the second core, is not being properly utilized by the OS the sims run on...

in any case.. those old slow sims should be headed to the great developer grid in the sky, leaving *all* the rest of sl on well performing, and hopefully still slowly improving hardware ^.^

I was told yesterday that you cant tell what class a sim is from the simxxx number anymore, basically because when the old machines have failed or been replaced in the past they havent been reassigned a new sim number