Scripts and Lag

Can anyone answer a question related to scripts and lag? I found out that my 4096 has a pretty low frame rate per second (as low as 52 sometimes, or as high as 80 others). In order to help this, I eliminated some of my particles and some of my scripts. I got rid of all of the seating in the common area / theatre with the idea that I could bring them back for specific events once framerate improved (the seating had hide/show scripts for the poseballs) and several particles of precious steam (rather important for a hotsprings spa). And, I experienced an instant raise in FPS. It went up to about 90 and all was well. THEN the next day it dropped back down to 52 and has rarely risen above 70 since! A friend told me that the FPS is shared by the whole sim and that I am just part of the whole so whatever I free up in lag, someone else will simply take up in slack. Is this true? Is there any number of scripts that would be a fair number for a property to run without overstepping one's share? And can anyone give me a guide line around what a good average # of scripts per square m would be? I can use all the help I can get here so that my poor nose has time to heal from being run into rocks and walls so often. ;-D ~ Perse

i have an idea - how about zoning or government?

Persephone,

I don't really have an answer for you. I try to be a good neighbor and hope that others do the same. Sometimes I win and sometimes I don't. I think any realistic attempt at dealing with this would have to be on a CPU% basis and not per-script... some commands are obviously more taxing than others.

[Edited by me to get to the darn point. ).

This is a great question, and one I've also wondered about myself.
Barring the extreme example of clubs which is so often quoted, I've never seen anything approaching an objective measure of what constitutes "too many scripts", either as formal SL doctine, or as informal community consensus.
I believe most of us who own land want to be good neighbors -- the kind of answers Persephone is seeking, even if roughly stated, would be valuable to me as well.

I am so glad you raised this issue, and I look forward to people who are knowledgeable as opposed to ideological telling us what the real issue is about scripts.

I find that you can do your utmost to take off lighted, scripted, particled objects -- or help extortionists to take off THEIR lighted, bouncing, scripted, particled, high-textured objects by bribing them and blowing them off the server.

But...then something happens with Linden server allocation. Yes, the numbers do change, under "about Second Life" where you can see the number of server you've been given in the grand game of Russian roulette that Lindens play with servers. In other words, for you trouble in removing lag from a server, especially laggy bouncy scripty lighted clubs, I suspect what happens is that the Lindens, manually or automatically, simply shift your server on you because they see you are taking up less resources. Maybe the grid monkeys see less green dots, or who the hell knows, but the reality is, in my experience, is that you can reduce lag tremendously, and then not see it seem to go away, and then the next day, actually be left with LESS FPS.

I also see an increasing phenomenon of lag nazis. Mall owners will send you curt notes that you must use light-kill scripts, or will ban land-mark givers. As if land-mark givers lag a sim, that is in fact lagged by that mall owners heavy prim construction and lighted boxes and spinning signs! Lag nazis also will tell you that it is YOU who are causing lag with something like a notecard giver or a lighted prim house even as they are lost in a cloud of particle smoke coming out of their chimneys and little hearts generating out of the walls. It's hilarious.

Zoning is a good idea, and I think you can zone, even player-based, without governments which are always a dread on the Internet because most players don't get how you have to start democracy with demos, people, who make a constituent assembly or some such organ to decide matters. Most players come up with a government scheme first, usually with themselves as president with a vast security retinue, then press other players into place around it LOL.

I would like to propose CHARGING for use of the server, either in $10 type LL texture fees when you place a scripty thing on a square, or in US dollar tier fees. That is, if your lot/club/particle/script/mall uses up more server resources in the form of run agents or scripted objects space or whatever, then the server, which knows the sources of these items, could be set up to CHARGE you.

Believe me, if the Lindens CHARGED FEES for draws on server resources, like they charge money for tier which equals square meters of pixel space, then we'd see an instant concentration of the mind wonderfully. Everyone would be scrambling to figure out the neighbour-friendly light-time-out script they could be using to reduce lag for themselves and their neighbours. All these extortionist clubs on a few square meters who drag four sims down around them would be forced out of business unless they had a lag reduction plan.

Now...wouldn't scripters/merchants/mall owners/club owners/lots of people howl horribly if the Lindens CHARGED for draw on server resources? But is it fair for somebody sitting in a quiet residential house on 8192 sq meters to be held hostage to some scripty maniac sitting on 512? Of course not. Another thing that might be accomplished, don't know the technical specifics, is allocation, so that if you have under 4096 or whatever, you won't be able to draw on server resources for scripted objects and run agents or whatever more than X number per square meter. Boy, I can imagine the howling in the land from feted on this one. But when there are scarce resources, if they aren't artificially induced scarcities, the free market should decide their value.

Let's take the issue of textures. Linden gets $10 whether I upload 256 size or 1024 size textures. But 1024 takes the server 16 times slower to rez in an area. So why doesn't it charge more? That's why mall owners who are more responsible have proposed tenants not take more than 512 size textures.

How about no?

There isn't a simple answer.

There is, although not universally accepted, evidence that multiple listen scripts cause lag. Scripts listening on channels other than 0 might cause less, but might not.

Light effects and particles cause lag too.

Moving prims do as well.

And so on and so forth.

You might have just got unlucky and you took stuff away but someone else added more and so the lag returned. There is an indicator of server usage that might help highlight where the server is spending its resources, although not being able to get in world I can't tell you where it is off the top of my head.

Other things, like numbers of bodies in the sim make a difference too...

Results of research and experimentation:

--- Do Particles cause lag?

Particles do not automatically cause server lag, because they are completely client-side. (In other words, the particles are displayed by YOUR computer, everyone sees their own version of them, and the only network traffic is when a particle system starts or comes within range, which is very, very small.)

IF you have a slow computer or a bad graphics card, then particles will cause local display lag, but you can turn off particles or turn the number of particles to display down to, say 200, to fix that. (Default is 4096.)

The only way particles can cause meaningful server/network lag is if somebody has a script that CHANGES the particle generator frequently. Every time a particle generator is changed, everyone in range must be notified. That causes lag. (Not all particles are bad. Changing particle generators are bad. If particles are a problem for you, turn them off.)

--- Do light effects cause lag?

Light effects do not automatically cause server lag, because the lighting is all done on the client side. YOUR computer is doing all the work.

If a script changes a light, then everyone must be notified of the change. If that happens more than once every few seconds, then that will cause lag. So moving lights and changing lights do cause lag. A spotlight on your potted plant is not hurting anyone.

You can turn off lighting.

--- Do moving prims cause lag?

Like particle generators, "spinning" prims (put in motion by llSetTargetOmega()) are handled on the client side. Spinning prims do not cause server lag, but they can cause client-side lag if you have a slow computer or low memory.

Frequently changing the rate of spin WILL cause server lag, again because everyone must be notified every time a rate of spin changes. While it is your own desktop computer that is doing the spinning, you do have to be told every time the rate changes.

Prims that are moved by other means, such as llSetPos(), DO cause server lag and network traffic becuase everybody has to be told every time they budge even a little bit. Your computer then has to do some recalculating. So that floating orb following you around does have a cost.

--- Do textures cause lag?

YES. (Advice to builders: USE THE LIBRARY TEXTURES AS MUCH AS YOU CAN.) If everyone used the library textures, SL would be much faster overall. Do you really need custom tile on your kitchen floor?

Textures do not cause server lag, but they are huge and every time you come in range of something with a new-to-you texture, it must be sent to you. Too many and your graphics card and processor are sweating and grunting and the network wires are on fire. Your computer can only remember so many.

(Note: Your computer will even download textures you can't see! If the texture is within range, you will receive it even if its on something that is behind a wall. So just becuase all your fancy textures are inside a closed room does not mean your neighbors aren't downloading them!)

"Alpha" textures (that is, textures that have clear areas in them) and transparent prims are hard on your local computer, so if you have a slow computer or graphics card or network connection, and you are in an area with a lot of "glass", then there is a cost.

--- Do timers cause lag?

Timers cause lag only if they are set to fire frequently (i.e., "fast timers", and/or if they trigger lag-causing code. The problem with timers is not so much the timer itself, but the work that is scripted to be done every time the timer fires. For example, if a timer is changing a texture on a vendor every five seconds, that's horrible. Everybody in range must be told about the change, and they need to be sent the texture if they don't already have it.

--- I could talk about messages, listeners, physics, etc but hey I have to go build something.

----------------------

The moral of the story:

- Particles, rotations and lighting are OK. Changing them frequently is NOT OK. Unless you have a slow computer, but that's YOUR problem, so change your settings.

- Too many textures is bad.

- Fast timers that change particles, textures, and position prims are BAD BAD BAD.

Buster

I'm glad you are doing the research already done thousands of times before by many older players. I think it is very, very important for new people to constantly come on, if they have the technical knowledge, and repeat the experiments you have tried. The reason is that things change in the game, the versions (updates of the game), the rate of FPS on new servers, etc. etc. I definitely welcome these experiments because they run counter to the grain of "received wisdom" that many older players have. Many people have gotten to be lag Nazis based on this belief system of what does or doesn't cause lag. Many people believe fervently that certain things cause lag and become insufferable about claiming this.

Having said that, I would urge you to go further, and try not to dump lag problems back on the "client side," as tekkies often do, and try to think outside the box.

It's common for tekkies in RL to just shrug and blame the consumer and his computer, and try to get him to buy upgrades of various software and hardware. However, in SL, when they do this, I do challenge them because I see this as a far more complex interrelationship between server and client.

Example: I am in Cub with 10000 FPS and I do not see a single packet loss issue. Nary a one. In RL, I live in a large metropolitan area with a nationally-known huge ISP so having good servers/Internet connections/relays shouldn't be an issue, and I shouldn't have packet loss, after all, I'm not trying to dial-up from the bottom of the sea in Arkhangelsk, with my computer set to "1 out of 99 tries".

But...as soon as I go to a laggy mall/club sim with lots of particles and stuff coming at me, spinning signs, little hearts spewing out over the land, etc. etc. all of a sudden, I show packet loss. Client-side problem you say? Well, no. They are straining my ISP's servers and my computer with their crap, so how client-side is it *really"? When *they* put out a good server, I don't have packet loss.

Also, what you need to factor in is the need for avatars (human beings) to look into the next sim over. I believe the name for that is parent-child agents or some such, it's on that screen you get by going alt-1 to see the server stats like FPS. And when one sim is laggy, it lags those next to it as they need to look into it -- it is a streaming game, and the servers pass off information to each other. Philip Linden has written today in the "hotline" section something about this issue, but I think it's one of the reasons vehicles halt on the seams of sims sometimes.

Your discovery about the textures has been made by various mall owners, some of whom require texture sizes below 1024. They have found that 1024 textures take 16 times as long to load. The answer isn't just to pick out boring Linden textures from the library, though some architects do that. The answer is to have users have more flexibility and creativity but just set their PSP or Paint programs to generate textures that are 512 or less, it's very easy, you can keep the same pattern resetting the various features on the texture menu for repeats, vertical face, etc.

Light is said to induce lag, read all the other threads about it. At least two mall owners are either banning lighted objects, i.e. set to light on the object itself, or insisting on the use of Light Kill script which apparently leaves the object lighted, but reduces that "shed" of light all around the object.

The biggest cause of lag you left out: avatars. Green dots. People. 30 of them, and you lag a sim all to hell, even if it is just an open meadow on a fresh fast sim.

I think the Lindens should just work toward having fast servers so people don't experience lag, that's the rational thing to do to improve customer server, rather than running around like a socialist commune and getting all the comrades to reduce their lag by various measures, restraints, punishments, naming and shaming, etc.. The comrades could take some good neighbour steps -- but all their work is for naught by just one absentee landowner who leaves all his spinning particles, one hedonistic club-owner who cares nothing for neighbours, or by stuff like a jet plane I found crashed into a sim seam betwen Linden water and a landowner's land, spewing smoke particles and turning around and lagging up the sim.

Once they start charging for the use of scripted objects on servers the way they charge for square meters of pixels, hey, that will concentrate the mind wonderfully.

I hope I'm not giving that impression. (Ah, you can tell I'm a tekkie?) I'm not "dumping it on the client". I'm reciting facts -- some things use server resources, some things create network traffic, and some things use client resources. I think there is confusion about which is which, everything just gets called "Lag". After all, its hard to be considerate of your neighbors if you don't understand how to do that.



No, in that case it is absolutely NOT client side! It isn't the mere presence of spinning prims and particle generators that is the problem there, though. Spinning prims, particles, and lighting do not cause excessive network traffic or server loads! Malls have huge prim counts, huge numbers of textures and running scripts. Just walking around in in that envoronment is hard work for all the wires and hardware at both ends, so you don't have to add much on top of that to really cause a problem.

IF there are scripts that change the particle generators, change the textures, or timers that reposition things in that environment, then THAT is the nighmare. It is taxing enough just to download all the textures as you move about, the busy-scripts are the straw that breaks the camels back.

I think your experience is that is where there is smoke, there is fire. Where there are particles and moving prims, there are often ALSO timers and sensors and buggy scripts. But I think there is a certain amount of guilt-by-association. A spinning cube = no network traffic at all. A cube orbiting a spinning cube that says hello when you come near it = nightmare.



Yes, I agree completely! I did not mean to say "only use the boring library textures", I meant to say "use the library textures as much as you can". In fact, use blank textures where you can. My ceiling fan is white with no textures and it looks great. I have a neat railing that's metal-looking with blank texture, only color.

Of course, everything would be zippy if everyone lived in hollow plywood 10m cubes. What fun is that? So YES! Use textures to make things look interesting or different or fun or realistic or whatever you are into! But if a library texture will do, then use that. change its color and you have a little more range. I don't mean to limit anyones' creativity, only to make sure everyone understands the tradeoffs!



Yes you are quite right. (I left out some other things too!) I think that the term "lag" is overused. When I say "lag", I mean "sluggishness caused by excessive and inconsiderate use of resources". EVERYTHING uses server, network and client resources. Even a 0.5m default cube has to be stored, communicated and rendered. If "lag" is means "causes computer processing and network traffic", then fill in the blank, ______ causes lag.



I don't think there is any such thing as a "fast enough server". We'll all use up the additional power!



I think that's a great idea! As long as its sensible, i.e. not $L per minute a script runs, but $1 per unit of CPU time utilized. GREAT IDEA!

Buster

The thought of you even mentioning "Charging for scripts" makes me wonder if you even pay anything other the entry cost to the game.
Im crrently paying a yearly note, and monthly cost of over 10,000 m2 of land is'nt petty cash lol. I too experience lag on my sim even at 400+ simFPS. I dont have a super computer so i expect some lag. I do my part by prim/script management to help the sim keep up its fairly fast pace. But lately have been in a losing battle. Yes i do own a Club, but i also have a large garden and a 3096m2 park that i try n keep clean from too many scripts or over doing it with prims. Still i lag.
Rather than "Charging" for scripts, give it a "Cap" like each parcel has for prims. To be completely honest, I would rather illiminate all my scripts for lag free events, but then what is the sense when it is a 3D world under the moto "Your World, Your Imagination"? New users come to our events and sees a big box with no action, maybe a commonly seen "In Game" texture on a wall and expect them to hang around? LOL
I'm not rich, nor do i get rich on the game, but im living the one thing i see alot of people in this game losing sight of, that is having fun. I share everything i have in the game with everyone who wants. I do not how ever contribute to the greed or the so called "Lag Nazis". If there is a better way, I'll be the first in line lol. Believe me, i would love to have a lag free environment.

Have fun!
ZEB

As I manage 4 private sims I have learned to help the vedors and residence with the script/lag issues. Try the following and see if it helps.

1) using (ALT + 1) look to see how many running scripts are in your sim. I have found a good range to be between 200 and 350. Many people leave scripted objects running 24/7 ie. spinning, sensor scripts (traffic counter), listening scripts (open or 0 channel hide/show) TVs that rotate textures/pictures, radio stadion changers. these are all examples although there are many others.

2) using (ALT + SHIFT + U) this will give you a in world view of laggy scripts be showing a green (low) red (med) or blue (heavy) updating script or scripted object. Use this to locate the laggy items and ask the owner to turn off. I try to explain why, most are accepting and other well gotta love a less than friendly neighbor.

3) in addition to the examples above. AV/overrides strut or strut overiders are scripts that run as fast as possiable to give the av walk a smooth look. these although look good are VERY heavy lag scripts and can be easily removed when not in use. Prim heeled shoes are another example of an appearance item thats running scripts add alot of lag do to the constant updatingand again can easily be removed when not needed.

Try it out, love to hear how it goes and if anyone has anyother tools they can share please do.

In closing, if we all try to be more responsible with are scripted objects it makes a better time for all. I would also like to see more of an effort by those of us scripting these to add a easly on/off to many of these this will help greatly. Please excuse any type-os. bumb arm has me typing lefty today.

Actually, your conclusion is slightly wrong here.

The effect of timers is only minimally changed by the LSL part. The harm in timers relates to the way the LSL event stack works, and timers causing active polling to check if it has been triggered. This polling occurs frequently whether it is a 5 second timer or a 300 second timer. The actual frequency specified is fairly irrelevant.

-Adam

I sure do.

And I'm tired of having my investment on a number of sims held hostage to somebody's overuse of scripted objects on their tiny parcels especially.

Why should some script-happy kids in a club on a parcel of only 2048 or so hold hostage adults on hundreds of thousands of meters on their sim and three neighbouring sims who want to live without lag?

Charge them, and it will concentrate the mind wonderfully. If I get on my little 2048 parcel and start lagging and scripting and lighting and particling the hell out of it with mY KeWl ClUbB then I should be BILLED for my use of CPU time or number of scripted articles or whatever, just like I am BILLED tier for my square meters of parcels.

Simple, fair, requires no Linden policing, just a billing system. If alt-U shows us the owners of the scripted articles (there is also an in-game script-hunter like Scrubbie which shows this), then that means the server is capable of LOCATING the source of scripted objects and BILLING THEM.

I really have yet to understand why Lindens come out to answer a complaint about lag-griefing and shrug helplessly looking only at the number of scripted articles for the sim as a whole when they could go use this alt-U and find out the OWNERS of the laggy scripted articles and TELL THEM to stop lagging sims down to 27 -- there ought to be a threshold at which a Linden intervention like this happens. I have seen hostage-holding situations where a person on a few 512s uses over 500 scripted objects and keeps the entire sim in thrall to their antics.

It's what I call the fuck-you hedonistic principle at its most vivid. Scripters feel *entitled* to use up free scripting space to be the happy-go-lucky creative types feted by Lindens. OK. But really, if the Lindens want to fill up the world with something besides scripters and their admirers -- and I mean scripters who mainly use them to play, not so much make items they sell and disperse across the world -- then they have to think how to handle this situation. Sure, you want the world to be kEwL and CrEaTiVe and WaCky but you know something? Some people want to have residential areas where they use the area for living and socializing and not showing off like in a sandbox.

The Lindens have gone on subsidizing older as well as newer technically proficient players with the event grants thing and the ratings stipend thing but they stopped all that because they realize to grow the world, they need to stop feting, and they need to create a more equal playing field. So another whole arena of Linden feting is the free resources freely dispensed to any and all who can script their way into some giant vehicle that plunges up and down and knocks you over and spews smoke. If they start realizing that this free and wanton allocation of their server resources drives away other players who want to make a home and live in peace on some sims, maybe they will see the wisdom of CHARGING for scripted objects use or at least figuring out how they can INTERVENE more on these player disputes involving a few morons holding sims hostage to their antics.

It is not creative scripting per se that bothers me and makes me urge BILLING as a solution -- it is the use of scripts in clubs and stalls in particular, and by griefers, on small plots of land especially, that makes me look for a solution.

I want to thank Blue Burke for making the knowledge from his experiments and use of the game features like alt-1 open and public. Often people with some technical proficiency treat these simple toggles as secret Masonic knowledge that they ought to be praised for given, and given something in return. It's just a game, though.

I tried to get this to work and there must be something I'm not understanding.

I press on ALT-SHIFT-U in the game and nothing happens. I see no menus on the screen. I thought perhaps I need to first click on an object, then do this alt-shift-U but I don't see anything but a little cross to use to zoom in with. What am I not getting about this?

same here alt shift u dont work

I think everyone is in SL for their own reasons. People who are into one thing often don't understand poeple who are into something else.

I know, let's get rid of scripting altogether and introduce a rule that says you have to tell your avie to go to the bathroom every half hour or it will turn purple and die! That would be REALLY fun! We'll all rearrange furniture and stuff!

They did that already, it's called "The Sims Online." Well, everything but the purple.

I found doing that shift-alt-U thing in an area where there were flying scripted birds made the birds fly with blue trails. I don't see what else it does.

That shows you "updates" -- essentially it tells you what objects are broadcasting updates to everyone in range. Anything that changes shape, color, texture etc. will broadcast an update. Try this: Rez a cube (or anything) and put this script in it:

default
{
touch(integer num)
{
llSetTimerEvent(1);
}
timer() {
if( llGetColor(1) == <0,0,0> ) {
llSetColor(<1,1,1>, ALL_SIDES);
} else {
llSetColor(<0,0,0>, ALL_SIDES);
}
}
}

This will turn the cube alternately dark and light each second, and if you have Shift-Alt-U turned on, it will be puffing colored smoke. (touch it to start it)

(DELETE THE OBJECT WHEN EXPERIMENT OVER!)

Frequent broadcast updates are BAD.

Buster

P.S. This thread is about, um, land and the economy? (Well, yes, because having laggy neighbors lowers your property value.)

Thank you Buster n Blue for the much needed information and leaving the politics out of it. Now some of us know what to look for insted of guessing what to do about it.

Education is boss!

ZEB

you have to have the de bug menu key first.

why not? persephone can limit the scripts on her parcel, but it doesn't prevent her neighbours from piling them on. as long as you share server resources you need some kind of cooperation - ie self government - in maintaining a low sim fps.

in pimushe we've adopted a loosey organized land owner association in the effort to help each other maintain a low lag sim. we'll keep you posted on how it works out.

word 'o caution - shift-alt-d only shows you things that are causing update broadcasts, which cost network traffic and processing. That only causes lag if there is too much of it in one area, or too much else going on too. There are other things that cause lag in other ways (like sensors), so even if you kill all the updating doodads, you can still have lag. And things like birds flying around can be kind of nice.

Yes im aware of ping, bandwith, packet streaming and latency etc etc.., the formula of balancing these out can be quite tedious. I am a newbie to these 3D simulators but not the gaming scene. I just dont know all the tools that are at my disposal to adjust and help me balance these things out.
Intrestingly enough i executed the Alt+Shift+U and i couldnt see past my dance floor rofl! Further more i illiminated most of the floor and i was amazed at being able to do a complete 360 with my avatar with out freezing lol.
I'm assuming theres a more detailed tutoral to these tools somewhere that i havent looked? Or maybe im not looking in the right places?
I would greatly appreciate if i could be directed to this iformation so i can learn more on how i can help reduce the burden to my sim, if there is such a place lol.

Again thanx for the info and thank you Persephone Phoenix for starting this thread
ZEB