This has gone too far.

I've noticed a lot of people who are having problems with the client and the grid in general... and I've noticed only a few people with the fortitude to speak up. The quality of SecondLife has been decreasing exponentially since 1.10.x, and as a result, I've not only lost data, I've lost my time and my effort.

Listed below are the MULTIPLE problems that need fixing immediately (Who knows, maybe the multi-million-dollar funding that seems to be floating around LindenLab could even go towards improving your one and only moneymaker.)

1) *EXTREME* Packet Loss!
I've been having this problem since the 1.12.0 (15) client update, and it's gotten worse and worse as the days go by. My avatar is floating off just crossing land borders! Not sim borders... measly plot borders! I can't even hold a regular conversation in chat, because whatever I type comes out in anything *but* the right order. It's chaos trying to outline a plan or hold a meeting!

2) Friends List is broken... AGAIN!
Why does this happen after every "upgrade"? I can't see who's online, and I can't talk to anybody because half of the time, the IMs they send me go to my Inbox... It's like I'm a ghost and it's absolutely absurd that this problem has not already been addressed!

3) CLIENT CRASHES IN EDIT MODE!
This has been going on for the past week, and it has always occured when I'm in edit mode, TRYING To do something productive!
As a builder AND a scripter, I can't get anything done. Usually it will occur when I'll go to zoom in on an object, and my entire system will lock up. And to clear up any confusion for people who have no idea what they're talking about, it is *not* the system's fault. I reinstalled my operating system (XP 32-bit), upgraded to a 64-bit operating system, and I even tried a Windows Server 2003 system, and it still happens on all three operating systems.

4) The database has the stability of a one-legged stool.
Is it just me, or does it seem like LindenLab is putting all their eggs in one basket? Or rather, all their data in one database. It's not very reassurring to know that somebody can exploit the old, outdated and buggy Wiki and gain access to the in-world database, not to mention our *very* private financial information! Encrypted or not, it's the shoddiest database setup I've seen yet.

5) Texture Overlapping!
This I've noticed on MANY of my builds. I'll look at the floor in my storefront and I'll see weeds sitting on the ground at least ten meters away. I'll look at one of my server racks and actually see THROUGH the textured, NON-ALPHA door and see the servers inside. It's incredible that no Linden has noticed this, and if they have, it's equally as incredible that they haven't made note of it!

I'm paying darn good money to use SecondLife and to own land. What do I get? Porn-textured cubes sitting on Linden Land outside my plot, my client crashing my system every 30 minutes, and extreme amounts of packet loss!

To the Lindens: What are you people doing over there in California? Are the gridmonkeys asleep at the keyboard? Why do you let these massive performance and security flaws go unchecked and uncorrected?

If LindenLab is supposedly getting millions in funding, why does the grid feel like it's held together with duct tape?

1) Most those sound like it has to be something on your end with your pc. I've had no problem with many things mentioned. I've never experenced packet loss. I'm lagging to heck right now, but no packet loss.

2) my friendlist is fine.

3) my edit mode is fine.

4) what you've described is not how it is setup.

5) Yes, I have notice this issue and it is very annoying..

so your 1/5 with me.

The last time I heard anyone say what Shiney just did it came from Lee Linden

Sorry, folks. It's NOT your pc. It's Linden Lab.

I have a pc that can start WW III..more honking than Alienware's bestest. It cuts through the most difficult and demanding games and programs like a hot knife through butter.

But my pc does exactly the same thing with SL that most people's pc's do. It spits it out at times. And lately, a lot.

SL, in toto, is sloppy. But is THE best innovation. Fun. Thoroughly entertaining. And you can make money from it.

There is NO getting around it. From lagging customer service, to questionable security for financial and personal info, it is boxed up, with a hover script and placed in a cheap stall asking to be sold.

Hope the new owners revamp what needs revamping, but hope they keep the original Rosedale vision. Hard to do both though. Having a great vision and a hard business sense. The brain, people, businesses usually flag at one, and are great with the other. What happens is that compromises are made in company culture and therefore, product, and what you wind up with is something blander, less spicey, and not quite with the same punch that made the business a hit in the first place.

BUT if SL is sold, and they keep the original staff...well confined...it may work. To oust the original braintrust would be like doing a lobotomy on the company. What you'd get is something that would BEHAVE, but would be a bit boring.

"I've had no problem with many things mentioned. I've never experenced packet loss. I'm lagging to heck right now, but no packet loss."

So you're blissfully free of packet loss and don't see why it's an issue for those of us who are plagued with it? The real problem is not packet loss itself, it's that SL isn't robust enough to work reliably in spite of packet loss. SL is just as blissfully unconcerned with packet loss as you seem to be.

The manual slider in Network Preferences that limits maximum download speed is a painfully inadequate band-aid. The client is obviously capable of monitoring packet loss as well as its own dynamically changing download speed. Instead of asking users to guess at a maximum download speed setting, why doesn't the client automatically regulate its download speed to maintain packet loss below a reasonable limit? While it's not a substitute for a truly reliable transmission protocol, it would at least make the current system work as well as it can.

This is a real problem, and an old one.

You have to fine-tune the network bandwidth settings to keep SL from sending data faster than your link can handle. If they used TCP for large transfers, or at least implemented a backoff algorithm of their own, this wouldn't be a problem.

To address the texture problem that people are experiencing, I have not seen this with textures that do not have an alpha layer in them. I have quite a bit of marble textures I got from a freebie box that had this problem, and it turns out that there is an alpha layer in the texture, but nothing that is alphaed that you can visually see. So unless you know for sure (made the texture yourself) that there doesn't exist an alpha layer, you might look into that. A good way to test this is to highlight transparent, and if it turns a little red, that is your answer hope that helps.

*rolls eyes* you never log in do you? o.o

I'm logged in right now and I build constantly every day on my 31k plot of land.

Lish, Still, I've never seen packet loss, even when pushing over 1000kbps.

Margot, I would argue on average, most issues are the users pc, and not LL. Everything from the dualcore bug to bad video card settings. Most people who've complained to me about graphic lag have had it solved with adjusting the settings to suit their card or disabling one core on a dualcore system.

I'm really pissed at LL right now due to no response for days and my sim is lagging to heck. "The system is unable to process your request"... grr.. And moving is apain in the arse. Neighbouring sims don't appear to have as much issues. And this is just a recent thing.... Another day in SL....

but I can speak for many. All of whom have told me hilarious machinations a liason has had them try to reduce lag. I'm surprised they don't have someone stand near their pc, hold one foot in their hand and face north to see if that helps. Many know that its LL's end, not their pc. Either from personal experience, hearsay or intuition. All of which, if of long standing and repetitious, points in the direction of the LL boiler room. If it were the user end, most of the complaints about lag would be toned down at this point.

What one person said he 'knew about this, from up close and personal experience', is that the ability to reduce lagging performance for users is in place at LL. And has been for some time. They just do not choose to use it for their customers. When I asked him why, he said he couldn't figure it out. Maybe they want to save that magic code for when Phil does the townhalls so people wouldn't keep crashing when they try to ask him if LL is going to be sold?

Im not sure what packet loss is but that red meter on top right corner of my screen goes so high then i get logged out.

That red meter would be the % of packet loss. "Full" is about 5% and I've seen the number go as high as 30%.
As for what packet loss is, think of it as undeliverable letters at the post office. It's data the client sends that doesn't go down the tubes to the sever (or the other way, sever sends it and client can't pick it up).

Every person I know is having the friend’s list issue. It’s a guessing game now a day's to see who is on or not; I usually start sending everyone a little ? To see if I get the offline Message or not. And even if someone is online, they still don't show up. So to the person who is not having that issue;You must not have anyone on your friends list.

I know this is not my computer; I play SL on 3 different computers at one time or another. All different makes models and the what-knots. It’s not on my end!

The packet loss issue is harshe. Mine occasionally jumps to 100% and back down to like 30%. Currently its at 0 though. I notice if i'm having serous packet loss and play a gesture that uses a looping animation, that animation never stops (yes it has a stop animation line... it just never reaches it) and i have to manually turn off the gesture.

Let me join the common scream for improvement. Sure SL is a great game, a great idea and a great effort to keep/develop the whole world, however, there are some very basic problems still unsolved after a long time.

The thing which plays my nerves the most is overall performance of SL on relatively modern PC I own. It is not graphic performance issue, tuning parameters down HARDLY CHANGES FPS. Dualcore bug is the most annoying thing I've seen so far in a computer program. Since I'm a bit of a developer, I'd make proper use of both (multiple - Opteron 8xx?) cores or multiple CPUs, using threads and stuff with PROPER synchronization. Is it so hard to do?

That's one point, next one is network performance. As much as I've heard, almost everyone has issues with it. My bet is SL is transferring too much data from wrong places, with not well designed protocol. Max bandwidth is 1000kbps - why so? Is it a per-client limit on server-side? Okay, bandwidth is a limited resource given hords of players out there. But please, make proper use of it! It may be simply compression issue, but may also be sim architecture related, what leads to some redesign in engine needed.

And lastly, for the friends list... I've been thinking if it's a bug or a feature that I actually have to MEET my friends (see them, chat with them) for the status to change

All of these are tech issues that can be solved, lots of people pay for it... If they didn't, there would be no ground for complaints.

The thing with alpha layers has been true for a long time. I found that when I was doing an underwater build several months ago, that anything made with an alpha was visible from above the lake surface 70 meters up! I don't know if that is still true but I do have to seriously space out things with alpha to get it to look right.

My friends list is not reliable any more and it's huge. Also, when I send notices to the group I own (over 330 people) they have not gone out, although they are saved in the group notices panel.

I hope this latter problem will get cleared up soon. It's critical for a group to have asynchronous communication in game.

Baloney! Why can't the industy understand that software should be suitable for the hardware that is available to use it?

Yep, been around forever, was just mentioning it, because when I started out it took me a friend pointing out why that was happening sometimes you have to recycle "common" info for the masses

I keep telling me to bug-report the packet loss problem, and even told to some Lindens that I would do that, but something always gets in the way.

In my case, it seems to be related to the number of items in my inventory. If I go over around 18.000 items, any operation that affects my inventory (including logging in SL and just opening the inventory window, but also searching for a name with the text box) will trigger the packet loss and extreme lag.

If I open the debug console with Ctrl-Shift-4, I see lots of messages like:

2006-08-18T16:15:33Z INFO: Num:   1 Bytes:   1425 Invalid:   0 FetchInventoryReply 0%
 2006-08-18T16:15:33Z INFO: Dump: 1 messages processed in 0.532927 seconds
 2006-08-18T16:15:33Z INFO: Num:   1 Bytes:   1284 Invalid:   0 FetchInventoryReply 0%
 2006-08-18T16:15:34Z INFO: Dump: 1 messages processed in 0.534024 seconds
 2006-08-18T16:15:34Z INFO: Num:   1 Bytes:   1266 Invalid:   0 FetchInventoryReply 0%
 2006-08-18T16:15:35Z INFO: Dump: 1 messages processed in 0.533566 seconds
 

It continues for minutes then two things can happen. SL gradually records or my client loose connection from SL:

 2006-08-18T16:17:08Z INFO: Dump: 11 messages processed in 2.43781 seconds
 2006-08-18T16:17:08Z INFO: Num:   9 Bytes:  11741 Invalid:   0 FetchInventoryReply 0%
 2006-08-18T16:17:08Z INFO: Num:   1 Bytes:	 13 Invalid:   0 PacketAck 0%
 2006-08-18T16:17:08Z INFO: Num:   1 Bytes:	 87 Invalid:   0 LayerData 0%
 2006-08-18T16:17:10Z WARNING: LLCircuitData::checkCircuitTimeout for 72.5.13.204:13003 last ping 106.154 seconds ago.
 2006-08-18T16:17:10Z WARNING: LLCircuitData::checkCircuitTimeout for 72.5.13.204:13003 still dead, dropping.
 2006-08-18T16:17:10Z INFO: LLCircuit::removeCircuitData for 72.5.13.204:13003
 2006-08-18T16:17:10Z INFO: Dump: 11 messages processed in 2.40276 seconds
 2006-08-18T16:17:10Z INFO: Num:   9 Bytes:  11684 Invalid:   0 FetchInventoryReply 0%
 2006-08-18T16:17:10Z INFO: Num:   2 Bytes:	 26 Invalid:   0 PacketAck 0%
 2006-08-18T16:17:10Z WARNING: sendMessage - Trying to send AgentUpdate on unknown circuit 72.5.13.204:13003
 2006-08-18T16:17:10Z WARNING: Packet  from invalid circuit 72.5.13.204:13003
 2006-08-18T16:17:10Z WARNING: Packet  from invalid circuit 72.5.13.204:13003
 2006-08-18T16:17:10Z WARNING: Packet  from invalid circuit 72.5.13.204:13003
 2006-08-18T16:17:10Z WARNING: Packet  from invalid circuit 72.5.13.204:13003
 

Does it happens in the same way to you too?

I guess the easiest way to respond to this is in a list format, since there is a list of complaints I'll list some ways to remedy them, and also lay blame to the systems that are causing your woes. Please keep the watermelon guns to yourselves, people and accept my apologies for the problems you're facing.

Packet Loss
This can be caused by a few things: the first, is our World Map. As much as we hate to say it, our map eats bandwidth like its in the finals for a hot dog eating contest. Work is currently underway on making the map not suck up your bandwidth.

The second, is your Maximum Bandwidth slider in Edit > Preferences > Network > Maximum Bandwidth. Start at 300kbps (most cable connections) and lower it if you see lots of non-map-related packet loss. Raise it if you don't see any packet loss and find that the world is loading too slow. (paraphrased from a notecard by Kex Godel)

A third cause of packet loss is higher than usual network traffic. If you are in a region with lots of avatars and/or lots of active/scripted objects sending updates you'll see this kind of packet loss. Remember that the simulator not only has to send updates to you but to everyone else in the region (as well as communicate with the 4 regions it is adjacent to).When those updates go over the top, some packet loss will occur.

Friends List and Presence Problems
The Friends List has been having problems for a while now. We are working on it but it's "not trivial to fix" (my least favorite LL'ism). The Friends Online page on our website is hit the most and contributes to the pain. In an effort to alleviate the symptoms we've started disabling that page when presence issues rear their ugly heads. A number of projects have resources dedicated to them to solve this problem and we hope to have it out before 1.12.2.

Crash While Building
This one I'm not familiar with this one (only one that was reported which indicates that when dropping an attachment you are editing your viewer will crash, which I am unable to reproduce). If you have a repro please send it to me via IM inworld.

Database Stability
We have projects underway to increase the strength of our backbone and database. We also have been doing work to reduce the strain on the database by changing back-end mechanics for storing avatar textures for improved performance and robustness (today's release). As far as data security, we are reviewing what we should and should not store in the databases with a strong sensitivity to the privacy of our Residents.

Texture Overlapping
As others have mentioned, uploading an image without an alpha layer but as a TGA file will cause it to be alpha-sorted as an alpha texture. This can cause the see-through textures you are experiencing. When uploading textures its always best to upload 24-bit TGA's unless you really put an alpha layer in the image. I've talked to the engineers in this department and they say that we check for "all-white" alpha layers and discard them on upload now. Unfortunately, this doesn't fix textures that already exist inworld. If they are truly freebie textures you should be able to download them (open the texture in your Inventory and choose File > Save Texture As...). Re-save them as 24-bit TGA's and re-upload them and you shouldn't have a problem anymore.

I hope this helps. If you have further questions please let me know.

Hi Brent,

I think its when you save a file as a 32 bit targa (as opposed to a 24 bit targa) that you include the alpha channel information. A 24 bit targa will not include that information and will not experience the flicker issues (as well as keeping the file size much lower).

I used to save as .jpgs until realizing that all the files uploaded were converted to jpg2000 format anyway, so now I save as the appropriate .tga bit depth and upload them like that to save on compression quality loss.

Also another minor issue with saving as .jpgs is that SL won't upload a CMYK .jpg, only RGB. As far as I can tell targa files can only be saved as an RGB avoiding the problem entirely.

Yes just use a 24 bit TGA. This will prevent extra loss from converting from jpg (a lossy format) twice. All good image editing software will give you the option of 24 or 32 TGA.

-DB

Friends fixed? NO

Edit mode is working but very unstable

along with people and their pocket loss and everyone seems to have it
I way in Japan and on a fiber 100m internet line. And i really never lag but withthe current client its been a nightmare...........

The user shouldn't need to touch this. The user should never need to touch this. The user should never even see or know about this. SL should automatically backoff and retry, and if implementing backoff and retry in UDP is too tough, then UDP should be reserved for real-time control and downloads and supervisory control should go over a parallel TCP connection to the sim. With a maximum of 40 avatars in a sim, that means a maximum of 40 TCP connections to the sim for texture and supervisory control. That's not going to bring any network stack to its knees.

Wait a sec the rule of thumb is set the BW to where you are cozy.........And yes the users should beable to set the slidder...................

This would be just f*cking hilarious if it wasn't so offensive.

LL has always said, and every major texturer, and every texture tutorial has been saying, for the entire time I have played the game (1.5 years), and possibly even longer, that one should ALWAYS upload TGA files and never Jpegs.

Now your saying, "oh, sorry it's your fault for uploading TGA's" ?? and "change them all to Jpegs"????


And your "solution" is for us to spend hundreds of lindens re-uploading all our textures???

What absolute f*cking gall!

Do you think once you guys could take responsibility for your screwups instead of trying to dodge the blame? WTF happened to all those long advice posts from LL that state how everything is automatically converted to Jpeg2000? Seems to me this can only be a screwup in your file conversion process (although I note you don't mention that), and somehow it reads like it's actually our fault for uploading TGA's??? Even though you have been telling everyone to do just that?

Thanks for nothing Brent, and a bit of customer service advice...

Next time you are answering a big list of complaints, try using the word "sorry" just once in your long reply.