Not so sure about this fixed 45fps thing that slows down scripts...

What's its doing is causing doors not to work, vendors a pain in the ass to browse, cars and airplanes to fly EVEN WORSE than they did before...

I know what was trying to be accomplished... to make it "appear" Second Life runs better than it does, but what it actually does is make Second Life look WORSE, because now stuff doesn't even work for 4-5 seconds after they are supposed to.

Not so sure about it either. Over in Furnation Prime tonight, the sim's FPS was back down to 9, again.

Its not fixed to 45 its floats at 45 like physics does, if there are many agents/scripts then it will be reduced with load, the notes on how to read are here

http://secondlife.com/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=How+do+I+read+the+sim+performance+stats%3F

I was visiting several sims today and found several with FPS of 20 or less. One even momentarliy dropped to 5, then back up to 13. Hardly anything was rezzing and I could barely move.

Physics FPS numbers were very low, too.

These sims had varying numbers of Active Objects and Active Scripts. Script Perf numbers were very high and flutuating wildly.

One oversite was that I failed to check the sim# in the address. These could be some older class servers.

Conversely, other newer sims that I assume to be running on at least class3 servers, were showing pretty good performance indicators - Sim FPS 45 and Physics FPS in the range of 44.7 - 44.8. All other indicators looked good to great.

My original comment wasn't exactly to the FPS of a sim, it was to this strategy that to achieve this mystical "fixed FPS," they are purposely slowing down scripts, which is really, really stupid.

What software engineer, looking at his client says, "And here, I wanted to slow the program down a little bit. No real reason, I just wanted to slow it down so it takes you longer to do your work."

Didn't make sense when they announced their intentions to do it that way, and it doesn't make sense now, when I click on a door in a busy sim and it takes 5 seconds for the door to open.

I have a Francis Chung colorchange script called "Torlifier Screensaver" in my MUNIFICENT, the magnifying glass headwear that I tote around.

I've noticed in 1.7 that the colorchanging happens BLAZINGLY FAST in empty sims, and in fuller ones, it slows to a crawl. I'd imagine the same thing happens to dancefloors which use a similar principle.

In 1.6, I remember the speed being more or less constant.

In sort of a funny way, it's a visual cue and convenient way for me to tell how fast things are going in the region that I am.

Definitely a noticable change. My sim has run (for some months) at > 1000 fps (daily average, I run a 24-hour check/email report thinger). My elevators ran smooth, rotating (physical/hinged) doors smooth, my high-speed/high-alt lift ran smooth.

Now there is noticable "jittering" to what used to be "smooth" running physical devices. Sim runs great post v1.7, 45fps, 44.x physics, usually 1-2 avs.

I just hope they soon establish CPU (script run time) sharing based on land holdings -- cuz I'm holding a lot of land just in case this gets in soon(er or later).

I realize what's being attempted with this change to fix the sim's, and it definitely makes sense -- just that it certainly makes the world run differently.

On a side note...
One oddity I'll keep watching, and admittingly I've only 1.5 days of data.. is Dilation averages (I do daily averages on this too) has dropped for a dil of 1.0-0.96 from 99.x% to 96.x%, since 1.7. (and huge jumps (relatively) in other dil ranges).. err well here's the last 6 days for a quick summary:

2005-10-25-- 1.0-0.96: 96.21%, 0.95-0.90: 1.36%, 0.89-0.60: 2.06%, 0.59-0.40: 0.24%, 0.39-0.0: 0.11%
2005-10-24-- 1.0-0.96: 96.85%, 0.95-0.90: 1.23%, 0.89-0.60: 1.60%, 0.59-0.40: 0.18%, 0.39-0.0: 0.10%
2005-10-23-- 1.0-0.96: 99.48%, 0.95-0.90: 0.14%, 0.89-0.60: 0.11%, 0.59-0.40: 0.00%, 0.39-0.0: 0.25%
2005-10-22-- 1.0-0.96: 99.73%, 0.95-0.90: 0.22%, 0.89-0.60: 0.04%, 0.59-0.40: 0.00%, 0.39-0.0: 0.00%
2005-10-21-- 1.0-0.96: 99.89%, 0.95-0.90: 0.06%, 0.89-0.60: 0.03%, 0.59-0.40: 0.00%, 0.39-0.0: 0.00%
2005-10-20-- 1.0-0.96: 99.89%, 0.95-0.90: 0.08%, 0.89-0.60: 0.02%, 0.59-0.40: 0.00%, 0.39-0.0: 0.00%

Again, very premature with no long-term data (and no time for the sim/patches/fixes etc to calm things down).

(for the curious, these are from polls taken every 10sec over a 24hr period)

Honestly, I think it makes vehicles perform BETTER than before. Prior to this update, I couldn't fly over some sims without my aircraft magically flaking out and me falling to the ground while it keeps going. Now, that no longer happens. It takes slightly longer to fly over some ocean sims, but otherwise it seems to be an improvement.

Cars seem to work better too, I can drive through laggy sims without major framerate drops. Previously, there were times when I flat-out couldn't drive in some areas, I'd end up halfway through a wall before I noticed it was there.

The upgrade isn't a huge improvement, and it sure as hell doesn't do what LL said it would, but it IS an improvement in some ways. I'm curious to see where we'll go from here.

I suspect there are other issues that are causing low frame rates than this new script speed. Fact of the matter is frame rates are generally worse than they were before.

Something simply isn't working as intended from what I can tell. I'd say let them work on it before jumping to conclusions as to the root cause.

Oddly, the Line dancing at the Shelter gets out of sync quickly now - prior to 1.7, everyone stayed in tight sync like a Vegas show

It definately reduces the 'cool' factor

I think part of it must be the textures either not fully loading or being cached properly, this will increase the image time of the sim and reduce the time available for everything else including script time

Yeah, I've noticed dilation is lower than normal in a lot of places.

Hopefully this will be fixed, as it is my understanding that the most important (or at least one of the most important changes) as that dilation was going to be IMPROVED in 1.7

Reducing cpu cycles for scripts to give to other resources is wacky crazy. Some of the richest content in SL relies on scripted objects (games). Who is to decide which types of content deserves the most resources? Why not always allow scripts a certain level of performance and steal from other areas to maintain scripting performance? Was there a vote? Who decided which was most important?

If you're at tringo or slingo or (yeah my jacks game) you don't care how quickly your avatar walks ... you're not walking!

Maybe in the case of at least island owners they can give throttling tools so the sim owner can decide what types of activities recieve what resources? If someone wants a sim that is script friendly let THEM decide that. If someone is more interested in "percieved" lag let THEM turn scripts resources way down.

There is more then one type of activity in SL ... to code against one type is redicuous, to try and decide which is the most important is even more rediculous. Users should decide this. Certain activities require more of one resource and less of another, other activities the exact opposite of a resource balance.

I understand what SL is trying to achieve. I am right now optimizing all my code to be lean and mean and finding ways to use code differently and more efficiently. Using less cycles to achieve the same results. This is a good thing but it should not be a person's primary focus. When everything boils down to how efficient can I make something rather then how rich can I make something then content will become efficient, not rich.

There must be a happy middle ground somewhere.

I hope LL revisits and refactors according to some of these ideas.

--chilly

I want to add to Aaron Levy's perceptions about doors and elevators (which rely on scripts) and it taking a door 5 seconds to open after touching it.

Well there are LOTS of scripted objects in SL which add to the total experience. Stealing from Peter to pay Paul is how I look at it.

... WOW it took me three less seconds to walk to this building ... but um??? now I have to wait FIVE seconds for the door to open???? Where is the gain? It makes the whole world (and experience) clunky now.

Not just doors, but vendors, scripted vehicles, elevators, and on and on and on.

OK. First, on the whole, so far, my experience with 1.7 is a bit negative.

My flying script relies on a double-tap keyboard control for some actions, and due to script-slowdown I often can't register my two taps within the TWO SECONDS the script allows.

No biggie for that one! I can revise the control mode appropriately.
Still, scripts are running tragically slower than before.

But I think it's all going to turn out right in the end because: The status display shows Script Execution at something like 25000 instructions per second. Just optimize that by 10-fold (perfectly plausible, I hope!) and we're set.

So uh... hurry up on that, Guv Linden, mmk?

Your Loyal Citizen --> Davan Camus

Line dancing? cool?

Sorry couldn't resist

hehehe - maybe a strong 'nifty' then

I have an "Avatar Finder" that rezzes four satellites. These quickly move to areas of the current sim, sensor, return, and then chat their data back the parent object which displays a dialog. In 1.6, this entire process could take anywhere from 10-20 seconds to complete the task in any sim.

I've been testing on both Lusk (an often busy sim) and it's neighbor Perry (an often empty sim) in 1.7 and here's what I've found.

First up, Perry is blazing fast. When I'm the only person in the sim (or even one of just three or four) my script is far, far faster than it ever was in 1.6. Even the speed at which listen events are triggered seems to be faster now as are parsing loops. The whole process takes less than 10 seconds.

Lusk on the other hand is not consistent. There have been times with roughly 10 people around when it can take up to 40 seconds for my scan to complete. Since my object shows each name is it receives data, I can tell that either the listen events are being parsed slower or the parsing of the script's if() loops are. I can't tell which.

Yet, today I logged on to Lusk and there were around 7 in the sim. For no reason I can tell, my script was suddenly fast there as well.

My only guess would be that maybe someone had been in the sim the first time (who wasn't there today) that had scripts that bogged the server down a lot when they are around. Or, perhaps, this is all just a part of the upgrade pains. I really hope it's the latter because if my scripts perform as well everywhere as they have been in Perry, we could be seeing even better performance than in 1.6 for our scripts.

Slumped a bit yesterday;
(dil)
2005-10-26-- 1.0-0.96: 92.56%, 0.95-0.90: 2.62%, 0.89-0.60: 3.85%, 0.59-0.40: 0.83%, 0.39-0.0: 0.11%

Again, pretty premature to draw any conclusions and no real time for them to get the servers optimized. Still this is very different than the 99.x% of dil averages, in the 1.0-0.96 range, that I have from previous months. I'd think with 1.7 dil would be extremely solid -- apparently that isn't the case (yet).

Sure wish we could get more info, via scripts, than just fps (pretty pointless now, in general), and dilation. Such as Primary/Child agents, active scripts, physics, etc.

I'm not sure if I like this at all. I bought half a sim to increase speed - which up until the patch worked wonderfully (usually about 1200FPS on the sim and 75-70fps on my system). Now my whole sim has crawled to a stop; even walking is seriously lagged.

I realize 1.7 was supposed to resolve many issues, but...

At it's current state it's a big fat, frustrating mess.

Simple vehicles that rarely make any tweaks to the vehicle system are probably going to work better, because they're being driven by the linear and angular motors and damping. Realistic vehicles like some of the ones you get at Abbott's, that continually tweak the engines to simulate real-world vehicle behaviour, are a different matter.

That's weird. I haven't been having one bit of lag anywhere, yet I have the minimal requirements to run the game. Everyone seems to be complaining about lag now, but for me it's still the textures not loading. Everything is still solid white.

Yea I agree Vehicles are faster now in SL but then agine I can use my MultiGadget and the avatar detecter is slow... by the time sumones in chat range its just them sayin there detected and they can be on my toes by the time it says there in chat range...
I flew from Goguen to the other side of the map in my mouse steering aircraft today and back in about 45 minuts at full speed and AB every now and then only fallin out on sim border once but mannaged to get back in.

Also Hyperteleporter is much faster than I rember

I was looking at waterfalls today, between sim crashes, and noticed their flow is not smooth anymore. In 1.6 the animation was very smooth. Now it looks like 2-3FPS...

and with this latest version (1.7.1(2)), just forcing sunset crashes the sim...
Me think I'll go for a vacation for 1 week or so and come back when this is all fixed. It's not fun anymore.

As someone who makes lots of physical stuff, like bikes and games, i'm about ready to cry.
I'm down with the vacation idea, though i doubt LL will stop billing me while this system is a flaming bag of shit. (you can smell the quality)

I've been waiting a year for this game to get decent physics. I've been waiting since 1.6 for LL to fix the @#($&^ sit animation bug on vehical sim crossing that they created.

My stuff keeps breaking. moo!

cries. whines. swears. tiers down.