This has to be a cache problem. And, yeah, the new default texture is bad.

I would like to add to suezannes post by saying when they ask for as much detail as possible then send in multiple reports if you start finding trends in these loading issues, personally one example for me is that the ground texture never remains cached, either when i relog or when i tp out and then back in, it may have loaded abit by the time you have logged in or tp'd but you should have the full crisp image cached

I disagree with the satement that it's working ok. Yeah, the texture was different before 1.7, but things loaded a LOT faster than this.

I'm flying around SL taking pictures of holiday builds and I found a winter park last night that took 3.5 minutes to load. LINDEN TREE TEXTURES WERE THE LAST THING TO LOAD.

Something's messed up.

There's no question that objects are taking longer to display. The latest revision 1.7.4 (7) hasn't solved the problem, unless it takes over a day to produce an effect.

Those giant linden tree grey rectangles are quite unpleasant to look at, aren't they?

This problem has been so bad that I have stopped recommending to RL friends that they try Second Life. To bring them here now would leave such a bad first impression that I know they would never return for a second visit. The fact that SL uses streaming technology in the first place, and is therefore generally slower to render, is already hard for noobies to get over. With caching borked this badly, it's an impossible hurdle to clear. When LL resolves this problem, along several others, I will probably resume my effervescing evangelism. Until then I will stifle my passion in the hope that it will soon be rekindled.

One way to reduce the effects of the lengthy time during which one waits for buildings to appear wearing their gray suits would just be to switch from a color display to black and white, That would make the gray loading time, which could be referred to as" the dead zone", much less noticeable.

That is the only thing I know that gets results.

The texture loading time seems to be carried into 1.8.

Sign, even the map will show the loading texture covering the entire mainland, and the pictures in user profiles show a gray rectangle with a white outline. There could at least be distinct loading textures for different functions made to look good in their distinct visual contexts.

This is sure to be mentioned elsewhere but with P2P we should be able to have a MRU places list, and be able to do a teleport back similar in function to the go back and go forward commands in a web browser.

Wanna check something out far away from where you are - just say ROAM ahern 128 128 and go there near instantly, check it out, say ROAM go back and back you go. Or stick the Go Back button on a HUD.

Sound preloading is also hosed. Vehicles have really taken a hit in 1.7.

Wow, that picture really brings back memories...used to have that game on the Atari 2600. It was called Tron: Deadly Discs.

i have a picture similer to aarons's. I showed it to alazarin in SL. I would show it on the forums but i didnt save it to disk and the grid is currently down so i cant get it yet. il post it later. After logging out, and logging back in im stuck in a TRON playfield or hologrid pretty much. No Trees, just mountains and hills of grey squares. I tried ron overdrive's ramdisk method. it did work fine, but the client would freeze up every moment and not respond. It might just be my computer though. I meen if it works for other people. One day i clicked the Clean Cache button in prefs and logged out. Then i went to my cache folder. I noticed 3 whole gigabites of unused files. WTF??? These should be gone right? So i deleted them. I miss the days when i could log in and the buildings would be there. now you can see all the holes and craters of the terrain under the buildings before they rez.

If it's not broke, don't "fix it"...

Personally I'm still looking for a Linden reply on this thread. Can we get some feedback ourselves along the lines of "Yes, we're aware this is broke. Here's why. *State new, defective program behavior*".

1.7 in general has been a huge step backwards for me. I ran off a 750 mhz p3 machine with 256 ram, fresh out of 1999 before. Upgraded to a borrowed workstation with 2 ghz p4 processor and 512 ram, about two weeks before the update. Suddenly SL performs no better than it did on the old machine. Where I was finally able to turn draw distance up as far as 192 without it impacting performance, suddenly I have to keep it to 96 or 64 if I plan on traveling anywhere fast.

Its not often I leave my home region of Abbotts, and as content-heavy as it is, I have my cache set to 1000mb. I should be able to move around within the sim without buildings halfway across it derezzing. I /used/ to be able to fly stunts around the place in a Tigershark, but no more. By the time I make the lap and line up on one of the passages, the darn thing's derezzed and I can't tell where the walls are. Manages to rez right in my face instead. >

Someone told me there's a bug in 1.7 where it constantly re-renders things. I believe it, because even with draw distances down so low I get significant FPS drops when I look towards the core of the aerodrome where object and texture density is highest. Again though, for the couple of weeks I had this machine before the 1.7 update it didn't do that.

Upgrading still again to a machine with 3.6 ghz hyperthreading, 2 gigs ram and a 128-meg ATI x600 graphics card (shaddup, Nvidia wasn't an option.). If SL is still so slow and laggy I'm gonna have a lot of complaining to do.

i am getting loading textures in the debug dialog while reporting overly long loading times for the textures in structures

The Lindens never admit fault; they're far more inclined to blame your ISP, your machine, your hardware drivers, sunspots, Osama bin Laden, Lee Harvey Oswald, or the Easter Bunny. If you can actually get Linden attention, they'll suggest you file a bug report as if they never heard of textures rezzing slowly. I think this tactic is commonly referred to as "blowing smoke up your posterior" especially as they know it is a huge problem as evidenced by various Linden posts here and release notes like:Last night I went in game for the first time in a few weeks. I waited - and clocked - 9 minutes for the ground texture on a mainland sim to rez. I traversed an entire void sim without the water rezzing and I saw builds textured with an identical texture remain a patchwork of grey and texture for minutes.

There was a time when the ground wasn't grey, really!

I recently returned to SL after a short break, and was having this same horrible issue with grey grid doom and 5 minute or more loading time, but I just deleted every file from the cache directory and wow, what a difference now. I don't know if the difference will last, but a thought on the matter; before I left, I was using 1.6.x, so is it possible theres some problem with the structure of the 1.6 cache vs the current cache system? Maybe trying to use the old files is causing issues of whatever sort. I suppose it could just be any cache that reaches a certain size, which would explain why storing the cache on a RAMdisk seems to make things more speedy as well. I figured I'd give my input just in case it proves helpful in any measure.

I have of course cleared my cache to no avail, and reinstalled the program to no avail.

Last night I went to a mall, did my shopping, made my transaction, and left, with the place still showing gray loading textures.

I've just resorted to bug reporting...I'll kill 'em with bug reports. If they get a gazillion bug reports with pictures, I think it will move the issue up the list...
BUG REPORT THE HELL OUT OF THEM!

*bump*

Heres the picture i was going to post. i would have made it a attachment but the forum database wasnt working right.

http://wolfeedarkfang.furrynet.com/images/theforestgrid.jpg

isnt this ugleh? XD

I came into SL on 1.6, it ran wonderfully, I was stoked, I brought a few friends here too, we all bought premium accounts... we all bought land... 1.7 happened, and the world blew up... now, I get 3 days maybe of good consistant performance, then, they do an update, and blow up the world again, so I am averaging 3 days out of 10 or so now of reasonably bad performance.
I am selling my land, and tiering down to the 512m that comes with the premium account I stupidly paid a years fee for. I feel very very stupid now for recommending SL to my friends, and for spending so much money on it...

Folks I'm not a techy, just a gamer.

Simple fact is, since I got into realm and the weekly upgrades began, game performance has been heading downhill alarmingly.

It's not about the textures, or the caches, or the lag, or any one issue. It's about being able to play the game, period.

What I DO know is we pay a LOT of money to play SL, and it's rapidly becoming simply not worth it.

My friend and I have traveled Underlight, EQ, EQ2, PE, Tale in the Desert, World of Warcraft, Anarchy Online, and a few others.

He's selling his 4K tier because he can literally stand motionless for hours at a time... unable to even move from lag, and lack of texture downloading, in a Sim wholey owned by about 6 people. Granted his connection isnt the best, but mine is amazingly stable, and fast, and the realm has degraded horribly for me as well.

We stand there chattin in IM because chat is about 2 minutes lagged, and watch folks on our friends list constantly popping in and out of realm, despirately trying to get the thing to work. The degradation in gameplay is simply unacceptable when you're paying $40/month for land you cant effectively use.

Hardeware? Trust me.... not an issue.

Bug reports? Hey if the folks at Linden havent gotten the word by now.... then there is a LOT more wrong than I can imagine.

It's pretty simple.... If they cant restore the playability of the realm to pre 1.7 levels, there are a LOT of far less expensive worlds to visit.

No one wants to pay for a game they cant play.

I agree. And another game which shall remain nameless even refused to charge people after there were problems with the game. Now that's customer service!

It doesn't look like it's a cache problem, but it's related to the changes made in the interest list (what your camera sees) and the texture pipeline. We've gotten much closer to the heart of the problem and as Karen pointed out in her update today, the texture problems are better, but still being worked on. I know it's been frustrating, and far from ideal for many. You should see ongoing improvements, and we'll continue to work on it until the situation is resolved.

/255/57/76043/1.html#post788879

You know, explaining WHY you don't think it is a cache problem would go a long way toward establishing a modicum of credibility.

I mean your benighted boss decided to look exactly where your customers were saying a problem wasn't and guess what? The phenomenon still exists in exactly the manner described and may well be contributing to Grey Life® but I'm just really tired of debugging your system for you.

Keep working on it. If you continue with the current rate of progress the problem should resolve itself as more customers get disgusted, vote with their feet, and the asset server load returns to 2004 levels.