sim lagging because of campers -- what can I do?

Hi,

Recently someone built a casino next to my house.

Now it's full of campers, and my sim is lagging badly to handle
updating all their points of view... as they sit (not even there,
just their avs) like a horde of brainless zombies.

The games I'm building won't work properly because the physics engine doesn't have enough time to update the dynamics of the objects smoothly. Needless to say, I'm pissed off.

Is there anything I can do?

Thanks,
JLB

Move to a private island where the landlord gives a da** about his tenants. The Lindens have proven time and time again they will do nothing about clubs and camping chairs that devour sim resources and destroy land values for people like yourself.

I think it's about time that LL take a new policy toward camping chairs:


CAMPING CHAIRS CONTRIBUTE NOTHING TO SL. THEY ACCOMPLISH NOTHING BUT CAUSING LAG AND WASTING BANDWIDTH.

I'm starting to think that LL needs to ban camping chairs.

put camping spots yourself it might make the situation worse but it will do less traffic for him wich will be a problem for him

I already suggested it when I still lived on the mainland: traffic restriction for mainland parcels. A maximum of 10 simultaneous visitors for plots of 2048 sqm or smaller, 15 visitors max. for 4096 sqm. parcels, 20 for 1/4 sim, 30 for 1/2 sim. It would greatly increase the value of mainland as a living space and make islands more attractive for business owners.

/Edit: plus the ability to return any object that extends onto your land, even when the object's point of origin is located on another parcel or in an adjacent sim.

We need to change the system that encourages camping chairs, otherwise they just switch to random prize balls or something else that gives cash to AFK avatars.

That would be missing the point, though. Any popular parcel would have the same effect, including a branch of (insert your favourite popular content creator here).

yay anti camping, but im not really shure whats worse, since phyisics can stop a sim dead for quite a while , with just a simple set of bouncing balls

I don't care if people visit a sim... that's the point.

But every time I go green dot hunting, all I find is zombie parties. I hit a casino the other day, and it was filled with 30 avatars.. all slouched over and marked as "away".

Setting aside the L$6 an hour for the moment, How is this helping SL as a whole?

Nothing is EVER as simple as "good" or "evil". As much as some have come to demonize campers, camp hosts, and camping chairs.. there are indeed a number of positive elements involved that keep them running.

"Setting aside the L$6 an hour for the moment, How is this helping SL as a whole?"

Let's talk about the fictional John Q. Public.. John's a pretty average sort. a businessman by day, he likes a little porn now and again, and he's techno-saavy. he's tooling along, looking at Yahoo or whever, and sees a story about "Second Life".. wow... it's free.. and people are making money at this? I should look into this! John fires up his browser, and after a frustrating half hour, finally finds the download link, installs the program, and fires himself up on Isla De Noob. AFter about half an hour.. he's bored, and wants to get to the "real" game.. he can walk and fly and okay let's go!

John plops himself out into the "real" world.. and is trying to find out how the game works. After a while, he discovers that to make money in this game, you really have to have money. It's hard to turn freebies into workable products, and uploads and whatnot are really important. Likewise, he realizes that in order to learn about how things work.. he needs to experience some "commercial" products.. as opposed to freebie junk. Still.. he's gritting his teeth... I dunno.. giving them my credit card.. (wince) I just don't know.

Then someone points out to him that there are some places where he can earn a few bucks. Nothing phenominal.. but *ALL* he has to do is just sit in a chair for a while. John looks up some places, and samples them.

The first place is a casino. The camping rate is really minimal, but the cool thingis, he can play the casino games while he camps. He gets a run on some freebie slot machines, and actually turns 100L$ in an hour and a half.

The second place is a dance club. THere's a whole social scene goign on here, with people chatting back and forth. There's some dancing girls on the stage there, and they seem to be stripping for tips. He's earning $3L/ 10m here.. and the casino has emboldended him a bit.. so he tips a few bucks to each dancer. NOthing spectacular, but every little bit helps. While he's there, he plays the "slpoder" and actually wins $50.. half of which he tips to the dancer he likes the most.

The third place is a mall. Just one of 16 chairs in the mall, arranged around a lake. He's acrued $125 now, and is earning $2/10m at the mall. Everyone seems to be silent here.. but he's surrounded by shopping opportunities. He looks around the mall, through the power of Alt-Camming. But he realizes that he can't afford much.

He realizes that the "amazing sum" of $125 is actually about as valuable as couch-lint. He sees the prices on the various toys.. many of which he's seen on others. He's seen clothes and outfits and blinging jewelry and whatnot..he's played some good games, and even seen some guys with guns. By looking around the mall, and spending a little quality time with a calculator.. that for only $20USD, he could have nearly $L6000 and "really" set his avatar up with some fun toys. He skips eating out tonight, and stays home and plays SL, buying some lindens.

Then he finds out about LAND.

How does this impact SL as a whole?

- The casino owner has increased his ranking in the search. Gambling is big business online, and every edge helps. The freeplays and camping are a small percentage compared to the amount he takes in from the higher-stakes games.

- The club owner has increased her ranking in the search. She's taken a small profit from the sploder, but her real income comes from the percentage she demands of the stage dancers. The dancers made quite a few linden-dollars that night, and partially due to the friendly noob who toipped what he could. Others felt bad for the dancers and pitched in extra so the noob's intentions weren't lost in the poorness of his tips. The dancers too made a pretty penny.. one of them has a business on the side, and the $2000L that she pulled tonight just allowed her to take the plunge and buy a networked server for her business.

- The mall increased it's ranking in the search. While John didn't buy anything right away, you can be sure that he'll remember WHICH mall he was at. BUt more to the point, the mall owner's search ranking is ALL that matters to him. The higher the ranking, the more likely that new shopkeepers will consider renting in his mall.

- Linden Labs made $20USD from John.. because he bought lindens off the lindex. (don't let's get into the technical issue of who ACTUALLY received that money). More cash was pushed into the system. SInce he's learned about land, it's quite likely that John might soon upgrade to a premium account.

- John... John spent a few of his early game hours.. learning about the economy. He saw some dancing girls.. had some real fun playing slot machines and blackjack.. had a good social evening at the club, and got to do a great deal of window shopping at the mall.

Experiences he never would have had, if he'd just stayed in the sandbox, and gotten caged by an army of griefers. Instead of having John's early SL experiences be ones that would lead him towards "I need a gun and armor and a sheild and a tank to protect myself from greifers".. he's been plunged directly into the economy game. It's possible that John would have plugged that same $20USD into the game eventually.. but he might never have intentionally visited a casino, or a mall, or a dance club. John has been able to sample a number of different SL experiences.

"Setting aside the L$6 an hour for the moment, How is this helping SL as a whole?"

The the scripter who sold the camping chairs has benefitted, land owners have all benefitted, as have many of the dancers in the club, and shop owners in the makk. LL has benefitted, and John has benefitted. The dancer's side-business has benefitted, and the people who John will eventually buy from, have benefitted. And "SL and a whole" has benefitted by one more member who is more likely to become a consumer of commercial goods.. as opposed to "just another meta-greifer".

And for the uninformed, "Average" camping rates run closer to L$ 18/hr, spiking as high as L$ 36/hr, to as low as L$ 4 / hr.

There was a proposal a while back to only include traffic in the listings (and dwell back then) from premium account holders (and possibly people who buy large amounts of money?) People who put money into second life.

This negates camping chair places as rich people dont usually camp.

It wont harm normal places of entertainment as they give their entertainment to all equally and all places in SL would use the same traffic formulars.
The only places that will be moved down in the listings are those whose traffic comes more from free accounts than normal - camping places
It may reduce traffic for education centers, but education centers could be found using a category in the find so it wont hurt them.

If Linden Labs did use such a system, in theory they could proberbly even bring back dwell, as the places providing entertainment for others are the places causing people to put RL money into SL. (yes I know they wont bring it back)

That all sounds rather sensible, Cortex. A fairer way of preventing camping 'cooking the books' for traffic.

Oh dear, but it is a SENSIBLE solution. So I guess there is no way they will do that then

Hm... Winter, that sounds nice, but... you didn't tell how our John buys some land, a new club opens right next to him two days later, and John finds out that he can't even open his house door anymore due to horrible lag.

Now, let's assume that John arrived some months earlier. He has to register his account and is reluctant to use his credit card, but our John has a paypal account that helps him to avoid using his credit card on the web. And trust me, it makes no difference if John lives in the USA or Europe or Japan. Unless he got his internet access only three days ago, he'll either have a credit card or a paypal account. If not, he's either a person who can't afford to spend a single cent online or a minor. Or he's from Timbuktu or Micronesia, and therefore one of the people for which LL has yet to add an additional payment system like direct debit, to allow them to buy L$ and make both our examples work.

John now walks around in the welcome area and asks a resident where he can have some fun. The helpful resident points him to his favourite club, and also explains how the Find menu works. John arrives at the club, watches the dancers and strippers for a while, chats with a girl and finds out what equipment he needs in order to look haflway decent and have a shot at the fun he's looking for. He also learns that everything in LL costs money, and the quickest way to earn money is to simply buy it. When he realizes that he can almost get L$3000 for a mere $10, he doesn't think twice about the purchase. L$3000! How much can a few clothes and a skin possibly cost?

He searches the classifieds (of course John doesn't look under "places" - when one is looking for a shop, "classifieds" appears to be the right choice). John visits a few places and buys a nice suit, a skin, a shape, a new hairstyle and is already out of money. He purchases another L$3000, to purchase genitals in addition and have some extra money. Since the classified ads pointed John at large main stores, he didn't have to wait ages for vendor textures to load in a laggy camping zone mall. Instead he experienced SL shopping from its best side, fluid and as lag-free as it can be. The vendors delivered his wares without a two minute delay, and his new clothes as well as his skin appeared on him almost instantly. Who knows if our John would have stayed if he had to click the "next" button on a camping zone club+mall vendor 20 times without getting the display texture to load?

John teleports back to the club, generously tips the strippers, flirts with the escorts and finally gets the fun he was looking for. When he inquires about the bad lag at the club, someone tells him that he might want to buy some first land and place a small house there, to have a more or less lag-free own place. Perhaps John will do exactly that tomorrow.


Where's the difference to your example?

- The dance club owner has rightfully earned his increased ranking from John's visit. And John spent the same amount of money there. But the club actually has to offer quality content to get a high ranking as well as visitors due to word-of-mouth-advertising. This requires a little more work and thought than simply putting up 20 camping chairs, but not only the club owner and his guests will profit from the nicer ambiance - also LL and every other SL business, since new residents who visit a club like that are more likely to stay in SL. The dancers earned even more tips, since John had already bought and spent money and knew about the relative value of the Linden dollar.

- The shop owners benefit even more from this system. They realize that a single main store with good advertising is enough, they don't have to open branch stores in every mall and club area. The money they save is spent on more land and perhaps even an island at some point, since they want a lag-free shopping experience for their customers. Perhaps they'll fill the additional land with a nice park area or another attractive public place. Again, LL benefits from this too since the game presents itself from its best side for new residents who shop around and explore.

- The scripter didn't sell any camping chairs, but he'll get hired by club owners to produce something to make their club special - since clubs have to be special in this system. They can't count on easy newbie traffic anymore. Perhaps our scripter will develop some fancy disco lights or a better dancing stage instead.

- Only the casino owner missed out, but if our John is into gambling he'll visit a casino at some point too.

The main difference is an overall increase of quality time in SL. The clubs are designed with more thought and uniqueness. The traffic is reduced to actual visitors without any camping chair zombies. As a side effect, those visitors are all alive, able to respond and chat with other newcomers. Don't know how others feel about it, but if a laggy zombie club would be my first SL experience, I'm not too sure that I'd stay. Giant laggy malls make room for actual shops, LL sells more land and earns more advertising fees, the land owners are happier since not every 10th resident tries to make a living with the camptrafficlagclubplusmall-idea. And, above all - there are a lot less minors and griefer alts on the grid, since the account verification is still in place. One would think, now that we have our million residents we could go back to those times.


/Edit: Btw, I visited some of those clubs or rather camps, since I was asked to rent shops space there. There were some dancers on the stage and lots of camping folks around. I didn't see anyone in the built-in mall, so I made up my mind pretty fast. Also, I didn't want my scripted wares to be associated with such a lag. One lag-free main store has to be enough for me.

Putting his credit card on file would have cost him absolutely nothing and he would have had $250 starting out (10-20 hours worth of camping).

John starts out with $0, in order to even get the $10 he'd need to bet with he has to spend 40-50 minutes camping. Casinos are set up in such a way that the chance of leaving with less than you came in (after camping) is more likely than leaving with more than you came in.
John would be able to place all of 2 bets on low gain slot machines (assuming he doesn't fall for the scheme of betting to increase dwell chair payout). Chances of him walking out with the $0 he came in with is far more realistic than walking out with $100.
All in all camping will leave John with a rather sour taste in his mouth when he realizes he just spent an hour and a half of his life sitting on a chair and he's likely to be rather disillusioned and bored at this point.

This would actually be a positive experience, if only for that fact that there's someone to interact with there, rather than a bunch of zombies.
However, it seems more likely that he'll stay near the stage because while camera skills are invalueable, most new people struggle with it or simply skipped that part of orientation because it does take some time to get the hang of.

Only a very small minority makes that jump, which isn't actually a problem. Before the all-out there were still free accounts, but since nearly everyone had a credit card on file then, buying L$ was only a single click away, and looking at anyone who signed up before June, it's evident most have spent money on SL at one point or another.
LL's reason for open sign-ups isn't to encourage people to try SL out for free (it's always been free), it's to let those without means of payment try it out, no credit/paypal means no way of ever buying L$.

LL makes $1 on a buy of $20 worth of LL. The fact that they'd ever see much more than that is wishful thinking.

All in all John's experience hasn't been the best, he realizes he wasted all his time camping for nothing (buying L$ gave him insight in exactly how little camping made him), did have an enjoyable time at the club, but because he stayed camping had very little chance for any kind of social interaction.

Take away camping and the story changes dramatically. Instead of sitting on a chair for an hour and a half, John would have gone wandering about and very likely to run into something that impressed him (wow, I could build something like that too?). Arriving at the dance club, he finds there an ongoing event and he could win $250 by wearing a funny hat (wasn't there one of those in the freebies he picked up?). Finding that the other guys there don't bother to fit the theme (what's up with that? guys don't like paying dress-up? ) and being the socialable type (also he can tip with the $250 he got for putting his credit card down) he wins and walks out with at least what he came in with. Even if he doesn't win, he'll have had a good and fun time interacting with live people.

It seems the first few hours (and beyond that) are crucial in determining whether someone ends up being yet another zombie, or immerses themself whichever way into SL. If your first experiences revolved around nothing else except how much L$ you need to have to buy this and that little thing, then yes, the whole free money thing is what they'll want. If it revolved around actually enjoying their time on SL, they're going to end up wondering why you'd want to sit in a chair for a penny when you could be out having fun.

That's true. The camping chairs ruin a lot here, since they give the impression that camping would be the "normal" way to start out and make some money.
Many new residents have played MMORPGs before; unless someone hints at the fact that buying L$ is more or less the way to go for every "non-crafter" (and not any more expensive than paying a monthly $15 for a MMORPG subscription), they'll likely start their SL life with a disappointing camping experience.

The original post, though, was complaining about lag.

"Deserved" traffic causes just as much lag as "undeserved" traffic.

The only solution is to improve the scaleability of sims, so that the crippling lag levels just don't crop up.

You're assuming that people willingly accept the nature of the Linden dollar. Some people do, but my experience has been that many very new users don't.

Many users just have a built-in resistance to the idea of paying real money for virtual goods. Moreover, many of them are looking for some sense of striving towards a goal, and are nonplussed by the idea that they can either buy money and have their goal right away, or not buy it and (assuming they don't want to become businesspeople) never have it.



But the problem is, it isn't enough. Rental stores work There's a reason why RL businesses spend so much arranging walk-by trade. Moreover, they're usually cheaper than the corresponding land, and you don't have to take time out to build a store (or pay to have one built for you). You don't have to worry about your products being judged by your store build (even if you don't enjoy making buildings) because since someone else built the mall, it doesn't reflect on you.

Advertising effectively is very difficult and expensive (classifieds are up to US$100 or more a week now?) and as with many "built-in" things, it tends to just leave you in a 1000-way tie.



And LL have just made this very unlikely with the island tier penalty.



The problem is that the key point of a club is that there's lots of people there to socialise with, but if there are a lot of people around then what you can do is extremely limited because of the heavy lag level.

Also, remember that the "special" club which is successful and has 30 visitors generates just as much (if not more) lag than the club with 30 full camping chairs.

Those camping chairs truly do suck. There really isn't much money involved, it feels like begging, and what exactly can you do with the 16L you just earned for sitting there a full hour anyway? Nobody talks, few people interact at all. It's just sitting and doing nothing to earn some money. Bleh. Boooorrrriiiiing. And not really very economical either. Most people that come to SL don't come here to just sit in a chair and do nothing at all. And yet, the options for actual real money are so few here.

Yeah, John could pay out however much rl cash to get some Lindens, and he probably will a few times. But John, like many people here, lives on a shoestring budget in real life and can't really afford to pay out that much money. So he does it a few times and then realizes how fast it goes! He looks at the transaction on his credit card statement and he realizes he has nothing of actual value to show for the amount of money that he spent. He can't afford to live in SL.

John tries to make it without spending RL money here. He tries to find ways to earn the great golden Linden, but opportunties are few and far between. He's new at content creating and heck, for the sake of arguements we'll say he's danged good at it! But those upload fees are quite a bit, and everything he sells, other sell also. There isn't really much of a profit in it for him. He considers buying an island to sell his wares or services but then sees the initial set up fees followed by the monthly fees and he about has a coronary.

So John realizes he has two choices. Purchase Lindens, or go somewhere else. Yeah, he could make do with the freebies, but he looks goofy in freebies and he likes nice things. He wants the opportunity to earn those nice things but is unable to. He finds the stress of the economic situation in SL even more burdensome than the one in RL. So what does he do?

John leaves.

Buh bye John.

Then Joan leaves. And the wonderful creators who are so good start disappearing one by one cause they can no longer afford this great place either. And we can sit here and scream and blame the corporations as much as we like. Won't do any good. It isn't really their fault you see. It's the fault of those that live here.

There is another alternative to every single situation that was put forth here. Some people, just as in RL are leaders. And some are followers. Some were meant to emply, and some were meant to be employed. Create more jobs, more opportunities. There has got to be some product or service that you think is needed in SL that isn't available! Create that product or service. Partner with others. Find ways to offer employment opportunities. Give altnernatives to the cursed camping chairs.

And for our corporations which I wish were reading this but probably aren't, how about giving something back to the SL community other than your name brand marketing strategy of rl products? Hire representatives from within this realm. Marketing directors, PR reps, etc. Remember that you are entering into a fully functional economic system and for this system to survive, everyone has to give back to it in some way shape or form. Yeah, you can afford to spend however much buying lindens, though I suspect you won't need to. You can afford those land set up fees and monthly upkeep. You get to write it off on your taxes as marketing expenses. So actually *do* something with it other than putting up a building and walking away.

Don't like the camping chairs? Neither do I. How about we do something about it?

Well, I'm a bit heartened to see it's not just me. ;}

I am loathe to move, since I spent a lot of time building my place and the games in it are not very portably scripted, and the neighbourhood was very nice until the casino went up....

I guess it's the only thing to do in the near term, though, and a kick in the butt to write portable scripts, which will make it easier to ``commercialize my product''. To be honest, the whole commercial slant to SL brings me down, but it's to be expected. After all, it's "Our World, Our Imagination". Or lack of it.

For the long term, I think Graciella has a good idea there. I'll be thinking about employing greeters and finders to bring people to my games. Maybe I'll be able eventally to charge enough to cover the cost of my employees. Until then, I'm finding the poker games in SL pretty easy to beat, so far.

What gets me though, is the mindset that says:
``It's possible to make L$ in SL, therefore I won't do anything in SL unless it will make me some L$."
Do people apply that logic in RL? Oh crap!
never mind....

Our World, Our Imagination, indeed.....

First, what is it about your scripts that make them non-portable? If you have lines in your scripts with particular locations, just change those lines to the correct locations. If you have them linked with other scripts and such, same thing. Takes a bit of time and effort, yes, but still.

And why commercialize your products? think about it. Somebody wants to play a game that you designed yourself. They like this game and payout is high. do youwant them to have the ability to play it somewhere else because you made it more portable and people bought it and were putting it up in their places?

Er... okay so maybe not a good enough example since the guy next door runs a Casino, you probably aren't marketing games and all.

There's a little guy down the street from me that sells the best tacos in the world.... out of a truck. He's got a complete kitchen set up in the back of a delivery type truck and he makes everything from scratch right there. Little overhead for him, easy to monitor and control and he has customers that line up the block just for his tacos. When asked why he did it this way the answers were simple. Cost of an actual location was too high. Employee overhead was too much. But mostly, he didn't want to give the ability of other people, his employees, to control his final product quality.

He's very successful, and he's an example of someone that refuses to commercialize.

Unfortunately, SL is beginning to experience a problem that was seen and dealth with in RL long ago. Business and Residential don't mix well. That's why zoning laws were created and enforced. I think the time will come when the same will have to be implemented in SL.

Another alternative just hit me and so I'll post it for discussion and thought:

Maybe LL could fix the Traffic system so that it doesn't "score" for people who are just loitering.

It wouldn't do to use the current Idle-detection routines because those are completely pwned already - it's pretty trivial to not get booted off SL for Idling while you're camping.

Instead, check for real interactions with the world - either people moving themselves around (not "being moved" - camping chairs could very simply shuffle around a bit to beat that), talking (even if it's not on channel zero - i.e. if they're talking to a script), interacting with scripted objects (talking to them, using menus, clicking on Touch-sensing objects), building, etc.

It wouldn't be necessary to "chuck people out for Idling" for failing these tests - just don't count them as being Traffic. I have no aversion to venues pimping their traffic with mass-games (whether that's Tringo, something like SecondFortune @ the Shelter, or this new SLTrivia distributed game thing), or shopping malls, or just people sitting round chatting. It's the "sit down, walk away from PC, waste sim resources" vibe of most camping chair venues which I think needs to change.

Even if this sort of change causes venues to switch to chairs which prompt you to interact with them a bit, it will raise the bar enough that the newbies who want to get a tiny foothold can still do it, but only for as long as they can be bothered to do so "in person". It is my unfounded but reasonable-feeling speculation that such use wouldn't be as sim-clogging.

Maybe even rig it so that you score a "presence point" (not necessarily equal to one unit of Traffic, you'd want some kind of multiplier or divider or extra layer of maths) for every 5 minutes that someone is on your land, but only up to a maximum of say 30 minutes per visit so that there's no merit in getting people to camp solidly in one place for hours and hours. Possibly even go as far as limiting the awardable Traffic per Person per Land per Day - so even if the camper leaves and comes back, they don't score you any more Traffic for your location on that day. That would seem like it would reward both bringing lots of different people in for a reasonable length of visit, and also give props for having a destination which people come back to regularly, but would cap the "traffic value" of someone that sits on their pixels for 8 hours a day so they're no more valuable than someone who comes to a gameshow for an hour.

(the "harshly limit the traffic from each visitor" idea could be used with the "activity-test for Traffic awarding" idea, or just as a restriction on the current traffic measurement system)

The problem with your suggestion is that it would quite possibly kill SL overnight if it were possible for (most/anyone willing) residents to make a living in SL (no need to buy L$).

L$ have no intrinsic value, it's only when someone else actually buys them in exchange for US$ that you get any value for them. If noone (or a significant less amount of people) is buying L$, then noone can cash their L$ to pay the bills or is forced to sell at an (to them) undesirable exchange rate.

The - still continuing - trend is actually to move away from being able to earn money in world and to force anyone to buy L$. Dwell/developer incentive was cut at about or before the time I joined, stipends for basic accounts have long been cut and premium is clearly progressing to a point where it won't come with any stipend whatsoever.

The commonly used suggestion that anyone can eventually build something that others will buy is cleary not a workable and realistic model either. If everyone is able to make something of value than the SL economy degrades to a barter system where I will buy an animation from you in exchange for this couch I just made.

SL can't survive without a necessary and steady stream of money in which a mass of consumers buy L$, and a small number of sellers cash out and you'll find that minority very vocal in opposing any way that benefits consumers or would let them earn L$ without buying them.

I don't think camping chairs should be banned... what should be changed is this:

No more popular places list
No more traffic results in places search
No more SL casinos (because they are 100% illegal)

You're right, the casinos aren't solely to blame: the strip and 'escort' clubs are culpable as well.