I actually have serious question for once On Sim performance

Hello

In looking at entire sims for usage there are two choices

1) get an island
2) buy a mainland sim

I'm still under the impression that the islands have better performance but I could be wrong can anyone tell me for sure if there is a true difference between a new island and a new mainland sim performance wise?

Busy researching options but can't really tell from the info I see. What I can see is you can reboot your island etc yourself if it does lag out but I dont think this feature is available on the mainland (can't remember) if you own the entire sim but I guess I am more interested in performance first.

Let me know thanks

The hardware is identical, AFAIK. One thing about islands is that they don't always have 8 neighbor sims looking into them so people can see across the border..

okay so basically its just bells and whistles and personal prefarance I have to think about thanks

The key difference in performance is capacity. Private sims can hold more people. Mainland sims max out at (approximately) 40 avatars.

In terms of performance that's the difference, I believe. However, there are other differences, too: Neighbours (as mentioned above) and tier fee come to mind.

was sceptic with getting an island at the start after reading the monster thread in the tech forum but i can say 1 thing for sure, screw the mainland, never going back

with all the crap as of late, being able to restart it urself then being at the mercy of ll is worth it alone lol

I think, but could well be wrong, that the reason private islands can deal with more people is because they're isolated (usually) and don't always have neighbors.

Aside from that, why would a class 5 mainland sim perform differently than a class 5 private island sim?

Maybe somebody like Desmond can comment on how their edge sims perform vs ones in the center of a continent..

That not having neighbors is much bigger than you would think. The SL client has to download everything within the draw distance set in preferences, if you are near a sim corner, you are downloading from 4 sims, not just one. I am able to keep my draw distance at 256 when I'm on my sim, but if I go anyplace where there are other sims linked (especially the mainland) I have to drop it back down 128 in order to be able to function. It is a drastic difference.

Understanding the fundamentals of how Second Life technology works and comparing it to what you want to do and your expectations will be the best guide to what to buy in regards to island versus mainland.

The technology answer is deep and time consuming but Meade Paravane touches upon one issue...

"The hardware is identical, AFAIK. One thing about islands is that they don't always have 8 neighbor sims looking into them so people can see across the border.."

Remember in Second Life, "success is failure" when it comes to avatars. Have a something cool that a lot of people want to see or interact with and the more performance will drag as you approach the top end of SL's software capacity, 40 avatars, fewer on low prim islands.

Going back to Meade's statement, seeing and interacting cause performance drag so the more sims around your sim the more that will take place. Islands are only immune to this as long as the ocean is around and not other sims.

"The key difference in performance is capacity. Private sims can hold more people. Mainland sims max out at (approximately) 40 avatars."

This statement is simply false hope, you may have that ability in your Region/Estate controls but it does not mean the SL software, sim or network will handle it.

Currently and oddly, you will find that if you want to buy a mainland sim the prices are much higher in auction than the purchase cost of an island outright. The tier is higher on an island, $ 295, than the mainland, $195. This of coarse is dependent on when and if the Lindens offer more mainland sims in auction, this appears to be sporadic and infrequent.

"okay so basically its just bells and whistles and personal preference I have to think about thanks"

Wilhelm, do more reading about islands or talk to people who own them. The only real and main reasons islands are better for performance, is that you have many controls you do not have in the mainland sims.

• You can get rid of troublesome avatars much better and more completely.
• You can locate and disable scripts, critical ability.
• Once you sell land in mainland sim you are not ever in control of it again, this is not true on an island as you can always reclaim it.

There is no reason that these abilities could not be in mainland sims, the Lindens, for reasons only they know for sure, do not make them available.

Oh and not performance related, but you can terraform in ways you can never do in the mainland. And in the future the new atmospheric renderer will be in place.

As I was writing this Isablan Neva, posted another very good comment.

Since every sim is shared on the 'computer hardware' that runs it, with 3 other 'random' sims there is no way to say if your island sim will outperform mainland sim, it all depends on what other sims are also running on that 'server' computer at the same time.

I was mostly looking for what the sim can handle. I was reading that they can hold more avatars (handle more traffic) but this made no sense to me because I thought they had the same hardware etc as the mainland ones but wanted to double check. I guess if i stuck to owning a single island in the middle of know where its possible I could handle more traffic, but lets say I decide to ad a set of void sims and maybe a second "regular" sim somewhere down the road. Its looking like from what I am reading that performance wise there is no real difference.

fee wise and "feature" wise there is a difference which I knew already just wanted to double check on performance as I am mulling some things over. I probably will end up with an island so i can ad a set of void sims etc and have the option to ad another sim later if I wanted to etc

Anyhow the avatar myth seems to be solved in my little pea brain so this is good

Performance wise there is little difference between an private sim and a mainland sim.

Costwise - most sims at auction go for US$2000 - US$3000, and in world you are looking at LS900,000 (about US$3600) so the initial outlay is twice that of a private sim, although the monthly cost of a mainland sim is cheaper at US$195 per month compared to US$295.

The main advantages of a private sim are

ability to see what scripts or physic collisions are lagging your sim (useful for checking the performance of your own scripts), and kick them off the sim
ability to reboot the sim if there is a problem (mainland you can get to help quickly via the concierge but need to persuade LL to reboot the sim for you, which can take anything from a few minutes to a few days)
no terraform limits (OK, so there is a hard limit of 100m up or down with the terraform tools compared to 4m on mainland)
ability to upload your own terrains (which overcomes the terraform limits) and terrain textures
peace of mind from landbots (you can reclaim land from anyone at anytime so if someone does grab land for sale at the wrong price you can grab it back - actually because of that landbots won't bother you anyway)
ability to send a message to anyone on the sim
sim-wise ban and access lists

Coming soon:

ability to configure whether voice is available on the sim or not
ability to choose when the sim accepts new feature updates

Matthew

Mainland sims are badly lagged by the neighbour sims, since their content has to be displayed as well. Even sound effects spill over the sim borders if you don't restrict the sound. The lag gets noticeably worse in the sim corners, where the content of 4 adjacent sims has to be rendered.

Aside from that, I'd miss the effortless landscaping in Photoshop, the option to stop the day / night cycle in order to have a consistent environmental lighting, and other neat features that Matthew listed above.

Keep in mind the eventual end to the grandfathering...eventuall ALL sims will be US$295/mo.

Personally I wouldn't buy a sim until the server side is made open source and I can physically buy my own server to touch. I expect a service fee to be able to plug into the main grid with that, but that's much more reasonable than paying thousands of dollars a year for something I will never be certain even exists.

Besides I don't want no SF hipster spilling a knock-off microbrew on my island!

(to all Lindens watching from on high...forgive me for I know not what I do!)

and they can charge $125 per server connection
server open source and every one will start to tinker with it so *if* they allow external servers to connect, u get screwed when tp`ing over as the code is incompatible

u really believe they`ll allow ecternal servers be hookedup to their network? highly doubt it, every one will have their own lil "sl" and need accounts every where

Being surrounded by other sims, is a double negative. Irrespective of your draw distances, you will still appear to be seen by anyone in the neighbouring sim, go to a corners and it becomes a tripple negative on the servers, connections etc. To elaborate, imagine 40 ppls on 4 sims, all meeting at the one corner whereby they can all see eachother, thats 160 avatars the sim servers have to cope with, along with your client, particles, scripts, primed hair, chat etc all come into play. Then the assett server starts to precache each avatar in case they cross into an adjoining sim.. so the permutations start to rise as it can't predict which of the 160 ppls will cross into which of the 3 other sims.

Has mental image of 160 avatars all trying to get to that corner...... carnage!

the sims would crash befor u get 20 in each walking to the corner and the other 80 stuck in tp

That's why auditoriums are built on sim corners. More or less works up to about 40/sim. At 50/sim, things get pretty gray (texture loading) and movement is nearly impossible.

One point: impact of neighboring sims is hugely dependent on how busy the neighbors are, especially close to the border. From what I've seen, the vast majority of the impact seems to be image downloading and network: feeding textures to avatars with your sim in view. After those redline, then Havoc tanks, too.

As for allowing interconnect with third-party sims: I would think we're several years from that due to technical complexity, but when it happens some things will have to remain Linden-managed unless/until very major changes are made internally: the "central bank", accounts and avatar identity, asset servers, and top-level grid layout come to mind. One way or another, difficult "namespace" issues.