DISQUS

radar · 1 year ago

I don't pretend to be on a first name basis with the source code underlying the SL grid, but it seems to me that if the problem was really a texture loading one, wouldn't if affect ALL regions? And wouldn't the lindens be able to tell that it's not just openspaces that are affected, but instead ALL sims?

I haven't noticed any huge instability on the grid, I have noticed textures taking forever to load, but the performance other than that has been fine for me. Little lag, no servers crashing, no finding myself standing still unable to move even though SL thinks I'm logged in...

if everything on the grid was crashing then I'd be inclined to believe this, but if the load is truly only excessive on opensim servers, then I have a hard time buying this theory.

gracemcdunnough · 1 year ago

I agree with your logic, but it seems the degradation is grid-wide. Consider yourself lucky, my SL experience since the last release has been abysmal but most especially on the asset serving side.

Still, this is all speculative. We won't know the real story unless LL decides to tell us.

Dale Innis · 1 year ago

Thanks for the link and the insightful comments and thoughts! Are you really an ESFP? :)

I actually have very little inside information about the functioning of the Lab; no more than anyone who regularly haunts Linden office hours and related Plurk streams could pick up. On the other hand I've worked for a technical company for more than twenty years, and I suspect that in these particular aspects the Lab isn't significantly different. :) In any company of significant size, things get forgotten or overlooked, X doesn't know what Y is doing even though they should, extremely important issue R doesn't get discussed because the whole meeting was taken up with trivial issue Q, etc. We are all a comedy of errors!

I would very much like to see more discussion of the technical underpinnings of this; I've suggested on sldev and various JIRAs that the Lab should make sure they've looked at the available technical means to limit how much resource a Open Space sim uses. Maybe they have, and it didn't work for some reason, in which case they should tell us about it to reassure us! Similarly, if the bug that you cite there is really messing things up significantly, they should fix it, and see if that changes the options available to them.

On sldev someone said that this is a business problem, not a technical problem, and so it will have no technical solution. But I don't think that's necessarily, or even obviously, true. Some problems *really are* technical ones, or have significant technical components.

Of course the fact that the Lab is sooooo awful at PR isn't a technical problem. :) So that needs to get fixed through other means...

radar · 1 year ago

i'm just saying still that LL, any service host, should know which of their servers have degraded performance, and i just don't see the lindens lying to this degree. also, when trying to judge performance, most people aren't going to be able to tell the difference between client or server, if the result is lag, slow texture loads, crashing (unless it's a sim crash), etc.

there's a texture loading issue, no doubt. if it's really bogging down the whole network, that would immediately be apparent to the lindens monitoring network traffic. if they don't see that, but they do see problems with OS performance, then i have to believe there are OS performance issues on OS sims that have heavy use.

i think this one has to still be filed under speculation. i can't even file it under "highly likely" given the evidence i see. if i'm wrong, i'll happily admit it when more facts come out, but i don't see it.

jeanricardbroek · 1 year ago

Grace: I am not sure that in this case one issue caused the other. but:

1. The texture lag issue is HUGE, It effects everyone, and LL has been silent for two months as it has become worse and worse, to the point now it is epidemic. What can be done about it? I would guess it has to do with either a bad server side update or a client viewer update, or a combination of both, which would make debugging it very difficult. One suggestion I made to someone was to go back two versions of the client and try that. They reported it fixed the issue, I have not tried it myself but will shortly. I would ask does the old Nicholaz viewer have the same problem? If so then it is all server side? This one issue has created major problems and caused many to say that their Second Life experience is now intolerable. I am sure it is destroying sales in world, since vendor and sales prim textures sometimes stay grey forever now. This certainly has contributed to the unrest in the community and is a reason no one will tolerate a tier increase. If it was a growing economy and sales were booming then people would pay more for there OS sim store/club/house/sailboat/palm tree island but with sales sagging, excuse the language F**k It.

2. This is a real recession now, worldwide real time, and I think that the price raise was well thought out anticipating hard times ahead The risks measured and even the mitigation to massive affections is planned. Just think, In a recession with stalled growth/sales, you must close unprofitable operations like Starbucks did and maximize and grow the best product lines. The least profitable product Linden Lab has is the OpenSpace Sim No you can just buy more servers or grow your way out of recession so those OS servers look like now free servers for the other product lines if you can just get people to abandon them. Ta Da.. Mission accomplished, Now lower the price to 100/sim from 125 and say your listening to customers and again ta da, a better tier price plan of $400/OS sim 4pack $300/sim for a Island and $200/sim for Mainland. Killed two birds with one stone and drove out the most aggressive competition.... Ta Da ~wOOt~ three birds, only one stone... Why think LL is unthinking, ignorent, NO... incompatent maybe, stupid, maybe Only time will tell. am sure this is proactive hardball business 2008-2009 LL style. In this climate who believes a company/person won't intentionally shoot their own kids for a quick fix when jonesing. I bet they have a 30 page, level two CMM complaint plan with risk management practices in place.

3: 1 above +2 above = 3. Disaster: Disaster for the dream driven by the most aggressive new micro-economy players who followed the Pied Piper The aggressive 5000 or so left after the Sheep died, the Million went to Sony, the gamblers/bankers/brokers/moneytraders, and anyone else that built a small business in an area that LL can in the future license lease or sell, like world advertising, now have been given the one two, heave ho. (my best run on sentence ever)

What will be left is a gutted shell, a theme park filled with ugly rides, prizes, tourists and pickpockets.

theshadow99 · 1 year ago

Well I've been around SL for what feels like ages.... and having taken a short break, I can say I do in fact see noticable texture issues on a regular basis.... more so than possibly ever before....

I can quite beleive serious problems inflatign the usage stats....