Pathfinding active.. sot of

[Keera Woyseck]

Pathfinding Server Rollout

 

Pathfinding is rolling out on all regions today and may have an impact on the performance of your regions as well as introduce some new bugs.   INFO: What is pathfinding? Click here

Pathfinding  & Region Performance Once your region has been updated today, it will have Pathfinding running on it. Until your region has been optimized, this may have a performance impact. Linden Lab has assured me the impact will be at worst 4ms on main regions and 1ms on homesteads and at best won't be noticed. In layman's terms, this is around 18% max of region performance. In order to optimize your region, you will need a viewer with pathfinding tools; currently these tools are only available in a LL Beta Viewer.
Your options will be to A) optimize your region; B) turn Pathfinding off on your region; or C) do nothing. Instructions for the first two options below...
Note: Only Region Owners and Estate Managers can work with Pathfinding. Only Region Owners and Estate Managers can enable/disable Pathfinding on a region. Parcel owners can optimize their parcels on a Pathfinding enabled region. Instructions to optimize your regions: Download the LL Beta Viewer (Win, Mac, Linux) and go through the process of optimizing your region / parcel.
Turn Pathfinding off 1. Get sim console open. Phoenix: Go to the top menu bar, Advanced > Consoles > Region Debug Console. (Press Ctrl-Alt-D to enable the Advanced menu if you do not already have it enabled.) Firestorm: Go to the top menu bar, Develop > Consoles > Region Debug Console. (Press Ctrl-Alt-Q if you do not have Develop menu enabled.)
2. In the console window that opens, type (without the quotes), "set dynamic_pathfinding false", and press enter.
3. Restart your region.
Note: More information about Pathfinding can be found here: http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/pathfinding

New bugs you should be aware of! Along with Pathfinding come changes to the Havok Physics engine, which have introduced some new bugs we think you should be aware of, including issues with some vehicles, physics, phantom and sculpts. You can view the list of issues we are aware of at the following link. None of these issues can be fixed by our support team: http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/pathfinding_server_bugs
Note: Unfortunately there are quite a few Linden JIRAs on this list that have been set hidden from public view. There is nothing we can do about that beyond offering a description of the issue.

 

Questions & Answers from Linden Lab Yesterday I sent a list of questions off to LL and received the answers back this morning. These questions and answers may be of interest to you, as well, so I've put them online here. http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/pf_questions

[wiked Anton]

Thank you for this post, it has to be one of the most shortest to the point and imforative posts i have ever read. I love it when people dont go into a lot of jargon and mumbo jumbo to show of their smarts. "just get to the point and keep it so everyone can understand it" just sayin....

[Innula Zenovka]

The Phoenix/Firestorm blog piece linked to should certainly be read in conjunction with Falcon and Lorca Linden's comments at the recent Pathfinding UG meeting, as reported by Nalates in her blog.

Essentially, optimising your region is only really important, at the moment, if you're planning to have pathfinding objects on it.   It's a good idea to optimise it anyway, at some point, because LL is considering introducing at some time in the future  some "neat new things " (unspecified) that will use that data, but it can wait.   

Otherwise, if you don't optimise it right now, the only things that are likely to be affected are pathfinding objects, which won't behave as well as they might if the sim were optimised.   Other things shouldn't be affected.  

Turning off pathfinding, at least from what Falcon and Lorca are saying, is very unlikely to fix any problems your sim may be having, and leaving it on with the region unoptimised isn't at all likely to cause any.    It shouldn't normally be necessary, apparently.

Falcon has also been commenting in the Pathfinding Q&A thread in the Server Forum.

 

[Maelstrom Janus]

pATHFINDING IS A DISASTER FOR USER ON LIMITED GB ALLOWANCES FROM THEIR ispS ..CHECK THE jiras. The worst thing thats been introduced in sl .....

[Maelstrom Janus]

Turn pathfinding off NOW until it works. My GB usage has been pushed to the limit by this rubbish which is absolutely no use to this user. Lag has also been apalling since it was introduced. Lindens keep introducing this rubbish and doing nothing to rectify the stability issues and financial issues which are slowly turning the entire map yellow. As for me, Im now trying to work out how many minutes a day i  can now spend in sl....My ISP generously increased my allowance - at a price of course...but this month my usage is done for if I wandered into sl and stayed for any length of time the worst case scenario is that I would be paying my isp an extra £200 for the usage over my allowance ! Needless to say I doubt whether linden labs would be prepared to foot this bill even though this problem is THEIR fault !!

 

If lindens dont do something to rectify this soon there wont be any point me paying my tier  (or that matter monthly premium account payment) for the decreasing amount of time I can come into sl. You should see the megabytes piling on on a broadband usage meter. My usage hasnt changed but since pathfinding was introducing my daily usage has soared from 1- 2 gb to 8- 10 !!

 

As usual the upper echelon users have the right to turn this off on their islands - not so those of us who simply own bits of mainland...

The feature is an absolute disaster as far as Im concerned and need to be laid to rest now.,...

[Innula Zenovka]

If SVC-8124 (which I assume is what you're talking about) is to do with Pathfinding in general, why does it only affect sims that are running on Magnum or sims that are in draw distance of them?     I'd have expected it to affect all sims were that the  case.

[Cully Andel]

Actually if you read the comments other servers are mentioned too, and that question should really be aimed at LL.

 

There are too many comments on that JIRA by too many people who know what they're talking about to just dismiss it. This could cause seriuos problems for LL and SL if it's not addressed. Not everyone can afford to take up unlimited broadband, and not all unlimited broadband goes uncapped. And yet, why should they? This has been a very sudden and very dramatic increase which I think will catch a lot of people out when they get their monthly bills from their ISP's.

If premium members and tier payers can't afford the usage for SL, that's yet more people leaving. This is not good and certainly needs to be addressed.

I udnerstand LL aren't going to alter Pathfinding on SL - so I think I for one (or should that be 2) may be saying farewell unless somethngs done

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I have read the comments and -- though I may have missed something -- I thought you had either to be on a Magnum sim or within draw distance of a Magnum sim to be affected by this particuar issue.

I've checked it on my own lands and for friends who'd heard about it and were concerned, and my observations coincide with those of Henri Beauchamp, the creator of the jira:

• it only happens to you if your viewer is connected to one or more RC Magnum region(s), either because you are standing in one, or because some neighbouring region(s) is(are) on RC Magnum and your draw distance is large enough that it causes your viewer to get connected to those neighbours. Of course, the more RC Magnum regions are connected, the worst you get spammed with ParcelOverlay messages.
• But try by yourself: go to islands that are not running RC Magnum and you will not see this issue happening.

[Qie Niangao]

There seem to be widely varying accounts of where this bandwidth-gobbling effect occurs.

What seems to be consistent, however, is that it doesn't arise (much? at all?) with short draw distances, at some remove from sim corners (southern only?).

For lots of reasons, my draw distance is usually very short, and although I've been able to replicate the problem (sometimes, near the corner of a Magnum sim), I've been thinking that it would be responsible to at least warn folks to minimize draw distance until this is resolved.

Also, yesterday at the server user group, Andrew brought up SVC-8124 himself, and said that he was working on it, but a first glance through the code didn't reveal the cause. Much has surely happened since, but at least we know the Lab is actively trying to understand and fix this.

[Maelstrom Janus]

And yet the talk in the firestorm group at least was that Lindens wont bother ...

 

What Im interested in now is whats in all those extrea megs being thrown at us.

 

By the way you might enjoy wandering round sl using a draw distance of 32 m...what pleasure is there to be had in the amazing landscapes and builds in sl...viewer designers might as well just restrict the draw distance and the rest of us may as well stand in a 32 m hollowed out cube... basically the politest word I can think of for this is crap....

[Drongle McMahon]

"I thought you had either to be on a Magnum sim or within draw distance of a Magnum sim to be affected"

That is definately not the case with a region where I have land. It affexts the two southern corners if you are within draw diatance of the corner, so that you can see into the sim diagonally across the corner. None of the six regions joining at these corners, including the one I am on, is Magnum. Some are main channel server and some are Blue Steel.

[Innula Zenovka]

Thanks.   I hadn't realised from your jira comment that Magnum sims weren't involved there -- might be worth making that clear.

I've just been over there and noticed two things.  The first was, when I was by the SE or SW corners of the sim, my bandwidth seemed pretty much as expected until I took my draw distance much over over 124 -- then it started getting crazy.

The other was that I wasn't seeing the "ParcelOverlay reliable" messages that Henri identified.   Rather, I was getting loads of the  LLWorld::addRegion: messages that Dari mentioned seeing in her comment there, which seems to have happened before (and been fixed) back in January, with SVC-7613.    So it may be that there's two separate, but related, issues here, one (apparently) specific to Magnum and one not.

[Drongle McMahon]

Yes. Also it could be the same underlying cause with different manifestations. For example, something causing repeated making and breaking of connection but differences between the server versions meaning a different message appear. I guess we will never know. When they find and fix it, they don't have to tell us what it was.

By the way, I still got the effect at 64m draw distance, although the peak bandwidth was not so extraordinary at that setting. Can't remember exactly, just a few hundred.

I guess the lab is paying for the bandwidth their servers consume and will be just as anxious as we are to find a solution if that means it is costing them money.

 

[Cully Andel]

Does'nt really solve the issue though - just avoid Magnum sims. This shouldn't  be happening full stop. We can't all afford private islands and given that a vast amount of mainland is on magnum, it's pretty hard to avoid.

[161488303349]

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Maelstrom Janus wrote:

And yet the talk in the firestorm group at least was that Lindens wont bother ...

 

What Im interested in now is whats in all those extrea megs being thrown at us.

---

is a bit unfair if people are saying that about linden

what linden said was they werent going to do a rollback of the entire grid to stop it happening. like some people was asking them to do

that they would investigate and see what is the problem and make a fix. that if they just done a rollback then would never know what was the problem or even how to fix it if it happens again

+

i am on a ISP cap plan so it affects me quite bad on some sims that i usual go to. like after the normal dl on teleport then i am normal tick about 4 to 30 onj a empty sim. at the moment is over 1000 in some places even when is only me. i cant afford that. i rather linden fix properly

is a bit of a worry as well that it actual goes over 1000 bc in my viewer i set to 500 and less some days, usual less near end of month bc i am running out of my cap. i get dropped to dialup speed when that happens. is sucky that

i not spend all my cap on SL tho. i do quite a lot of other stuff on the interwebz as well. more on them that on SL really. i have to manage my cap as best i can pretty much all the time

if SL is not throttled to the size i put in the viewer then is really lame

+

seems whats happening is that the servers just sending the same stuff on some next door sims over and over and over

[Leila Refenoir]

PATHFINDER TO THE GIGABYTE TROUGH - suddenly i am now using 5.6GB per day from 1.1GB per day. At a cost of USD6.00 per GB.

Not fair and I am now broke for the rest of the month.  Can't believe it that I have to now monitor my Gb usage all the time  - several times a day  -and no one said this was a side-effect of Pathfinder.

 

[Leila Refenoir]

I gone from 1.1GB per day to 5.6GB per day at a cosy of USD6.00 per GB!!!!!!.  Please  - how do i turn Pathfinder off ?????????   HELP!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!!

 

[Qie Niangao]

The extent to which this is a side-effect of Pathfinding is unknown, as far as I can tell. It does appear to coincide with the rollout of Pathfinding, so it certainly may be related somehow, but that's not clear from any of the technical details that have been posted to the jira. What does seem to be clear from those comments is that turning off Pathfinding on a region has no effect on the bandwidth problem.

[Theresa Tennyson]

The bandwidth problem appears to be caused by having a region that's diagonally to the south of yours in your draw distance, so it mostly appears in the southern corners of Mainland sims or sims in large estates. Happens with all server channels but I think BlueSteel isn't as bad as the others. Shouldn't happen at all in standalone islands and can be controlled in other areas by keeping your draw distance down and staying toward the north of the sim.

[Maelstrom Janus]

Do you know how ridiculous your advice sounds ?? Read it back...stand in this region, face that direction.... we need action from lindens now ... I cant get into sl for the rest of the month..why should I pay a full months tier or a full months premium payment for that ...what annoys me is that this iss ue is of vital importance to users whether their usage is limited or not and we arent getting any info at all.

 

By the way if this thread slides from the top I'll be bumping it till we get some much needed action...

 

[Maelstrom Janus]

Its time someone at Lindens got their finger out started looking at the issues adversely affecting their clients and giving some infomration and actually BE SEEN to be doing something other than promoting other social networking sites and using them to dribble out info people want to see...

[Innula Zenovka]

It clearly is being investigated, though, by Maestro Linden (and, I would think, some others).   I can't imagine LL is any happier about the situation than is anyone else since, while I obviously don't know their financial arragements, I would imagine using all this extra bandwidth to no good purpose is costing them money too.   

What action, other than investigating the problem and fixing it, do you want them to take?

And, ridiculous though it may sound, the issue does only seem to occur in particular circumstances; that is, when you're near the SE or SW corner of a sim, with other sims to the South of it, and your draw distance is such that you can see into several of them.    Then your viewer gets spammed by huge quantities of messages  about Region, Region already exists, Removing Region, and/or  ParcelOverlay reliable (as can be seen if you turn the debug console on).    Anywhere else, particularly on an island with no adjacent regions to worry about, things seem normal.    That seems to me useful information for someone to have, particularly if they're worried their bandwidth until this gets fixed.

 

[Maelstrom Janus]

I want Lindens to shut off pathfinder across the grid...its clearly a major nuisance.... why should the option to shut down be available to some but not others... SIMPLE

[Maelstrom Janus]

All I know is that my gf went to umpteen regions where we own land last night none of em is magnum...Im sure she didnt go out of her way to orient herself in any particular direction...in every one her usage meter went mad...then she went to a region where its turned off...the difference speaks for itself.

 

And even if the info is right who wants to spend their time in sl in specific parts of a region facing a certain way...ridiculous nothing its BLOODY LUDICROUS

[Innula Zenovka]

But turning pathfinding on or off doesn't appear to have any effect on this bug, at least according to people who've tried it.     I've checked this out on an estate of several privately-owned contiguous sims whicht I know all have pathfinding turned off, and got similar results to what I've seen on the mainland.  

It looks to me very like something that happened back in January, well before Pathfinding got out anywhere on the main grid -- see SVC-7613.