Aviation - Beyond a joke LL - please sort this.

[NikCruze]

Since the last update nearly two weeks ago aviation has gone beyond a joke.

Sim crossings aside,  planes are throwing up script errors and randomly spasming out for no particular reason.

 

I like many others have invested a great deal in airplanes & now it seems they are useless & all that money wasted!

Also after glitching out, many many times the avatar becomes IMMOBILE and cannot be turned needing a relog to rectify.

Why oh why do you, LL, get things pretty much stable and then go pull something like this?

I for one will not be investing another penny into SL until these problems are dealt with properly.

I really hope this is sorted out soon as it has affected greatly the aviation community and to some extent the transport community as a whole. Please LL, look  at what you did, look at the outcomes & rectify as is necessary.

 

[Lovinglebonalways]

I have to agree it, its very upsetting.  So many of us have spent a lot of Lindens on things that have now became really useless. I hope LL will take a look into this and fix it.  Its very frustrating when you become immobile (not able to move sideways at all) and have to relog all the time.

[Monster Mode]

 Week after week there has been a decrease of performance that reached a deplorable impasse. Aircraft crashed, boats do not sail , they fly or sink. Often the avatar also loses mobility ....

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Sorry, no Lindens here.  This is a resident to resident forum.  The only place they monitor is in the Technology Forum  - Server Subforum right after a rollout.    Filing a JIRA report is your only way to communicate with them about issues such as this.

 

[Fortnight Baxton]

Let's get a admin on that before people start talking like they're in some sort of position of authority. Besides the Jira is unreliable in getting into contact with LL.

[Perrie Juran]

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Fortnight Baxton wrote:

Let's get a admin on that before people start talking like they're in some sort of position of authority. 

Besides the Jira is unreliable in getting into contact with LL.

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I hate to say this but the JIRA is more reliable than this Forum for contacting LL.

And for getting an answer.

(we agree that support in SL is very poor)

[PeterCanessa Oh]

2 years ago the OP thought ranting in the forum was the way to get LL's attention.  Must have worked, he's still doing it.  LL must be wondering why something SL was never designed for and they had no part in suddenly doesn't work.  Bet they're all over that right now, what with all the details the OP provides and everything.

Or not.

[PS: 2 years ago the OP rejected the same alternatives we're suggesting now - the whole thread is an exercise in futility.  Pie, please say something apposite, you have a knack for cheering me up]

[Vania Chaplin]

Perrie Juran wrote:

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(we agree that support in SL is very poor)

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mmm, I disagree. To be very poor, it must be about 500% better.

[Pie Serendipity]

Sorry Peter, I don't want to tempt Rob Tish back out of his self-imposed exile by further comments on the pointlessness of using airplanes in a virtual world where you don't need them to fly.

Instead, have this uplifting tale of a plane crash.

[Storm Clarence]

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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Fortnight Baxton wrote:

Let's get a admin on that before people start talking like they're in some sort of position of authority. 

Besides the Jira is unreliable in getting into contact with LL.

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I assume you are referring to me since you posted right after I replied to the OP.  Note that I have never claimed that I had any authority.  Just tried to give the OP some friendly advice on where to go with his complaint.

Sorry to burst your bubble but there are no administrators only moderators who will not post in these threads either.   You and the OP are talking to a brick wall when it comes to communicating with anyone official.  Moderators are not "Lindens" either.  They are lower level employees whose sole job is to moderate here.  That means moving posts to appropriate areas, deleting spam and suspending or banning people that break the Community Guidelines rules.

LL actually relies on experienced volunteer residents to answer questions here. 

Sadly there is NO way to contacting LL for anything other than billing issues, if you are a resident except support tickets, abuse reports,, the Jira, and if  you are premium, with live chat.  Live chat mostly tells you to file a support ticket, abuse report or Jira and can only handle some inquiries and minor problems.  You can't even call there because the operator will not put you through to anyone.  Snail mail, probably mostly goes in file 13. 

[Awe Thor]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

Sadly there is NO way to contacting LL for anything other than billing issues, if you are a resident except support tickets, abuse reports,, the Jira, and if  you are premium, with live chat. 

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Erm, you are not entirely correct in this respect.

Actually, the format of the LL email address is in the public domain, as are the real life names of LL employees, so it is very simple to contact the relevant employees.

Most Lindens and Linden representatives with non-Linden surnames can also be IMd and sent messages via their private feeds, since most don't seem to understand the privacy settings and have made no adjustments to the default settings to restrict incoming communications.

Whether they actually respond is another matter. Whether they respond in a meaningful, or helpful manner, is yet another.

[Qwalyphi Korpov]

I have this tiny clarrification to add:

There are 33 'Community Managers.'   Most of them are specific Lindens.  However some are generic Lindens and some aren't Lindens at all.  Although the non Lindens are probably really Lindens - if you know what I mean. 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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Awe Thor wrote:

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

Sadly there is NO way to contacting LL for anything other than billing issues, if you are a resident except support tickets, abuse reports,, the Jira, and if  you are premium, with live chat. 

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Erm, you are not entirely correct in this respect.

Actually, the format of the LL email address is in the public domain, as are the real life names of LL employees, so it is very simple to contact the relevant employees.

Most Lindens and Linden representatives with non-Linden surnames can also be IMd and sent messages via their private feeds, since most don't seem to understand the privacy settings and have made no adjustments to the default settings to restrict incoming communications.

Whether they actually respond is another matter. Whether they respond in a meaningful, or helpful manner, is yet another.

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For the last several years, this is the only time you are likely to get even a form letter reply that says file a support ticket or jira.

 

L

[NikCruze]

Well thanks for all  the comments advising where to go etc.

 

Yeh I could  write a jira but sometimes just venting on a forum feels good y'know & this problem for which I have spent a lot of money on for a hobby I enjoy(ed) really felt like needing to be vented in the public eye, ie a forum.

Would just be nice to see LL doing updates that don't mess up an already working part of the system per se.
I am pretty confident that they will fix the scripting probs with flying & indeed today felt a lot smoother when I took one out for a spin so hopefully they have already made some adjustments.

If they could test for these things beforehand though it would stop a lot of frustration, just bug tested there updates more thoroughly before releasing on the global grid.

[Dillon Levenque]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

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Awe Thor wrote:

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

Sadly there is NO way to contacting LL for anything other than billing issues, if you are a resident except support tickets, abuse reports,, the Jira, and if  you are premium, with live chat. 

---

Erm, you are not entirely correct in this respect.

Actually, the format of the LL email address is in the public domain, as are the real life names of LL employees, so it is very simple to contact the relevant employees.

Most Lindens and Linden representatives with non-Linden surnames can also be IMd and sent messages via their private feeds, since most don't seem to understand the privacy settings and have made no adjustments to the default settings to restrict incoming communications.

Whether they actually respond is another matter. Whether they respond in a meaningful, or helpful manner, is yet another.

---

For the last several years, this is the only time you are likely to get even a form letter reply that says file a support ticket or jira.

 

L

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Overlooking the fact that pigs can fly in SL along with everyone else, this is a very cool picture—since to our knowledge pigs CANNOT fly in RL. I had to go and look for myself just to be sure that was LL's office, and found out that gray sign on the right of the entrance says 'Second Life'.

Those of you who like Google Maps and Street View will find the evidence at 945 Battery Street (an old street name in San Francsico; I believe it precedes the quake).

[Zoot Beaumont]

Totally agree with you Nic.

I am at the point of leaving SL. i spend a lot of money with buying planes.
The last week was really horrible.
This morning I tried again to fly a plane. Could not set my dyn cam because of a sript error  :  Script trying to clear camera parameters but PERMISSION_CONTROL_CAMERA permission not set!

Finally got it working and on the very first crossing my plane starts to spin like crazy and fell out of the air...

I am done with SL  

[NikCruze]

Yup Zoot this was exactly what i was experiencing & once out the plane I would most times have to relog as  avatar could not even move, it just was static.

 

On the up side though I flew out today & there seems to be some improvement.

I took off from holly & through several sims returning to the airport & landing no probs so maybe they have addressed this issue already. Lets hope so!

 

I think scripting is still prone to play up but I've turned off script error reporting for now as it was just getting too much.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

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NikCruze wrote:

... sometimes just venting on a forum feels good y'know...

.

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See, that's fine and understandable, venting we can all sympathise with.

In your OP, though, you have "Why oh why do you, LL," and "Please LL, look  at what you did" - which rather makes it look as if you're trying to address LL.  That ain't us.

It also remains the point that the very fundamental structure of SL (and OpenSim) is the 'sim' - fixed at 256m in SL.  The IT handshake and data-handoff for changing sims has got better and better over the years but is always going to be a weak point.  No problem for walking or even flying at avatar speeds, but as I pointed out in another thread a WWII aircraft would typically need to cross 40 sims per minute!  It isn't going to happen and, whatever you as an individual group may have spent on aircraft, LL isn't going to rebuild the system from the ground up (pun) to make aviation any easier.

SL wasn't designed for it,

SL wasn't built for it.

LL didn't do it.

Some residents got together and built/operated something for which SL isn't a suitable platform.

Congratulations to them for their persistance and achievement.

But when it doesn't work like you want it to it isn't going to be a priority for LL.

Because SL is, inherently, not a suitable platform for aviation.

So you should be suprised (and impressed) at what DOES work..

Or back-up your "threats" and leave for somewhere that does support aviation properly.

 

[Perrie Juran]

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PeterCanessa Oh wrote:

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It also remains the point that the very fundamental structure of SL (and OpenSim) is the 'sim' - fixed at 256m in SL.

 

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This is something I have wondered about, SIM (Region) size.

Maybe it was a hardware and software limitation that dictated the 256m when SL was started.

But does that limitation still exist today?  Consider the number of SIMs (Regions) per Server today. 

Four Full Regions per server

Eight Homestead.

Sixteen Open Space.

What stops keeping each Region on its own Simulator.  Make it Four Regions (or 8 or 16 depending on Region type) per Simulator with them divided like Parcels are today.  You'd elliminate a lot of Region Crossings that way.

(Trying to be clear as I can be, the way we use the terms can confuse people at times, but I think I'm making my point)

[Robert13111]

Interestingly, it is not just aviation. Motorcyles and HUDs have been doing the same.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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PeterCanessa Oh wrote:

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It also remains the point that the very fundamental structure of SL (and OpenSim) is the 'sim' - fixed at 256m in SL.

 

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This is something I have wondered about, SIM (Region) size.

Maybe it was a hardware and software limitation that dictated the 256m when SL was started.

But does that limitation still exist today?  Consider the number of SIMs (Regions) per Server today. 

...

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I haven't looked at the (OpenSim) server-side code in any detail so I can't give you definitive answers.  As far as I know some OpenSim, or similar SL-derived, grids have a different or even variable sim-size so it would appear that 256m is not a fixed limit.  The number of sims per server is definitely adjustable, with typical examples that you mention.

The thing is it is technically better for hand-offs for the sims concerned to be on the same machine - the actual data doesn't have to move, after all - but better for performance (apart from sim-crossings) to have a whole server dedicated to one sim.  The tradeoff is something that LL can do something about - which is why there are the different types of region - but who to favour?  Ideally something like aviation, and other travel-targetted things, would want BIG sims with relatively little in them.  Sims designed for walking-pace want detail rather than space.

Every program that attempts to map a large space has to make a decision between size/complexity of 'scene' versus complexity for scene changes.  I'm sure there that if they were designing SL from scratch LL would reach different decisions but almost any change at the moment would render whole areas unusable for existing users of one group or another.  It remains the case that SL is designed to divide resources by area, not by character or any other way things could be sliced and diced.

It would be interesting to hear from anyone with more experience of running another grid, but I doubt that they read this forum.

[Madelaine McMasters]

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PeterCanessa Oh wrote:

It would be interesting to hear from anyone with more experience of running another grid, but I doubt that they read this forum.

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Right. Even the ones who run this grid don't read this forum.

;-)

[NikCruze]

Hi Peter, let me just go back to your post a sec.....

 

(quote) "Or back-up your "threats" and leave for somewhere that does support aviation properly."

 

Let me make it perfectly clear. I made no threats but simply stated my feelings at how things can go from 'relatively working well' to 'completely messed' up in the course of some updating & that I personally felt LL could be a little better at updating than that by keeping the working parts working while still advancing the evolving newer material,  the term for this being 'compatibility' & not forgetting of course, pre release 'bug testing' which I believe is how the gaming industry (by comparison) survives as a thriving & well oiled machine.

If a gaming company released an add on pack for one of there products (the sims for example) & it was full of bugs which made the original 'not work so well, if at all' then of course there popularity would dwindle & people would not be happy. I am actually very happy with a lot that LL has done recently in certain areas it is simply the 'one step forward then two steps back' problems that occur which frustrate  the majority of SL users in general I think.

 

Also you say  Sl isn't made for aviation, i think that you limit it to easily, it actually can (when running smoothly) be extremely enjoyable as also is sailing because the people  who are passionate about it  do there  utmost best to make it as 'peak performance' as possible for the  user who has similar interests, they don't see limitations, they  see challenges & things to overcome & I applaud them for it. Maybe you should raise the bar higher yourself for what  is achievable & attainable? Just a suggestion.

Good creators always advance, never receed & as much as I love LL for all the good things they  bring it frustrates me when you log in one time & suddenly see a working mechanism broken. Thankfully they do work it seems at putting it back together again eventually but I digress, a little more pre release testin wouldn't hurt before going 'alpha'.

 

So again Peter let me make clear, I made no threats, simply stated some frustration about the mechanism/scripting breaking down from developer changes that had been made (though since posting this it does seem improved a little from what it was) & I applaud LL for makingprogress with SL, they put a lot of effort into it, it is just when it 'regresses' that frustrates.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

I am probably taking your venting (quite right too) too seriously.  Specifically, I was reading it as a demand for special attention to a very non-core function of SL.  Sailing is one of the things I have enjoyed most in SL but stormy weather' has led to the cancellation of many a race I had been looking forwards to.  SL being an ever-changing 'beta' is something we have to accept, including limiting the investment we make in the platform.  LL have spared me from ever spending any real money here as one of the things they are incapable of doing is a payment system like everyone else on the internet (of course, that also means I can't take any out).

My apologies.