You Can Never Understand What is Going on In Second Life

[Prokofy Neva]

This is just a simple observation, not about Sansar or conspiracy theories or anything weird like that, just about how hard it is to judge the economy and society when you have free press or democratic government. And by that I mean things like an auction where the names of the bidders and buyers are on record in city hall; the statistics for how many Premiums there are from LL itself; the statistics on how many people spent more than 1L in world that month (we used to get that); the last 10 purchases products (that's on the MP but that's not as useful always); the number of uniques monthly; the number of concurrent users, etc. etc. We have NONE of that anymore and live in the dark under molasses.

As I often point out, the chief reason I run a rentals company and try to play virtual inkeeper is so that I can understand how society works in virtual worlds, and how businesses and civic groups work, and so on, and how our future will be formed when we all live in virtuality -- which I think we will. That is, you can't have "making money" as a chief motive for anything in SL in my view, and if you cover costs and have a little income to pay some bills, great, but that can't be your reason  given the exigencies.

So it's interesting to me with this "hobby" to have lots of cases, and information, and data points just in an informal way -- I'm not an academic and don't care to study it formally in any way. 

So I ask myself: Why Has Second Life Fallen Under a Barrel of Molasses?

For a week, the game doesn't work, there are new patches, you are ground to a halt, you crash, you can't move, even to pay somebody $1 takes 15 minutes to "turn over"; you can't buy anything at a merchants' event even if the sim isn't that laggy -- the vendor won't turn over. You can't teleport, your items rez in odd places, you can't "see" things -- well the entire menu of annoyances all at once. Just sheer moving through molasses with lag and poor visibility and functionality.

THAT this is a fact isn't disputable because ALL your tenants, friends, passersby speak of it like the weather. I used to have a group "WeatherReport" I may start again to post bulletins like "lag is just me? or?" or "did that sim not restart in the rolling restart?" or "is Blue Steele the channel that this thing works on because I can't get it to work on XYZ" If somebody want so do that come and join lol.

So often they say it's your fault, your computer is old enough to go to kindergarten and so on.

So when I see REFUND REFUND REFUND for several days or "I'm interested in renting can you tell me..." which usually leads to "XYX Resident Paid You" and now leads to NOTHING, you think -- the performance is hurting business.

Oh, and that LindEx crash which is not cured IMV.

I have a routine where I always ask every refunding or non-closing customer if they had problems. Sometimes their issue is they couldn't read the 5 ways they were told this and didn't join a group to set prims. Or they can't understand why they can build but not terraform yet. So when I collect dozens of this "I can't get my new computer to play SL" or "the lag is terrible" or "I can't even pay anything, I'll come back in two days" etc. etc. I know "it's not me". It's their software. THEY preferred to fix voice, and leave us all in the mud. I personally don't care about voice and I see a lot of customers don't even, they even ask to have it unchecked on their land. I have no idea if there are more voice or non-voice in SL especially on the mainland, I think not. I personally am happy to turn on voice and use but I find it cumbersome and laggy and not working sometimes and -- meh. 

So today I see like 6 refunds and after a week of Molasses I think "Uh-oh," worse.

But then every single thing is different, or maybe one of them is lag/computer won't work but five are like this:

"I'm partnered and he wants me to move in" -- that's great -- there's something about RL holiday periods that seem to kill SL romances and then they come back around Valentine's Day!

"I'm buying a homestead."  Wow, people are buying? They feel confident despite LindEx Sansar etc? Good. It doesn't matter if it means my loss -- it's better for the economy as a whole if more people buy especially on the Mainland and stabilize it.

"I'm just moving to your larger rental." Good! We always like to hear that!

"I'm moving to your other sim, that's more homey." -- A signal to figure out what's "not" homey on the sim they left.

When I see these stories I think: signs of a pick up in life and the economy? Or not?

 

Edited February 2, 2018 by Prokofy Neva

[Nalytha]

I don’t really have anything of substance to add to this topic. However, I wanted to say that no matter how controversial your threads tend to be, I’m always impressed by your passion and willingness to share your time and energy to make these posts. Especially considering how much time I imagine your business takes. 

Hats off to you.

[Prokofy Neva]

No, it's self-service, I try not to let it take too much time. My RL jobs take time. I don't post much but lately for various reasons I just think it's good to put developments on the record. It's not really important if anyone agrees or whatever. Some people may be looking for signs of improved economy -- maybe these are? But it's not a big sample and is easily undone.

[encidious Opus]

I like following the mainland land/real estate. There is still a boatload of abandoned land but looking at the auctions, the majority get at least one bid. So a small initial amount going into the Linden's coffers, and then the ongoing tier fees add up. But hopefully this means new residents establishing themselves on the mainland and interacting within the economy. Of course the last 3 large parcels that ending up auctioning for over L$14/sqm were won by veteran land barons. What was surprising is the land wasnt that great for the price imo.

[iamyourneighbour]

Mine runs fine. Had to expend by 5000 sqm and if anyone tell you accepting script animal farms by putting them next to neighbours I don't like to make them lag they are conspiracy theorists.

 

Having said that I run on flat 0.5L$/1 LI and I poach existing renters from other Sims

Edited February 3, 2018 by iamyourneighbour

[animats]

On 2/1/2018 at 4:02 PM, Prokofy Neva said:

So I ask myself: Why Has Second Life Fallen Under a Barrel of Molasses?

For a week, the game doesn't work, there are new patches, you are ground to a halt, you crash, you can't move, even to pay somebody $1 takes 15 minutes to "turn over"; you can't buy anything at a merchants' event even if the sim isn't that laggy -- the vendor won't turn over. You can't teleport, your items rez in odd places, you can't "see" things -- well the entire menu of annoyances all at once. Just sheer moving through molasses with lag and poor visibility and functionality.

Something seems to have slowed things down in the last two weeks. Sims that didn't used to lag now lag badly. I have a  suspicion it's "server consolidation" - LL is saving money by putting more sim processes on fewer servers.

I have a support ticket open for excessive lag on rarely-visited Vallone sim in Kama City. Every 10-15 seconds, there's a huge load from somewhere. LL support has restarted the sim several times, without much success. I kept posting pictures of a lag meter all the way down at zero. The latest suggestion from support is to remove the lag meter as it may be causing the problem. Removed the lag meter. It didn't help.

As many of you know, I've been working on improving region crossings, so I drive instrumented motorcycles around SL. I'm seeing more laggy sims in the last two weeks. I record video of much of this so I can review problems, so it's not just opinion.

[Prokofy Neva]

It's true lag meters inworld *do* add to the lag. You could just measure the lag meter in the browser AND collect the sim stats to send them but they could see that too, the time dilation and all of that.

Is it that they are putting more sims on more servers? Or is it the move to the cloud? Or what exactly?

Sometimes you can get them to swap out sims they've put on servers, ie if they have 3 clubs out of 4 sims you get your sim moved away out of the clubs. Not sure they do that any more. 

I still think it's about fixing voice which made problems elsewhere breakout.

[ChinRey]

On 3.2.2018 at 4:54 AM, animats said:

Something seems to have slowed things down in the last two weeks. Sims that didn't used to lag now lag badly. I have a  suspicion it's "server consolidation" - LL is saving money by putting more sim processes on fewer servers.

Oh yes, it's very noticeable. To me it looks more like it's the connection rather than the server though.

How about this for a conspiracy theory: The big U.S. internet companies noticed that LL campaigned for Net Neutrality and decided to punish them by throttling the bandwidth. The real reason why LL wants to move to the cloud is to get out of this.

[LittleMe Jewell]

Something has definitely reduced performance lately.  Nothing has changed on my computer and I'm visiting the same places that I usually do, but things are randomly being slow.  For me, it isn't even consistent, but just periodically slows for a few seconds to a minute.  I just assumed it was something with my ISP, but maybe it is more than that.

[animats]

8 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Oh yes, it's very noticeable. To me it looks more like it's the connection rather than the server though.

I keep seeing the load monitor report high packet loss and long ping times. I'm on Sonic.net - no smart middleboxes, net-neutral, 50mb/s, no big network usage  at my end other than SL. SL is using less than 1mb/s when it's complaining.

[pennytrated]

It has slowed down quite a bit.  I eventually got a Homestead and a Sim where I can reboot when I need to.  On some occasions and dont quote me, but if I log out and log in, it seems as if I hit a less active server and it moves faster. 

Most sims even mine I can run Ultra, however I have another setting called "SL is being a PITA".  I lower the draw to 128, take down the fluffies like terrain, shadows etc.  ( I leave the LOD at least at 3.85), and drop the setting to High and 1/2 or just high.    If you are using Firestorm here is the Wiki link.  http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=start

Wow so many things to help tweak the viewer I was amazed.  (I'm a guy in a woman's body, I never read directions). There is a newer version to correct bugs.  Only thing  Ihave troubles with now..is my inventory, lol.  Bad enough I have 15K in stuff cant find a darn thing now. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

36 minutes ago, pennytrated said:

  Only thing  Ihave troubles with now..is my inventory, lol.  Bad enough I have 15K in stuff cant find a darn thing now. 

/me chuckles

15K?  Come on girl, you need to acquire more stuff - you are falling behind. 

[pennytrated]

Nope...105,000....and that's down from 107,800 - been up 72 hours in a sim project--- I'm seriously considering hiring someone to sort the darn thing.  But am a breeder and Zoo owner. 25-30 different types of breedables...try keeping the ferrets out of the bunnies and Horses

 

 

Edited February 4, 2018 by pennytrated

[Alwin Alcott]

13 hours ago, pennytrated said:

 I'm seriously considering hiring someone to sort the darn thing. 

get that seriously out of your thoughts... NEVER give somebody access to your account.

[pennytrated]

Dont worry and thank you for your cautions.   Only person I would allow to help is color blind 

[Callum Meriman]

On 2/4/2018 at 8:48 PM, ChinRey said:

Oh yes, it's very noticeable. To me it looks more like it's the connection rather than the server though.

Certainly around the time that we started taking sounds and animations from the CDN as well.

If I type XD in world I normally make a cute little kitten nya-nya-nya fanfare. That can now be delayed 20 or 30 seconds.

[ChinRey]

32 minutes ago, Callum Meriman said:

Certainly around the time that we started taking sounds and animations from the CDN as well.

I may not be up to date but I don't think animations are on CDN yet.

[Whirly Fizzle]

5 hours ago, Callum Meriman said:

Certainly around the time that we started taking sounds and animations from the CDN as well.

If I type in world I normally make a cute little kitten nya-nya-nya fanfare. That can now be delayed 20 or 30 seconds.

I suspect you are seeing this bug, which only reproduces on Asset-HTTP viewers:
BUG-139305 - Gestures containing the "BigSmile" built-in animation take way too long to load

[Whirly Fizzle]

5 hours ago, ChinRey said:

I may not be up to date but I don't think animations are on CDN yet.

They are if you are using an Asset-HTTP viewer.
I believe you use Firestorm Chin.  The latest 5.0.11 release uses Asset-HTTP.

[ChinRey]

7 minutes ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

They are if you are using an Asset-HTTP viewer.

Oh kay. I knew they were going to move more assets to CDN but I didn't know how far they had come.

 

11 minutes ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

I believe you use Firestorm Chin.  The latest 5.0.11 release uses Asset-HTTP.

I use the SL viewer most of the time but FIrestorm quite often and Singularity every now and then.

[Whirly Fizzle]

26 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Oh kay. I knew they were going to move more assets to CDN but I didn't know how far they had come.

Animations, gestures, sounds, wearables & landmarks are now fetched from the CDN.

 

27 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

I use the SL viewer most of the time but FIrestorm quite often and Singularity every now and then.

SL viewer has had Asset-HTTP for quite a while.
Firestorm 5.0.11 uses Asset_HTTP, earlier versions do not.
I believe Singularity has Asset-HTTP, but only in the later alpha versions, not in the release viewer.

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

9 hours ago, Callum Meriman said:

Certainly around the time that we started taking sounds and animations from the CDN as well.

That might explain the long delays before my building alt's AO kicks in.

What existing content could LL possibly break if they just replaced the default duckwaddle with something vaguely normal?