Sim Crossing far worse since Last Tuesday?

[Anna Nova]

5 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

After fairly extensive testing, I'd say that yes, the crossings from Halsey to Zumwalt and from Zumwalt to Rickover are pretty bad.

All the other crossings I made in that area, in essentially similar conditions with the same server software, aren't bad - with three different power boats by three different scripters at full throttle while wearing my script-pig regular AO instead of the lighter-scripted one I usually use for traveling, and over enough regions that I got lost a couple of times and had to work my way back.

And I've seen worse crossings regularly with the old version you'd want to roll back to.

As far as can tell, you had bad luck hitting a couple of isolated problem areas that could have happened any time since the Blake Sea was created.

<snip>

Yes, the old experience wasn't good, and yes, as Animats says, it needs to be fixed.  But it was intermittent, and you could go for long adventures without encountering issues.  Now I find it is impossible to have any enjoyment of my virtual reality.

I don't understand why you are defending the Labs on this.  Or maybe, as you say, I am just having bad luck every time I go sailing.

[Anna Nova]

8 hours ago, animats said:

I just tried that, and it failed in exactly that way. I used a Belliza power boat, 9 knots, and crossed OK from Halsey to Zumwalt. Crossing back from Zumwalt to Halsey, I got a half-unsit. The avatar is exactly one sim from the boat. I still have arrow key control over the boat, and if I turn the boat, the avatar moves, remaining one sim from the boat.

Avatar on map is exactly one sim from viewpoint near boat.

Turn boat 90 degrees, and the avatar is still one sim away, but now to the east.

That's a strange error. The avatar to seat distance has one sim width added to it. 

We know that half-unsits are network timing dependent. One second of network delay at a double region crossing will cause a half-unsit almost every time. The change last week was supposed to change the packet retransmission timing, which is going to affect network delay. That may affect how often this bug appears. Something is way too time-sensitive. This seems to be the same old bug, but with a changed occurrence rate.

The underlying problem is that half-unsits are a stable error - they don't get quickly resolved by the system. I've written about this before. The LL people say this is really hard to fix, but there's now enough attention on it that it's being worked on. Keep up the pressure. Send in JIRAs. Go to the Server User Group meeting. Find repeatable bugs and document them well. Take pictures. Take video.

There are about half a dozen problems with sim crossings, but this is the big one. The one that totally ruins the user experience. It makes sailing not fun. It ruins races. It messes up military combat roleplay that uses vehicles. It makes driving tough. It makes flying fail far too often. It breaks a whole range of things that otherwise work in SL. We need to get this fixed.

(No, I don't work for Linden Labs. I just want the only good virtual world around to work right.)

 

Great exposition of exactly my problem.  Thanks for the As-Good-as-Aquilla photographic exposition!

I think there are several key points in this, but the stability of the half-unsit in this instance is fundamental to the unpleasantness of the experience.

I realise now that when I say that my avatar has lost fly-left-right, what I really mean is that those functions are still attached to the boat!   Even after I have been apparently placed in the offending sim crossing.   This effect was seen quite often even before the 'downgrade', but wasn't so visible.

I'll collect more evidence.

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

3 hours ago, anna2358 said:

Yes, the old experience wasn't good, and yes, as Animats says, it needs to be fixed.  But it was intermittent, and you could go for long adventures without encountering issues.  Now I find it is impossible to have any enjoyment of my virtual reality.

I don't understand why you are defending the Labs on this.  Or maybe, as you say, I am just having bad luck every time I go sailing.

You asked at the start of this thread if people were finding sim crossing far worse since last Tuesday. It looks like most people aren't. I've tried to experience your problems. I can't. I don't doubt that you're having problems but it looks like they're not because of the server changes.

[MBeatrix]

1 hour ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

You asked at the start of this thread if people were finding sim crossing far worse since last Tuesday. It looks like most people aren't. I've tried to experience your problems. I can't. I don't doubt that you're having problems but it looks like they're not because of the server changes.

You're right, Theresa. I fly and sail around daily, and I can't say that crossings are worse (or better) than before. Also I didn't notice any improvement on crossings between Snack regions, as I wrote in a previous post, after spending some time sailing at high speed back and forth, from Honah Lee Trudeau to Blake Sea - Atlantic. While doing that, I had no issues, but I also had none sailing back home (Nuggy) at high speed too, and on my way back home crossings seemed to happen just like between Snack regions.

[Anna Nova]

Just a little addendum.  I tried a high-speed flight at 20 m/s and had no issues at all today.  It might be that this problem is script related, rather than just sim crossing.  I have to admit I found the sim crossings themselves very smooth - which was NOT the case the CABS ship.  (rather old sculpty-based AMOK F-16C with all the weapon add-ons)

[Ayesha Askham]

14 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

An interesting statement, seeing that the problem areas aren't running on RC channels.

Well, it might be that some or all of the "problem areas" were not on the RC channels.  That was not my point.  My point was that there was fairly clearly some sort of problem and without knowing the "why", I speculated that the LL op responsible for such matter might have wished/been told to withhold the actual release notes of what was being rolled to the RCs on Wednesday while the mess was sorted out.

Now I am not suggesting any malign intent (I do not routinely wear a tinfoil hat), I am just puzzled  by the lack of information that is usually rapidly disseminated on the Release Thread.  My phrasing might seem overly strong to some, but I'd say it simply reflected the concern shown by other contributors, who are also not known for their propensity to Tinfoil-hattery.

[animats]

Some Blake Sea areas are definitely broken; reproducible trouble there. Beyond that, there's no clear pattern. Has anyone requested sim restarts of the troubled Blake Sea regions?

[MBeatrix]

6 hours ago, animats said:

Some Blake Sea areas are definitely broken; reproducible trouble there. Beyond that, there's no clear pattern. Has anyone requested sim restarts of the troubled Blake Sea regions?

Which sims, animats? I sailed there earlier and had no trouble. Sims I crossed into/out from there: Jones Locker, Hawser, Nelson, Swab, Crows Nest, Indefatigable, Atlantic, Mizzen, Swab, Sirens Isle, Kraken, Windlass, Jellicoe, Murat, Turnbuckle, Half Hitch, Barbarossa, Lanyard and Azimuth. Of course there were more, but I'm only pointing those belonging to Blake Sea where I've been today.

Please keep in mind that the Blake Sea has always a lot of traffic, so at some hours a few sims may have difficulty dealing with all of it. Also, being homestead regions doesn't help... Best time to sail there: Mondays, Western Europe morning.

[animats]

Question: for those of you who had trouble in boats, how many avatars were on board? I've been going hours between fails with motorcycles with one rider. Added a passenger, and there was a half-unsit within five minutes.

[JoyofRLC Acker]

My take, on a very non-scientific basis, from a sailing perspective in Blake Sea is "much about the same"; Ill ask around for other impressions.   Day to day variability seems to dominate.