How to broach script use with neighbors.

[k9loverjasmine]

Hello this is my first time posting in the forums and while I have done some searches and haven't found a lot of help dealing with a situation.  I recently bought a small parcel on the mainland for a very good price, and the reason why became apparent the first time I had a guest over that was not using  a 100 Mbps connection, lag was to be honest game breaking.  Upon closer inspection my neighbors have a host of little robots and breed able pets.  The two offending lots are owned by a group of friends and my preliminary inspection of scripts on their lots were 55 Mbps and 97 Mbps which seems high to me but then again I am new so not really certain if it is or not.  I would like to talk with them about it first but not really sure how to broach the subject with out being rude.  What would be a good etiquette to talk with them about this.    So I guess what I am asking is could some one please give this newbie some tips before she makes a fool of her self.

[Fionalein]

If connection speed is the key then it isn't scripts - breedables can be bad but if the sim works for you but not your friend it is more likely geometry or texture based.

[Ethan Paslong]

27 minutes ago, k9loverjasmine said:

55 Mbps and 97 Mbps which seems high to me

are you sure it's really Mbps for scripts? Just curious how did you measure that?

Also without knowing what your machine does or has as specs, it's kinda hard to tell sombody they overuse resources.
About scripts i think you better look at the Statistics toolbar to see the used script time, spare script time and amount of scripts running( amount and % )

I'd like to add... always check parcels and surrounding at your sim if you plan to buy land... don't when there are too many resources used. And it will never be sure you when en if you get new neighbours ... next to breedables also clubs are not the best to have on your sim.. not only because of the visitors ( most clubs won't have any at all ) but for use of the absurd amount of high res textures and badly scripted ligths, and other gear.

Edited December 27, 2018 by Ethan Paslong

[k9loverjasmine]

What do you mean by that.  We have been to other areas and while she does lag a little this spot was so bad it crashed her Firestorm session.  Is there another angle I should look at this I recently got sent over seas so this was planned to be our way to hang out.  She is getting a better connection soon but if there is something else we could do to alleviate/reduce  the issue that would be great.

 

[k9loverjasmine]

5 minutes ago, Ethan Paslong said:

are you sure it's really Mbps for scripts? Just curious how did you measure that?

I walked there parcel and clicked about land an then checked the script button.  I currently have not found the statistics tab on Firestorm though its probably staring me in the face I just don't know what to look for.

[Qie Niangao]

Hmmm. This thread is getting weird faster than I can get a response submitted. I'll just ignore a host of stuff that doesn't make sense and throw some spaghetti.

Scripts can add to bandwidth demand, but bandwidth isn't usually the way to measure script impact.

It's certainly possible the neighbors are doing something that's lagging your friend's viewer to death. They may also be doing bad things with scripts. These things may or may not be related.

Two things I'd look at to see what the neighbors are actually up to:

1. Open the Statistics Bar (Control-Shift-1), expand the Simulator category (if it isn't already) and look at the Scripts Run percentage. If it's substantially less than 100% much of the time, some script abuse is going on somewhere in the sim.
2. Then toggle on "Show Updates To Objects" (Control-Alt-Shift-U, or select it from the Develop/Show Info menubar), cam around and see what's flooding little (mostly blue) square sprites upward. Those are object updates that can flood a network connection, and that's really the way scripts can overwhelm a viewer.

Now, more likely than either of these is that the neighbors simply have too much geometry showing for your friend's viewer to handle. That can also be measured in various debug consoles, but ultimately the solution would be for your friend to change viewer settings (shrink draw distance and temporarily disable features like shadows, etc.) and derender stuff that's causing the lag.

[Ethan Paslong]

19 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Hmmm. This thread is getting weird faster than I can get a response submitted. I'll just ignore a host of stuff that doesn't make sense and throw some spaghetti.

perhaps enlighten us what's weird ?

[Qie Niangao]

Well, I started with the same reply you made, basically: how are scripts measurable in Mbps? Then as I was revising my response came the post about that information coming from About Land / Scripts -- on a neighbor's parcel. I decided not to investigate if Firestorm has some magic there (which shouldn't be possible, but who knows?) and instead just posted with reckless abandon whatever I could salvage of what was in the text buffer.

[Ethan Paslong]

50 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I decided not to investigate

you should
but i still don't know where the Mbps comes from in the post, my script button in firestorm tells me the size of the script, not the bandwith or time it uses.(unless i miss something)

[Qie Niangao]

38 minutes ago, Ethan Paslong said:

my script button in firestorm tells me the size of the script, not the bandwith or time it uses.(unless i miss something)

Right, that's what I see in Catznip, too, and the Linden viewer. So I fired-up Firestorm and it looks identical, as far as I can tell.

[k9loverjasmine]

So that is a shot of the Statics menu with the script section you said significantly under 100% was bad?  It was hovering between, 45-60% I can't seem to get anything to happen when I try CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+U or at least nothing I can see on my screen.  ((I started writing this before I had something come up so about to check what else was posted in between then and now.)

[k9loverjasmine]

I have learned you are correct in that it is just the size of the scripts not the bandwidth use and I rounded up to Mbps since it was 970000 Kbps and 550000 Kbps in each of the readings.  I am now more well informed that those numbers are not active scripts just the size of scripts on the land and that only some are active.  

[Qie Niangao]

9 minutes ago, k9loverjasmine said:

I can't seem to get anything to happen when I try CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+U or at least nothing I can see on my screen.

Ah, yeah, you'll need to go to Preferences / Advanced and show Developer and Advanced menus first. (I coulda sworn viewers enabled these shortcuts independently of the menu visibility, but I'd have been wrong.)

That's a lot of script activity, by the way. Still unclear why that should crash your guest's viewer, though. It would definitely make script use annoying, as in adjusting mesh avatars and heads.

[Callum Meriman]

What is your friend's bandwidth set to? More then 1000?
And being mainland, what is their draw distance?

[Qie Niangao]

ooo. I saw the location from that screen dump and sent an alt to look around. That's a heap o' scripted trouble there, indeed. Your guest may be able to dumb-down the viewer settings enough to survive long enough to start de-rendering all that craziness next door. I'm guessing it would be pretty pointless to broach the topic with those neighbors, given that this seems to be the main thing happening over there.

Thing is, even if your friend can make the rendering lag tolerable (by derendering the worst offenders), you'll still have that script lag in this sim. So I'm not sure what's to be done about that. That part is unpleasant, but believe it or not, I've seen much worse, so I kinda doubt the Lab would intervene in response to an AR about "Excessive scripted objects".

[k9loverjasmine]

So I got the little blue dot thing to work and what here is a screen shot of what I think is the culprit.  The lot is directly next to mine and whenever my friend brings her avi anywhere close to that parcel which directly abuts my 1024m parcel she freezes as does everything else for 30 seconds then her screen goes grey and the message  "You have been logged  out of Second Life.  This Region May be experiencing trouble. Please Check your connection to the internet."  If I TP her in further away  she is fine so as Fionalien mentioned it may be something else besides just the scripts that is causing the crash and I would love to solve this problem with out having to sell the land and buy a new plot.  Especially since most of the other lots surrounding the parcel are also for sale, so of which have been for quite some time. I guess it is a case of Buyer beware and I did not do enough research before jumping on what I thought was a great deal.

[k9loverjasmine]

Lol just saw your other post. I started it and made then decided to fly around and and check the rest of the region just to make sure.

[k9loverjasmine]

52 minutes ago, Callum Meriman said:

What is your friend's bandwidth set to? More then 1000?
And being mainland, what is their draw distance?

She is set at whatever the basic defaults are for Firestorm (if its browser dependent) I am partially computer literate but she is significantly less so though if I can find the settings I think I can talk her through what to change if you have some recommendations.

[Callum Meriman]

Just now, k9loverjasmine said:

She is set at whatever the basic defaults are for Firestorm (if its browser dependent) I am partially computer literate but she is significantly less so though if I can find the settings I think I can talk her through what to change if you have some recommendations.

 

What I am seeing is if we can skip downloading those things in the picture. This is really just diagnostics, not so much a cure yet.

Go to a region you know is ok on their computer, I normally use Aswan as it's nice and empty 80Meter deep water.

Bottom right is a phoenix icon

Make a note of the old setting, then move the "Draw Distance" slider to the left until the number is 64 or even 32 to start, return home, and see if the situation improves.

You can also click in the white box and remove the old value and type the new one.

 

If this improves the situation then it's another hint towards a better solution.

[k9loverjasmine]

Thanks Callum I will try that, she won't be on again for awhile but when she does I will see if that helps things I am currently in S. Korea and she is In Alaska so its not even 4 AM yet her time and its almost 10:30PM mine so I need to head to bed.

[Theresa Tennyson]

2 hours ago, k9loverjasmine said:

So I got the little blue dot thing to work and what here is a screen shot of what I think is the culprit.  The lot is directly next to mine and whenever my friend brings her avi anywhere close to that parcel which directly abuts my 1024m parcel she freezes as does everything else for 30 seconds then her screen goes grey and the message  "You have been logged  out of Second Life.  This Region May be experiencing trouble. Please Check your connection to the internet."  If I TP her in further away  she is fine so as Fionalien mentioned it may be something else besides just the scripts that is causing the crash and I would love to solve this problem with out having to sell the land and buy a new plot.  Especially since most of the other lots surrounding the parcel are also for sale, so of which have been for quite some time. I guess it is a case of Buyer beware and I did not do enough research before jumping on what I thought was a great deal.

 

One thing that would probably help is to move your house high up into the sky above the region, making it a "skybox." There isn't really an advantage for you to have your house at ground level with the way the region is laid out and having your living space in the sky would mean your neighbors' items would be invisible. I flew up to about 500 meters and the sky looked pretty clear at that altitude. (As you are new I should point out that "gravity" will only affect objects if you specifically change a setting to make it happen and your house will happily stick at any altitude you place it.)

[LittleMe Jewell]

You can sometimes report these things as 'excessive use of resources' - sometimes LL will intervene and sometimes not.

[foxfirestorm]

While I am not going to get heavy into this subject, because I actually know the guy who owns the land in question... ^_^;;;
What I can say is that the breedables (aka the robots) are Buildables, which all run at 320 kb/s as script goes. They are probably the lowest running script breedable I'm aware of on SL. Not that it really helps when someone has a troubling connection but-- I do agree with some other statements here on skyboxes.

Probably best to build a skybox and you can make your own really easily with some really good textures and doing some masterful linking of the prims by turning them into convex hull and linking them as such. That way when your friend does come over and visit, that data isn't loaded in and it will make it easier for them to rez the area.

Also weekends. Weekends are horrible on the mainland. No matter where you are. It gets horrible lol.

Added: I also noted near his space was someone with amaretto horses and ABC Horses. Now ABCs can get a bit higher on the script, but they are not hard to load in, but amaretto horses... where-ever i go that has those guys and they get loaded in? It can get a bit of a headache and I have around a 15 mb/s + download speed. You also got a club in the distance by the looks of the lights and the neon signs, and clubs can also cause issues when down on the ground level just cause textures and lighting.

So, I can see several sources that would cause a problem if you don't move upward into the sky.

Edited December 27, 2018 by foxfirestorm
Further details

[Ethan Paslong]

14 minutes ago, foxfirestorm said:

What I can say is that the breedables (aka the robots) are Buildables, which all run at 320 kb/s as script goes. They are probably the lowest running script breedable I'm aware of on SL.

this would make sense if there weren't hundreds of those there. Now it creates a mess. Period.

15 minutes ago, foxfirestorm said:

Not that it really helps when someone has a troubling connection but-- I do agree with some other statements here on skyboxes.
 

connection of somebody is not really relevant anymore when there only is room for 40% of the present scripts running... no skybox is going to compensate that.

16 minutes ago, foxfirestorm said:

Probably best to build a skybox and you can make your own really easily with some really good textures and doing some masterful linking of the prims by turning them into convex hull and linking them as such. That way when your friend does come over and visit, that data isn't loaded in and it will make it easier for them to rez the area.

this is not a solution but a tool to make it being able to use for others. Fact stays your "guy you know" ruins the whole sim for all others close by on it

17 minutes ago, foxfirestorm said:

Also weekends. Weekends are horrible on the mainland. No matter where you are. It gets horrible lol.

absolute nonsense

18 minutes ago, foxfirestorm said:

So, I can see several sources that would cause a problem if you don't move upward into the sky.

the only source in this case is that "guy you know"and his stuff.

 

 

[LittleMe Jewell]

As Ethan said, even a Skybox won't fix the issue of only having roughly 40-55% of script time available -- assuming you care about scripted stuff working worth a darn on your parcel.