Problem with world map

[amywilders]

Hi!

I have problems with my world map. When it's zoomed in on a place, it works just fine, and as I zoom out, all the new squares that becomes visible adds nicely.

Until I get zoomed out half way. Then the entire map turns "ocean blue" and all the land I just saw is gone. If I zoom in again, it comes back. If I scroll when seeing a map, new bits is added as it should, but as soon as I zoom out, it all goes blank again. I have waited for 30 min for it to rezz, but nothing happens.  I have noticed this the past days, but I don't really know when it started.
I am using the Firestorm Beta viewer 6.0.1. but I am having the same problem with Firestorm 5.1.7 so I don't think it is the viewer as such that's causing it.

Any one got an idea on how I can solve this?

[Qie Niangao]

Unfortunately(?) it's not just you, and not only in-world. Try zooming out on this map in a browser. This means that the map data collection process didn't complete the last time it ran, so some resolutions of the map never got generated.

If the jira weren't in some Atlassian Limbo at the moment, I might try to find and re-open one of the several reports from all the times this has happened in the past. Maybe somebody can do that if/when jira comes back.

[Alyona Su]

It's not a viewer issue. It's a bandwidth issue. Each region (square) on the map is a separate image that is downloaded from the web. When you zoom out, more regions are visible=more images to download. If you zoom out so far that you see the entire world then you are downloaded literally thousands of images. So 30 minutes to see the entire world? Makes sense.

This is a very simplified, general description of what's happening (not an officially technical explanation). The point being that it's not a viewer issue and it's not an issue that only you are experiencing, everyone experiences this. We've just gotten used to it and gone complacent, I suppose.

[Qie Niangao]

6 hours ago, Alyona Su said:

It's not a viewer issue. It's a bandwidth issue. Each region (square) on the map is a separate image that is downloaded from the web.

Not exactly. Instead, the work of compressing all those region maps into zoomed-back images is done by the map server, in eight power-of-two scales. The documentation of the Map API has all the detail you never wanted, but as an example, you can see it working properly in these two intermediate-scale levels:

http://map.secondlife.com/map-3-1000-1000-objects.jpg

http://map.secondlife.com/map-4-1000-1000-objects.jpg

I finally got into the jira and found that this has been broken at the very next step of zooming back -- since August!

[KathrynLisbeth]

It broke in August.   Was broken for about 6 weeks...  mid-October.   Fixed.

Noticed it was broken again yesterday...  After the new EEP stars were in the Sky, and before the Inventory Implosions (when  bodyparts didn't want to rez).   

[animats]

Again? I thought that was fixed. Apparently there's some batch job that runs periodically and makes low-rez tiles from high-rez tiles. Fine. But losing all the old tiles if the batch job crashes is lame.

This really bugs the aviation people. They use the big map for flight planning.

[Makisuchi]

i have the same problem right now . 😔 

Sometimes it loads slowly but no longer does anything with any viewer. I can only see the sim I'm currently in, but I can't see anything else even if I zoom in a bit. It also happens to me on the map of the SecondLife page. Do you think there is a solution?

[Aishagain]

@Makisuchi:

This. https://status.secondlifegrid.net/incidents/cgpt13b12sry

Is there a solution?  Yes, LL get around to fixing it.  Is that likely any time soon?  No.

Edited January 18, 2021 by Aishagain
Additional information

[Makisuchi]

Thank you very much !

[Jerry McNally]

So this is still an issue? At one level of zoom I can happily pan around and see everything, but zoom out and it's all just clear wide blue of the ocean. Will this ever be resolved? Can someone clever just port it over to Google Maps or something? I see someone's tried to do that in the past, but that's not working anymore.

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Jerry McNally said:

[...] Can someone clever just port it over to Google Maps or something? I see someone's tried to do that in the past, but that's not working anymore.

The reason that was easy to do in the past was that the entire SL map system used the Google Map API (which, impossible as it may be to imagine now, used to be free). If you want to read all about the current SL Map API (which is reasonably similar in many respects), here's a good starting point into the documentation on the wiki.

As to the problem you're seeing, it's about automated generation and storage of several zoomed-back levels of map tiles (see that documentation). When it's finally fixed, it will just unceremoniously start working again, no updates to viewer nor sim required. The impact of the bug has been discussed at great length more recently in other threads:

 

I think that one has the most recent post at the moment, but there are also these (and maybe others?) too:

[KjartanEno]

4 hours ago, Jerry McNally said:

So this is still an issue? At one level of zoom I can happily pan around and see everything, but zoom out and it's all just clear wide blue of the ocean. Will this ever be resolved? Can someone clever just port it over to Google Maps or something? I see someone's tried to do that in the past, but that's not working anymore.

Someone mentioned this in one of the other threads on this topic: There is a product by Shergood Aviation available in marketplace called the SA GPS/Transponder HUD which uses media to show a resizable world map. It is certainly worth the cost to me even if the viewer world map suddenly starts working again since I like having this quick view of the surrounding sims while flying, boating, and driving around the continents.

[Prokofy Neva]

4 hours ago, KjartanEno said:

Someone mentioned this in one of the other threads on this topic: There is a product by Shergood Aviation available in marketplace called the SA GPS/Transponder HUD which uses media to show a resizable world map. It is certainly worth the cost to me even if the viewer world map suddenly starts working again since I like having this quick view of the surrounding sims while flying, boating, and driving around the continents.

This is a great tip. The item is $500 but I need to solve this problem of the map not loading in the worst way. It's less broken than it was a few weeks ago, where clicking on it would take you to any sim but the one you wanted, but it still doesn't load. Or you land and it only shows you as a dot like the mini map, not the tiles and their features so you can't pick an area to land in. What's the point of p2p? Go back to telehubs then. I will try this item. I have found using Artizan's Avatar Key has finally returned my sanity as I have struggled for weeks trying to get in touch with paying customers to give them needed information -- and I can't find them on search because search is broken and returning thousands of entries on exact searches. If only there were a similar thing to Avatar Key that found labeled parcels of land!