Stop 'N Shop Does Not Have to Be So Laggy

[Sukubia Scarmon]

I went there again yesterday, and I'm extremely sure it's mainly other avatars and their scripts. If a person goes shopping with their animated pets, you can be sure they didn't descript one single thing.
The most lag I've noticed was at the sim where one creator gifts the customers a giftcard, and yeah, almost everybody I saw there was in elaborate outfits, with animated parts, blinking, yada yada. 

I'm in favor of kicking anyone above a certain - low!- scriptcount/memory usage, or turning of scripts in general. Most Ao's tend to still work, and if not, everyone one using FS can use the integrated Ao, and if that's not a possibility - I'd rather newbwalk through an event than rubberbanding 10 minutes just to get to the shop next door. 

[Qie Niangao]

Just a caution about bouncing avatars for resource usage: There's no mechanism for the sim to know about viewer-side rendering complexity; the best it can do is get viewers to tell it what they think that rendering complexity might be. I don't think Project ARCTAN does anything smarter than this.

Scripts are even worse unless you're prepared to region- or estate-ban offenders so they can't try again. And it's hard to know who to ban anyway: although the sim knows how much time an avatar's scripts are using instantaneously, that number is much higher on arrival than later when the scripts are loaded. The script memory measurement is completely useless -- it mismeasures so badly that script count is more accurate. But in any case, if the offender isn't prevented from trying again, it can easily make the problem many times worse to ban them and have them return, repeating all that expensive script-loading that happens upon arrival.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

I visited two of the shopping regions, Gilded and Aurillian. Neither was crowded, it looked like there were maybe a dozen other avatars in each. Gilded was fine, great frame rate, no problem walking, flying or anything. Aurillian was a nightmare. The frame rate was fine, but moving was like walking in glue, with plenty of rubberbanding. If I was a vendor and got stuck there, I'd be pissed. If Aurillian was the first region I landed in at the event (it was) I wouldn't have spent any more time on it. The only reason I went back this morning was curiosity sparked by the comments in this thread.

[Polenth Yue]

I went around on the soft opening day. It was mostly fine, but a few regions did lag more than others, which suggests something in those builds was setting it off (Aurelian was laggy for me as well). Which isn't to say I think the mall building is perfect. The ponds act as avatar traps. But the regions are pretty identical, so that lag difference was most likely down to merchant builds.

[Chic Aeon]

3 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

I went around on the soft opening day. It was mostly fine, but a few regions did lag more than others, which suggests something in those builds was setting it off (Aurelian was laggy for me as well). Which isn't to say I think the mall building is perfect. The ponds act as avatar traps. But the regions are pretty identical, so that lag difference was most likely down to merchant builds.

And one shop is giving away a 500 linden gift certificate.  Might be in Aurenlian --- just happy it is not in my region :D.   

I am sure that there are some heavy mesh creation and giant textures floating around. I didn't actually notice any when I was shopping but there are bound to be.   A large majority of merchants really have no idea bout triangle count, LODs and huge textures. They just put out what is pretty. So having "good practices" as part of the Hop and Shop criteria would likely kill the whole thing. 

 

Everyone DOES have a choice of course. They can go or not go. It isn't like a required event - LOL.   Personally I think this round was better lag-wise than the previous events. And having more sims evened out the visitors even at the beginning. I never saw many folks in the overflow areas -- and didn't expect to with twice as many shops to peruse.  

[Polenth Yue]

6 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

Everyone DOES have a choice of course. They can go or not go. It isn't like a required event - LOL.   Personally I think this round was better lag-wise than the previous events. And having more sims evened out the visitors even at the beginning. I never saw many folks in the overflow areas -- and didn't expect to with twice as many shops to peruse.  

The extra shops did help a lot and meant the range of stuff was better (a complaint I had last year... this year I got a bunch of cute pets and decor things). The soft opening was also nice. Doesn't hurt to offer some lag feedback though, as it might be the Moles will be able to pinpoint what's going wrong in the laggiest region.

[Chic Aeon]

2 hours ago, Polenth Yue said:

. Doesn't hurt to offer some lag feedback though, as it might be the Moles will be able to pinpoint what's going wrong in the laggiest region.

Here is your answer on the "problematic" sim.  

Addams    http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Aurelian/165/93/53

 

500 gift card.  I was next door to Blueberry one time with a store credit voucher and you could NOT MOVE for-e-ver. This with just five regions or maybe four. I don't remember. So I don't think it is a region issue, just crowds most likely.  

[Akane Nacht]

I confess I am willing to endure lag for a 500L gift cert

actually for pretty much any gift 😅

[Charlotte Bartlett]

The moles part of the build seems fairly ok.   The lag is there for sure, but it's from the stores who have decorated their booths imho.  I went to Gilded today.

I took this screenshot and blurred names, but one store had used a lamp 22 times in their small store space.
Each lamp shows 25885 VRAM.  There are FIVE x 1024 textures on each of those lamps (they did luckily also use 2 x 32 textures ha).  The lamp is tiny and could have been done with 1 x 512 texture for the whole thing.

The individual who used it probably doesn't realize what a terrible lamp it is sadly - but also they didn't need it 22 times in their store too.  

I think it was clear there were no parameters for stores in terms of best practice.  In fairness the only best practice creators have had is what we have individually gleaned from learning from forums, other creators and those who kindly share their knowledge on what "good" looks like.  Personally I am a mile away from good myself (I still learn by the day!).  However, I do feel that for large corporate led events like these, having a moderator for content quality and proper event guide on things like texture sizes, what contributes to lag, complexity etc would help everybody including those who enjoy visiting the events.

Edited July 1, 2020 by Charlotte Bartlett

[Marianne Little]

15 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Here is your answer on the "problematic" sim.  

Addams    http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Aurelian/165/93/53

 

500 gift card.  I was next door to Blueberry one time with a store credit voucher and you could NOT MOVE for-e-ver. This with just five regions or maybe four. I don't remember. So I don't think it is a region issue, just crowds most likely.  

Ha, yes. But turning on "Show friends only" worked beautifully. I've been there with all my female avatars. Thankfully I had no vendor lag.

When Scandalize send out a group message about a 1 L fatpack for 1 hour... that is stampede and lagfest. Shop and Hop is just a baby lag compared to that.

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Charlotte Bartlett said:

Each lamp shows 25885 VRAM.  There are FIVE x 1024 textures on each of those lamps (they did luckily also use 2 x 32 textures ha).  The lamp is tiny and could have been done with 1 x 512 texture for the whole thing.

Well obviously THAT is a bad thing LOL. I sometimes wonder if folks making mesh realize they can bake  ALL THE TEXTURES (for smallish items like many decor and furniture pieces) onto ONE TEXTURE.   

 

I did want to add (and someone in the know feel free to correct me) but it was stated here on the forums  -- maybe a year ago or more -- that TEXTURES once loaded are in cache and only need to be downloaded once -- BUT that mesh object  "instancing" (using the same mesh over and over) does NOT help in SL. It does in many platforms.    So if that really IS correct (I tend to not pay attention to folks who I don't know "know"  then the mesh part of the equation was likely more important than the texture.   

 

I DO agree though and as I said above somewhere, most creators really don't understand this even though many of us have tried to explain over MANY years :D.    

 

[Chic Aeon]

2 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

Ha, yes. But turning on "Show friends only" worked beautifully. I've been there with all my female avatars. Thankfully I had no vendor lag.

When Scandalize send out a group message about a 1 L fatpack for 1 hour... that is stampede and lagfest. Shop and Hop is just a baby lag compared to that.

I automatically derender everyone in "nearby" when I go to a venue.  I don't really care what everyone is wearing; I just want to see the STUFF.   

[Wulfie Reanimator]

2 hours ago, Charlotte Bartlett said:

one store had used a lamp 22 times in their small store space.
Each lamp shows 25885 VRAM.  There are FIVE x 1024 textures on each of those lamps (they did luckily also use 2 x 32 textures ha).  The lamp is tiny and could have been done with 1 x 512 texture for the whole thing.

Absolutely true, but although the VRAM usage there is listed individually, they are most likely copies of the same object or share at least some textures. In that case the memory usage is almost* nullified for each copy after the first. 

But just to make it clear -- 5*1024 is not acceptable for a lamp, lol.

@Chic Aeon I don't know for sure but even if the mesh data was entirely duplicated for each copy, the textures on the mesh would still only be in memory once and use way more than the mesh. Mesh is pretty compressible. 

 

Edited July 1, 2020 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Orwar]

6 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Absolutely true, but although the VRAM usage there is listed individually, they are most likely copies of the same object or share at least some textures.

   Newb question. The VRAM is still multiplied by the amount of copies though, yeah? 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

38 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   Newb question. The VRAM is still multiplied by the amount of copies though, yeah? 

Nope, I don't know if it ever was. To give a more concrete example, here's one mesh:

Here's two of the same bed:

Note: Faces/Triangles go up, but texture count, TMem (Texture memory) and VRAM (mesh included) remains the same.

Without taking a deep dive into the memory management of the viewer (or explaining very technical details like the memory overhead of just keeping track of instances in memory), that's the easiest explanation I can give.

Edited July 1, 2020 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Orwar]

1 minute ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Note: Faces/Triangles go up, but texture count TMem (Texture memory) and VRAM (mesh included) remains the same.

   Oh. Well, I knew textures worked that way (there were tutorials on how to put several signs on a texture and just aligning the texture in such a way that only the sign you wanted on a given surface is shown, to save upload costs and TMem), but I thought VRAM worked .. Differently .. Then again, I suppose .. Huh. Yeah, okay. 

   So essentially, putting up several copies of the same object doesn't impact the frame rate? 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

53 minutes ago, Orwar said:

   Oh. Well, I knew textures worked that way (there were tutorials on how to put several signs on a texture and just aligning the texture in such a way that only the sign you wanted on a given surface is shown, to save upload costs and TMem), but I thought VRAM worked .. Differently .. Then again, I suppose .. Huh. Yeah, okay. 

   So essentially, putting up several copies of the same object doesn't impact the frame rate? 

You made me do it.

It's a little more nuanced than that.

Let's say you're trying to render a scene with a simple cube in it. 6 sides, 2 triangles per side, 12 triangles. Let's ignore the texture on it.

Rendering one on the screen is fine. Creating 300'000 copies of that cube would mean that your computer would have to sort 3.6 million triangles* (to determine which ones are facing the camera, or behind other triangles) and then put pixels on the screen one by one. Depending how the code is written, the same pixel might be drawn-over multiple times.

Infinite memory still means your computer has to spend time doing many more calculations before generating an image. This is what causes your framerate to drop. It simply takes longer to render a single frame on the screen because there are more things to take into account (mesh, textures, everything). That's why additional copies of the mesh still causes lower framerates, why heavy mesh is Bad, and why "just buy more RAM" isn't a solution after a certain point.

Larger textures can also take longer to draw onto the screen, but I don't know if that's the case with SL. (It depends entirely on how the code is written.)

When you start running out of memory, the problems just get worse because now instead of just "drawing an image," your computer has to spend time figuring out which textures it can discard, and possibly load new ones from the (relatively much slower, even SSD) hard drive. 

VRAM stands for "video memory," or "Video Random Access Memory" if you really wanna spell it out. It's the amount of memory needed specifically from the graphics card, not just the regular RAM that your processor uses. When you create copies of an object, it needs to be stored somewhere so information about it can be tracked (location, scale, rotation, etc) and sent to the graphics card. So for every copy of an object, there is some memory cost even if the mesh and textures were "100% all shared." Otherwise you'd only render one thing, or all of the things identically on the same place.

* 3.6 million triangles is not hard to reach, considering how Bad most mesh content is (especially as attachments). Your naked mesh body alone can put you halfway to your first million, or more. (Looking at you Legacy...) It has become more and more commonplace to see a single avatar reach the million-mark, I would even call it the norm.

Edited July 1, 2020 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Orwar]

1 minute ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

You made me do it.

   Smirks deviously. 

2 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

It's a little more nuanced than that.

   Thanks! 🔶(t'was the closest to a heart I could find!)

[Charlotte Bartlett]

@Wulfie r

4 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

You made me do it.

It's a little more nuanced than that.

Let's say you're trying to render a scene with a simple cube in it. 6 sides, 2 triangles per side, 12 triangles. Let's ignore the texture on it.

Rendering one on the screen is fine. Creating 300'000 copies of that cube would mean that your computer would have to sort 3.6 million triangles* (to determine which ones are facing the camera, or behind other triangles) and then put pixels on the screen one by one. Depending how the code is written, the same pixel might be drawn-over multiple times.

Infinite memory still means your computer has to spend time doing many more calculations before generating an image. This is what causes your framerate to drop. It simply takes longer to render a single frame on the screen because there are more things to take into account (mesh, textures, everything). That's why additional copies of the mesh still causes lower framerates, why heavy mesh is Bad, and why "just buy more RAM" isn't a solution after a certain point.

Larger textures can also take longer to draw onto the screen, but I don't know if that's the case with SL. (It depends entirely on how the code is written.)

When you start running out of memory, the problems just get worse because now instead of just "drawing an image," your computer has to spend time figuring out which textures it can discard, and possibly load new ones from the (relatively much slower, even SSD) hard drive. 

VRAM stands for "video memory," or "Video Random Access Memory" if you really wanna spell it out. It's the amount of memory needed specifically from the graphics card, not just the regular RAM that your processor uses. When you create copies of an object, it needs to be stored somewhere so information about it can be tracked (location, scale, rotation, etc) and sent to the graphics card. So for every copy of an object, there is some memory cost even if the mesh and textures were "100% all shared." Otherwise you'd only render one thing, or all of the things identically on the same place.

* 3.6 million triangles is not hard to reach, considering how Bad most mesh content is (especially as attachments). Your naked mesh body alone can put you halfway to your first million, or more. (Looking at you Legacy...) It has become more and more commonplace to see a single avatar reach the million-mark, I would even call it the norm.

So if I am understanding this, the 22 lamps, in my fun example - are technically only "from a texture" standpoint impacting me "once".   But the mesh rendering is well all that stuff above (ha) thank you for putting all the info it does help!

It's a little confusing because the VRAM on Firestorm shows 22 instances too.  So it's hard to tell what the total VRAM is with a static screen at any moment.  Based on if calculations are then happening to negate instances of the same textures.    They even showed up on the VRAM when they were not in my direct camera vision (confusing me further).

I did think (and I could be wrong) that unless the items are linked/joined as one mesh item it actually treated them as separate.  I remember one thread discussing this (I can't find it now) i.e. if the same texture is used twice on one mesh item - it counted as one but if different mesh instances  (same texture) it counted as separate so both used VRAM.  

I am not that au fait with the viewer side of things....   so have probably confused myself even further now!!
 

Edited July 2, 2020 by Charlotte Bartlett

[Wulfie Reanimator]

5 hours ago, Charlotte Bartlett said:

I am not that au fait with the viewer side of things....   so have probably confused myself even further now!!

It's okay, I rarely read the viewer source too (hopefully one day I'll be fluent enough on C++ to do that), but I have a lot of "general knowledge," some practical knowledge, and the benefit of reading a lot of discussions specific to SL

[Prokofy Neva]

On 6/30/2020 at 4:23 AM, Qie Niangao said:

A minor point (and one with minimal effect on event lag) is that this "None" setting serves a slightly different purpose than "phantom", and necessarily applies only to some links in an object; that "scary error message" is the hint that it cannot apply to the root prim, but can be applied to all others. So if one has a linked object with parts that shouldn't block colliders (such as foliage you should be able to walk through) and other parts that should be barriers (tree trunks, say), "None" is just the trick needed.

Out of idle interest, I went to visit Shop & Hop during off hours (as usual for me) and of course there weren't many avatars in the regions, which explains why the sim statistics (Ctrl-Shift-1) showed 6 milliseconds "Spare Time". That probably doesn't apply during "prime time" for these regions, but in passing: If there's Spare Time, there's nothing to be gained by reducing scripts. (Well... scripts can do stuff that creates non-script lag. Physics is the most common server-side example but scripts can also set up effects that lag viewers even when the script isn't itself using any sim resources. But reducing your avatar or build scripts won't really help with that.)

There are good reasons to favor scripted AOs over viewer-resident AOs, at least for some applications. I agree with @Pussycat Catnap that (usually) the newer llSetAnimationOverride()-based scripts are adequate, and significantly less active than the venerable ZHAO-based AOs (which themselves are much less laggy than some popular animator-scripted kludges). Hence, I've shifted over to NirAO which is mostly all I need (although I'm not finding it on Marketplace now - god only knows, it's open source with what appears to be a license grant at the top of the script, so I guess it could be shared). I mention all this because I anticipate a whole new class of super-laggy avatars, one feature of which will be server-side AOs that synchronize elaborate attached animeshes with the avatar's own motion. I mean real body parts (hair, for example or, say, octopus arms) with their own "skeletons" that animate in synchrony with the avatar's own skeleton (not the current crop of drag-along animesh entourages of pets and bodyguards and floozies).

I'm no fan of this "mall" build. In contrast, though, the cited Fantasy Faire is a good example of extraordinarily elaborate builds by creators who know what they're doing, and they're an actual draw for shoppers. Or at least I for one wouldn't have bothered attending for the shopping, and yet I bought some stuff there while wandering around enjoying the region builds. Also, the "gigantism" of this Shop & Hop build is similar in practical motivation to these other multi-region events: build it big in order to spread it out across multiple regions, thus spreading out the crowds of avatars. What a talented builder does with all that space, though, is why it's (really) an art.

Have you been to Stop 'n Shop? It's nothing like Fantasy Faire or really anything. It has these big RL mall-style pools with fountains and seating that no one uses. These are laggers and avatar traps. The huge ceilings are the gigantism. I don't see that they add anything. 

[Prokofy Neva]

On 6/29/2020 at 6:01 PM, Chic Aeon said:

Yes, understood that about scripts being avatars and wasn't referring to YOUR comment.  However, that being said, turning off scripts also negates AOs (at least mine) and so we end up running around like we are just out of the pod and THAT is not a fun shopping experience. So having a script counter for avatars that boots you if you are only a prescribed limit would be much better.  However, I am not in favor of that anyway.  

 

Honestly the event lasts a LONG time. Currently most of the sims are less than half full. Towards the end they will likely be only a few people in each sim. So if those that are having issues with lag JUST BE PATIENT and not try to come when it is super busy, there would be much less of a problem.  

 

And I am now just reading your ARC or "complexity" comment.   There is one main store event once a month that ONLY let's folks get the gifts if there complexity is below 25.  That seems to work fairly well. I did say "fairly".  Again, I am not FOR that, jut mentioning. 

 

My main comment is in bold and italics LOL.   There IS of course getting a better computer ^^.  Giving up Starbucks for a few months could solve a lot of problems.    

 

 

It's a given that avatars crowd events like this and their rendering points are a big factor in lagging. But that's harder to control for, unless there are guards at the door and scanners and rejections of those over a certain limit.

My point is THE MOLES THEMSELVES can control for the OTHER PIECE of the lag -- which is the Mole build itself, and the individual merchant builds. Every single one of these can meet the standards of every other event and remove unneeded scripts, use 512 textures, put on phantom, etc.

Did they? No. And yet you are strangely resistant to simply acknowledging that yes, this is an area where improvement is more easily made than in trying to police avatars.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 7/1/2020 at 2:24 PM, Charlotte Bartlett said:

The moles part of the build seems fairly ok.   The lag is there for sure, but it's from the stores who have decorated their booths imho.  I went to Gilded today.

I took this screenshot and blurred names, but one store had used a lamp 22 times in their small store space.
Each lamp shows 25885 VRAM.  There are FIVE x 1024 textures on each of those lamps (they did luckily also use 2 x 32 textures ha).  The lamp is tiny and could have been done with 1 x 512 texture for the whole thing.

The individual who used it probably doesn't realize what a terrible lamp it is sadly - but also they didn't need it 22 times in their store too.  

I think it was clear there were no parameters for stores in terms of best practice.  In fairness the only best practice creators have had is what we have individually gleaned from learning from forums, other creators and those who kindly share their knowledge on what "good" looks like.  Personally I am a mile away from good myself (I still learn by the day!).  However, I do feel that for large corporate led events like these, having a moderator for content quality and proper event guide on things like texture sizes, what contributes to lag, complexity etc would help everybody including those who enjoy visiting the events.

Yes, thank you for making a field trip and confirming my point: no rules are being enforced.

If they were, merchants could take out lamp scripts because the prim will stay lighted.

As we all have to do at SL17B or FF or any other event. Hello!

There isn't the policing, and there should be. 

I will have to say the Moles haven't remove their lights, either, however, as I said in the OP, naming one of the objects.

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Have you been to Stop 'n Shop? It's nothing like Fantasy Faire or really anything. It has these big RL mall-style pools with fountains and seating that no one uses. These are laggers and avatar traps. The huge ceilings are the gigantism. I don't see that they add anything. 

Yes, I've been to... well, it's actually called "Shop & Hop" , about which I was agreeing with you:

On 6/30/2020 at 4:23 AM, Qie Niangao said:

I'm no fan of this "mall" build. In contrast, though, the cited Fantasy Faire is [...]

 

[Elisaisabel Munro]

On 6/29/2020 at 5:18 PM, Prokofy Neva said:

The Shop and Hop, which I have come to think of as the Drop and Hop, as you CRAAAAAWL like a sleepy fly in molasses throughout the whole thing, could be far less laggy than it is, and it is not due to 40 avatars on a sim. The build itself and the lack of rules enforcement is at least in part to blame.

Since I know there's a certain cadre on the forums that disputes anything I say, and an overlapping cadre that rejects anything critical of the beloved Moles, I'll address this one over their heads in the hopes that Moles, who I find far more receptive than their fan base, might hear this.

Events in SL are laggy. This is a given. We all know the recipes to make them less laggy, starting with ourselves -- remove all the attachments and bling that make rendering hard. And turn off the view of avatars, and for that matter, other things (surface patch) to reduce lag for yourself.

But we also know that all kinds of things can be done to optimize a heavy-use sim. It's done all the time. Huge events recently like Fantasy Faire, Relay for Life, Home & Garden Expo Design Contest, and the SL 17th Birthday all had strict rules for lightening sim loads.

At Fantasy Faire, which I was fortunate to take part in for the first time this year as a small merchant, has very strict rules that are vigorously enforced. A matron comes around and looks over EVERY SINGLE THING on your lot. Does it violate copyright? Has a script been removed? Is it on topic? But wait, are you SURE you took the script out of that lamp/candle/glowy thing. Then they come around AGAIN. They start with a set of rules (no 1024 textures, take out scripts, take off light, etc.) and they enforce them -- and it works.

And please don't tell me FF has less of a load than Shop 'N Hop. FF has MORE. It has far, far more elaborate builds. More avatars. And way more vendors, as it has lots of shop vendors plus the RFL vendors. It has more shops per sim in some cases, and events on those same sims.

But if you feel as if you must argue about FF or any other big event as being "less" than Shop 'n Hop, then look at SL17B. Yes, SL17B do not always have as many people per sim, but even event-packed sims are not as laggy as Shop 'n Hop.

Because at SL17B -- same set of rules as FF or any other big event, Linden-sponsored or not. Take out scripts -- and then take out MORE scripts. Put everything on "phantom" so there are no collisions. Lindens or Moles come and check and tell you to reduce, and reduce some more. And check AGAIN. You keep whittling and battling til you get down below their norm, which is I believe 0.06 script time per parcel (and below .01 per item). Much of the work of your build comes in doing this paring of prims and scripts and optimizing things.

I don't think this is being done with anywhere near the scrupulousness of other Linden-sponsored or Linden-facilitated events at Shop 'n Hop.

I see merchants that have not removed obvious scripts from lamps and other lit things -- and they don't need them to be there in a sample as they have vendors. I don't know how you tell whether a texture is at 512 or 1024 (I'd love to know if there is  a test) -- but persistent grey squares may indicate that.

More to the point, which is easier to police in a way, is the Moles' build. Now, I realize this is a very awesome and beloved build. It looks like Midtown Plaza, the first mall in Rochester, NY, which we used to go to as teenagers in the 1970s and buy things called "records" at "record stores" (which later my daughter called "Those big CDs you have in the closet"). Midtown Plaza -- with the same swirly arches and rounded effects and hanging plants and pools and more plants was torn down a few years ago because not only was it expensive to heat in the winter and cool in the summer, stores were dying due to the Internet.

So here we all are on the Internet, and the thought is, "Let's re-create virtually that fabulous 1970s mall experience that Prok and other teens buying record and posters and beads in head shops look upon so nostalgically".

Except this build is not only a lag monster, in my view, it's an avatar trap. Most of the time when I just click on a sim, I land under the build or trapped by the benches and pools, unable to break away easily. There is no need for all those pools and benches. No one sits at them. Ever. They fight their way FROM them. ONE per sim would be plenty.

The hanging plants have lights in them, for example:  0.01331 ms, 1792 KB, (28/28) : Gleaming Hedge E2

I flew around with my Xoph script sensor and that was just one of the high script time lit things I saw that could have been removed. In fact the entire overhanging plant-filled mall could go. 

A lot of the big events merchants have  finally changed their big, avatar-trapping, elaborate builds. Remember We ❤️ RP's old medieval town builds? You had to DRAAAAG yourself through these wending dirt roads past dark medieval pubs and fences and stalls and castles that made the whole experience dark and depressing. You could never find the thing you were looking for. You would grind away at it, trying to cam, and give up. Finally the owners realized this cost them sales, they ditched all that stuff, and made a spacious, clean round building with simple stalls which is 10 times easier to navigate, find what you want, buy, browse, and get out without torture. Same with Sanarae, even Shiny Shabby -- all of them have ditched their elaborate builds in favour of builds that reduce lag and therefore increase sales. After all, if you want to go look at a build, you can go to a Destination or some romantic spot, you don't need to go to a laggy event you can't even see. Arcade put the entire thing on a pier. I think it would make sense to put Shop 'n Hop on a pier with no ceiling, no plants, no impediments, and take out all the scripts possible.

I realize that Soviet-style gigantism, or for that matter, 1950s American recreational gigantism, styles that Moles like other virtual architects fall back on because they are lacking in other models for the masses they wish to bring, dies very hard out of the repetoire. But it must. Merchants work hard to set up their stores, they give away gifts, they set things at half price, they take a loss, and while they can do what they should to reduce lag -- and rules should be enforced with them as much as they are for SL17B or other events -- the build itself has to change.

Yes, I realize you can wait until the first very laggy days die down. Duh. It does last a month. But I'm talking about going there *yesterday* or *today* when it has 13 or 18 avatars per sim, and it is still grindingly slow. It doesn't have to be this way.

 

Thank you for doing a rant post about this.
While it is true what you say, I think the big issue here is avatar complexity.
I went to places that were impossible to go around only days after opening, and then a week or 2 later.  Not so many avatars, and really not laggy at all, and all the buildings around me rezzing in orderly manner. 

People need to understand avatar complexity.  If you are heavy, no one will be seeing you.  NO ONE.  I will derender you immediately.  If you are obscene about it, I might derender you permanently. Many will lower graphics so you will be a jelly doll or a pixelated green/brown/violet figure.

So stop going to events wearing more than 50k complexity.  And wear textured panties if you find impossible to hide your vag and ***** with an alpha.  Texture clothes are here and thanx god for that.