Is it time to say Yippeee!

[Lancewae Barrowstone]

I just learned (and yeah, maybe I'm the only fool not to know) the entire Blake Sea has been cloned to Aditi (the beta grid) where it is being re-worked and transferred to the cloud.  There is talk of "fast crossings" at sim lines -  along with bugs and fixes and fails, of course, but that is the process.  And you want to find bugs.  Ain't nuthin better 'n the world than to find a BUG and squash that thing into oblivion.  But so, now here is the question.  Should we just take a year off and come back to SL when this magnificent undertaking has been completed and running smoothly from that Big Daddy cloud of AWS? Then we can run out like children at recess and test the sim crossings everywhere in our own speedboats and airplanes?  I mean, it's surely gonna take a year, right?  Or is it. 

So, wait a minute before you answer.  Here's what I think (and of course, what else in the WORLD is more important that that!?  Huh?).  First off, using the Blake Sea is smart, because it's full of broad expanses and thus minimal disturbances to builds on peoples' properties,  and so beginning there to transfer from SL servers to the cloud serves to get the kinks worked out in a cumbersome process with a little space and calmness while you do it.  I know how that goes.  Like any complex project fraught with unforeseen encounters, you just tool up and begin.  You start small in some out-of-the-way place, if you can, and start making your mistakes so you can alter your approaches, learn and build your efficiencies of doing.  You also then create strong and knowledgeable teams and once you're rolling and everything is relatively predictable you can expand those teams and move fast and slick.  Completion time is always a product of size of skilled teams and resources.  Thus, it might be achievable in say, 6 months?

But who knows.  And really I suspect that once they've lifted Mainland to the cloud, you can then, just bring up the private regions one at a time at your leisure if you want.  So, maybe we don't really need to take a year's break at all.  Not like we were going to any how.  Just be ready for some dust and noise as work seems at hand.  And as always, tell me how I'm wrong and completely full of milkshake. 

~ Cheers!  

 

 

 

Edited July 28, 2020 by Lancewae Barrowstone
spellblurb

[Aethelwine]

I might remember wrong but I think the expansion of Bellisseria regions is paused until they migrate to the cloud and I have in my head they plan this for Autumn..

I hope they iron the bugs out by then.

[Mollymews]

yes it is yippee. We are starting to see the progress on the cloud uplift programme

there is a feedback thread here:

 

[Mollymews]

on your wider point. I agree that will be good if private region owners will one day be able to switch to a pay-for-time model for their regions rather than a fixed fee. Which will suit quite a few people

might be that the pay-for-time model will come with some minimum time amount, $10 or $20 a month for X hours say. Pay extra when X has been used

[Aethelwine]

"Pay as you use" openspace regions could be the ultimate in affordable privacy

[Fritigern Gothly]

10 minutes ago, Lancewae Barrowstone said:

I just learned (and yeah, maybe I'm the only fool not to know) the entire Blake Sea has been cloned to Aditi (the beta grid) where it is being re-worked and transferred to the cloud.  There is talk of "fast crossings" at sim lines -  along with bugs and fixes and fails, of course, but that is the process.  And you want to find bugs.  Ain't nuthin better 'n the world than to find a BUG and squash that thing into oblivion.  But so, now here is the question.  Should we just take a year off and come back to SL when this magnificent undertaking has been complicated and running smoothly from that Big Daddy cloud of AWS? Then we can run out like children at recess and test the sim crossings everywhere in our own speedboats and airplanes?  I mean, it's surely gonna take a year, right?  Or is it. 

 

The Blake Sea was indeed cloned to Aiditi, and is already running in the cloud. 
Last night I finally managed to give things a whirl and aside from the tiniest hiccups (like perhaps a 10th of  second) the crossings are lightning fast, and sometimes even completely unnoticeable!

As most Blake Sea going people know, it is best to make your avatar as lightweight as possible to make region crossings as smooth as possible (I have  system avie for that, no scripts, etc) and hope and pray that this is enough.
However, for last night's test I chose to wear my scripted mesh body, scripted mesh hair, scripted clothing, lots of HUDs and so forth. I deliberatly made it hard. I then rezzed a ship which in the past has been sent flying, or just plain disappeared on me during region crossings in the Black Sea and traveled from the east-most region to the west-most one and back with only the aforementioned tiny hiccups, if any at all!!!

Next up was me trying a powerboat. This one should not even be attempted on the main grid, it will send you flying, crashing, or it will vanish. This powerboat (by Michie Marine) achieved insane speeds of over 55 knots (5 times the speed of my favorite boat) and the hiccups were still there, but not so much that it would disturb your race. 

I am deeply impressed with the current results, even though this is just an early public preview (I don't even think it's an alpha) of having our regions run in the AWS cloud.

 

[Maryanne Solo]

Omg I'm going there asap! Been working on my yachts textures too. W0.0T! \0/

[Fritigern Gothly]

In contrast: a few hours after making the above post I went to the Blake Sea on the main grid. Tried make a nice little trip, starting at Dutch Harbor but stranded in Blake Sea - Galilee with HUMONGOUS local chatlag, and the inability to walk after my boat poofed. A relog to that same region left me with a naked system body which did not appear to gain any of the attachments that I wore previously (hair, head, clothes, you know, the usual). A relog to my Belliseria home immediately gave me my outfit back.

So... The Blake Sea on the main grid is still a very sick puppy.

 

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

I just safely crossed a bunch of sims at amazonaws/Flotsam and Jetsam.

I think we're gonna need a bigger boat.

[Drakonadrgora Darkfold]

And then, when or if aws is ever ddos'd then everyone will feel the pains again and race back here and complain again.

everyone thinking the cloud is some magic answer to everything might find it isnt for some things.

[Phate Shepherd]

Has anyone found an AWS region where http comms is allowed? Anything of mine that I test that uses HTTP in any way throws up an error that it is disabled in that region.

[animats]

8 minutes ago, Phate Shepherd said:

Has anyone found an AWS region where http comms is allowed? Anything of mine that I test that uses HTTP in any way throws up an error that it is disabled in that region.

No, outbound is still turned off, Oz has said. There are supporting servers involved in outbound, like "lsl.secondlife.com", and their equivalents may not yet exist on the AWS side.

[Gabriele Graves]

Holy Sheet!  That has to be some of the smoothing crossings I have ever witnessed in SL.  Only one time did I get glitched, the controls stopped controlling the boat and reverted to rotating the camera.  Stopping the boat, standing and then sitting again fixed the issue though and it was at a crossing.

It was really nice though.  If the Blake Sea could be more like this on the main grid, it would be wonderful.  I could almost not tell the crossings were there in most cases, they were that quick and smooth.  There is an oddity though, in some regions the boat would go much slower than in others, like through mud even though the boat speed was always at 100%.  So the speed of the boat wasn't anywhere near as constant as it should have been.  I was using the Coast Guard Pursuit boat to test with which isn't super fast.

 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

On 7/29/2020 at 3:18 PM, Drakonadrgora Darkfold said:

And then, when or if aws is ever ddos'd then everyone will feel the pains again and race back here and complain again.

everyone thinking the cloud is some magic answer to everything might find it isnt for some things.

To be fair, it isn't like SL hasn't been DDOS'd as it is now.

On one hand, I imagine taking down AWS is a tad harder than LL's own little setup. On the other, we might be affected indirectly as collateral. (I say might because I don't think AWS could be taken down all at once, probably just regionally.)

The move to AWS is no more magical than BOM. It's an improvement, it has benefits, but no tech is flawless.

Edited July 31, 2020 by Wulfie Reanimator

[animats]

12 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Only one time did I get glitched, the controls stopped controlling the boat and reverted to rotating the camera.  Stopping the boat, standing and then sitting again fixed the issue though and it was at a crossing.

That camera and animation problem can be handled in vehicle scripts. If, as a vehicle builder, you need to fix that problem, look here starting at line 465.

The remaining big question is how to prevent a vehicle from starting a second region crossing before the first has completed. The region crossing system cannot handle that. This is why region corners are a problem. Defensive measures in the vehicle can help (approach corners slowly, stop and wait for avatars to catch up after a crossing) but are not airtight. This seems to happen far less often on the AWS sims, but the Blake Sea sims are empty and lightly loaded. We need something like a Drivers of SL rally to find out what happens in traffic.