Doormant Scripts & Lag

[Ford Lusch]

Apologies if this is a dumb question but I've searched for something similar and cant' find an answer.

There's lots of objects such as rocks, grasses etc in my region that have scripts in them to change textures for seasons etc. Do these scripts have any impact on region performance or are they completely dormant until initiated? I'm just curious if taking the scripts out of these items would help keep the region running smoother?

Thanks for any advice.

[Qie Niangao]

Depends what the "smoother" expectations are. Scripts almost only affect the performance of other scripts. There are special cases where they affect other stuff the sim has to do (such as Physics), or possibly overall sim resource use (such as memory) but the kind of expendable scripts you'll find for changing textures, starting particle systems, triggering texture animation, etc., really only compete for tiny scraps of Script Time and nothing else worth noticing. So you can't expect reducing such scripts to have any effect on making stuff rez into the viewer any faster or have less rubber banding or any similar common "lag" symptoms.

Still, it's good practice to tidy up because completely idle scripts do demand a tiny bit of processing each simulation frame, so when there get to be over 5000 or so in a regular sim (or anything over 1200 or so in a Homestead), scripts start to have to queue up to get a shot at the scheduler, which is reflected in the sim statistic, % "Scripts Run."  Linden developers aim to reduce this overhead someday, but that's not going to happen immediately, so removing idle scripts is worth the effort on any region that's running low on Spare Time, which is when Script Run starts falling below 100%.

(Also keep in mind that scripts attached to avatars visiting the region demand every bit as many resources as those rezzed on the region all the time, so reducing idle script count can create a little head room for visitors to arrive and still operate HUDs, etc., without tanking all other script performance.)

[Ford Lusch]

Thank you so much for that very detailed feedback Qie, that was really helpful and I appreciate it.