World Map still not fuctional

[Aishagain]

Bump.  This is STILL not functional and we are being starved of information regarding progress (if any).

We need SOME news and progress to be made on this.  This weekend saw the highest numbers online for years.  Give the newbies and returnees something to stay for...PLEASE!

[rasterscan]

Lab still on Christmas hols ?

[Odaks]

I think they got lost, somewhere along the line. If onl;y they had a working map.......

[Mikkoto Takeda]

This world map is now working is no ETA! so it's would be like 2099 or 2030,2050,2060

[animats]

On 2/8/2021 at 7:29 AM, Aishagain said:

Bump.  This is STILL not functional and we are being starved of information regarding progress (if any).

We need SOME news and progress to be made on this.  This weekend saw the highest numbers online for years.  Give the newbies and returnees something to stay for...PLEASE!

This is looking too much like the usual situation after a leveraged buyout. Cut costs, reduce services, extract money. Look at the Linden Lab jobs page. That tells you LL's real priorities. No technical staff for Second Life, but a lawyer for Tilia. Pay attention to what they do, not what they say.

 

[Crim Mip]

I get that the new investors are probably more interested in Tilia. Still, the map has been broken long enough. Apply enough devs and crack the whip a little. Sheesh.

[foneco Zuzu]

 Sadly this issue made me rethink SL as a ALL  and forced me to move mostly to other online adventures, mainly Rockstar Red dead 2 online.

Hope to see it solved really asap cause if not ill be forced to rollback all my accounts to basic.

[Qie Niangao]

12 hours ago, Crim Mip said:

I get that the new investors are probably more interested in Tilia. Still, the map has been broken long enough. Apply enough devs and crack the whip a little. Sheesh.

Yeah. Mythical man month notwithstanding, somebody needs some help here.

This really only affects those of us who frequent the Mainland, though, right? I mean "Greater Mainland" I guess, to include all the Linden Home regions. And maybe a handful of Estates with large enough region clusters to not fit on the Map fully zoomed-in.

It must all be a plot to promote the new standalone Homesteads they'll be offering Premium Plus subscribers any day now. (No wonder it's taking so long!) 😛

[Aishagain]

3 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

This really only affects those of us who frequent the Mainland, though, right? I mean "Greater Mainland" I guess, to include all the Linden Home regions. And maybe a handful of Estates with large enough region clusters to not fit on the Map fully zoomed-in.

Do I detect sarcasam here, Qie?  I must assume so 'cos it's a LONG way from being correct!

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, Aishagain said:

Do I detect sarcasam here, Qie?  I must assume so 'cos it's a LONG way from being correct!

Actually the sarcasm came later. But I guess the map tiles are actually out of date, right? (I mean, besides being unable to be displayed zoomed-out.)

(Or did you mean something else?)

[Aishagain]

15 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

(Or did you mean something else?)

I was meaning that those of us that fancy ourselves SL sailors need a functional World Map in order to navigate in places other than the wide open part of Blake Sea.  I am sure that map tiles the render for some that have not cleared cache or renewed their viewer lately (which I have) but as you say they are now way out of date.

That we have not had anything resembling a functional map now for a couple of months is nothing short of disgraceful.  It might well be hard to code but if anyone WAS doing it, I am sure we'd have something useable by now.

I had assumed your paragraph about Mainland and Linden Homes users was the intial sarcasm!

Edited February 24, 2021 by Aishagain

[Qie Niangao]

Ah, my fault for the confusion: I kinda forgot that Blake Sea isn't Mainland (mostly) [EDIT: and I guess there are other non-Blake Sea non-Mainland sailing areas, too].

Edited February 24, 2021 by Qie Niangao

[Lucia Nightfire]

Map tiles have been broken since November 18th. That is over 3 months ago...

[TT120]

We were told that they had their best coder working on it but I'm pretty sure that was a lie to shut us up.  Nothing is being done so don't hold your breath.  I can't navigate without it...Exploring is all but impossible. Looks like it's time to look at other games....

[Aishagain]

14 minutes ago, TT120 said:

Looks like it's time to look at other games....

And THAT is exactly what Linden Research's new owners do NOT want.  No Map - no (or fewer) users...no profit...shortly after, no SL.

This is beginning to look like the Lindens hell-bent on comitting suicide....again.

[animats]

The new owners of LL may think that Tilia will give them a strong position in the exciting new make-money-fast world of non-fungible tokens. That's the business which Upland, which is powered by Tilia, is in.

Non-fungible tokens are a scheme for monetizing Fear Of Missing Out. See Upland's home page. Depending on how old you are, you may remember Crypto Kitties, Beanie Babies, Cabbage Patch Kids, the Franklin Mint, or baseball cards. Same concept; crank out "collectables" in "limited editions" and convince people to overpay for them. A lot like gachas, but at far higher prices.

[MBeatrix]

I don't see why would someone drop SL and go look for games just because the world map isn't working... I never use it when sailing or flying, as Firestorm's mini map is good enough (unlike the Lindens viewer one).
Yes, it's annoying when you want to go sim hopping around mainland but just that. However, I wonder why it still isn't working when it's said that "a fix has been implemented". Is it possible that they don't know how to do it, as someone sort of suggested some time ago?

Edited February 25, 2021 by MBeatrix
typo correction

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

The other important use for the map is when looking for land for sale, scrolling to and fro looking for yellow patches. With search also having some issues as reported in other threads there is a possible effect her on the economy?

[MBeatrix]

6 hours ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

The other important use for the map is when looking for land for sale, scrolling to and fro looking for yellow patches. With search also having some issues as reported in other threads there is a possible effect her on the economy?

Maybe it affects economy a bit but I don't think it's significant in the short term (and even less in the long term) if it gets fixed sometime soon.
I'm more concerned with the overall performance, things like slow rezzing and assets loading, teleport failures, regions unusable for half a day, group chat not working when you need it, etc.

Edited February 25, 2021 by MBeatrix
typo correction

[Solar Legion]

9 hours ago, MBeatrix said:

I don't see why would someone drop SL and go look for games just because the world map isn't working... I never use it when sailing or flying, as Firestorm's mini map is good enough (unlike the Lindens viewer one).
Yes, it's annoying when you want to go sim hopping around mainland but just that. However, I wonder why it still isn't working when it's said that "a fix has been implemented". Is it possible that they don't know how to do it, as someone sort of suggested some time ago?

It does not say that a fix has been implemented.

As for the spitballing other users have been doing ... It seems as though the Instant Gratification mentality is cropping up again.

[MBeatrix]

50 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

It does not say that a fix has been implemented.

As for the spitballing other users have been doing ... It seems as though the Instant Gratification mentality is cropping up again.

Maybe I misread it weeks ago, although I could almost swear that's what was on the GSP then... If that's the case, thanks for correcting me. But the GSP post has been changed since last time I saw it.

Edited February 25, 2021 by MBeatrix
corrections

[AlettaMondragon]

I'll quote multiple posts to avoid making a bigger mess of this conversation. It is fun to just read it, and all the other topics that were opened for this one issue, but seriously, on our end there is simply no progress made in this case since November, as the map is still broken, and apparently @Oz Linden and his team forgot to update us with new info for a month again, if we count the Jan 21 update on the GSP as an actual update, while it actually doesn't contain any new, useful information, so it doesn't count. Anyway, we would certainly appreciate some new updates on where exactly the progress stands now, like, is that ONE (but obviously the best, they are all the best) developer rewriting all code necessary to make the world map working? Or is the world map getting redesigned as well, so that it would work like you would expect in 2021, instead of its nearly 20-year old way? So that it would render sculpt and mesh objects properly, there wouldn't be 8 levels of tiles of different sizes, unnecessarily storing and downloading so many textures instead of using (and scaling) one per region? Or is this apparently really hard and time-consuming work necessary only to restore the world map to its previous state? These are the questions that at least some of us would really like to know, so we could know what to expect. It would be also much appreciated to get the ETA for it, not like March 13 or anything like that, but whether we could expect to have a usable world map by this summer, or if it will take you a year to fix it. Telling us repeatedly that you don't want to "jinx the developer" is simply BS, we all know that. I'm really not sure how LL works as a company, when it comes to projects, but at companies where I've worked and were heavily project-oriented, a manager would never accept if any of us told them we don't know when exactly we'll complete the project. Maybe managers at LL don't do this, and nobody expects the developers to complete a task in the shortest time in the best quality, but if I'm wrong and you do, it would be nice to respect us as much to tell us that estimated time that the developer told you when you asked them how long it will take to have the world map up and running again.

Now I'll actually address some of the things I've been reading here, I just wanted to have the important part on the top for Oz, hoping that he'll give us some more up to date and reassuring answers this time, to reduce this confusion.

 

On 2/24/2021 at 3:36 PM, Qie Niangao said:

Yeah. Mythical man month notwithstanding, somebody needs some help here.

This really only affects those of us who frequent the Mainland, though, right? I mean "Greater Mainland" I guess, to include all the Linden Home regions. And maybe a handful of Estates with large enough region clusters to not fit on the Map fully zoomed-in.

It must all be a plot to promote the new standalone Homesteads they'll be offering Premium Plus subscribers any day now. (No wonder it's taking so long!) 😛

 

23 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Actually the sarcasm came later. But I guess the map tiles are actually out of date, right? (I mean, besides being unable to be displayed zoomed-out.)

(Or did you mean something else?)

 

We can be actually glad that the full-zoom (level 1) tiles with their November 17 print didn't get dumped with the smaller zoom level tiles. If you look at any region that was made after that date, they don't have any map tile, it's like a ghost on the map. It is something that doesn't matter on an isolated private region, most of those usually have a cover prim at sky-sign altitude to have a neutral color instead of a messy map print anyway. When it comes to multiple-sim estates, though, it can get really annoying, since you might want to first see how the land lies, literally, before you would have the time to go there and explore, but you simply can't. This will be an issue with new Bellisseria LH region groups as well (I think there weren't any new ones added yet after those including Twisted Palms with the sky sign saying "SOON", so while the tiles are outdated, at least they have tiles...), which actually makes the irony in this situation stronger. SL's main viable product is the "land product", LL actually puts serious effort into maintaining it, yet a gridwide feature that actually shows the land product as a map, which helps exploration, "sim-hopping", choosing your home or next additional property, managing estates, etc, gets broken and 3 months later, they can't even tell when they expect to make it work again. Interestingly enough, when the Land Store is unavailable, it gets a red (major outage) color on the status page, but the post for the map outage has a black color. I'm not entirely sure what the difference should be between the blue and black colored posts there (since there are usually non-maintenance posts in blue, too), but I'd think such an outage as this should be marked with a yellow color at least, for the "degraded performance" or whatever that status is called. Of course, if the black color means the situation is so grave it needs a black flag and a funeral, it is actually quite appropriate for this issue. It only shows this isn't a priority for LL, and unfortunately, it's really a small fraction of all users that is concerned about it, so it's not a surprise. Honestly, do those new region owners who don't have a map tile on their sims on the map stop paying for the region just because of it? Of course not. If that was the case, I bet the world map would be fixed long ago.

 

23 hours ago, Aishagain said:

I was meaning that those of us that fancy ourselves SL sailors need a functional World Map in order to navigate in places other than the wide open part of Blake Sea.  I am sure that map tiles the render for some that have not cleared cache or renewed their viewer lately (which I have) but as you say they are now way out of date.

That we have not had anything resembling a functional map now for a couple of months is nothing short of disgraceful.  It might well be hard to code but if anyone WAS doing it, I am sure we'd have something useable by now.

I had assumed your paragraph about Mainland and Linden Homes users was the intial sarcasm!

 

They're definitely working on fixing the map, so it's not the issue, at least, they told us several times they were working on it, and LL is actually good at telling us when they are not going to do something, so we don't have any reason to believe they aren't working on this. (For example, they've done 3 "group chat maintenances" since November, and group chats are still terrible and randomly working or not, so we know it takes a lot of time to get things fixed, if ever.) The problem is the terrible lack of updates on their progress, and treating it as a low-priority issue. Actually, even things that were suggested in this topic before, like replacing the automatically updating "map print" tiles with the clean terrain tiles of the regions would be a good intermediate solution so we would at least see something on the map for navigation, but I assume the issue is more severe than that, so that they can't make it to feature any textures now at all, and it is not only the print update that is broken but the entire system. If I'm wrong, though, it would be pretty cool if they could put random memes up for each region's tiles on the 2-8 zoom levels, and pictures of cute animals and whatnot. It would clearly show us they're doing something (because obviously, seeing the same blue background for 3 months isn't a promising sign of progress), and while the map is still not usable, at least we all could have some good laughs.

 

22 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Ah, my fault for the confusion: I kinda forgot that Blake Sea isn't Mainland (mostly) [EDIT: and I guess there are other non-Blake Sea non-Mainland sailing areas, too].

 

Isn't it? It is. I'm always amazed by the confusion this causes, mostly with the Blake and Belli. People tend to think Belli is Mainland too, because it is between Sansara and Jeogeot, but they tend to think the Blake is not Mainland, because of the private estates around it. However, all the regions that have "Blake Sea -" in their name are technically Mainland regions, and any other regions where the parcels are owned by the Blake Sea group are Mainland regions owned by LL. All those regions around the Blake that are (now mostly) residential regions are the private estates in the CLPP, of course they are part of the Blake Sea, but the whole thing is actually a mixture of the LL-owned sea and the privately owned residential estates. The area where most of the actual sailing and aviation is happening, is 100% Mainland.

 

17 hours ago, Aishagain said:

And THAT is exactly what Linden Research's new owners do NOT want.  No Map - no (or fewer) users...no profit...shortly after, no SL.

This is beginning to look like the Lindens hell-bent on comitting suicide....again.

 

You would think it is the best interest to run a service at its best all the time, with the least outages possible, and for only brief times when it happens, exactly for this reason, so that the customers would get the actual service they're paying for. As I said above, though, this issue is not a huge impact on LL's incomes from SL. We can only make guesses and estimates, but they're fully aware of how much money they make and what products it comes from, and I'm pretty sure there are still at least a hundred times more people that are here to pay large tiers and don't care about the map, compared to those who pay less and would be here for the activities that usually require a functional world map (or stopped paying because of this unresolved issue). You can be pretty sure if anything occurs that cuts those end-of-month premium material incomes, thereby endangering the planned new jacuzzi, new BMW, new Rolex watch, expensive vacations, etc of the owners/investors/managers, they fix the issue ASAP because they can feel the importance of it.

 

12 hours ago, MBeatrix said:

I don't see why would someone drop SL and go look for games just because the world map isn't working... I never use it when sailing or flying, as Firestorm's mini map is good enough (unlike the Lindens viewer one).
Yes, it's annoying when you want to go sim hopping around mainland but just that. However, I wonder why it still isn't working when it's said that "a fix has been implemented". Is it possible that they don't know how to do it, as someone sort of suggested some time ago?

 

I can very well relate to why someone would choose to go back to play games. I would as well, if it wasn't for SL's much more wholesome experience. I can't dump SL for a game, because they don't offer as much, like the ability to easily create my own things for my own use, or even products, or jumping from one themed roleplay to another one without having to log out, start up another game and waiting half an hour until it loads. The only thing that anyone can prefer in a game now over SL is functionality. If you rather go to spend time playing a game whose features are fully functional, it is technically better than constantly trying to accommodate to the missing features and other issues. Technically, yes, we can still fly and sail, nothing restricts us from doing so, and yes, the minimap works properly, and Firestorm's property lines feature on it is something that should be enough for navigation in short range. That is, when you have to avoid private parcels, banlines, etc. The minimap displays as many regions as the range of your draw distance limit. It is perfect for navigation at the very area where you currently are, but you can't plan a new flight or sailing route with it. If you can't see like half of a continent on the map at the same time, along with how it currently looks like, which is particularly important now with Bellisseria as it's being built, you can't plan your own explorations or a group event easily. You can only go out there like in real life and scout the area for yourself. I've been out exploring places irl too, doing it without a map is awful. It can be fun, until you get lost and run into something dangerous. You won't run into anything dangerous in SL, if we look at it like this, but it would be still convenient to plan ahead. If you're flying or sailing or driving your usual routes where you know where you are, it's perfectly fine, I don't need a map for that either. If you're about to go to places where you haven't been before, well, I know many people don't use a map for that either, but those of us who would, should be able to.

In fact in 2021 the world map in SL should have more features, not less. Useful and convenient ones, like being able to place markers on the map instead of using prims for sky signs, similarly to how the land sale, auction, event and infohub highlights already work, being able to place multiple beacons on the map for waypoints on a route (I guess that could be a viewer feature actually), and more retrievable information, like if a parcel has the feature enabled, people right-clicking on the world map could view the parcel profile, etc. What do we have instead? A 90-95% unusable, broken world map feature that now can't even provide the most basic info, such as how the surface of a region looks like. It was already very outdated and had its major flaws while it was working, but now, if we have to rely on the limited minimap instead of the world map, it's a big step back to 1998. Oh, and that being said, actually a reason that people would go to play games now is that most of them have both a world map and a radar (minimap) feature, because game developers in the 2000s realized as the size of the map grows, players will have to monitor their immediate surroundings directly (radar/minimap), and at the same time, they should be able to see more information about the entire map, in the form of a world map. The two can't substitute each other.

(Also, for sailing and flying, the out-of-sync error on crossings is far more annoying, and really impeding, for those vehicles that are highly prone to it. It is actually that issue which made me avoid sailing and flying, but it was only that combined with the map outage that made me entirely stop sailing and flying unless it's entirely necessary to take off or sail out in some cases. It's another topic though and this post is too long already, so it's just good to acknowledge when several issues have a combined effect, it can really ruin the experience for at least a few people.)

 

Edited February 25, 2021 by AlettaMondragon
additional info

[Lucielle Littlepaws]

I'm thinking about leaving Second Life. I've already kinda stopped exploring the grid and even sailing because it's no fun at all without a working map. I moved to Second Norway because of sailing and I can't even see the sim I live on on the map. As an estate manager I would be totally furious about that because potential customers can see neither the sim nor the available parcels on the map. It's not only the world map issue, but several other issues like eg data loss on my web profile, eep problems and so on and so forth. Things have really gone downhill in the last few months. And of course I regularly check the forum and status page but Linden Lab clear lack communication skills. Last update on the world map issue: January 21 ... over a month ago. I really don't know how long people should wait. I mean, right now, still in the middle of the pandemic, it would be the perfect time to grow and improve Second Life. But Linden Lab just messes everything up ... it's all really, really disappointing.

[Samara Sharkfin]

I put this here because i also miss very much the working map.

From today's Lab Gab   "... that's coming ..."  at 10:22.  but starts at the question.
 

... and for the whole bumpy roller-coaster of the uplift etc ...

Edited February 26, 2021 by Samara Sharkfin
etc.

[Lucielle Littlepaws]

Thank You, Samara 🤗

... but oh my, I just watched the video and now I'm literally crying: Thank You Oz 💛

Edited February 27, 2021 by sweetlucielle