Just WHAT is happening to SL Sailing?

[Aishagain]

I'm posting this here in the hope that someone more knowledgeable than I can explain just what has gone wrong with Sailing in SL. 

Tonight my partner and I rezzed our not too old Bandit 60 at Nantucket Sailing Club and headed out into Blake.  We had only crossed 3 regions when two things became apparent:

1) the yacht was slow to react to commands

2) region crossings were initially much better than they were.

Then just after our third region crossing the boat simply stopped and became unresponsive.  After 30 seconds it jerked into life and resumed its course, but we realised it was not responding to commands either in chat or via a touch menu.

At the next crossing I was unsat from my cockpit position and my avatar now was sat on (perhaps) the craft's root prim somewhere in the belly of it.  My partner, who was "driving" deliberately unsat, but the boat continued and eventually I unsat and TP'd home. I must assume the boat continued until SL killed it at the next region border.

The map was utterly useless since land on neighbouring regions either never appeared or did so intermittently.

So, I ask in all innocence and ignorance; what on Earth is happening?  I also noticed that the Nantucket Yacht Club region traffic was a fraction of its normal value, so perhaps I should have realised that there was a problem, compounded by the fact that I could see very few other avatars on the water. All the regions we entered appeared to be running 555570.

Edited February 19, 2021 by Aishagain
spelling and grammar

[animats]

Strange. I just  went to Nantucket Sailing Club and rezzed a Belleza speedboat. Drove that past Siren's Isle, where the usual suspects were partying. Went to Brussiac, and checked on my NPCs at GTFO HQ. Rezzed a Laser sailboat for the trip back, and ended up at Dana's Oceanfront Paradise. The only problem was some slow rezzing; I didn't see a huge yacht at Dana's appear until it was too late to avoid.

[Anna Nova]

It's intermittent.  My own theory is that if 2 (or more) are in a boat, and at least one has a slow or latent connection, then you may get the issues @Aishagaindescribes.  There is also the complexity of the vehicle, of course, Bandits aren't that lightweight.

[CarlaWetter]

Sounds at least in good parts as if you got hit by the sporadic and random bug that your vehicle scripts get a link change event before the sitters finish their transit. Many vehicles that use some version of AVsitter are particularly vulnerable.

There are some AVsitter scripts available on MP that have some workaround included for the link change bug.

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/AVsitter-129-fix-for-vehicles/20869617

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Cs-region-crossing-patches-for-AVsitter22-3/21179378

Note, the bug as such is serverside and these scripts, meant to replace the AVsit respective [AV]sitA and [AV]sitB scripts in your vehicles can not really provide a fix, they only help to "hide" the issue for a short time after a crossing.

[Vicious Hollow]

The fixes linked are great, and I highly recommend Uggo's, (the first link).  However they, sadly, don't work in the Bandit 60, 55, and 25r as they use another sitter system. which is why I've pretty much docked those boats until a server fix or a fix for those is worked up.

 

With that said, even with the fix, I have seen something similar to what Aishagain has mentioned. This was up the Bullring channel. I hit a crossing and lost full control, but not like the normal loss of control, in this case I came to a complete stop, all of the surrounding sims vanished and I was eventually disconnected. Sure that sounds familiar to problems in the past, thing is, it wasn't the same sequence as before, and when it's happened in the past I didn't come to a full stop, lose sound and basically be sitting in status, including "that" long delay before being disconnected. 

 

I've also seen, in the middle of Blake, another similar issue as the one mentioned, - as in delay or serious lag in controls, and a sudden stop, then movement suddenly resumes. This happened when several sailing groups were out on cruises, plus the CG was having a "parade".  

 

With the AVSitter fixes available, sailing has gotten so much more enjoyable again, but as I was saying even with the fix, and/or in boats that don't use AVSitter, there have been some really strange issues like mentioned. Still, have to say, in all, it's heaps better then the horrid "drop to the bottom of the sea without warning" crossing issues of the past ... 😛