SL Performance

[Sid Nagy]

2 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

 

@Sid NagyIt's also not the moles work and houses or trees. They might look like they are having a texture problem, but really .. that is a symptom of a bigger problem. If the viewer runs out of VRAM because it's full of mesh data, it just starts junking textures, sods law dictates it will pick the most obvious ones first. We've done testing on empty Beli regions and the mole builds are generally very lean. It gets rubbish after people move in .. and stays rubbish even if you derender all the mole content .

Okay.
But how come it happens on Belli sims that the textures load crappy, but not (or much less) on residential private sims?
Somewhere the combination of tons of LL stuff on a sim and then the residents get full 1024 parcel LI allowance, isn't the right combination.
LL wants to give what they can't deliver.

They make totally nice environments in Belli but you can't really live there, unless you like gray, constantly readjusting textures or spartan decorated houses with only a simple bed, a nightstand, a chair and a picture of your mother.
If Belli is designed to only function totally empty, they should not give out so many parcels on every sim or give only sparsely numbers of LI allowance to privately decorate.
Heavily landscaped private sims don't have (many) tenants either.

 

Edited July 28, 2021 by Sid Nagy

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

I would be interested to know precisely what the OP has been seeing / not seeing that caused them to start this topic.

It could be slow loading / grey textures, which most people replying have assumed to be the case. There are some things that we can do to alleviate some of these problems.

But it could also be the deteriorating performance of scripts, which nobody seems to have considered. There is nothing we as users can do to alleviate such problems, apart from stop using scripts.

[Sid Nagy]

If one doesn't log in to SL, one doesn't experience the lag inside either.  😁

It is about the usability of SL.
Then you need decoration, then you need scripts, then you need to be a Barbie or Ken doll.

LL is proud that it runs on user made content. Rightfully so it is a main feature.
But they let creators create non optimized stuff, there is no check whatsoever.
That is LL's choice. It is up to them to keep things run smoothly, with the choices they made.

Users don't have to be technically savvy and understand how SL works deep down in the engine rooms of the viewers or the server software.
In the end, if someone buys a living room set of 25 LI and he/she has more than 25 LI allowance left it has to function without any second thoughts.

Most users are simple consumers.
They have 3 concerns about the 'technical' side of SL:
1. Do I look good?
2. Can I purchase L$?
3. How many LI do I have left on my parcel?

The platform developers ask more than enough RL money for land usage. It is up to them to let it function as advertised.
 

Edited July 28, 2021 by Sid Nagy

[Coffee Pancake]

3 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

But how come it happens on Belli sims that the textures load crappy, but not (or much less) on residential private sims?
Somewhere the combination of tons of LL stuff on a sim and then the residents get full 1024 parcel LI allowance, isn't the right combination.
LL wants to give what they can't deliver.

Residential private sims tend to split a parcels Li allocation between a home on the ground and a skybox. They also tend to more isolated without a full compliment of neighboring regions.

LL are not over promising with Belli, it's working fine for a lot of people .. just not you.. which may be because ....

3 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

unless you like gray, constantly readjusting textures

You're out of video ram. 512MB was fine when VRAM was mostly just used for textures. All the 1024 textures we could manage. All fine.

But now .. no. 512MB is not even nearly enough.

The moment you run out (which with 512MB will happen almost immediately) your performance nose dives. Everything the viewer does is compromised and it's thrashing it's brains out trying to stay still.

We have been trying to get LL to bump the amount of texture memory claimed by the official client for literal years. There is no perfect way to determine how much video ram a system really has, and laptops really like to lie .. believing the lie can make a minority of machines crash (sometimes really badly). But this isn't a reason to limit all users of the official client to 512MB under all circumstances.

We have really tried on this one. Brought it up with Oz and other developer Lindens many times. This is clearly an impossible problem that LL aren't able to solve and aren't willing to allow their users to override. Maybe developer Linden's don't get out much and aren't aware just have hard it bites. Maybe all the other staff and Moles just assume developers know about the problem and aren't submitting feedback. Maybe this being something ALL third party viewers choose to mitigate years ago has convinced LL they can afford to let this one slide.

I know you don't like TPV's .. but this is one thing we have all been doing in our own viewers for years. 

 

3 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

If Belli is designed to only function totally empty, they should not give out so many parcels on every sim or give only sparsely numbers of LI allowance to privately decorate.
Heavily landscaped private sims don't have (many) tenants either.

Nah .. it's far worse than that. You only have 512MB of VRAM. An empty belli region and your avatar and it's half gone. You could have the whole region to yourself and wouldn't be able to decorate one house and have a friend over. Less than 1GB of VRAM is borderline.

Pretty much all your problems and complaints about Belli just go away with more VRAM .. that chances are you probably have.

Edited July 28, 2021 by Coffee Pancake

[Sid Nagy]

It is simply frustrating to have a fast video cart with more than enough high speed ram in a gaming PC with fast Internet and then experience such crap again and again in the Belli regions.
LL has to keep their act up to par and not present things THEIR code and systems can't handle.
That's all.
To only look at nice scenery I don't need a Belli home at all.
I can google postcard pictures from SL within seconds. It has to function. And it does only partial.

Edited July 28, 2021 by Sid Nagy

[Sid Nagy]

59 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

I know you don't like TPV's .. but this is one thing we have all been doing in our own viewers for years.

Okay, you convinced me, I gonna give TPV's a try.
It will take some reading up. I never bothered about them so far. But if they handle VRAM better....
 

Edited July 28, 2021 by Sid Nagy

[Sid Nagy]

I installed Catznip, changed the LOD factor, and hopped around the several themes of Belli and I must say it handles textures (a lot) better than the original viewer.
@Coffee PancakeThanks, for pointing that VRAM thingy out to me.

LL developers really need to take a closer look at what the TPV's have done to improve the SL experience.
LL is crippling their own viewer on this point.

Edited July 28, 2021 by Sid Nagy

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Sid Nagy said:

I installed Catznip, changed the lot factor, and hopped around the several themes of Belli and I must say it handles textures (a lot) better than the original viewer.
@Coffee PancakeThanks, for pointing that VRAM thingy out to me.

LL developers really need to take a closer look at what the TPV's have done to improve the SL experience.
LL is crippling their own viewer on this point.

If you have any problems or can't find something, feel free to poke .. oh and right click on things, we love context menus.

[Lewis Luminos]

On 7/27/2021 at 3:57 PM, Sid Nagy said:

I have a decent computer and fast Internet.
SL loads fast and quickly most of the time with high frame rates. It is all a tat slower since the uplift but not worth talking about.
Two big exceptions:
1. Arriving at Bellisseria coming from other non Belli parcels is a lag crime. Gray, gray and more gray, sometimes for minutes.
We pay the price for the Moles extravaganza with beautiful scenery but sadly also with extreme LI heavy houses, scenery and 1024x1024 textures.
The log home sims and the camping sims are the worst IMHO.

2. When people gather at events, clubs, beaches etc. Things slow down as well.
People want to look too good and sharp.  Result: all the efforts with nice jewelry, extra layers etc. are mostly for nothing because others see you as blurry clouds because they want halfway decent frame rates and a less grayness.

 

I have an average computer and less than average internet speed but even so, SL performance is still pretty good for me, even in Bellisseria. The one place that really lagged me to hell was Campbell Coast, which is such a shame because it's so lovely and I wanted to rent there. But it takes 10-20 minutes for textures to un-grey and even when they did, they would thrash constantly. The only fix for me was to stay away. 😢

[Marianne Little]

It can be a challenge to decorate the Linden Homes so it looks like it's spent 700 in land impact instead of 351. If you look at Bellisseria Parade of Homes and also the Show off Your Home and Garden thread you will see that many manage that well.

I am finding as many 1 Li decorative objects as I can. I am sure I use 150 - 200 single items that all have different textures. I have also found very low Li furniture. It gives room for even more decor. And on top of that, many 1 Li objects can linked with another 1 Li object, and still be 1 Li. When linking decor, this increases the number of textures too.

But I pay for 351 Li and is going to use it all. I only had problems for myself in a Victorian home, and found out that I had not increased the VRAM or what it was. And I also has "grey textures" with one special creator who I shall not name. Very popular, incredibly many triangles, textures and what else objects is made of. Sorry for that bad explanation, I don't remember the technical.

The point is, LL should totally and undoubtedly know that people will use the land impact they pay for. And if LL does not know that very popular creators makes a ton of 1 Li objects, and that decor obsessed people like me buy them and even link them to get the maximum use.... Then LL has no clue of what people put in their houses.

 

[Amelie Mersereau]

On 7/28/2021 at 5:35 AM, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

"I would be interested to know precisely what the OP has been seeing..."

It is not only me who is experiencing the degraded performance. I have discussed this at length among friends, and in group discussions, including in the Bellisseria Citizens group chat discussions, wherein many, many people acknowledged precisely the same observations. Yes, textures & many HUDs take comparatively forever to [fully] load, yes, the map takes forever to load (or it never even finishes loading until long after its specific utility [vehicle race turns, etc.] has ended or expired), yes, even the [grass] terrain sometimes takes forever to load or to finish loading clearly, yes, more and more (not all) avatars present themselves as orange clouds for longer periods of time of late (even if only for a few seconds longer- but consistently longer nonetheless), yes, the........................... And finally, yes, my connection is insanely fast (additionally, wired connection to router as well) ;;). I admit that I can gather better performance (after attaching HUDs, etc.) if I now go elsewhere, to a different estate, to a Sandbox for example, to complete my task (e.g.: selecting a dress color from the respective HUD), buttttttttt this never used to be necessary, and it continues to be slower than was previously the case.

Given my personal experience in discussions of this matter, wherein I was met with almost universal agreement, I was a tiny bit dismayed when almost all of the initial responses to my post here, boiled down & condensed to fit in a thimble, were essentially those of incredulity. In fact, without regard to prim-management-related statements, I thought that I may have accidentally stumbled upon the LL cheerleading squad group discussion lol ;;):    'Everything is totally wonderful with, perhaps, the slight exception of a tiny bit of prim-utilization-optimization-related lag in Bellisseria.'   That's pretty much why I ended my participation in the thread that I started. No, the issue(s) is not 'just me' and/or my system. Essentially, the one (& mostly only) variable that has indeed changed, both for myself and for the myriad of people with whom I have discussed this, since all of the aforementioned began observing this behavior, is SL's migration to the cloud. What a coincidence! Still skeptical? Why not bring the matter up in group chat discussions (choose whatever group you wish) and see how others respond? All I ask is that you advise me beforehand as to when the discussion will take place in order that I too may participate.

And for those of you whom have yet to experience any of the things that I described, all I can say is, um, you need to get out [of Bellisseria] & about and around the grid a bit more lol ;;).

And finally, this is not [solely] about Bellisseria.

Edited July 30, 2021 by Amelie Mersereau

[Conifer Dada]

I haven't noticed any deterioration in SL performance over the last year or two, which encompasses the cloud migration. In busy places it takes a long time for all the avatars to rez, but that's always been the case since the widespread adoption over-complex mesh avatars. 

 

[Sid Nagy]

5 hours ago, Amelie Mersereau said:

It is not only me who is experiencing the degraded performance. I have discussed this at length among friends, and in group discussions, including in the Bellisseria Citizens group chat discussions, wherein many, many people acknowledged precisely the same observations. Yes, textures & many HUDs take comparatively forever to [fully] load, yes, the map takes forever to load (or it never even finishes loading until long after its specific utility [vehicle race turns, etc.] has ended or expired), yes, even the [grass] terrain sometimes takes forever to load or to finish loading clearly, yes, more and more (not all) avatars present themselves as orange clouds for longer periods of time of late (even if only for a few seconds longer- but consistently longer nonetheless), yes, the........................... And finally, yes, my connection is insanely fast (additionally, wired connection to router as well) ;;). I admit that I can gather better performance (after attaching HUDs, etc.) if I now go elsewhere, to a different estate, to a Sandbox for example, to complete my task (e.g.: selecting a dress color from the respective HUD), buttttttttt this never used to be necessary, and it continues to be slower than was previously the case.

Given my personal experience in discussions of this matter, wherein I was met with almost universal agreement, I was a tiny bit dismayed when almost all of the initial responses to my post here, boiled down & condensed to fit in a thimble, were essentially those of incredulity. In fact, without regard to prim-management-related statements, I thought that I may have accidentally stumbled upon the LL cheerleading squad group discussion lol ;;):    'Everything is totally wonderful with, perhaps, the slight exception of a tiny bit of prim-utilization-optimization-related lag in Bellisseria.'   That's pretty much why I ended my participation in the thread that I started. No, the issue(s) is not 'just me' and/or my system. Essentially, the one (& mostly only) variable that has indeed changed, both for myself and for the myriad of people with whom I have discussed this, since all of the aforementioned began observing this behavior, is SL's migration to the cloud. What a coincidence! Still skeptical? Why not bring the matter up in group chat discussions (choose whatever group you wish) and see how others respond? All I ask is that you advise me beforehand as to when the discussion will take place in order that I too may participate.

And for those of you whom have yet to experience any of the things that I described, all I can say is, um, you need to get out [of Bellisseria] & about and around the grid a bit more lol ;;).

And finally, this is not [solely] about Bellisseria.

If you only want to see your own views repeated, forums might not be the right place.
Every single user has their personal experience with SL. It depends on a lot of factors:

• The machine you use: 40,000 users means 40,000 different configurations.
• The Internet: 40,000 different Internet quality and speed situations.
• The sim your on: depending on usage one sim has more lag than another.
• The people within drawing distance: If they are heavy dressed, you suffer.
• The sims or other stuff on the cloud server that the sim you're on shares its space with. If something has high usage on that server, it has influence on your sim performance too.
• The viewer one uses. Thanks to Coffee I found out that my viewer's baked in limitations caused a lot of the texture lag I got on Belli sims.
• The viewer settings: playing with the sliders and check boxes in the graphic section of preferences can have great results. The viewer doesn't always suggests the best settings for your situation.
• Personal perception: Some are okay with a bit of waiting times, others not so much.
• SL will never load as fast as all the prerendered games out there.

There is no easy one answer that fits for all.
Everybody can only talk about their own situation.

And my personal observations are:

• The cloud transition changed very little.
• Most laggy are Belliseria and heavy used sims (clubs, events, buzy mainstores, the ones with tons of decoration and scripts)

But mileages do vary.

 

 

Edited July 30, 2021 by Sid Nagy

[Marianne Little]

I am sorry @Amelie Mersereauthat you will find me as another voice that has not seen any noticeable effects. The issues I have now with grey textures, orange cloud avatars and slow loading HUDs has been present before, during and after the cloud uplift.

I was moving in Bellisseria during the first 48 hours after its opening, and it has been a place where I always have to reduce draw distance and not have on shadows, and it still was not loading fast. It is the same now.

Before the upload, I have had issues with slow loading HUDs, one of the reasons I cheer when we could use BOM instead of appliers. But now, I find that I still use appliers for HD makeup, and they load faster. Maybe the creators has improved their work. It is not worse.

SL had a long time where the map was broken, but both before and after they fixed it, it has opened fast for me. No difference.

When I fly, drive or sail around other places than Bellisseria, I can open the map and look for canals or other roads, and it opens for me. Some places are horrible laggy and grey. Some are not.

When I teleport in an event, it is lots of avatars that do not load. But I can not say that I have noticed that it is worse. I always turn off seeing them when I'm out shopping and I see I have landed in a nest of avatars.

I am sorry, but I can not see any noticeable difference. SL has never loaded super fast for me, but I have learnt to live with it. I think I would have noticed such a drop in performance as you describe.

 

[Coffee Pancake]

12 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

orange cloud avatars

 

Cloud avatars is a very specific issue and one I've seen an increase in support requests for.

The viewer displays an avatar as a cloud when it's lacking one of the 4 core components of an avatar - Shape - Skin - Linden Hair - Linden Eyes.

Don't confuse this requirement with inventory, they are separate systems. You can have a fully loaded inventory, be looking at the required parts AND still be a cloud.

This is almost always caused by packet loss. The region sent you the data and it wasn't received, so you're left hanging waiting for something that will never arrive.

 

The solution is to (aggressively) lower the bandwidth slider, especially if you're on wifi. It wont affect the speed anything rezzes (textures will load and decode just as fast as they can), but it will tell the region to calm down a little when sending one time information. If set really low it can cause crowds to take longer to load in .. given that this is at its worst when arriving at a new region and the viewer is busting it's guts with a million other problems .. it's probably not a bad side effect, just perceptually backwards as there is an expectation for avatars to load in before the scenery (when really it's always going to be the other way around).

 

[Marianne Little]

2 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Cloud avatars is a very specific issue and one I've seen an increase in support requests for.

The viewer displays an avatar as a cloud when it's lacking one of the 4 core components of an avatar - Shape - Skin - Linden Hair - Linden Eyes.

Don't confuse this requirement with inventory, they are separate systems. You can have a fully loaded inventory, be looking at the required parts AND still be a cloud.

This is almost always caused by packet loss. The region sent you the data and it wasn't received, so you're left hanging waiting for something that will never arrive.

 

The solution is to (aggressively) lower the bandwidth slider, especially if you're on wifi. It wont affect the speed anything rezzes (textures will load and decode just as fast as they can), but it will tell the region to calm down a little when sending one time information. If set really low it can cause crowds to take longer to load in .. given that this is at its worst when arriving at a new region and the viewer is busting it's guts with a million other problems .. it's probably not a bad side effect, just perceptually backwards as there is an expectation for avatars to load in before the scenery (when really it's always going to be the other way around).

 

Interesting, thank you. I have my stationary computer on cable, but my laptop is on wi-fi. So I have to change when I change computer then....

Edit to add: Does the browser have anything to say, the one I fill out under bandwidth?

Edited July 30, 2021 by Marianne Little

[Coffee Pancake]

Just now, Marianne Little said:

Interesting, thank you. I have my stationary computer on cable, but my laptop is on wi-fi. So I have to change when I change computer then....

Set it low and forget it. UDP traffic bursts when you enter a new region, but so does the load on the viewer. In practical terms it doesn't matter how quickly the viewer knows all about the avatars, it's going to be so buried fetching assets and textures and getting everything on screen that patience is about the only agency you have over anything.

Cup O Tea?

[Amelie Mersereau]

5 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

"If you only want to see your own views repeated, forums might not be the right place...."

Thank you for your patronizing reply. What's next, will you advise me to reduce my draw distance? Perhaps you would be better served, when criticizing another's post, by reading the entire post next time...

"If you only want to see your own views repeated..." you say?

It was indeed & precisely toward soliciting a broad array of opinions (several opinions, actually, from a multitude of groups) that I offered my suggestion and that I made my initial post above! But, again, you missed that part. Here's an excerpt from my previous post:

• "... Still skeptical? Why not bring the matter up in group chat discussions (choose whatever group you wish) and see how others respond? All I ask is that you advise me beforehand as to when the discussion will take place in order that I too may participate. ..."

If you perceive a constructive suggestion toward gathering a diverse set of opinions that might potentially differ from yours (or from those here) as a threat to your position atop your high-horse of sanctimony & status-quo, that's on you, not on me.

Come on, Sid, why not put your money where your hubris is:  select an inworld group of your choosing in whose group chat we can jointly discuss these issues with many others. Simply let me know in advance so that I can try to accommodate my schedule in order that I may participate. Let's see if a perceived change exists among a broad array of opinions. Count me in.

Here, from 25 July Firestorm group chat, is a little taste of what to expect (and you will see that there are indeed varying opinions on all sides... essentially, 60% noticing issues, 40% not) :

• "[2021/07/25 05:53]  Amelie Mersereau: (W 6.4.12f*) Not FS related, but simply a vent & rant: It seems to me that the migration of SL to the cloud is very noticeably & adversely affecting [SL's] performance. Textures take longer and longerr and longerrrrrr to load, etc.
  [2021/07/25 05:54]  commenter #1: (W 6.4.12f*) Yep!  And the world from LL...crickets!  They don't want to admit it!
  [2021/07/25 05:54]  commenter #2: (W 6.4.13m) not my experience but hey   [differing opinion!]
  [2021/07/25 05:54]  commenter #3 [FS version not indicated]: i think the sim borders are smoother to cross while sailing-  [differing opinion!]
  ** unrelated comment
  [2021/07/25 05:54]  commenter #1: (W 6.4.12f*) And as premium member with an entire region of mainland region, it's disgusting!!
  [2021/07/25 05:54]  Amelie Mersereau: (W 6.4.12f*) That's like not admitting that is snowed while standing knee-deep in, um..... snow!
  [2021/07/25 05:55]  commenter #4: (M 6.4.12f*) many problems have arisen!!
  [2021/07/25 05:55]  commenter #1: (W 6.4.12f*) LOL...Yep Amelie!  giggle
  [2021/07/25 05:55]  Amelie Mersereau: (W 6.4.12f*) ;;)
  [2021/07/25 05:56]  commenter #1: (W 6.4.12f*) As someone on the outer fringes of IT, it's a known fact you can't transmit and receive the oodles of bytes via the cloud quick enough!  The Cloud was designed for storage, not for operations.
  ** unrelated comment
  ** unrelated comment
  ** unrelated comment
  [2021/07/25 05:57]  commenter #1: (W 6.4.12f*) I think LL thought, well...the industry will catch up soon enough and we will be well positioned already once we get there.  That nad the savings of not using their own server space..."

No stifling or denying differing opinions here, Sid....  in fact, and quite obviously, precisely the opposite; so let's indeed see what a larger sampling says. But yes, I ended my participation herein when a statistically unique sampling (100%) of respondents expressed unfamiliarity with my observations, observations that have been witnessed & discussed by many, many inworld residents. Do I doubt the sincerity of the comments so made? Absolutely not. I simply realize that this particular forum may not reflect a representative cross-sampling of the larger sphere of SL residents.

Ready when you are, Sid...

Edited July 30, 2021 by Amelie Mersereau

[Amelie Mersereau]

5 hours ago, Marianne Little said:

I am sorry @Amelie Mersereauthat you will find me as another voice that has not seen any noticeable effects. The issues I have now with grey textures, orange cloud avatars and slow loading HUDs has been present before, during and after the cloud uplift.

I was moving in Bellisseria during the first 48 hours after its opening, and it has been a place where I always have to reduce draw distance and not have on shadows, and it still was not loading fast. It is the same now.

Before the upload, I have had issues with slow loading HUDs, one of the reasons I cheer when we could use BOM instead of appliers. But now, I find that I still use appliers for HD makeup, and they load faster. Maybe the creators has improved their work. It is not worse.

SL had a long time where the map was broken, but both before and after they fixed it, it has opened fast for me. No difference.

When I fly, drive or sail around other places than Bellisseria, I can open the map and look for canals or other roads, and it opens for me. Some places are horrible laggy and grey. Some are not.

When I teleport in an event, it is lots of avatars that do not load. But I can not say that I have noticed that it is worse. I always turn off seeing them when I'm out shopping and I see I have landed in a nest of avatars.

I am sorry, but I can not see any noticeable difference. SL has never loaded super fast for me, but I have learnt to live with it. I think I would have noticed such a drop in performance as you describe.

 

Thank you, Marianne; I appreciate your feedback also : ).

[JeromFranzic]

On 7/27/2021 at 10:57 AM, Sid Nagy said:

I have a decent computer and fast Internet.
SL loads fast and quickly most of the time with high frame rates. It is all a tat slower since the uplift but not worth talking about.
Two big exceptions:
1. Arriving at Bellisseria coming from other non Belli parcels is a lag crime. Gray, gray and more gray, sometimes for minutes.
We pay the price for the Moles extravaganza with beautiful scenery but sadly also with extreme LI heavy houses, scenery and 1024x1024 textures.
The log home sims and the camping sims are the worst IMHO.

2. When people gather at events, clubs, beaches etc. Things slow down as well.
People want to look too good and sharp.  Result: all the efforts with nice jewelry, extra layers etc. are mostly for nothing because others see you as blurry clouds because they want halfway decent frame rates and a less grayness.

 

This is why I love my Lucybody, not too many tris (complexity level be damned). I keep a few Ruth, Roth and classic avis aboard for busy/action packed places or when I'm in an old school mood. I'm also not above using bodyp... erm... SYSTEM clothes when necessary.

That said, I run on High settings most of the time. If there aren't too many residents around, I'll turn on the shadows. I'll use a Mid setting if I notice more than 20 people within my draw distance, usually 128. All of this running on a Intel i7 8th Gen/GTX 1050 based laptop with 2 SSD's (sorry platterheads).

Edited July 30, 2021 by JeromFranzic

[Sid Nagy]

20 hours ago, Amelie Mersereau said:

Ready when you are, Sid...

Don't wait too long.
What I have to say about this matter, I will post in this thread, if I feel further need to do so.


 

Edited July 31, 2021 by Sid Nagy

[Qie Niangao]

On 7/30/2021 at 1:34 AM, Amelie Mersereau said:

Still skeptical? Why not bring the matter up in group chat discussions (choose whatever group you wish) and see how others respond? All I ask is that you advise me beforehand as to when the discussion will take place in order that I too may participate.

Hard pass.

We've now seen how that discussion would go, and it's an idle exercise in "bad performance is bad" whining and exchange of misinformation. "The Cloud was designed for storage, not for operations." 

Lordy.

If this thread was intended to be more of that, well, count me out there, too.

[Coffee Pancake]

"The cloud" was designed as a marketing gimmick to carve big servers up into tiny virtual servers and  avoiding the negatively perceived 'virtual server' moniker everyone had grown to mistrust due to over provisioning. The "hosting" industry had already moved away from language relating to actual hardware that actually exists in some actual location, to fluffy notions of hardware and this is just a way to imply standardization.

Any notions of magical scalability are entirely aspirational .. sure, your application "could" "scale" in "the cloud", but only if it's specifically written to do so and there's no reason why such "super powers" couldn't function in your own datacenter.

The cloud, like any actual server in any datacenter is not just for storage. It's for whatever you want to do with it. There are cloud platforms designed specifically for storage and distribution of data, and LL uses one .. the CDN, which hosts all the textures (etc).

LL had a choice, commit to the long term investment in maintaining their singular expensive commercial kitchen and all the associated running costs or switch to take out. The advantage is that costs now scale with demand, and with a little more tinkering, we will be able to get our food made local to the people eating it. The downside is it's more expensive .. but take out always is.

 

Personally, I think it was the correct decision to make, even with SL being a poor fit with regions running full tilt even when no one is using them. An on demand offering priced around average usage wouldn't work in practice as we would just use bots to keep regions active.

SL regions don't naturally scale in ways cloud hype might imply, but it should now be possible to have super regions that have more memory and a dedicated high performance CPU core (server CPU speeds are typically lower).

[bigmoe Whitfield]

we run windows vdi's from azure on thin clients an we have some aws instances now at work to doing the same job,  10gbe uplinks to them, the cloud is fast enough to run windows without any noticable issues, it just does fine for SL.   replying to some chat I saw above.

[Rolig Loon]

2 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

LL had a choice, commit to the long term investment in maintaining their singular expensive commercial kitchen and all the associated running costs or switch to take out. The advantage is that costs now scale with demand, and with a little more tinkering, we will be able to get our food made local to the people eating it. The downside is it's more expensive .. but take out always is.

If I'm understanding you correctly, using the cloud as a distributed storage facility can mean that "with a little more tinkering", it can be used globally as a tiered cache so that the assets in highest demand in one part of the world -- Europe, say, or South America -- are available "nearby".  So, SL residents "will be able to get our food made local to the people eating it." SL residents in places that are far from LL's home base in California could see shorter ping times and faster load times than they do now.  As you say, though, if LL decides to do that, it will increase their costs.  It also might make SL more attractive to distant users, of course, and increase LL's income and stability.