I want ALL of my inventory!!!

[Jaffee Gaffer]

FYI, I installed LL V2.6 viewer yesterday.  It did manage to load all the inventory, although very slowly.  I tried Firestorm, just for kicks, as well and it failed.  It loaded around 43,000 items out of about 68,000 total.

 

[Jaffee Gaffer]

Pingtest results:

San Francisco:
Packet Loss 0%
Ping 73ms
Jitter 4ms
Grade B
MOS 4.36

Denver:
Packet Loss 0%
Ping 29ms
Jitter 4ms
Grade A
MOS 4.36

Tucson:
Packet Loss 0%
Ping 73ms
Jitter 1ms
Grade B
MOS 4.37

Los Angeles:
Packet Loss 0%
Ping 67ms
Jitter 2ms
Grade B
MOS 4.37

[Stone Linden]

Jaffee Gaffer wrote:

I do not use viwer 2.x.  I've tried it and HATE it.

I'm bummed to hear that. We've put a lot of work into Viewer 2. Would you take another shot, perhaps at Viewer 2.7? As for inventory, I personally fixed the inventory loading problems starting in Viewer 2.5.1. You're welcome to use any viewer that picks up the new code if you want to have your problem resolved. Cheers!

[Luc Starsider]

No, those numbers do not explain it either...

And I'm out of ideas...

- Luc -

[Innula Zenovka]

---

Jaffee Gaffer wrote:

FYI, I installed LL V2.6 viewer yesterday.  It did manage to load all the inventory, although very slowly.  I tried Firestorm, just for kicks, as well and it failed.  It loaded around 43,000 items out of about 68,000 total.

 

---

That suggests to me, then, that it's to do with the viewer.   Your inventory is there, and can be retrieved by 2.6.    Try reloging with 2.6 and see how long it takes to load now it's had a chance to be cached locally.   Also, you might want to try  the new Firestorm Beta, released yesterday.   It's based on 2.5, so it includes the new method of fetching cache.

[Acheron Gloom]

Pretty unrelated to the original thread, but oh well...

I personally think viewer 2 is great once you get used to the UI changes, and It hink that the code-base itself is much better than the v1 code base, just I prefer firestorm/phoenix for the features that the linden lab viewers don't have.

Considering that third party viewers are always based around the LL viewers, I kind of see the LL viewer like a factory stock engine or car without the little accesories and add ons, but still a vital part of viewer development as all the core parts come from it, and without it we wouldn't even have the TPVs.

[Jaffee Gaffer]

Well, yes, it's the viewer, but specifically, it's ALL viewers using the old inventory system.  The new one works well, but I have to put up with a truly horrid viewer to get it.  My hope is that they will add the new inventory system to Phoenix.  I tried the new Firestorm Beta, and it loaded all my inventory instantly (much faster than LL V2.7 did).  But I can't stand all the CRAP cluttering up my screen and blocking my view when I try to build. I don't neet a stupid button bar.  I don't need a GIANT dock on the side with my inventory when a small window would work fine.  If they add a V1.23 style UI option to Firestorm, then that will be my solution.  The new UI is awful though, and any attempt to deny that is juvenile.

[Innula Zenovka]

I wasn't saying that you should use V2 if you don't want to.  

My point was, rather, that we've now proved that LL's servers and your computer can talk to each other and load your inventory perfectly well in V2.6 and Firestorm.    

That doesn't explain, I agree, why you're having much greater problems loading your inventory with Phoenix, Imprudence and so on than are many people using those viewers (my inventory loads ok most of the time with Phoenix), but it seems to me to suggest that, whatever's causing things to hang and stop, it's something at your end, because clearly the issue isn't there when you use something with the new inventory api.    So that's where you need to look, I think.

[Stone Linden]

Jaffee Gaffer:

Well, yes, it's the viewer, but specifically, it's ALL viewers using the old inventory system.  The new one works well, but I have to put up with a truly horrid viewer to get it. 

Glad to hear that your inventory is loading now. You're welcome.

[Jaffee Gaffer]

Stone: 

I don't mean to sound unappreciative of your efforts.  The new inventory loading system you built seems to work flawlessly so far, and I am *truly* appreciative of your concern and your efforts. 

It's just frustrating that I've been dealing with this for more than three years and LL has never admitted that there is a problem.  Yet, nearly everyone I talk to has had inventory losses similar to mine.  I supplement my RL income by DJing in SL, and I do pretty well.  But I arrive at gigs only to find I have NO tip jars in inventory!  Amazing, especially since I built them and there are dozens of variations in my inventory.  You'd think at least some of them would show up!  And often, the only ones I see are in the trash.  So maybe deleting objects and not clearing the trash is the solution.  The trash is always there.  Then, the next day, I have my tip jars, but I'm missing my props.  Or I'm missing something else I had before. 

The other thing I find interesting is that the old crap I collected as a noob is always there.  It's the new things I've purchased or built that don't retrieve.  I buy a prop to use at a gig on a holiday, and when I get there, I don't have it.  You can't imagine how that drives me nuts.  And it has happened time and time again.  But those free clothes from the noob days are always there.

But again, I do appreciate your work.  It seems to have solved the problem, whatever it is.  Now I just hope someone puts it in a viewer that makes sense.

 

 

[Stone Linden]

Jaffee Gaffer wrote:

It's just frustrating that I've been dealing with this for more than three years and LL has never admitted that there is a problem. 

Inventory not loading reliably has been a known issue for a while, although it's not clear how well acknowledged the issue was in public. It's also very often confused with different problems, such as lost inventory transfers and dragging inventory into objects (among others that I'm working on next). Part of why Viewer 2 is important (or another viewer based on V2, yes I understand there are preferences for other viewers ) is that the codebase is significantly cleaned up and we're able to approach each smaller problem and fix it independently.
 

[snip]

But again, I do appreciate your work.  It seems to have solved the problem, whatever it is.  Now I just hope someone puts it in a viewer that makes sense.

Thanks! The technical details fairly straightforward: load inventory over HTTP, rather than UDP. Movement and voice, for example, make sense over UDP because a lost network packet will, at worst, be a momentary jerky movement or a staticy voice, and you continue on without any trouble. Inventory, however, requires that 100% of the data arrives. For this, HTTP is a better protocol because it allows the viewer to identify a complete transmission, and to retry the request if it failed. There's a little more to the story, but that's it in a nutshell.

I've presented about the inventory system at the open source viewers user group (I'd capitalize but I forgot the current official name of this group), and the devs were excited to incorporate the necessary changes, and glad that I provided full docs on the SL wiki. I think it's just a matter of time before your favorite viewers take this up.

Please nudge your favorite viewers' teams to update their code - even if they're staying on 1.23 codebase - because the cost of dodgy inventory loading in some viewers is a lot of unnecessary frustration!

[Blaze Nielsen]

My inventory loading experience has been horrid with the 1x sl viewers and now Phoenix as well. I just installed the new Second Life 2.7.1 and found inventory loading was perfection. However, I had to dumb down the preferences on it to the point it was cumbersome laggy. 2.7.1 has unacceptable performance. I too am not a fan of the UI for the new sl viewer. As a full time builder in SL, it simply is a disaster for me to use. 

What irritates me the most is, some people are using Phoenix and have NO inventory problems, while I constantly am unable to get full inventory. I'm on a Mac and generally run Phoenix at the highest settings, it works like a dream, except for the inventory issue. so, I'll stick with phoenix for the time being, hoping they adopt the inventory coding. 

Update: After reading forums about the new sl 2.7.1 I was able to adjust it for adequate performance. (but still will not use it as my primary tool for building)

[Jaffee Gaffer]

Today I had virtually NO clothing in my inventory with 30 minutes to go before a DJ gig at a formal ballroom (Frank's Elite).  After three relogs, and a change in the total loaded each time, I still had no clothing other than the ones on my back, and the number dropped with each relog.

I've been forced to run Firefox while I DJ which is a total nightmare, though better than V2.x.  I can't find anything.  I can't read the chat and IMs, I don't get pop up notices of tips, and it's taking about twice the internal memory to run it so I can't run anything else to download requests.

Here's how my inventory folders looked with 15 minutes to go before my first of two gigs:

 

[Jaffee Gaffer]

I've been doing much testing and comparing since my last post.  The problem is not exactly as explained by Stone.  I have repeatedly taken screenshots showing that I've dropped 0 -- count them -- ZERO packets, yet I'm still missing thousands of items from my inventory.  Another interesting phenomenom is that it's almost ALWAYS stuff I've made myself or purchased, and NEVER old freebie junk from my noob days. This kind of shoots down the dropped packet theory because if it were simply dropped packets, it would be randomly different things every time, with fewer repeats of the same thing. 

I have a few things I've made that I use when I DJ, specifically my tip jars, a floor standing microphone that serves as a pose stand/placeholder, and a simple posestand/placeholder without the microphone.  These are consistently missing from my inventory, despite the fact that I have dozens of copies of them and several variations.  Fortunately, the copies I've deleted are almost always in the trash.  So, it appears the trash is more reliably loaded than normal inventory, for whatever that means.  It's sad when you have to delete things in order to be able to consistently find them.

I've also been logging off and relogging on totally empty sims (sims for rent by large land holders) and my inventory loads much better on these sims.  So, it's obviously more of a LL server side problem than a lost packet problem on my end or in the connection between my home and LL's server farms.

When I crash on a busy sim while working, and am forced to relog there, I typically lose around 20,000 intems from my inventory during that one incident, and it takes nearly an hour of repeated relogging and reloading inventory on an empty sim to recover it all.

V2 and Firestorm are not the answers.  I've tried and tested it and virtually every function involves with DJing a gig takes more keystrokes/mouse clicks than it does in Phoenix.  And it's significant.  Add to that the HORRID font legibility in V2 and FS and it's a joke.  These may be good viewers for new kids coming in  to play, but they are nigh unto useless for performing a professional work function.

Someone needs to fix this problem, either in a v1.23 level viewer, or by completely redoing the UI and font problems in V2/Firestorm.  This is an insane example of someone redong an interface just because they can and not because it makes sense.

 

[Alexi Raynier]

It appears too much to ask that LL make logins take less than three hours, that inventories actually load fully as intended, or that we get honest answers as to why these things are not happening, and not have them blamed on thrid party viewers or if we are unfortuanate enough to use a LL viewer our computers.  The truth is these problems have been going on for a long time now, and are periodically fixed from time to time, only to be broken with the next restart or shortly after.  I have been in SL now for over six years and in the last few years I have witnessed a steady decling in the level of effective service til it has reached the poing where I seriously wonder what I am paying LL for at this point, for it cant be service, or help.  Since the weekly restart program has begun we have seen a huge increase in lag, huge inventory problem, an increase in sim crossing issues, massively failed teleports, the periodic failure of media and the web kit, huge rezz times and a host of other problems that all seem to begin and end in an overly stressed database that each week becomes even more stressed as LL adds new improvements to what amounts to an already failed program.

The result is the chao we are seeing, a steady decline in business and probably the worst overall service I have seen in Second Life since 2006.  In response to this questions go unaswered, complaints unreplied to, help is all but non existent and we are told the problem is always either our viewer or our computer or connection, and Linden Lab takes absolutes no responsibility for these problems, but crows mightly when they think they have fixed on like the problems with group IMs that have been a disaster for years now.  Well, I have new for them they did fix them for about a week now they are back as laggy as ever, and are failing just as before, so congratulation LL your record is perfect and we will no no longer have to worry about when group IMs will fail again.

I would be nice if I though LL would care that these things are going on but by their actions they have made it clear they don't, and in return players no longer expect problems to be fixed and when something goes wrong on an RC server dont bother to report it so really the weekly restart program is a failure as is seen by the constant rollback and disasters it has caused over the last month or so, and we are stuck with what amounts to the longest running paid beta in gaming history, though, unlike most betas, this one does not get better but instead gets worse by the week.

Hopefully, LL will listen to some of these complaints and take them seriously but history offers little hope that they will and we will continue to muddle along til we eitehr tire of the problems and quit, a better product is available, or the database finally crashes and cannot be revived.  As ofr LL taking this seriously and trying to fix these and the many other problems that afflict sl, gave up hoping for that long ago.