Oooo a New Shiny. Event Regions - What do you think of this?

[Mazidox Linden]

Hi! I'm the Simulator QA Lead for Second Life and one of the Lindens who worked on Event Regions. I'm hoping I can clarify a couple of things about the new offering:

 

* The "20% increased script performance" is due to several factors, but it is far from the only area of improvement for Event Regions.

** In synthetic benchmarks we saw an increase of between 22% and 45% in speed of script execution.

** In production Resident-run event tests, we observed approximately 31% more scripts (that is to say, for example, from 30% to 39.1%) running per frame with an equivalent amount of spare time at the end of each frame

 

* On a standard "Full Region" simhost we share various connections to services like Inventory, Group Chat, and internal logging. On Event Regions, those connections are either exclusive, or shared with one other Event Region in the special case of regions that are adjacent in-world when we want to get high performance region crossing.

 

* Related to the above points, we're putting a lot (and I do mean a lot) more compute power into each Event Region. This costs us a substantial amount more money compared to a standard Full Region, but frees up the main simulator thread to do what it does best and simulate.

 

* The compute power that we're putting toward these Event Hosts is more advanced than what we're able to use for Full Regions right now (for boring supply chain reasons). I fully expect this to change with time as resources become more freely available, but for now we're reserving the latest CPU cores for our highest end product first

 

* We're also taking this as an opportunity to address long standing pain points with simulator performance in general which will absolutely benefit anyone who uses Second Life, whether they own an Event Region, a Full Region, a Homestead or Openspace, are a Mainland owner, or just hop in-world to visit.

 

Edited May 6, 2022 by Mazidox Linden
Bullet Points were super messy, switched to asterisks :(

[Jennifer Boyle]

I am very happy about this development even though it's doubtful that I'll ever visit an event region. What is exciting for me is that LL is developing its capability to provide better-performing regions. While this first iteration is very expensive, I expect that costs will decrease over time, and we will eventually see improvements that are accessible to ordinary users.

[Kori Amaterasu]

The introductory price seems a lot more reasonable at $600 per month for a ~25% script time boost with some extra avatars you have to turn off anyway. I don't see event owners moving to this $900 setup when they can have 1 main region and 2 cam sim for way cheaper. After the first few days of their events, these region would be useless since their traffic drops considerably. Personally I feel these new regions should be geared towards RP sims rather than event regions. Maybe instead charging an additional $100 on owned regions, kind of like upgrading to 30k prims, for that extra 25% script time/processing power and maybe an extra 25 avatars, would be far more reasonable and marketable. Current regions already support 100-110 agents but can only handle about half of that, I take it the new regions would allow ~80-90 agents in real conditions?

[Sam Bellisserian]

I can see this being useful for high traffic clubs such as Fogbound but then again they have had one of the smallest, most laggy clubs since I've been here and have never attempted to make it bigger. 

The cost of these sims will just be passed on to the consumer because event coordinators will charge more for booths and creators will have to pass that cost on to their customers. So in the end the consumer will be the one burdening the cost.

[Solo Alpha]

On 5/8/2022 at 8:07 PM, Jennifer Boyle said:

I expect that costs will decrease over time, and we will eventually see improvements that are accessible to ordinary users.

You are suggesting they spread this latest cashcow a.s.a.p. over all other regions and make these technical abilities availiable for both premium and free accounts on all regions on the grid ? 

Yeah, this question is meant rethorically. 

I don't mean to sound bitter. I just couldn't initially believe what I was reading in Mazidox' post earlier. 

I, like many others I guess, just spend too much time and money to, still, get stuck so often on region-crossings.

Damn LL .. so you can push the region's limits, yet you won't do it for your core users.

Shame.

 

Edited May 17, 2022 by Solo Alpha

[Love Zhaoying]

12 minutes ago, Solo Alpha said:

You are suggesting they spread this latest cashcow a.s.a.p. over all other regions and make these technical abilities availiable for both premium and free accounts on all regions on the grid ? 

Yeah, this question is meant rethorically. 

But yes! I think if it is an improvement, then it should "trickle down" to us normal folk.

[Solo Alpha]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

But yes! I think if it is an improvement, then it should "trickle down" to us normal folk.

That still suggests you expect it to happen quickly. You cannot milk a cashcow when it's only just been bred.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

29 minutes ago, Solo Alpha said:

32 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

But yes! I think if it is an improvement, then it should "trickle down" to us normal folk.

That still suggests you expect it to happen quickly. You cannot milk a cashcow when it's only just been bred.

"Trickle down" = slowly. As slowly as needed. Maybe 2-4 years or longer.

Edited May 17, 2022 by Love Zhaoying
*as slowly

[Solo Alpha]

7 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

"Trickle down" = slowly. A slow as needed. Maybe 2-4 years or longer.

It will trickle down as much as on any bright sunny blue skyed cloudless hot summersday.

It' s an apparant business plan. Based on demand.

It excludes benefits for other regions or 'us normal users', as you put it, not visiting those regions.

You wondered about what or who to spend your 400K on ? Why not have a go at it ? 

Edited May 17, 2022 by Solo Alpha

[Coffee Pancake]

Nothing good has ever trickled down.

[Paulsian]

will be interesting to see performance differences at sl19b, maybe this year during event will not have to look at myself or look away from festivities to keep from crashing/freezing up. 

[Sorina Garrigus]

Well .... the price point is pretty bat poopy crazy. Who is going to do this? What would they get out of it? 

"For initial release, we are pleased to offer an introductory price of $599, with no additional setup fee through June 6, 2022. Following the introductory pricing, event regions will have a set-up fee of US$999 (includes first month), and a rate of $899/month after the first 30 days."

 

[Sorina Garrigus]

On 5/2/2022 at 1:04 PM, Grumpity Linden said:

Event Regions as a product are certainly not limited to actually running events. They can be used to host Roleplaying Regions or any other purpose our residents desire! 

Who exactly are the target demographics for this service? The pricing seems way beyond anything practical in SL that I seen. 

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

What do I think of Event Regions and, more generally, expensive things? Not.

1. I don't have the money for them.

2. I have no time or interest in investing in them in order to make a bigger profit.

3. I have no knowledge of the marketing or financing rationales behind them, so who the bleep am I to opine over them?

If I ever feel the need to satisfy my curiosity concerning expensive things, I'll watch YouTube videos about expensive things. And, although I doubt whether Business Insider will ever do an episode titled 'Why Second Life Event Regions Are So Expensive | So Expensive', this series of videos should give you a general impression as to why expensive things are.

[Qie Niangao]

Large scale shopping events usually last almost a month, with maybe a week between editions for vendor set up. It's rare that the venues are busy for more than the first few days.

Some shopping events are held on regions that host multiple shopping events, with starting dates staggered across the month, right? I think I've seen this arrangement but I'm not seeing it for the events where I thought I remembered seeing it, so maybe I imagined it, or maybe it turns out to be a Bad Idea for some reason I never considered.

If it's not such a bad idea, these Event Regions could make economic sense. I'm quite sure that the share of peak demand satisfied makes all the difference to merchants' income at these things. A week later, sure, anybody can get in, but by then the new hotness will be another too-crowded event and the long-tail sales can never make up for sales missed at peak.

If a region owner hosting events can "double crop" (or more) while simultaneously charging merchants more for a higher peak capacity, this would be a no-brainer, right?

[Persephone Emerald]

2 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Large scale shopping events usually last almost a month, with maybe a week between editions for vendor set up. It's rare that the venues are busy for more than the first few days.

Some shopping events are held on regions that host multiple shopping events, with starting dates staggered across the month, right? I think I've seen this arrangement but I'm not seeing it for the events where I thought I remembered seeing it, so maybe I imagined it, or maybe it turns out to be a Bad Idea for some reason I never considered.

If it's not such a bad idea, these Event Regions could make economic sense. I'm quite sure that the share of peak demand satisfied makes all the difference to merchants' income at these things. A week later, sure, anybody can get in, but by then the new hotness will be another too-crowded event and the long-tail sales can never make up for sales missed at peak.

If a region owner hosting events can "double crop" (or more) while simultaneously charging merchants more for a higher peak capacity, this would be a no-brainer, right?

Cosmopolitan has been breaking their events into 2 parts. I imagine this gives some creators a chance to pay for only the first or second part or to be present at both parts. It also allows a smaller region to host more creators during a month.

[Paulsian]

On 5/21/2022 at 8:06 PM, Sorina Garrigus said:

Well .... the price point is pretty bat poopy crazy. Who is going to do this? What would they get out of it?

if i were famous and a snap of finger hold last minute event for 200,000 of my closest followers to sl and have fun. venue would be fun setting up. or crash bellisseria omg jk. maybe someday.

Edited May 23, 2022 by Paulsian