Why has there been so much lag and people getting bumped offline lately? It is becoming a real pain

[ShadowWhysper Rain]

Why is there so much lag lately no matter what sim a person goes to?  A lot of times a person cannot even get into Second Life.  This has become a real pain.  My partner and I have Amaretto horses that we must care for and when we cannot get into SL it creates a lot of problems.  No matter what sim we go to it is the same lag. Please tell me what is wrong?

[Amethyst Jetaime]

When new features are introduced into SL or major changes to the server code take place in a new release, there are sometimes unforeseen problems or bugs that may cause more lag, crashing or inability to log in grid wide.  These problems are usually isolated and fixed sooner or later. We just had a major new feature added with the addition of Mesh.  So I'm not surprised.

In the five plus years I've been in SL, this has happened time and time again.  Keep in mind that SL is very unique in that it allows so many people to do so many different things and own and create everything under the sun - more than most virtual worlds or games. It boggles the mind to think of the variety an number of things the software has to keep up with.   Its a pioneer of free form virtual worlds and there are bound to be things like this happen.

Then again, it may be that the sims you and your friends are hanging out in are coincidently having problems and need restarting or other maintenance attention.  It may also be that you are wearing too many scripted items or items that are poorly scripted that causes this, as well. 

Even if you don't normally have problems, when there are problems like this grid wide there are things you can do temporarily  until things improve.  Detach as many scripted items as you can from your avatar, turn down your draw distance or graphics settings, refrain from wearing complicated items with a lot of textures and flexi prims, and to stay away from venues with huge crowds or complicated scripted items in the environment.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

In addition to what Amethyst said, Second Life is a constantly changing platform.  Not only the content that the users upload to the servers but how that content is processed and sent back to every users who's viewer requests it.  Every upgrade of the server code that introduces new features put just a little more demand on the users' machines.  At some point in time all that data that allows the features overwhelms the machine.  A super gamer's rig of 5 years may struggle in today's Second Life (at the very least, that machine will not run SL as well as it did 5 years ago with the code servers delivered to everyone's viewer).  It's possible that last little change was the breaking point for you computer and you'll have to adjust by changing some of your settings, tryng another viewer, doing without a "shiney" or two, or updating your video adapter driver. 

 

Linden Lab is not going to wait for you, you must keep up with them.

[Marigold Devin]

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ShadowWhysper Rain wrote:

Why is there so much lag lately no matter what sim a person goes to?  A lot of times a person cannot even get into Second Life.  This has become a real pain.  My partner and I have Amaretto horses that we must care for and when we cannot get into SL it creates a lot of problems.  No matter what sim we go to it is the same lag. Please tell me what is wrong?

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Welcome to Second Life Answers, ShadowWhysper

I must be living a totally different Second Life to everyone else, because I haven't seen a marked difference in lag this week. Just the busier sims, where more scripts are running have been as laggy as usual.  I had a few issues with teleporting as my main avatar, but my alts were absolutely fine, which indicated a problem with what my main avatar was wearing. I even left an alt inworld for six hours straight the other day, at one of the infohubs, and when I returned to the PC, they were still where I'd left her.

Be more script aware, perhaps. When people start to talk about how much "more lag there is this week", it seems to often be people spreading SLhysteria, although each week there are often new little quirks, because of the tweaking LL do on a weekly basis (hence the new JIRAs that pop up each week, and added to old JIRAs too.

I hope you find things markedly better after next Tuesday's deploys.  Keep an eye on Oskar Linden's Monday evening posts, here on the forums, which tell us what to expect from the planned deploys for that week, and if you have specific problems, you can add something to his threads, and any major problems can be nipped in the bud for everyone.





[Baloo Uriza]

Something potentially wrong with your internet connection?  This could be confirmed if you're dropping a lot of packets.