Rollout monday?

[JoyofRLC Acker]

We have been informed (a post to one of the sailing groups) that some changes are being released Monday to improve sim border crossings - does anybody know what this is exactly?

[Chelsea Malibu]

I've not heard anything nor can I find anything other than their new more customizable viewer.  It seems they want to work on new stuff and not fix the old.  There are some fixes to mesh coming out but I am not aware of when or what.

However, one thing is for sure, Sim Crossing and Teleporting has degraded over the years and while we have FaceBook Widgets and Mesh, we still can't get around to see and use SL.  Any wonder why concurrent aren't going up and sim counts have declined by 50% in the past 3 years? Seems to me that this is a lot of it but it also appears that Rodvik is aware of these issues and is addressing these bugs.

"Back in the first quarter of 2006, a rework of simulator crossings to make them more reliable pushed crossing latency up from approximately 250ms to 750ms – which unfortunately made crossing between simulators fairly disruptive. Judging by the data that we’re given today, that latency has been increasing substantially since then, apparently having reached more on the order of 1800ms (for the arithmetic-impaired, 250ms is one quarter second, 750ms is three-quarters of a second, and 1800ms is nearly 2 seconds).

The new performance improvement for simulator crossings compresses data before handing it between servers, and reduces the latency for simulator crossings back to somewhere around 750ms, from eyeballing the graph. So, we’re talking faster than it has been for the last couple of years, but still three times slower than it was in 2005." Tateru Nino January 2011

[Ayesha Askham]

Y'know I'd buy into Rodvik's hubris if it wasn't so misplaced.  Sim crossing is nowhere near as good as it was Pre-Windlight, I think 10% would be generous.

Sailing on Blake Sea has become a challenge.."How many crossings can I make before my boat derezzes/I crash". 

This, considering how well-publicised SL Sailing is isn't merely SL footshooting...it's commercial suicide.

Over the past 2 years Linden Labs have ostracised Adult activities and BDSM, gamers who lost HUDS in summer 2010, and now SL sailors as well as racers.  It's barmy.  I'm beginning to wonder what's left?

As to spending more time devising new shinies...it is blazingly obvious that Linden Lab developers and programmers would rather devise new toys than fix broken ones...where's the fun in toy-mending?

Until the company actually start to understand that SL actually has to WORK to succeed, this slow atrophy will continue.  It's not rocket science, it is simply good business!

[Chelsea Malibu]

Ditto Ayesha.  I've given up on some of the things I have loved the most in SL...sailing, flying and riding.  I can barely use the Blake sea anymore or with anyone.  Ever sim crossing, regardless of how slow means that I will more than likely crash and end up with a pile of prims on the ocean floor.

[Deej Kasshiki]

I got that notice also Joy. I haven't seen anything official from LL, however.

One thing in the notecard mentioned that the initial fix was very likely to create problems with the physics engine so we should expect some major bumps if this is true.

As a (former) very avid SL sailor and pilot I certainly hope that the Lab does something to smooth sim crossings soon. I pretty much parked all my boats and aircraft over a year ago because trying to use them was an exercise in frustration.

[Wildcat Furse]

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Deej Kasshiki wrote:

As a (former) very avid SL sailor and pilot I certainly hope that the Lab does something to smooth sim crossings soon. I pretty much parked all my boats and aircraft over a year ago because trying to use them was an exercise in frustration.

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I did exactly the same Deej .... let's hope that something will be done about it *meows*

[Malate Banufong]

Last weekend, after a meeting with the Lindens, it was proposed that a test be done on 12 adjoining sims in the Balsa Avia Regions on some technical changes that were an attempt to improve SIM crossings.

The tests took place and I, along with a lot of others, was involved, using all sorts of vehicles like cars, planes, helicopters, motor and sailing boats, horses etc.

The results in SIM crossing were nothing short of fantastic. Where the 2 SIMS were running on the same versions you couldn't even tell you had crossed a SIM. Yes, it was that good. Tests included SIM corner crossings, SIM crossings of more than one vehicle at the same time etc.

I don't know if this is what Linden is proposing to roll out on Monday, but if it is then this is a fix for an old issue and brilliant news.

[JoyofRLC Acker]

Malate - Are you saying that the simulator versions is a critical issue in boder crossings?  (You say that where the versions are the same, crossings are excellent.   You do not say explicitly how bad they are when the versions differ).

I have long wondered why they went with the chequerboard approach.   This sounds like good news though.

I think I saw somewhere that havng adjacent sims on serves in the same location (stack?) made a big difference too.  Something else that one wonders why it would be otherwise.

I think the Group Note referred to the information about Monday coming from a Vale Linden iirc (sorry im not familiar with the Linden family tree).

 

 

[Malate Banufong]

It was Andrew Linden who set up the tests but it wouldn't necessarily be Andrew that does the roll out. Actually I said "Where the 2 SIMS were running on the same versions you couldn't even tell you had crossed a SIM". For the others, "The results in SIM crossing were nothing short of fantastic". This was my personal experience, but Bancos Milestone, the owner collecting all the data from the tests said "Thanks to all who participated in the Aiva Test Grid. All note cards submitted were sent to Andrew Linden on Monday and a second batch is being assembled to be sent today.  Over all, it seems that the test grid was much better than any previous server side software.  With the positive response we expect that Andrew Linden will be rolling this version out as soon as practical".

:matte-motes-big-grin-wink:

Just to add, SIM crossing isn't obviously the only factor, if you arrive in a poor performing SIM or one that has issues for whatever reason, or your own equipment or viewer is giving issues then that will affect things. This was only about the actual SIM crossing experience.

[Malate Banufong]

I didn't see anything on the deploys for the week report. Do you think this has been deferred?

[Nalates Urriah]

We won't know until the Lindens say something, which will likely be Thursday with possible follow up Friday.

The sim crossing improvement thing is unlikely to be a single roll out. This week's deploy has a foundation piece for improved crossings, but it by itself won't improve crossings noticeably. Or so we are told.

Also, the recent Critical OS Upgrade fixed the problem that lead to the upgrade. BUT... we got another problem as an unexpected and unintended consequence. So... Another upgrade is in planning. Test results from ADITI testing suggest the next OS upgrade will make a significant performance improvement in disk access speeds, which affects a number of sim related tasks and fixes the new problem... which I'm unclear on.

Also, the region reorganization that was tried last week and rolled back was to be attempted again this week. This will likely improve crossing performance. I am guessing the 2 region test in ADITI was done with the regions in the same simulator/server.

The idea is to get regions adjacent in SL into physically adjacent servers or the same server or even the same simulator. I'm unclear if LL runs multiple simulators in their servers or only a single simulator with multiple regions per server. Whatever, the idea is to make sure adjacent SL regions are in physically close simulators.

The reorganization is also intended to deal with busy regions and avoid placing a number of busy regions in the same simulator. This too should help crossings.

This can get confusing and complex to keep up with as there are numerious things going on and different groups working on different parts of the system. One has to do some information collection from multiple sources to get an accurate idea of what is going on. 

 

[Malate Banufong]

Thanks for all that info Nalates, it is all very interesting and useful.

[Ayesha Askham]

Thankyou for that comprehensive post, Nalates:smileyhappy:. 

I wish I could say that it relieves me, but I get the distinct feeling that "Joined Up Thinking" is not a frequently employed concept at Linden Lab.

That one big change has led to others being needed is no great surprise, but I still get the impression that while there is clearly a lot of work being done at LL, the teams work in isolation from one another.

Has no one at LL realised that Team-meetings where proposals and ideas can be shared is a really good idea, and a sure-fire way to improve efficiency?

I cannot help but believe that if the various teams at LL were to coordinate better, that their work would be far more effective and SL would be a much better and fitter place.

Am I missing something?:smileysurprised: