[Good Alternative To Ramdisk?]

More network bandwidth than about 10Mbps won't help much. SL throttles at their end.

Improvements to cache management in the viewer are coming soon, and may help. The current system clearly makes some bad decisions about what to load first.

[(Retention suggestion) Let new users choose communities they consider to be a part of during registration and first-spawn them in specific community gateway based on their choice]

46 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

Linden Labs has always assumed 7-billion people a day make an account here, and then all but 5 of them decide SL sucks and never return. I would instead say that 6,999,999,993 of them were actually bots... 2 gave up, and 5 stayed...

I wonder how many of the "signups" LL counts even made it through the intro tutorial section.

[(Retention suggestion) Let new users choose communities they consider to be a part of during registration and first-spawn them in specific community gateway based on their choice]

3 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

One of the biggest "Retention Problems" in any business, are the lies told by company Marketing Sith, that the product and it's sales and support staff, simply cannot make good on.

Klyryna may be on to something. Here are the three pictures the home page of SL shows right now if you're not a logged-in SL user.

Have an adventure

 

Become a creator

 

Earn money

Those are very nice pictures. They were all taken in SL. But compare what users can do with those pictures.

• You can have adventures in SL. You have to find them, but they're available. So that's real.
• You can't paint in SL. SL does not even have 2D paint, let alone 3D in-world paint. You can't create a texture in SL at all. Nor can you do modeling of the quality shown. For that, you have to go outside SL and use pro 3D modeling tools that are not easy to use. Compare Microsoft Paint 3D. SL doesn't even have Sketchup-level modeling.
• You're unlikely to earn money in SL today. The good product niches are mostly taken. If you can make money in SL, you can probably make more money in RL.

The new user who sees those pictures and signs up is going to be angry and frustrated by day 3.

 

[Snap-together objects]

Has anyone ever created SL objects which snap together, like Legos?  When linked together, they would align themselves precisely using pre-set mate points.  Scripts on the parts would cooperate to make this happen. You could have sets of snap-together parts.

Someone must have tried this. Especially since LL's other product is Blocksworld.

[That Pesky Script Error Trying to Stop Animations - PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION permission not set]

2 hours ago, Xiija said:

I may be way off here but....

It seems the situation is this,

Bob, Ted, and Ann come up to the campfire.

Bob clicks the fire and gets perms and is animated.

That's a good question. Dance machines in clubs handle that case. Both dancers touch the same ball, but they get different animations. The trick seems to be to have a separate script for each dancer. They all get the touch event, I think, but for each avatar, only one script requests animation permissions. That one has control of that avatar. The scripts have to coordinate on who requests permissions to make this work.

[That Pesky Script Error Trying to Stop Animations - PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION permission not set]

Just for fun, I created an object to do this.

Relax. Breath deeply.

Rachel's code checks for the avatar still being around. On vehicles, we check even more things before triggering an animation. There are moments during region crossings when avatar and vehicle are not linked normally. That's why you sometimes see "Can't find agent" script errors.  You have to defer animation changes until the region crossing is complete. But for a stationary object, you don't have to handle as many special cases.

[Lag in Vallone sim, in a very regular way]

Try now. Thanks.

[That Pesky Script Error Trying to Stop Animations - PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION permission not set]

  

    timer()
    {
        llSetTimerEvent(0.0); // not 60.0; that will make it run every 60 seconds. 0 turns it off
        if (llGetPermissions() & PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION) // something else might have turned it off
        {   llStopAnimation("warm hands by fire"); }
    }

That should do it. Your object may have had the permission to animate earlier, but may not still have it.

[Lag in Vallone sim, in a very regular way]

I've been trying this tool in a few other places. In nearby sims in Kama City, it reports a short lag once in a while. In a big sandbox, it's mostly quiet. But crossing a sim boundary (entering, not exiting) with an avatar can cause a brief, measurable script lag, of about 150ms or so.  No worse with a vehicle. Less with the simple n00b avatars. Nothing like the 1.5 seconds lag every 10 seconds I see in Vallone, although Charlesville has something happening every 30 seconds.

If others want to try this, I have one outside my workshop in Vallone which anyone can copy. I also put it on Marketplace for L$10 as "Sim Lag Reporter".

[(Retention suggestion) Let new users choose communities they consider to be a part of during registration and first-spawn them in specific community gateway based on their choice]

(Referring to the Firestorm welcome area)

That's  kind of neat. I'm there now. It's much emptier in world, of course. And it seems to be a collection of disconnected sims, rather than a place. But all the stuff is there.

Scuba diving is quite nice, except that it doesn't work right unless you have a swim HUD or AO, which is not provided. If you just use all the provided gear, you walk on the bottom.

[Mainland Beauty]

On 4/12/2018 at 5:07 PM, Kara Trapdoor said:

Why can't /doesn't LL dedicate some mainland for those seeking residence on mainland and incorporate a few easy rules for such areas, similar to rental landlords, specifically no low lying skyboxes or sandbox type things below 500m? 

We may see something like that after the transition to Amazon AWS ("the Cloud"). LL has said they want to have regions that are not "always on", because on AWS, LL will pay for "on" time.  Empty isolated regions can then go fully offline, rather than using resources while idling. Connected mainland areas have to be always on, since you can look or  cross into them, but isolated regions don't. They'll turn on when someone teleports or logs in to them.

Once that works technically, LL will probably modify pricing and rules to encourage it. No idea what form that will take. But it might involve incentives and penalties to move mainland skyboxes and such to isolated regions that can go offline when idle.

This is going to shake up the land business. There will probably be higher pricing for private sims for "always on". Maybe a pricing level for "turns on for premium members only".

[Mole Town]

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Meauxle Bureaux/187/127/32

Mole Town still exists, although SL has few remaining moles. There are cute little houses for the moles. Some still have names of moles (Garden Mole, Quartz Mole, Milli Mole, Dyna Mole) on them. The biggest house, for the chief mole, is vacant. There's a museum of good builds. There's Abnor Mole's pub, with the "Good Neighbor Commandments for Second Life Mainland" obelisk out front. The original one, by Abnor Mole.

[Mesh Bike Tracks]

Where? Post a SLURL, please. Copy it from the address bar at the top of the viewer. I'm always looking for vehicle trouble spots.

[Mainland Beauty]

If you want a nice area of little houses, try the premium Linden Lab house continents, like Meadowbrook. They have strict rules.

    * Linden Home is for residential use only.
    * Business use of any kind is prohibited, including parcel rental, rental boxes, classified ads or other forms of advertising, and event listings.
    * Land cannot be terraformed, sold, deeded to group, joined, or divided.
    * Land cannot contain sky boxes, temp-rezzers, or individual prims beyond the allocated size of the Second Life Viewer build tools — 10x10x10m (no megaprims).
    * Linden Homes may not be removed, modified, exchanged, set or deeded to group, or transferred.
    * Linden Homes should be kept presentable and in-theme.
    * Linden Homes should not be used as sandboxes.
    * Linden Homes do not include traffic tracking.
    * Ownership is limited to one Linden Home per Premium Account.

    * Use local chat say, rather than shout.
    * Adhere to the Maturity Rating for the Linden Home region you're located in.
    * Respect your neighbors' privacy.
    * Review general Second Life etiquette suggestions and incorporate them into your Linden Home experience: http://bit.ly/sletiquette

 It's suburbia. There are huge areas of houses, with trees, flowers, parkland, and pathways. Few roads. Almost nothing else. Very peaceful. Boring. Just like RL suburbia.

 

[Lag in Vallone sim, in a very regular way]

Avatar presence triggers it. Zero avatars in the sim, no lag. One avatar in sim, the pattern shown above. Two avatars in sim, a more complex pattern which settles down into the original pattern in about a minute.

I'm thinking badly coded security orb.

[Lag in Vallone sim, in a very regular way]

I packaged up the tester for this as a little bronze pyramid. It's here, and copyable, if you want one. It runs as long as it is rezzed, and whispers SIM LAGGING reports to anyone nearby. Don't leave these running permanently; it's a debug tool.

[Lag in Vallone sim, in a very regular way]

I've been seeing lag every 10 seconds or so in Vallone sim for weeks. Today, though, while doing some timing tests on vehicle steering, a pattern appeared:

[11:22]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 1.422260  Since previous lag: 1.598988
[11:22]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 0.197685  Since previous lag: 8.414715
[11:22]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 1.387371  Since previous lag: 1.562363
[11:23]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 0.200169  Since previous lag: 8.438240
[11:23]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 1.406193  Since previous lag: 1.650105
[11:23]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 0.203171  Since previous lag: 8.358871
[11:23]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 1.488628  Since previous lag: 1.662804
[11:23]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 0.187752  Since previous lag: 8.320145
[11:23]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 1.254395  Since previous lag: 1.454010
[11:23]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 0.195648  Since previous lag: 8.566086
[11:23]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 1.320679  Since previous lag: 1.542542
[11:23]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 0.189110  Since previous lag: 8.450493
[11:23]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 1.368523  Since previous lag: 1.543747
[11:23]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 0.192764  Since previous lag: 8.460548
[11:23]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 1.355927  Since previous lag: 1.489693
[11:24]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 0.186714  Since previous lag: 8.500282
[11:24]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 1.381752  Since previous lag: 1.628365
[11:24]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 0.194176  Since previous lag: 8.395630
[11:24]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 1.375374  Since previous lag: 1.532898
[11:24]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 0.177559  Since previous lag: 8.456879
[11:24]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 1.491974  Since previous lag: 1.670341
[11:24]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 0.191803  Since previous lag: 8.303307
[11:24]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 1.344498  Since previous lag: 1.539261
[11:24]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 0.187225  Since previous lag: 8.477051
[11:24]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 1.310120  Since previous lag: 1.510239
[11:24]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 0.169800  Since previous lag: 8.477112
[11:24]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 1.456055  Since previous lag: 1.637375
[11:25]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 0.188034  Since previous lag: 8.366394
[11:25]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 1.357407  Since previous lag: 1.515808
[11:25]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 0.182831  Since previous lag: 8.472702
[11:25]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 1.335922  Since previous lag: 1.518051
[11:25]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 0.167603  Since previous lag: 8.497147
[11:25]  SIM LAGGING. Delay: 1.560043  Since previous lag: 1.758499

There's a very regular 10 second cycle.  There's a big lag of 1.5 seconds, and a smaller lag of about 150ms.  (The code timing this has a resolution of 25ms; it's from logging "control" events, which update every 25ms when a key is down, so all numbers have 25ms jitter.) Somebody in Vallone sim has a script that uses a lot of resources on a 10 second cycle. Any guesses as to what?

Support has tried to fix this several times. They can't find it. Restarting the sim doesn't help. This apparently doesn't show in "scripts using a lot of time" because it is not continuous.

[Regiongs blanking out today]

This is becoming so common that it's the new normal in SL.

You can't even update the 6 year old bug report. SVC-8130.

It's "inactive".

[(Retention suggestion) Let new users choose communities they consider to be a part of during registration and first-spawn them in specific community gateway based on their choice]

6 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

That is the problem, and maybe SL should be more like a game or more like a social network.

The retention rates are so low, the typical user experience might as well be :

1. Join SL, download and log in.
2. Figure out how to move about  Oh no, that's easy.
3. (optional) maybe get off help island, find the grid ..
4. " WTF is all this and how the hell is it relevant to anything? ... Why am I here? "
5. Log off
6. Never come back. Ever.

Step 4 is overcome for a MINORITY by social bonds, existing friend(s) in world, a 5 minute chat on help island, preexisting expectations from outside of SL (websites, youtube, personal recommendations), stubborn determination ... humping avatars .. etc etc etc.

The point being the vast majority of signups never make it to first base, and this is where the focus needs to be in terms of working on retention. The fact we can't even define what first base is in these circumstances frames the problem perfectly.

This is good. We're converging on understanding the problem. Onboarding breaks down at the point the new user finishes setup and the tutorial, and is dumped into the help island crowd.

The Second Life landing page currently shows three pictures in rotation - "Have an Adventure", "Become a Creator", and "Make Money". They all look good, and new users sign up. Then they discover that a new user can't do any of those things easily, if at all.. The landing page pictures should re-appear on the help island, and should lead to experiences which let new users do those things, with visuals that look like the ad pictures. Then SL will deliver what they promised in the marketing material. Not doing that makes users feel cheated.

Whatever LL puts on the landing page should be something a new user can try in their first hour in SL.

[random touch to rotate wheel]

Oh, you want to make one of these.

See it here.

They did a nice job on this. It moves the way you want, and the script knows where the wheel ends up. 

If you do this with llTargetOmega, the rotation is client side, and scripts have no idea of the position of the object. "Physical" is a property of the entire link set, so you can't have the base be non-physical and the wheel be physical. Nor does SL do rotational joints. So the easy way to do this won't work.

You probably have to set angular position with llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast and PRIM_ROT_LOCAL. That means running a timer and explicitly setting the rotation for each time tick. This is a pain, but it gives you full control of the wheel, so you can rig the game. 

[(Retention suggestion) Let new users choose communities they consider to be a part of during registration and first-spawn them in specific community gateway based on their choice]

As someone who entered SL six months ago, I've done the current onboarding process.  It's not bad until the end. 

There's avatar selection, with a few unimpressive avatars. That's OK. Then there's a walk-through tutorial on basic movement and commands. That's OK. Then you end up in a large new user space full of people being jerks in voice chat. There's no suggestion of what to do next other than some posters which teleport you to a few currently popular destinations. That's the problem.

There needs to be something else at that point. I'm not sure what. But that's where the onboarding process breaks down. Some, clear, fun. well-chosen options need to be presented. Not an overwhelming number of them, or new users will freeze up with decision paralysis.

[Loot boxes now illegal in Belgium]

6 hours ago, Drake1 Nightfire said:

I find it interesting that your quoted text appears nowhere in the link you provided..

That's from the translation of the press release from the Belgian authorities linked in the article.

[Loot boxes now illegal in Belgium]

Video game loot boxes are now considered criminal gambling in Belgium

EA, Activision, and Blizzard are now in trouble.

"Belgian law considers four factors when deciding whether something constitutes gambling: there must be a game element, there is some form of betting, that betting can lead to profit or loss, and chance plays a role. "

That probably covers gatchas.

 

[SL usage statistics]

Or consider a hypothetical situation where about 40%-60% of the users logged on are alts or bots, and real usage is about half what LL claims. That's consistent with what you see in world.

We're guessing. The numbers LL lets out are all ones that reflect past glories (like total signups ever), or are inflated by alts.

[Beta grid downtime]

I was just on the beta grid. It's up, mostly. It's just hard to find things, because search for the beta grid doesn't really reflect what's there.. I keep getting sent to regions that don't exist. When you find out how to get somewhere on the beta grid, landmark it, so you can find it again.

I've been doing vehicle half-unsit tests on the beta grid at LL's request. There's now a big sandbox running a test release and full of all sorts of vehicles - vehicles hung in midair, vehicles running and stuck at an obstacle after dumping the rider, and various ones just parked. Lindens have been testing there.  This used to be mysterious, only failed during heavy load / script heavy avatar / etc. No, all it takes is a short period of 1000ms network delay and a 4-sim intersection. Instant fail. With that, LL can debug.

I hope they can fix this. I just want to tour and enjoy SL with friends, not maintain the system.