AlettaMondragon

I have actually said that back then to mock Prokofy. Sadly, the Bellisseria railroad has fallen into disrepair since, instead of building and improving it, they even ruined some parts that were already working before, so we're very far from automated vehicles there. Even our own rail vehicles can at best just stumble between guides without getting stuck now.

I appreciate the regular restarts even if there's no simulator version update, because restarts are necessary BUT it is extremely annoying that I checked the GSP to see if I can leave my avi logged in while I go away from home (to catch important group chat, mostly), and as there was absolutely no mention of restarts on the GSP and here on the forums, of course I did. Now as I got logged out, as usual for at least a year now, the usual annoying issues are here, group chats not working, and other glitches and malfunctions. The service is unreliable at best lately, just look at all the restarts since the end of November, except today's (yet) ended with minor grid crashes and other issues, so it's hard enough to log in to SL and actually be able to use functions properly, if we get logged out because you do restarts without prior notice, that just makes everything even worse. It would be nice to post that notice a few days in advance on the GSP and keep it there until it's done, as you normally do. Then we know what to expect. @Maestro Linden @Grumpity Linden @Mazidox Linden Can you give us any explanation for this and this recent bunch of failures during and after rolling restarts? We know you are working on things and some got fixed, new functions were added, etc, that's indeed nice (when we of course notice it because it's hidden in the simulator release notes, but at least featured). It is weird, though, that some of the recent restarts caused issues like the restarting regions didn't come back online for about 3 hours, or remained inaccessible until a manual restart, and other unexpected problems quite all the time (but especially when more than 50 thousand people are online), like teleport failures, group chats not working or being absolutely unreliable (such as dropping messages), even personal and object IMs not getting delivered, even while we're online, and other annoyances. There are a lot of these lately, about the last three months. Do you know what is behind these issues, and why they are more frequent now than, let's say, in August?

I don't know what this topic is about, I just saw a notification that my topic was linked here. If only it wasn't, well anyway. Just a bit of explanation on that Route 8A-8C connector: Route 8A and 8C were built in late 2008 and early 2009, even though the parcels have been there before, the roads were only built on them at that time. As they didn't connect them at the time, Route 8C remained an isolated section of Satori's road network for 12 years, except times when resident-owned roads connected them, usually at the very same spot where this new connector is located. And still, while the land between the two roads in this area was almost always abandoned since early 2020, it took until July 2021 to convince the Lab to build that short, but very important connector between the two roads. I collect a lot of historical information about how Mainland evolved and has been developed, and honestly, I don't see any major difference in how the Lab makes progress. They don't think about some things that turn out to be important, or somewhere in the management it gets cancelled, probably because they decide it isn't worth the work and costs. It is a very nice thing when things like this can be finally fixed, and it is also great that thanks to Patch we actually have the major Mainland continents connected, but there's nothing in these things that should encourage us to take this for granted as the current approach of the Lab. I'm actually convinced that the majority of the management don't want to waste resources on opening empty water regions just to provide sufficient waterways for the community, after all it is not 2007-2009 anymore, when they even built unique sites all along those empty water regions provided for the community to sail at and explore. Even the fact that the private regions along the Southwestern coast of Satori were recently relocated doesn't mean they are going to do such a great work in this area as they have done at Jeogeot, not just to connect it to Bellisseria properly, but to even improve the continent by doing so. IF they are going to do that while expanding Bellisseria, that would be great and appreciated, but it is really up to one thing: what the management wants.

Thank you Molly, I was wondering if it's a known issue already, I'm glad it is. This in the summary seems like an understatement though: Unfortunately it is not just some tiles that aren't updating, even before the Level 1 tiles stopped updating on 28 October, it was a consistent issue with all tiles per each zoom level stopping to update, the earliest I was able to determine was that the Level 6 tiles stopped updating before 23 June. This means the updates were only working properly for 2 months (18 April - 23 June), or not even so long before the specific zoom levels started to fail. I hope it won't take 5 months to make it work, like last time.

I see there's not a lot of attention to this issue so far, I finally had some time to make the bug report: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-231387 If anyone has even more details, it might help, whenever the Lab starts to work on it.

I haven't been following things on the Forums too much recently, and a quick search didn't bring up any recent topics about it, so there we go... I was already about to file a JIRA about the issue, as I have noticed months earlier that something wasn't right about the smaller zoom levels of the world map. This was first noticed after the release of the Bellisseria Fantasy-themed regions in August, as zooming out on the map showed that these regions didn't get lower level tiles. While looking at any of these regions on the map (for example Toad Pool), gradually zooming out shows the Southwestern regions of the Fantasy area not having zoomed out tiles. Also, the tiles that are showing for the rest of the area at the same zoom level are way outdated, still showing the pre-release region progress marker outlines. Zooming out further, the entire magic swamps area vanishes from the map. At this zoom level, you might also notice that the mainland continents' tiles are even more outdated, so as the Belli-fantasy area was released in August, the smallest zoom level tiles (6-8?) have stopped updating in August or earlier. The mid-range tiles (3-5?) stopped updating sometime in August when the fantasy regions were already present, and lately the closest levels started to fail as well. The newly added regions on the coasts of the fantasy and chalet areas don't even have level 2 zoom tiles, and today I noticed that the level 1 tiles (full zoom-in) apparently stopped updating on the 28th. Edit: I just found another reference point. Route 8A and 8C were connected in Varean and Osiliers on 13 July, but zooming out on the map doesn't show the connector from zoom level 5, so zoom levels 5-8 have already stopped updating early in July. I didn't bother too much with the low-level tiles not updating, although it was already a concern for long-distance navigation and making new maps. Now as apparently the entire map stopped updating, this escalates the problem. If it goes the same way as 11 months ago in last November, the entire world map will be completely useless in 1 week. @Maestro Linden I'm not sure if you are the person I should tag in this case, and if you have available information on this problem, but did the Lab notice this, and is this something expected or being worked on in the background? Some information would be much appreciated as I can't find anything mentioned about the map recently. I'm going to file a JIRA bug report on this too, but I came here first to collect more information. What are others' experiences with the world map lately? Please share any info here that I haven't mentioned, so that can be added to the JIRA as well once I file it. I will share the link of the bug report here.

I am only posting this here as well to raise some awareness to this problem and the request itself, so anyone interested in supporting the request can join the conversation here, and also follow and comment on the feature request here: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-230930 This is the second time since last November that a clear path of abandoned land shows between Route 8A and Route 8C on the Southern part of Satori. This is important because these two roads have never been connected by Linden Lab, even though they are only one region away from each other. It really isn't hard to connect the two roads, and some people with the resources and willingness have done that at this area before, but since early 2020, the roads are mostly not connected as the private landowners weren't able or motivated to keep up their own roads between them. By late 2020, this resulted in several landowners interested in this area, owning parcels along Route 8C, abandoning their lands and moving to other areas, or even giving up owning land at all, because of the Lab's reluctance to improve the infrastructure of the area, and connecting the two roads. Previously in last November, some of these people, before making the final decision to give up their lands, wanted to make a request that Route 8A and 8C would be properly connected by Linden Lab, however, eventually it was only me alone that made the request. I promoted the idea at a user group meeting, where all the Lindens present told me it was a good suggestion, and I should file a feature request in the JIRA. I proceeded to do so, however, a few days later, all the abandoned lands on the roadsides in question were already set for sale to a certain person by one of the Lindens that has approved the suggestion to connect the roads on the meeting! Of course, if we were to ask any questions about this, the Lab would have said it was just a coincidence, so I didn't even ask questions. It was obviously the Linden way to deal with this issue. No, no, wait, alright, let's just assume it was a very unfortunate coincidence indeed, and it isn't going to happen again?! I just noticed recently that a new opportunity occurred to resolve this issue, and have the two roads connected. In the feature request posted above, and in this post below, you will see there is a new clear way between Route 8A and 8C in Varean and Osiliers, even larger than previously, a 55 meters wide purely abandoned land between the two roads. A road obviously doesn't need to be 55 meters wide, it is fine with only 20, this also means it doesn't have to be right next to current private parcels (there are only 2 at the moment) and it also doesn't have to be right at the region border, because it would be quite disastrous for those that would use the road with vehicles - actually, it would be still better than no road at all - so there is really enough room to make a road now, LL, and then you can also set the new roadside parcels for auction, you would be surprised, they would sell quickly. Infrastructure improvement always makes land more desirable, this works in both worlds. Here are the details of the land where the connection can be made: Corner points of the free (abandoned) area that can be used as a road at the moment: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Varean/52/1/83 - Southeast corner at Route 8A http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Varean/92/55/85 - Northeast corner at Route 8A http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Osiliers/29/55/73 - Northwest corner at Route 8C http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Osiliers/16/1/68 - Southwest corner at Route 8C (This is a much larger area than it is needed for an actual road, as I have pointed out above.) This is the area outlined on the map: Especially as Satori is connected to Bellisseria near this area, it is important to make certain development in this part of the continent. While a protected waterway is desperately needed for sailing and safe aviation through this area as well, just west of here at the Southwest coast of Satori, it is just as important to acknowledge these roads have been here for several years (a decade?) and for some reason they have never been connected, while it would be very easy to do so. There is a good opportunity right now. If residents occasionally decide to buy land to make something road-like between them, it can give a bit of relief and satisfaction for a few weeks or a few months, but it is nothing like when we have a properly made road maintained by Linden Lab to drive on. If you would like to support this suggestion, please let your voice be heard at the feature request at the link above. Thank you. Also, I will just tag @Patch Linden and @Alexa Linden here so they can see the post, in case they would be interested in the idea as well and it wouldn't reach them otherwise.

It didn't get any better yet, to be honest. It is still as unreliable as it has been since last August. No, not "as it always have been", because the massive fail of group chat is definitely rooted in some simulator server and agent presence communication issues, which began in August 2020. Fortunately in the last month, for me all group conversations work mostly fine, once they start to get delivered. The problem is the circumstances of getting the messages delivered. (Supposedly the viewer and the group chat servers doing the necessary communication to subscribe to group chat delivery, and supposedly through the agent presence service, right?) It isn't a new occurrence for me that after logging in, regardless whether the last login or logout was within a few minutes or several hours ago, I don't get any group chat messages delivered for a certain (but random amount of) time. Sometimes it is about 30 minutes before group chats start to pop up, and then they do one after another. Sometimes, fortunately more rarely at this time, it takes up to 2 hours before they start to work, like today. This especially happens on days with rolling restarts, and occasionally when the overall online count is above 50000. The latter quite makes sense, actually, since the more people online, the more people the messages have to be routed to and delivered, and not only that, but monitoring their online status in the meantime, while they move from one region to another by crossing or teleporting. And as I experienced a lot of times, changing region is the most common source for the agent presence service to fail to recognize you're online, which usually lasts for only a few seconds, but it is enough to miss the delivery of personal or group IMs. However, I still can't see why rolling restarts should correlate with failing group chat, and I can't even say it is in a direct correlation. This is when we, who don't know how the entire infrastructure works, can't figure out what's happening. I just suspect without any proof that the "thing" that triggers the rolling restarts, can affect the agent presence service, so people that log in during rolling restarts might experience these issues. Yes, this is just my suspicion, and I can't support it with anything yet. I can confirm this. This is part of what I am referring to above. After teleporting, or while travelling and crossing many regions, at a certain point, all group chats "stop". I can even add that since that participant list blocking feature was implemented, usually it simply stops updating the list of participants at some point. In large group chats where I'm not a moderator, the moderators in the list stop updating, meaning that moderators joining the chat sometime after the conversation was opened for me, don't show in the list, but also, moderators that were in the chat when the conversation was opened on my end, and now even went offline, still show in the list. The same goes with the list in a group chat where I'm a moderator, but with everyone. I can confirm this too. For me, this happens randomly, not as severely as in April, but for example last night, when the overall online user count was above 51000, I didn't get any group chat for several hours (and then none until today before starting to write this post, because I went to sleep, obviously. I know, it's surprising I ever sleep.) So I'm in the Catwa Head Friends group too, as a normal member (everyone role). It is one of the 4 largest groups I'm in, the other 3 are over 70k members if I'm correct, but less active in their group chat, normally. When things are working fine, whenever I log in, I should have the Catwa Head Friends group chat popping up within a minute. Maybe 2 if there really isn't anything being said at the very moment. Since this has been the case every single day, in any hour I might have logged in the first time for the day or I relogged, we can say it is how it works. That group is really active 24/7. (By the way it's amazing the Catwa crew can manage sorting out all those questions all the time!) If I log in and no Catwa Head Friends chat is popping up within 2 minutes, it already means something isn't working properly. In these cases, like today, usually no other group chat pops up either, until that "certain" time (today 110 minutes) after logging in, then the Catwa chat pops up, and then the others (this is because it is more active than any of my other groups). Relogging indeed doesn't help, it is totally random whether group chats start getting delivered right when they should, or after 3 minutes, 30, or 110. It might be also an important part of this issue, that an old bug is still present, where you don't get the first message of a group conversation, only the second or third one. It is easy to recognize, since you get a group chat popping up, but only with an answer as the first message. You ask what was the question, and they'll repost it with the timestamp, and you can see it was at the same minute, or a minute earlier than the answer. It might be related to the failed delivery of the chat of a certain group, if after the first message didn't get sent to certain members, the subsequent ones get sent to the same members again. If I get something that can serve as a proof, I guess I'll go and file a JIRA again, for things that haven't been addressed before, but until then, since this topic is here (and it was a good idea, it's good to see when the Lab gets a proactive idea), maybe others can relate to these findings as well.

You misunderstood the point, then. I wrote it here first for people like you and me, so you can do the same tests if you want, if you notice failing group chat delivery, and then it won't be only me poking them on the Jira with this all the time, while others just silently accept the fact things are so broken, or even try to tell people off of seeking a fix when we bring it up here. It is nice you were able to read the first sentence of a consistent paragraph, but it doesn't take too much effort to quote myself here, so here you go, reading it again can't hurt.

If only someone kept going there to remind them about fixing the map as well... I'm really disappointed the time that user group is at isn't good for me, but oh well. To stay on topic, yes, it might help some, and if it really did, then for example I wouldn't complain about it at all. It would be just another recent change in the line that might or might not have some real benefit, but isn't really important anyway. The problem with the change is that it didn't work, and it seems to correlate with the group chat delivery issues that arose right after the changes were made. A few hours ago it started again for me, not getting any group conversations after relogging at some point. I logged in with an alt as well, like yesterday, that I only keep nowadays to test group chat when it is failing on my main. Now my alt didn't receive any conversations either, not even some that I initiated with my main. The common pattern in the failing group chat delivery was that, on both my main and alt, the full participant lists got sent to the viewer (despite not being a moderator in those groups, and group members well over 10, which is the intended limit - they were over 1000, 3000, or 70000, actually). In group conversations where the full list got sent to me, I wasn't able to see or send chat with either account, initially, while those that showed the participant list "as intended", worked properly. Since we already determined with @Maestro Linden yesterday that this issue is about the viewer not subscribing for group chat delivery on login, I started to do the same tests that we have done yesterday, and then I also created different scenarios with my main and alt to further test how the group chat behaves. The overall result is that this participant list blocking feature is entirely inconsistent now at best, and in the worst case scenario, it might be the cause of the failed group chat subscription on login. If not the blocking of the full list from being sent, then something else that was accidentally affected while implementing this feature, which is even more likely. I've run different scenarios, in which either my main or alt initiated a group chat session, where either or both of them got the entire participant list of the conversation, or the intended cut list, then also refreshed group profile, closed and reopened the group conversation, and started the test again, and then also relogged with both accounts and did the same tests again. Eventually, I became able to read and send messages in all the groups I've been running these tests in (until proceeding to point 4 below, where it got entirely broken again for both accounts), but there are several things that still aren't working properly: 1) It is random whether a group chat conversation is getting sent to the account after logging in. After relogging with both accounts, my alt got a group conversation popping up, where my main is also a member, and didn't get the conversation until opening the conversation manually. So the group chat subscription on login randomly fails. 2) There is one group, where my main got the full chat participant list during all of these tests while not being a moderator. After relogging, it still shows the full list. My alt has received the full list as well, initially, and persistently after refreshing group profile and reopening the conversation, however, after relogging, unlike my main, it only gets the cut list with only moderators showing, as intended. Another person in that group chat confirmed that she also received the full participant list despite not being a moderator, and it persisted for her over closing chat, refreshing group profile, and reopening chat as well. This means the feature that is supposed to block the participant list from being sent to those that shouldn't receive them, is unreliable and only randomly works. 3) While initially it seemed to be a consistent pattern, and a correlation that if the account got the full participant list while it shouldn't have, it would mean it is unable to receive or send messages in that group chat, it turned out within 10 minutes of testing that it isn't the case, and there is no direct correlation between these two aspects. You can get the full participant lists while you shouldn't, and be able to receive and send group chat messages at the same time. 4) During the tests, I stayed with both accounts in the same region they were in (a different region for either of them) for the entire time. While writing point 3 above, I had to teleport out to another region with my main to check on something. Right after the teleport, my main stopped receiving group chat messages (in opened conversations as well), that my alt (still in the region it has been in the whole time) kept getting. Then I teleported to another region with my alt too, and this caused my alt from receiving chat as well, and even in my own group with only my main and alt, my main now cannot send messages in that group chat, my alt can send messages that my main gets, though. After closing the conversation with my main, refreshing the group profile, reopening the conversation, my main can send messages in the group which my alt can see but my main can't, and my alt can still send messages that only my alt can see this time, so my main cannot see anything in the conversation. This means changing simulator does correlate with the failure of group chat delivery, and after changing regions, the simulator doesn't recognize the agent being present there. It is not news, it has been happening since last August here and there. Maestro, please, take this seriously, when we keep saying the root of this issue is in the simulator servers, we aren't joking or guessing. It is proven. I'm writing this here instead of filing a new bug report (yet) because more people read the forums than the Jira. People, if you feel like you want to experiment with these things, and collect data and see if it correlates with my findings, especially if you are having issues with group chat recently, please do tests similar to what I described, and share your findings here, so we can learn more about the issue together, and I can add those results to the bug report I'm going to file along these lines.

There is one thing that I feel like I have to ask about this argument of yours, because it is either only unclear to me, or there's some lack of connection between your argument and the current issues. So if the "intended use" of groups was only land management, then why are group features virtually unlimited? Yes, I know, there is no such thing as "unlimited" in reality, there will be some processing or storage limit eventually. However, the group system wasn't designed with limits. All limits have been apparently implemented one by one when the Lab determined it would be necessary to do, like the recent changes now, the limit of 5000 members above which the member list doesn't get sent to non-moderators, the group notices only kept for 14 days, etc. The group notices are interesting in particular, because earlier this year (I think it was in January, and lasted until the first week of February) the 14 days expiration limit wasn't imposed, and group notices were kept from even last December. I would even imagine the notices are kept forever on the servers anyway, they just don't get unnecessarily sent to all members when they call the list of past group notices. Same with group proposals. Where are they? Have they ever been implemented at all? It exists, though, so if groups are only meant for land management, what would a group use the voting system for? To decide if they wanted a potted plant or a small statue at the entrance of a clubhouse? To me it seems like the group system has been designed to be robust and able to deal with anything the users would try to use it, but obviously not in a volume of 70000 people in a group, with 2000 of them online at the same time. Prove me wrong though, if you have the resources to show us the groups were really only meant for land management and nothing else, I am eager to see that. Another thing that just doesn't check out with this concept is, if we stick to the logic of "land management groups as the intentional use of the group system", then land management groups should keep working fine, and only those groups that misuse the service would fail, like you could use the chat of a small group with no issues, but the chat of a huge group would constantly fail. This is not the case. It doesn't really matter how large the group is, and how many members are online that would become the active participants once one member initiates a chat session. The issue has an entirely different root as it seems. I also doubt LL would think the same way, because in that case they'd tell us to go use Discord or anything else, instead of forcing group chat to work as we want, and it is definitely not the case, they want it to work just like we do. I'll paste the Jira bug report I made earlier today, and Maestro managed to sort it out as much that I can receive group chat properly again. His comment is more interesting there, which can actually take us closer to understand what is going on when things are failing. I believe that is still just the tip of the iceberg, but you have to make the first step somehow. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-230576

When it is a topic about something that is still just as relevant as when it was made, I think it's much better to bump the original one. This way people that haven't known about the entire thing can learn something new and join the discussion as well. Who knows how longer it would have taken for me to find out about those videos and that feature request, if ever, if it wasn't for seeing "Mirrors" here now? I'm not here for such a long time yet, so as I haven't been around when this suggestion might have been a thing, it isn't actually easy to come across things like this if you're not directly searching for it. Not searching for something doesn't mean you wouldn't appreciate accidentally coming across it, though. In my first few months I didn't even find out about water reflections "on everything", so I had it on "Minimal", I think. When I once realized it and was like "hey, why don't I have this set to "everything", and did it, it was a great graphical experience boost to SL, bringing it closer to games with pretty high graphics features. I could never go out to the sea in SL again without that. And since that point, I am wondering why the same reflectiveness wasn't implemented for objects. So this topic, the comments on that Jira, and the videos themselves are a great source to learn and think more about this, to have an idea of what it would take to implement it, what risks it could bring with itself, etc. It would be definitely a major aesthetical improvement, even if it wouldn't be able to reflect all shadows and occlusions properly or at all. The fact that you can have a working mirror is a huge step from not having any mirrors at all. It would allow for anything from a bathroom mirror to huge hallways with wall-sized mirrors, rear-view mirrors for vehicles, and so on. It is really a valid point that it could be used for griefing or trolling as well. Seriously though, what hasn't been used for griefing or trolling in SL yet? Every single kind of object, animated texture, particle, sound, animation and script function has been tried as a use against others (sadly), with more or less success. You can't create anything that someone wouldn't try to use for griefing, it isn't really a good excuse for rather not creating it for that reason. Especially since it should be possible to prevent "cross-mirroring" (reflecting a mirrored image on another mirror) after a few iterations, or at all, like limiting the maximum amount of reflective surfaces in a scene in the viewer, etc. The way I have imagined this feature while playing with textures and reflective surfaces, it would make the most sense if it was implemented in the Shininess (specular) texture's environment factor. The more the input, the more sharp and detailed the mirror would be (where 0 would be no reflection at all, and 255 the clear mirror). Between the none and full reflection endpoints, the reflection could be gradually clearer, so it could be easily used to make reflective glass and metallic materials. (The same way as it is now, just with realistic reflections instead of just the sun.) The most important thing in it would be that it doesn't have to be perfect, it is enough if it works reliably and doesn't break other features in the process. It has to be faced that improvements in graphics and rendering require better computers, so if we don't want SL to be a 20-year-old, outdated platform with serious lack of features compared to contemporary platforms, certain improvements have to be made from time to time even if it means the overall hardware requirements will raise. And then being able to turn off the reflection feature at all like other features of ALM could be still an option as well.

Alright, here we go again. I was happier not to come to the Forums for a while since Oz retired, since seeing these misleading, false, or directly lying, or largely incompetent and useless posts is more than disappointing. Oz at least answered questions and tried to help. Without that help, there's not much to hope, but what is enough, is enough, so it has to be addressed. I mostly stayed away from complaining here because at least I was less affected by these technical issues. Of course there is no usable world map, I wrote long pages on that so who cares. Teleport failures and group chat issues were mostly resolved in the last months, though, at least since those "Group chat and agent presence" maintenances were done from time to time, group chat of most groups worked fine. Until this last one which didn't do anything else but just cut a useful function. And thanks to today's rolling restarts and the latest simulator server version, now I don't get any group chat conversations again, and if I open one and try to send a message, IT DOESN'T SHOW. If I log in with an alt to test it, even in my own group with only my main and the alt in it, the alt can receive and send messages properly (and I can see it on the main - however, only if I opened the group chat manually first - but whatever I say with my main won't be visible on my screen, only for my alt. HELLO, Linden Lab, you have resolved this issue in last October, why is it suddenly back? This has been an issue since last August, multiple accounts got affected by it, and it got sorted out entirely until late November, when you started doing those agent presence related maintenance sessions. Did you forget what you fixed back then, and how, and did you manage to accidentally revert it? Or intentionally, to see how much trouble you can cause again? There is a reason I have to keep saying all you keep doing since last November is nothing more than DAMAGE. This situation with not only the intentional blocking of the participant lists from being sent, but bringing back an issue that was resolved for almost 6 months, is the perfect example of that. It also shows that blocking the participant list from being sent was an absolutely unnecessary move, and it doesn't prevent group chat from being entirely broken. Maybe it even contributes to it. More likely you managed to break something else during the rolling restarts today, but how would we even know? If we look at the release notes https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/simulator/2021-03-31.557694.html it only says "This release contains some internal tweaks." Really? And what kind of tweaks? Is this just pure laziness, not writing proper details in these notes lately, or are we considered so dumb by the Lab that we wouldn't understand it anyway, so why would you let us know what you are tweaking - and breaking - this time? Many people in SL seek and provide help in groups, through group chat conversations. I'm one of those, on the providing side. How am I supposed to help someone with an issue, if I can't see when they ask something in a group? I usually even leave my avi logged in all day long, even if I'm not at home, so when I get time to read group chat later, I can even return to people with unresolved issues hours later. I can't do that if I don't get those messages delivered. Did anyone at the Lab think about this??? That we need that working group chat system, and the excuses and failing attempts are more than enough at this point? Or even a better question: If group chats were working properly in March (because they were), why did you have to keep tweaking the service further? Also, hello, why don't you listen to what we're telling you? We've been suggesting since last August, with proof, that all these issues - failing teleports, failing sim crossings, errors thrown on sim crossings (vehicle out-of-sync), failing group chat and IM delivery, failing to retrieve parcel details from an adjacent region, "very slow asset loading", agent info not getting retrieved after a sim crossing or teleport, regions being inaccessible while showing parcel info of a random other region on the map - are caused because when you changed things to prepare the simulators for the Uplift, the simulator servers started to communicate erroneously, between each other, the agent presence service, and the clients, and so the simulators and certain services like group chat and IM delivery don't know that the agent is online, and the message has to be sent, or in other cases, the simulator doesn't recognize the agent being there after a teleport or crossing. Oz eventually confirmed some of these, but still, we can't see any improvement on any field. Vehicles are still throwing errors on crossings because they can't find the driver, region corner crossings instantly unsit the driver because the handoff is just too fast, regions, both Mainland and private, get knocked out randomly with apparently no reason, sometimes you have to wait several minutes before you can open the details of a parcel, and hey, how great, now group chat is just as bad as it was in last autumn! I wasn't able to participate in any group chat for 2 weeks back then, for some people it took more than a month! Will it take so long to fix this again? Or longer? Like the world map? In addition, picks from what Maestro said, and opinions, questions in regard: It's good to know it was at least designed to improve things. It didn't improve anything. As others above commented as well, group chats were working properly before that maintenance. Now, there's not only the participant lists missing, but people are not getting ANY GROUP CHAT CONVERSATIONS AND CANNOT SEND MESSAGES IN ANY GROUP CHAT CONVERSATIONS AGAIN. Wake up. You limited these updates because you can't figure out what is causing the issues in the first place. So you decided to cut seemingly not essential functions in hopes of magically getting some good results. No wonder it doesn't work. It doesn't even work in the way you expect it to work. For a few hours last Sunday, we were able to see the entire list of the participants in groups of any size that we weren't moderators of. After that, the limit seemed to be around 1000 members. And only then went down to 10. However, just an hour ago when I was suddenly disconnected from my home region when it went down to restart without a restart warning and timer, and I managed to log back into another region that was online, and I opened the chat of a group with over 3000 members, the entire participant list of the chat got sent to my viewer. It didn't do any good or bad though, what I wrote in the chat, I couldn't see. Great job, it really tells you guys know your stuff over there. If regular chat messages aren't going to be affected by this, then why am I not getting any group chats and am unable to see my messages sent in any group chat I open myself, since the rolling restarts? Group chats were working just fine before 14:00 SLT. Since I was disconnected by the fabulously done restart, nothing. You have one point on that. In really large groups, the full list of the chat participants is rather useless, especially since the viewer cuts that list anyway (100 names by default if you don't change that setting, I believe). Also, it is probably rather rare you would directly have to search for someone that isn't a moderator, if you aren't one yourself. It is usually good to know who you are talking to, even in a group, though. You know, it is a community thing, knowing who you are speaking to, instead of talking to the wall, like here on the Forums. The real problem comes in another aspect, though: Just like now, in this reproduced situation from last year, where certain accounts (like mine) don't get ANY group chats delivered at all, and can't see their own messages once they try to do so, we now can't even see if the group chat should work! When the participant list normally gets sent to your viewer, if there is a routing error, you don't see the participant list in a conversation you opened. If the participant list might be empty on your side by default, since there isn't any moderator online and participating in that chat, you can't tell the difference! It's just shooting yourself in the leg again with this move, since nothing actually improved by it, but we lost a function that was, if nothing else, a good diagnostics tool when something was wrong with a group conversation. And of course, it was another good move in the progress of ruining the community, to prevent people from seeing who they are talking to. But oh well, it's not a surprise, you don't know or care about the community anyway. In your carefully engineered language, does this mean we can expect more function cuts in exchange of better perf... oh, no, I mean, in exchange of MUCH WORSE performance, like this situation now with not getting any group chat at all? Oh and hey, please fix the map too, we've been waiting 5 months for that as well. Wake up.

Let's be honest, it's no wonder you guys fail to restore the world map's functionality, a simple rolling restart is too difficult for you now to carry out. Oh and this is false, main channel regions only got restarted today after exactly 28 days, the grid poking bot or whatever it is, is still broken. It would be much easier to just do a restart on an entire channel even without simulator version update every 7-14 days (1-2 weeks) just to keep their uptime low.

I'll quote multiple posts to avoid making a bigger mess of this conversation. It is fun to just read it, and all the other topics that were opened for this one issue, but seriously, on our end there is simply no progress made in this case since November, as the map is still broken, and apparently @Oz Linden and his team forgot to update us with new info for a month again, if we count the Jan 21 update on the GSP as an actual update, while it actually doesn't contain any new, useful information, so it doesn't count. Anyway, we would certainly appreciate some new updates on where exactly the progress stands now, like, is that ONE (but obviously the best, they are all the best) developer rewriting all code necessary to make the world map working? Or is the world map getting redesigned as well, so that it would work like you would expect in 2021, instead of its nearly 20-year old way? So that it would render sculpt and mesh objects properly, there wouldn't be 8 levels of tiles of different sizes, unnecessarily storing and downloading so many textures instead of using (and scaling) one per region? Or is this apparently really hard and time-consuming work necessary only to restore the world map to its previous state? These are the questions that at least some of us would really like to know, so we could know what to expect. It would be also much appreciated to get the ETA for it, not like March 13 or anything like that, but whether we could expect to have a usable world map by this summer, or if it will take you a year to fix it. Telling us repeatedly that you don't want to "jinx the developer" is simply BS, we all know that. I'm really not sure how LL works as a company, when it comes to projects, but at companies where I've worked and were heavily project-oriented, a manager would never accept if any of us told them we don't know when exactly we'll complete the project. Maybe managers at LL don't do this, and nobody expects the developers to complete a task in the shortest time in the best quality, but if I'm wrong and you do, it would be nice to respect us as much to tell us that estimated time that the developer told you when you asked them how long it will take to have the world map up and running again. Now I'll actually address some of the things I've been reading here, I just wanted to have the important part on the top for Oz, hoping that he'll give us some more up to date and reassuring answers this time, to reduce this confusion. We can be actually glad that the full-zoom (level 1) tiles with their November 17 print didn't get dumped with the smaller zoom level tiles. If you look at any region that was made after that date, they don't have any map tile, it's like a ghost on the map. It is something that doesn't matter on an isolated private region, most of those usually have a cover prim at sky-sign altitude to have a neutral color instead of a messy map print anyway. When it comes to multiple-sim estates, though, it can get really annoying, since you might want to first see how the land lies, literally, before you would have the time to go there and explore, but you simply can't. This will be an issue with new Bellisseria LH region groups as well (I think there weren't any new ones added yet after those including Twisted Palms with the sky sign saying "SOON", so while the tiles are outdated, at least they have tiles...), which actually makes the irony in this situation stronger. SL's main viable product is the "land product", LL actually puts serious effort into maintaining it, yet a gridwide feature that actually shows the land product as a map, which helps exploration, "sim-hopping", choosing your home or next additional property, managing estates, etc, gets broken and 3 months later, they can't even tell when they expect to make it work again. Interestingly enough, when the Land Store is unavailable, it gets a red (major outage) color on the status page, but the post for the map outage has a black color. I'm not entirely sure what the difference should be between the blue and black colored posts there (since there are usually non-maintenance posts in blue, too), but I'd think such an outage as this should be marked with a yellow color at least, for the "degraded performance" or whatever that status is called. Of course, if the black color means the situation is so grave it needs a black flag and a funeral, it is actually quite appropriate for this issue. It only shows this isn't a priority for LL, and unfortunately, it's really a small fraction of all users that is concerned about it, so it's not a surprise. Honestly, do those new region owners who don't have a map tile on their sims on the map stop paying for the region just because of it? Of course not. If that was the case, I bet the world map would be fixed long ago. They're definitely working on fixing the map, so it's not the issue, at least, they told us several times they were working on it, and LL is actually good at telling us when they are not going to do something, so we don't have any reason to believe they aren't working on this. (For example, they've done 3 "group chat maintenances" since November, and group chats are still terrible and randomly working or not, so we know it takes a lot of time to get things fixed, if ever.) The problem is the terrible lack of updates on their progress, and treating it as a low-priority issue. Actually, even things that were suggested in this topic before, like replacing the automatically updating "map print" tiles with the clean terrain tiles of the regions would be a good intermediate solution so we would at least see something on the map for navigation, but I assume the issue is more severe than that, so that they can't make it to feature any textures now at all, and it is not only the print update that is broken but the entire system. If I'm wrong, though, it would be pretty cool if they could put random memes up for each region's tiles on the 2-8 zoom levels, and pictures of cute animals and whatnot. It would clearly show us they're doing something (because obviously, seeing the same blue background for 3 months isn't a promising sign of progress), and while the map is still not usable, at least we all could have some good laughs. Isn't it? It is. I'm always amazed by the confusion this causes, mostly with the Blake and Belli. People tend to think Belli is Mainland too, because it is between Sansara and Jeogeot, but they tend to think the Blake is not Mainland, because of the private estates around it. However, all the regions that have "Blake Sea -" in their name are technically Mainland regions, and any other regions where the parcels are owned by the Blake Sea group are Mainland regions owned by LL. All those regions around the Blake that are (now mostly) residential regions are the private estates in the CLPP, of course they are part of the Blake Sea, but the whole thing is actually a mixture of the LL-owned sea and the privately owned residential estates. The area where most of the actual sailing and aviation is happening, is 100% Mainland. You would think it is the best interest to run a service at its best all the time, with the least outages possible, and for only brief times when it happens, exactly for this reason, so that the customers would get the actual service they're paying for. As I said above, though, this issue is not a huge impact on LL's incomes from SL. We can only make guesses and estimates, but they're fully aware of how much money they make and what products it comes from, and I'm pretty sure there are still at least a hundred times more people that are here to pay large tiers and don't care about the map, compared to those who pay less and would be here for the activities that usually require a functional world map (or stopped paying because of this unresolved issue). You can be pretty sure if anything occurs that cuts those end-of-month premium material incomes, thereby endangering the planned new jacuzzi, new BMW, new Rolex watch, expensive vacations, etc of the owners/investors/managers, they fix the issue ASAP because they can feel the importance of it. I can very well relate to why someone would choose to go back to play games. I would as well, if it wasn't for SL's much more wholesome experience. I can't dump SL for a game, because they don't offer as much, like the ability to easily create my own things for my own use, or even products, or jumping from one themed roleplay to another one without having to log out, start up another game and waiting half an hour until it loads. The only thing that anyone can prefer in a game now over SL is functionality. If you rather go to spend time playing a game whose features are fully functional, it is technically better than constantly trying to accommodate to the missing features and other issues. Technically, yes, we can still fly and sail, nothing restricts us from doing so, and yes, the minimap works properly, and Firestorm's property lines feature on it is something that should be enough for navigation in short range. That is, when you have to avoid private parcels, banlines, etc. The minimap displays as many regions as the range of your draw distance limit. It is perfect for navigation at the very area where you currently are, but you can't plan a new flight or sailing route with it. If you can't see like half of a continent on the map at the same time, along with how it currently looks like, which is particularly important now with Bellisseria as it's being built, you can't plan your own explorations or a group event easily. You can only go out there like in real life and scout the area for yourself. I've been out exploring places irl too, doing it without a map is awful. It can be fun, until you get lost and run into something dangerous. You won't run into anything dangerous in SL, if we look at it like this, but it would be still convenient to plan ahead. If you're flying or sailing or driving your usual routes where you know where you are, it's perfectly fine, I don't need a map for that either. If you're about to go to places where you haven't been before, well, I know many people don't use a map for that either, but those of us who would, should be able to. In fact in 2021 the world map in SL should have more features, not less. Useful and convenient ones, like being able to place markers on the map instead of using prims for sky signs, similarly to how the land sale, auction, event and infohub highlights already work, being able to place multiple beacons on the map for waypoints on a route (I guess that could be a viewer feature actually), and more retrievable information, like if a parcel has the feature enabled, people right-clicking on the world map could view the parcel profile, etc. What do we have instead? A 90-95% unusable, broken world map feature that now can't even provide the most basic info, such as how the surface of a region looks like. It was already very outdated and had its major flaws while it was working, but now, if we have to rely on the limited minimap instead of the world map, it's a big step back to 1998. Oh, and that being said, actually a reason that people would go to play games now is that most of them have both a world map and a radar (minimap) feature, because game developers in the 2000s realized as the size of the map grows, players will have to monitor their immediate surroundings directly (radar/minimap), and at the same time, they should be able to see more information about the entire map, in the form of a world map. The two can't substitute each other. (Also, for sailing and flying, the out-of-sync error on crossings is far more annoying, and really impeding, for those vehicles that are highly prone to it. It is actually that issue which made me avoid sailing and flying, but it was only that combined with the map outage that made me entirely stop sailing and flying unless it's entirely necessary to take off or sail out in some cases. It's another topic though and this post is too long already, so it's just good to acknowledge when several issues have a combined effect, it can really ruin the experience for at least a few people.)

That's actually the original photo that I took the first time I drove there, while I was still new. I didn't expect the road to break like that, I thought it would be just a steep grade down to the canyon. I had to realize in a millisecond that wasn't the case, so I quickly pulled the parking brake, but it was only enough to produce this great photo, after that, I put it in Drive again and I properly fell down 😂

It's in Fenric and Davros, and if you're there, there's something you shouldn't miss: So if we're at the challenging/impossible to drive roads, this is my favorite. Where is it?

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Frostar/157/11/25 - Maybe it is supposed to reflect the unfinished nature of the Gaeta continents, or it was just some random idea to make that abandoned beach setting. It is at that part where the road is secluded from the rest and you'd have to use an amphibious vehicle to get there, so it looks intentional. I love Gaeta V, though, it's very sandy and pretty overall. I guess I want this to be the next one, I like that throne. Where is it?

It is NOT mainland. It is Linden Homes. They do interact, though, those who want, at least.

The East River Community is the only thing that I can think of, which might match these aspects you're looking for. Although if you're looking for something like the RP/community sims on private estates, there won't be a perfect match on Mainland. You can take a look at the ERC if you go to Helvellyn for example, the East River area is one of the most beautiful areas of Sansara, and the East River Community consists of multiple parcels in 13-14 regions. There are two airports, public transport, shops, residential areas, a harbor, a hospital, fire stations, a lot of parking lots, an internal road network linked to the Linden-owned public roads in the area, and of course the actual river runs through the middle of this establishment, which leads you to the Sea of Fables (from there, you can sail just anywhere on Sansara and Heterocera, except the few waters that aren't the default height). You can take a look at Coniston as well (that's the region name), it is less extensive both geographically and in the range of services, yet it is another beautiful place in the same area. It's at the end of the same road that goes through the East River Community as well. Other than these, you can take a look at Campbell Coast on Corsica, like in Laserlight (that establishment spans across several regions, too), it is as beautiful as the first two, it's a residential area, and the owners are very friendly. It is on both sides of Circuit La Corse, Corsica's main public road, and offers access to the sea as well, in Emyniad. (That sea offers the largest area for sailing in SL, between and around all Eastern continents and the Blake Sea.) These three places are definitely worth a thorough look - and asking their owners about what is available - if you haven't found them yet, and I hope you'll find the place you are looking for!

It was a bit tricky, because just any of these places with the "hedgemoles" wasn't good enough for me, I wanted exactly the one in your pictures LOL. At least there aren't too many sims with U in the area, so the sign was a big help, it's at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Shempo/183/139/76 I guess this is super easy, where am I?

That is one of my favorite locations, in Durango, the Bridge of Light under Amundsen Road, and this lower end is on the border of Durango and Grindlewald. Crossing it with a vehicle is more than a challenge, it's a game of precision and time! Let's see another favorite location of mine, then. This is a resident-build, pretty old, it is in a well-known and unique area, and the most important clue to it is: Deep. (It is beautiful, and it was one of the first places I've explored in SL. It is a must to see if you haven't been there yet!) The same from the outside: This is how it looks if you look up: And a final shot to make it easier:

Cool, another place I remember! Poseidon Island, http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Bohol/218/75/23 And this is mine for you. Other than this frog, there's another notable inhabitant of this place, who is called Boris.

I can only speak for myself, but I would definitely never hire anyone for anything with such an attitude.

A minimum of 28, to be more accurate, but that is what I've been thinking about for some time now. 28-29 full water regions would properly connect Ruthenium and Neutral Zone, where with a minimal adjustment in its Southeast corner, it would provide a continuous waterway up to Bay City, and further, to Heterocera, since you can already sail between Heterocera and Chamonix City. Unfortunately, LL weren't happy about a suggestion to add no more than 3 water regions to fix a waterway on Southwest Satori not too long ago, and they refused to do so, and it would need about 15 more of them to make a continuous waterway down to the Southern tip once (if and when) the Bellisseria extension reaches Satori, which is way less than what is needed at Southwest Sansara, so I doubt they would ever bother with Sansara and sailing anymore.