Rhys Goode

I changed internet providers a few months ago, and the new setup came with its own WiFi router. I had been using SL over WiFi for 5 years, and it took me a while to figure out that the problem was the WiFi router provided by my new ISP. When used with SL, I experienced massive packet loss, and any SL or 3rd party viewer would crash within a few minutes, most of the time. (It was 2WIRE router, I have since used several different 2WIRE routers, they all had issues with packet loss running SL and WiFi, but are well behaved if you plug in a cable) I switched back to my old reliable WiFi router, and that worked too, but then I tried hooking up to the router with a cable, and it turned out that even my old reliable WiFi was giving me bouts of bad packet loss, and that most of the occasional bouts of bad lag I was blaming on SL were actually due to the WiFi. I use a cable now, unless I have no other choice. Note that WiFi runs in a spectral band where anything from garage door openers to microwaves can cause sporadic interference. Another acnecdote: Visiting my sister, I had to use WiFi. My PC would not stay connected to SL, it crashed within minutes every time I tried. I could make the problem go away by plugging in with a cable, but that was not very convenient. So I tried downloading the viewer onto a newish MacBook Pro, and there it ran quite nicely over WiFi, no packet loss at all. Evidently not all wifi hardware is created equal.

It sounds like you changed viewers too. This morning I tried the newest Linden Viewer on my tired old dual core, 2 GHz machine, 4 Gig RAM, Win 7, 32 bit. In a moderately crowded sim, but with the sim itself running time dilation >.98 and >~ 44 fps. Keeping the same position and field of view, and after waiting a bit after changes. My fps fluctuates a bit as avitars move in and out of my field of view. Newest Linden Viewer, 3.2.1 (244864) Nov 10 2011: ~ 3 fps Same Linden Viewer, voice chat disabled: ~ 5 fps Firestorm 2.5.2 (16922) Jul 3 201, voice chat disabled: 10-12 fps Firestorm 3.0.1 (22525) Sep 6 2011, voice chat disabled: ~8-9 fps. This is the mesh version. On my machine, enabling voice chat leads to a lot of read/write activity to the hard drive. Aslo, with the firestorm mesh, I had to reduce the size of the graphics cache to reduce read/write to hard drive, when used with the default, I saw about half the frame rate as the non mesh version of firestorm. My take home from this is that I need to update my computer!

Years later, all things improved. Getting better, flexprims and sculpties and mesh. More users, less LL lag. As bad as microsoft or apple at needing better hardware to run properly. And really, really unfriendly to WiFi. But overall, I love it more as time goes on.

Yes, disabling http textures worked for me too. Although it seems like it depends a lot on the quality of my intenet link. When I have a solid link, with no packet loss, http textures works a bit faster on my machine. But if I start to get noticeable packet loss, then I start getting fuzzy. So I leave http textures off, especially if I have to use a WiFi link. WiFi almost always has packet loss problems running SL, even a good WiFi link is subject to occasional "storms" of packet loss.

This is a complicated subject, I have a smattering of knowledge, but if you want to find out details, you should really look in the mesh forum. You would likely get a better answer to your question there. From what I glean, it is possible to make very low or very high PE objects that will look the same in your 3D modeling software. So it would not surprise me if you managed to make a simple box with a PE of 15, even though it is more typical to be able to make a more complex shape, that might take 3 or 4 prims to approximate with the SL building tools, and have it come out with a PE less than 1. It takes some skill and judgement designing the mesh to make it come out right. If you insist on using 10 times the number of vertices as needed in the mesh YOU design, then you will pay the price in PE. But like I said, lots of good info available in the Mesh forum. In particular there are long threads relateing to the development of PE.

I don;t know the absolute limit, but feel safe saying "many". I have seen one set up with 5 primary owners: Me and my alt, my friend and her alt, and another friend. And a couple of sec owners too, i forget. Yes, not only can you have several primary owners, you can be one of them yourself. This offends some of the BDSM purists out there. But for me its a great toy, and the fact that you can have several "owners" is a neat feature that makes it more fun.

There is some very good help available at the Phoenix website. http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=troubleshooting_and_quick_fixes in particular http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=very_laggy

Server updates are announced every week. For example: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/Deploys-for-the-week-of-2011-09-12/m-p/1097979#M2204 Sadly, they do not include predictions about whether or not one of the updates contains a buggy bug fix, or a successful bug fix.

I had been experiencing issues using FireStorm, and they got substantially better with HTTP textures off. But I recently discoverd that my WiFi connection has sporadic issues with high packet loss, especially after TP when there is a lot of info being downloaded. Using an ethernet cable, I see hardly any packet loss, and today I turned HTTP textures back on. It works fine now. I think that the protocol is inherently more sensative the packet loss than UDP.

I recently discovered for myself how WiFi was giving me some similar issues. Using WIFI, I have had issues on and off - most days just fine, but some days just terrible. (I use Phoenix and Firestorm) I recently changed ISP's and they provide intenet to a router that has both wifi and wired capablity. I ran an ethernet cable from the new router to the old one, since the old one was serviceing some non-wirelss devices. Well, I could hardly log into SL with the new WiFi signal. Packet loss was nuts. And if I changed sims, the packet loss would spike up, it would be many minutes before I could move. Fiddling around, I found that if I hooked up to the WiFi from the old router, most of my problems went away. Instead of seeing huge packet loss whenenever I changed sims, (or jacked my draw distance way up, and panning all around with the camera --- looks like a data rate thing), I only had a problem every 5 or 10 tries. Then I tried an ethernet cable direct to the router, and that almost comletely eliminates packet loss for me. I've ended up mosly using the wifi from the old router, most of the time it seems to be just fine, and I don't trip on the cable that way. But if I notice high packet loss when I log in, I log off, switch to the ethernet cable, and the problems go away. For some reason, the wireless is bad only sometimes. I am within 20 ft of both wifi's, so I don't think is a signal strength thing.

Sorry you are still having trouble, Shana. It must be *very* frustrating. Here is a link to a page on the Phoenix web site. Apparently the problem is not unique to Phoenix, so these suggestions are useful for all viewers. http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=bake_fail&s[]=bakefail

Why blame Linden Homes? I was forced out of several rentals buy landlords going out of business. Years ago. Before anyone even thought of a Linden Home. I am sorry that your SL is changing, but that is just the nature of SL. Few things last for years.

SOme people are really turned off by Furries. What do you think gives you the right to get in thier face? THere are lots and lots of places to go in SL where furries are welcome. If some people choose to ban something that they find offensive to themselves, go somewhere else and deal with it.

You can try FirstnameLastname as an account name, not quite the same as not having Resident, but close. I know someone with several alts, kind of like JoeLastname, HarryLastname, TomLastname.

I was a fan of Phoenix, and am a fan of Firefox. Not so much because of any big performance improvement, or because they both offer a nice set of extra features that I use. The really huge thing about Phoenix/Firestorm is support. There are video tutorials to get you started, and detailed FAQ's and a Wiki with all sorts of useful trouble shooting information. There are in-world courses that walk you through every setting, or you can read detailed descriptions of each setting on the web. And, there is an active in-world support group where there is amost always someone to answer questions.

I was stuck in the wrong skin last week. And I could see clothes, but no one else could. Re-logging did not help, cleaning cache and re-logging did not help. What finally cleared the problem for me was completely removing all the cache files manually, then re-logging *into a different region* I think the server has a cache too, and if you re-log in the same region, the server cache can mess up your skin, etc. Here is a link from the phoenix poeple on how to manually remove all the cache file, same method works for all viewers, I think. When I need to do this I re log into a linden sim, either aich or hatton. Good Luck, Shana

I experienced a bunch of random TP's a couple of months ago. It turned out to be a bad mouse. How that got turned into unwanted TP's, I haven't a clue. If the only thing wrong had been SL, I might never have figured it out, but the faulty mouse was giving me other problems navigating around in Windows, I was surprised to see the random TP's stop when I replaced it.

Is there a way to surpress the swirling particles that result when a scripted object speaks into local chat? I know about using the debug setting effectScriptChatParticles to supress them in my own viewer, is there some way to turn it off for everyone?

I think that virtually without warning, they changed from having all your profile and pick info open to everyone who logged into SL with a viewer, to having a system that defaults to show the same information to the same people if they are logged into the same accounts over the web instead of just logged in to SL using a viewer. Oh, and they provide new ways both to make it more widely exposed, or to tighten up on who within SL get to see it. They have done their ususal piss poor job of explaining the changes, and notifying the members, and letting rumors and misunderstandings run rampant, but hey, it is LL.

Yeah, I noticed a bunch of lag last night about the time you posted. My guess it that it lasted about an hour, maybe a bit less. It was happening in several sims, and for several friends, so it was not our particular graphics driver or OS or viewer. The statictics bar showed low sim frame rates, with time dialation .1 to .3. The sim frame rates and time dialation measure *server* performance. What was it? I don't know. I do know that it happens from time to time, not really common, but not rare. And I never see a word about it at the LL network status link. Its kind of hard to figure out when this kind of lag is system wide, it is more often due to problems with a particular sim, or a particluar beta server release, both very annoying and much more common occurances.

I've been in SL for almost 5 years. I have had dozens of problems with purchases, ranging from wrong items, to missing parts, to things that just did not look like I expected. I have had exactly *1* merchant in all these years who was not willing to work things out. I don't know where you could be shopping Ayrea, you may have found a den of thieves. But I have to say thet the statement "most merchants will not stand behind hardly anything they sell" is flat out wrong.

Yes, cutting and pasting to all my outfits just to change hairstyle is an incredible pain. I only use the system outfit folder and tab to keep my naked avatars - shape, hair, skin, eyes, etc, along my basic attachments. I have a couple of different naken avatars, with different hair, makeup, attachments. Then I have my own clothes organized into "#outfit"s, each in thier own folder. Each #outfit has clothing, shoes, jewelry, perhaps the odd attachement, and is worn over the base avatar. To get dressed, I choose an #oufit folder in inventory, and "add to current outfit". To change #outfits, I select the #outfit folder in inventory and "remove from current outfit", then "add to current outfit" a different #outfit. A nice thing about this approach is that I can organized my #outfits into folders and subfolders, unlike the intrinsicly "flat" system folder. The default system outfit approach is great if you are new, and have only 5 or 10 different outfits. It fails badly if you have 100.

First, its nice to see a glitch ID'd and fixed so quickly, and to know that someone from LL is paying attention. Thank you. But ... While this fixed the OP's particular problem, there are a lot of people beginning to notice and wonder what is going on with profile ratings. No documentation, no apparent rhyme or reason. Dick Van-**bleep** fans left out in the cold. Why is one AV with flagrantly A content rated G, and another with less explicit content rated A? I don't mind rules at all, as long as they are spelled out. *Please* spell them out!

Yes, the latest Firestorm Beta, released on July 5, has a z offset built in.

Well it only takes one "squirrelly" script or attachment to foul things up. Take off all attachments and hud, relog. If that solves the problem of staying logged in, add them back one at a time, see if you can find the one thats messing up. Good luck.