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WolfBaginski Bearsfoot

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Everything posted by WolfBaginski Bearsfoot

  1. I would try going into Preferences and switching to a different viewer skin. Then switch back to what you prefer. That will make sure the .xml files are reladed from safe original copies.
  2. These days there are so many different servers involved that a "server lag" label is almost useless, but there are a few things you should check and try that are at your end and semi-independent of the viewer. 1: When was the last time you rebooted you modem (or equivalent hardware). It's a bit of a catch-all, but it is worth a try. SL puts a slightly unusual sort of load on the internet connection. and some commonplace hardware needs a reboot from time to time. 2: What are your graphics settings (found in Preferences (Ctrl-P))? Even with a 32m Draw Distance, the highest visual quality puts a heavy load on your computer, and a long draw distance, useful for some situations, needs to be used with caution. I have seen some problems with 64-bit Firestorm, and I am not sure it is all that big a benefit. A better check may be to use the Cool VL Viewer, it certainly doesn't put as heavy a load on my computer. Why is it so different in performance? I don't know. After all these years, you would think I would be used to the corporate staff management software that both Second Life and Firestorm use for customers to submit bug reports, but those are the breaks. I see patterns that the developers don't. Maybe I am just at the wrong end to the Trans-Atlantic wet string. Some of the numbers I see claimed as necessary for good performance of virtual worlds imply faster-than-light communications.
  3. The problem I have with that suggestion of "certain code" is that all the RCs were stated to be getting the same code. So why was the problem only affecting Le Tigre? I do wonder if Le Tigre got a different version through some error. There are naybe other things that could affect the Le Tigre channel, but that's the only thing that comes to mind.
  4. It gets complicated. The UDP traffic, out-of-the-box, doesn't do any error detection or correction. If a packet gets dropped, it's gone for all eternity. The HTTP traffic sits on TCP, which does have the error detection and correction. If a packet gets dropped or damaged it is retransmitted And now so much comes from a content delivery network, I am not sure that SL can limit the HTTP traffic, and the retransmission leads to more UDP packets, such as the control signals for movement, to vanish. The ways in which USP and HTTP interact can be unpleasant. If you can limit the HTTP traffic, or its a small part of the total, maybe it can be made to work, The fact, even with so much extra capacity, that you're getting the same problems I see on my line, leaves me thinking that you won't gain anything. The CDN will just grab all the badwidth it can
  5. And it looks as though the Rollling Restarts announced in the Status have started (11:26 UTC)
  6. Essentially, it's the timing and nature of the MC rollout announcements. We're accustomed to a much longer test-run period, and doing a roll-out on a Friday is, in the wider world of system management, rather frowned upon. The first mention of the MC rollout was 5:47 PM PST, 18 February, which is the early hours in Europe The announced start of the rollout was "approximately 3:00 AM PST". That's probably near enough. It fits with my experience. The first confirmation that the roll-out was happening was, as usual, later then that, at 6:50 AM PST, 19 February. And the completion was announced at 8:00 AM PST, 02 February! I'm not so bothered that somebody got the date wrong, though you'd think there was some sort of script that would mark an entry as resolved and get the date correct. The bit is the square-brackets is so standard. But the time is consistent with the timestamp for the complete text. If the notice in this thread had just said that there was a possibility that the change would be rolled out on Friday, I would feel a lot better about how SL managed to commuicate with customers. As it is, they persist in presenting an image of believeing that the world beyong the USA' s 12-mile limit is a story intended to frighten children.
  7. So what is the very vague "maintenance" announcement in Status about?
  8. I've been having login problems, with specific sims, for the pasr dozen hours. It is not a general log-in problem, and when I do get logged in via another sim, there are often texture and object loading problems. All the tests I do show good connection behaviour at my end, and some sims work without any hint of trouble.
  9. Aeon Voom's bug report appears to have been resolved as a duplicate of Maint-5193, which is doesn't seem possible for me to access. I'm not sure that I could cope with the content of that, JIRA reports can get seriously unreadable and seem to get past jargon into the territory of a cant or argot. We don't even get told when it was first reported, and whether it really is limited to Magnum.
  10. The general quality of documentation in Second Life is pretty poor, starting with how the Lindens tell new people how to get things working. I find myself wondering what the point of RCs is if they don't tell people what the new code is supposed to affect. It seems a lousy QA process, and it isn't helped by the way JIRA seems to be written as a tool for managers of programmers. This particular instance is a simple enough problem to fix. But it does leave me wondering what else Caleb Linden might be missing out.
  11. So all three RCs are running on the same code? Because there's just been a group notice in SL Aviation claiming special problems with vehicles on the Magnum RC, and advising people avoid Magnum RC sims. I can't say that I have noticed anything special myself. And if all the RCs really are the same it sounds like somebody is mistaken. Maybe I should tell the guy to submit a JIRA instead of putting out scare stories.
  12. MB Robonaught wrote: I'm sure there is somebody to contact but finding who is like finding the lost ark. So Linden Lab support is in a an old wooden packing crate that is kept in a secret government warehouse? That explains a lot.
  13. I sometimes hang out at NCI, which is one of those volunteer support groups in-world. What soon becomes apparent is that Linden Lab struggles to connect new players to all the support (such as the knowledge base) and do little more than let a new player pick an Avatar with no explanation, Most of them pick one of the mesh-based avatars which are a dead-end for modification. With a few honourable exceptions, the Lindens seem disconnected from the world they provide. The "outfit" system works if you have a few outfits, and is a struggle to organise if you have many. The huge problem I see is that you're not allowed sub-folders, and it's not hard for people to have hundreds of different outfits: now try finding the one you want. Linden Lab can't fix a problem with outfits that was fixed by Microsoft, in MS-DOS, with v2.0 in 1983. They call 'em folders and sub-folders know, and Linden Lab just don't seem to be bothered by their lack in the outfits sub-system. Which strongly suggests a lot of "Linden" accounts in-game are never used. And that may be part of the reason why support is so bad, and some new ideas seem so misguded a use of programming resources. (We lost easy user access to alternative viewer color schemes when Linden Lab dropped Viewer 1, though there is a third-party add-on, and it has become very apparent that the Lindens do not have the colour vision of mortal men.)
  14. The only flashing/flickering I see is with distant water while flying. It's one of those old, known, problems that nobody bothers to fix. If it's something else, all I can suggest is the obvious: check you have the latest graphics drivers. But most of the fixes seem devoted to Windows DX rather than OpenGL: that's where the money is.
  15. That does sound to be a different problem than earlier failures. But they all look the same, multiple strips and I wonder how that can be blamed on a particular map tile. I don't have much confidence in the JIRA system. And I don't think it's really designed for problem reporting by non-programmers
  16. It's an imperfect tool, because not every node will respond to the signalling, and the packets may be treated differently to the UDP and HTTP that SL uses, but the ancient utility traceroute can reveal whether the problems are near you or near SL. The Atlantic doesn't get any narrower so there's always a leg that takes a lot of time if you're in Europe, and those numbers have been consistent for many years. It can take a while to get a feel for the normal times. Trans-oceanic links, even with the CDN taking some of the load, are always going to be slow, But once you know the usual situation, you have a chance of discovering which end of the intercontinental wer string might be the problem. Just to put things into perspective, I was getting 34ms to London via my ISP, 167ms to Phoenix. That's close to a 5:1 difference, very different to the distance difference, but there's a lot more switching—alternative routes to be chosen—that has to be done overland.
  17. I am not sure this would be legal. The USA is a signatory to the Berne Copyright Convention, and this doesn't seem to meet the minimum standard set by the convention. It's possible that Registration would add extra protections, as it already does. None of that is a guarantee against legislative stupidity, which might force an expensive court case that gets to the US Supreme Court. This needs watching, but don't panic.
  18. It's a bit of a wild-card option, but if your computer is that old it might be worth switching it to Linux. The Mint distribution could be a good bet. he big risk for you isn't Windows XP, it's that some parts might be too old to replace. The hard drive may be on an IDE interface and it's a mechanical system that wears out. But IDE drives are hard to find now. Even if your data is backed up, I recommend a replacement. Your graphics card, processor, and RAM can all be classed as obsolete. About the only usable component might be the case. (I may be mistaken about the timescales for the various shifts. Your computer might have one or two of the current technologies.) Linux won't save you from that, even though you get up-to-date software by using it. Plan for a change.
  19. There is a rendering difference between mesh and the avatar surface, but I have been seeing a similar effect on an avatar face. And I was using Firestorm too. Some testing suggested that the Windlight setting might be responsibly, possible combined with locking the lighting to midday. Mostly I stick with a "furry" avatar, which doesn't seem to produce these strange shadows. I never did bother to test a facelight, which wouldn't help with these legs anyway. It looks very wrong, not like real shadows, but what I do know of rendering methods suggests that you would have to go to a full ray-tracing system. Real shadows are modified by light reflected by the environment.
  20. That isn't bad advice. Many routers are hit badly by SL. Things such as memory leaks accumulate more rapidly than with other internet services. On the other hand, some regions seem to need several restarts to get things working right after a Server roll-out. So trying logging on to a different region may help. When somebody is having more general problems, not even getting into web pages such as the Marketplace, a router re-boot is still a good idea. Changing DNS server is also good. It's worth knowing such things as the Google DNS servers, and having a note of your ISP's address servers, but things can be a little tricky. Your computer may be using the router IP address as its DNS source, and you need to change the router settings. Yes, CDN can complicate things, but it shouldn't be affecting places such as the Marketplace. But since your computer caches DNS results, if you do have a bad address you may have to flush that cache. How to clear your computer's DNS cache Oh, your router is also DNS caching. That's another reason to reboot the router. It keeps coming up, doesn't it.
  21. This may be Google Calendar rather than LL. Unless they have some completely seperate services under the same customer-facing name.
  22. No deploys means no restarts which means... Kuula, which is the sim with the main NCI location, is currently being pretty bad. But how much is a crash an actual restart of the server code?
  23. Thanks for the info. I'm not totally helpless at such things, but it's still pretty intimidating. If it's possible to log these "capabilities", maybe it wouldn't be so hard for a viewer to give a warning. Though. looking at the Wiki pages, it looks as though that thought is very wrong. I hope the Lindens have access to more recent documentation.
  24. This fits with my observations. Firestorm has a menu option to stop animations and revoke permissions. That seems to work at least some of the time. So does sitting on some objects. Again, not all the time. It may depend on how sits are scripted in a chair, or another vehicle. Usually it is arrow-key turning which fails, but you can control your motion with mouselook. Sometimes, if you wait a really long time, the vehicle mysteriously reappears and control is restored. I expect some people to dismiss these observations as the blatherings of a British fool. I am sure that a small village in Austria is currently short of an idiot.
  25. I've been seeing the disconnect-on-TP problem for what seems like a long time, certainly since the CDN went active. Would sim-crossing failures be related? There's been a tendency for people to say to me "It's your connection!", and the possible coincidence of CDN did have me checking with my ISP, but they were not slowing down data packets from CDN nodes. There used to be a lot of warnings about the bad effects of UDP and TCP/IP running in parallel. In the end I gave up on trying to figure it out. Nothing in my control seemed to be misbehaving, yet other people would always blame my systems, not their own. I can appreciate the temptation: I see the mirror of that, and it always looks like your fault. I'm not sure what "capabilities" means, but there's enough similarity in the problems that I wonder if we have all been buried in a large and stinking pile of red herrings.
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