Cincia Singh

You can't export your actual inventory from SL to other grids ... not even your own grid.

It would be useful to post your system specs and some information about your viewer and how you've set it up. Any discussion of why a viewer crashes without system specs as a reference, regardless how obvious the cause seems, is purely speculative.

Exactly! The average new person in SL has already had to do something they likely don't do very often or at all ... install new software (the viewer). Now that they've overcome that hurdle and gotten inworld where they just want to know how to do basic SL things someone comes along and tells them they're using bad/poor/crappy software and should download and install MORE software. And they're given a link to a site other than the official SL site. It's small wonder a significant percentage of new residents just throw up their arms and walk away from SL. The best solution would be for everyone to learn at least the basics of using the default SL viewer so they could answer the questions from new residents before they start suggesting additional downloads.

I installed Win 8 CP on my previously Win 7 Pro computer. No I didn't partition or use a VM to run Win 8. So far I've run Phoenix, Firestorm, LL's V3, Dolphin, Niran's, and Zen viewers with no problems. My computer is a C2D E8500 @ 3.16GHz, 8GB RAM, and a GTX560 Ti w/1GB VRAM.

I installed the Windows 8 Consumer Preview last night and haven't found any viewers that won't run; Exodus, Zen, Phoenix, Firestorm, Dolphin, LL's V3, LL's Development (Snowstorm). They all took a while (30-45 seconds) at the "initializing texture cache" stage of starting the first time I ran each one but they all start like they did on Win 7 now that I've had each one up and running.

How about a little sanity for a second? We know, at best, 1/2 the "bigger picture" ... the half we get from sitting in front of our computers reflecting on how everything affects us and getting frustrated. What we DON'T know is the other 1/2 of the big picture ... that would be the half of the big picture seen from the Linden side of SL. I have to say you couldn't pay me enough to listen to some of the things people post. Imagine someone using terms like "boneheaded" "irresponsible" "naive" "inept" and "careless" to describe the work WE do at our RL jobs when they don't have a clue about everything we do and how we have to do it due to our workplace rules. What value would we put on that person's opinion? Would that approach make us want to help them with their problems? In the past I've used the same tactics and language when confronting frustrating customer service situations, as a customer, and gotten precious little in return for my angst and bluster. I probably got more help than I deserved. But I soon realized that if I want to be taken seriously and have someone sympathetic to my needs help me with my issues I need to be calm, collected, clear, employ patience, explain my issue clearly several times, and realize that there is only so much anyone can do to resolve some situations; no one can make everyone happy all the time. And in some situations there is no way to make anyone happy. That's called life. So if anyone thinks posting insulting rants and derogatory & inflammatory rhetoric will make the situation better, please continue .. the lulz, for the sane among the readers, is epic. :matte-motes-kiss:

Don't delude yourself into thinking there's such a thing as virtual nirvana. If there was another VW with the same complexity and concurrency as SL it would have very similar controls; maybe more depending on their business model. The idea that a company could operate a VW without controls is frankly absurd. When grids are small and sparsely populated it's in their best interest to appear loose and free, and they can afford to allow some "cowboy" mentality on the grid with low server loads and resources to spare. But when loads on the servers start to mount with concurrency and performance diminishes due to the behavior of small groups of residents it's only prudent to exert control that helps to insure a basic level of performance for all residents. That's called stewardship and good management.

I agree ... it would be infintely easier for people to take things out of context and twist meanings if all they had to do was copy/paste :matte-motes-big-grin-wink: (present company excepted of course)

I think you've struck at the heart of the matter ... and LL has never said they wanted everyone on their viewer. Lots of people claim that's the reason for the TPV policy changes but it really makes no sense and LL hasn't said THAT. I think it's clear LL wants everyone to see the grid properly regardless the viewer they use, and they probably need to have control over any impact a viewer has on server loads and import or export of things to or from the grid, but beyond that the viewer used wouldn't seem to matter. And since all TPVs have to be based on the LL viewer code, which they get for free, a little help with bug fixes probably isn't an unreasonable expectation. Of course, there's no drama in that perspective.

You're a little late to the party. The ranting about this came and went epic over the wekend. I guess you were otherwise occupied. I use Firestorm as well as other viewers (not LL's very often). As far as I can see nothing in this policy change kills a TPV. It seems many are already compliant. And I'm not aware of any pending Firestorm enhancements that this change impacts. No more viewer tags is not going to affect business but may tone down some harrassment and juvenile hazing behavior. As for finding out if someone is online when they choose to NOT allow anyone to find out ... I wasn't aware that was anyone's "right" but their own. This change will have unfortunate fallout for some inworld products, but commercial advantage or convenience is not a reason to violate someone's privacy. The only TPV innovations that will be curbed are those that change how residents see the world unless they use a particular viewer. This is a good thing since the grid should always look the same regardless which viewer a person uses. As I understand it the original idea behind open sourcing the viewer (a long time ago) was to add innovation to the LL viewer. The TPVs are just a divergence from that original intention. TPVs are a good thing, but innovations have be be well reasoned and work across a lot of hardware configurations, not released on the grid on a whim or for bragging rights. And since LL has future plans that TPVs aren't privvy to (LL is a private company after all) no TPV can know how a proposed change/modification/enhancement might be affected by LL changes to the base code six months or a year down the road. Innovation with a viewer's UI that make them more convenient for building, photography, socializing, scripting and etc. are not impacted by the policy change. But by all means please carry on ... I could use a fgood entertaining thread on a Monday.

The reason doesn't matter. Viewer tags ... gone Tuesday/Wednesday. Finding out someone's online when they don't want you to ... gone. All viewers sticking to official new features ... the rule of the day. They've got server updates waiting to be deployed to make the server side changes. Save yourself some anxiety and move on because it's neither the end of the world nor worth fretting over because it's been decided.

This seems to do two things; 1) preserve individual privacy, and 2) begin to standardize viewers to a common visual experience.

A larger sample size improves the chance of finding any complications before it goes to the main channel.

This rolling restart also broke thousands of mailing list products in SL; SVC-7631. Nice.

Spot on! If LL wants new residents to have a better first experience, make that first experience more like what they're already familiar with.

For the record I joked that IE9 was evil, not YOU. You're pure and angelic. I work at a university and IE9 has compatibility issues with many legacy programs and applications. That's why I use Chrome or Firefox.

I use Chrome ... or FireFox :matte-motes-wink-tongue: IE9 is teh evol :matte-motes-evil:

If trouble shooting doesn't solve your problem please post your system information so we can try to pinpoint any hardware that may be the root cause of your viewer crashes.

Add to the equation that a mega-region would involve mega-tier.

That's odd, I haven't experienced any of this over the last couple weeks; my inventory loads fairly quickly depending on the region I log in to and I rarely crash, although I do crash occasionally but I really push my viewer and computer hard in SL. In fact there are dozens of settings in the preferences of the viewer any one of which could cause the viewer or your computer to perform less efficiently than you want it to; different hardware responds differently to the settings. Likewise there can be ISP issues (packet loss or bandwidth throttling) and computer issues (insufficient GPU or CPU or RAM) that can cause SL to be less than enjoyable.

Before you give up on SL there are some other things in preferences you can adjust to try to make your SL run better and stay connected longer: 1. Bandwidth: this control is in different places depending on the viewer you use but I suggest you set it to no more than 80% of the "measured" bandwidth for your internet connection. Don't rely on the advertised bandwidth from your ISP. The old Phoenix wiki suggested no higher than 1500kbps (1.5MB/sec) but that dates from when most ISPs were DSL and the fastest was usually 1.5MB/sec and may be too low if you have a faster internet connection. 2. Draw distance: this is in the graphics section of preferences (advanced). Try turning down your draw distance. Many times people I help with lag or disconnect problems have their draw distance set at or above 256m. High graphics settings should default to 128m and medium graphics defaults to 96m. Remember regions are only 256m wide so why make your computer try to draw things you can't see every time you take a step or turn? Especially if you don't have a really good graphics/video card.

There is a jira, SH-1867, for fixing the memory bloat in the viewer. Vote AND watch the jira to help move it up the priority list of work at LL.

I can't imagine how additional information about the process would be helpful other than to satisfy curiosity. Additionally, I could understand how some technical aspects of the upgrade would be confidential business information. In my experience nothing done in or with SL either by Lindens or we residents ever seems to be straight forward or completed in one attempt, but I imagine that's the case with any virtual world. I'm always entertained by people asserting that we have a "right" to additional or complete information about the goings-on inside a private company because we're "customers". No product I buy consults with me on any on-going maintenance or updates other than to send the updates to me if they so choose. Given the amount of flaming that goes on (I'm just as guilty of being short-tempered as anyone else) I'm impressed they talk to us at all lol. Also, I haven't had any issues with logging in or posting.

Personally I prefer they work hard on the OS upgrade rather than post the minutia of a mundane install/reboot process.

Besides CPU, RAM and Video Card many other things dramatically impact fps. How you have your viewer preferences set can slow the highest powered PC to a crawl. For instance draw distance; I routinely help people who come into our club and complain about lag and low fps and it's not unusual to find out they have their draw distance set to 256m or 512m ... or they have shadows and water reflections set to max. It is small wonder that people experience lag when they're forcing their hardware to draw everything 2 regions away everytime they take a step.