We always have problems. Second Life™ is far too complex a system to be perfect. Problems tend to range from unnoticed to really annoying. When you are around long enough some of the annoyances seem to come around again and again.
Get Your S__f Together…
Most problems are just the symptoms. A fever is caused by; a cold, flu, or bacterial infection. Same symptom, different causes. While it is way uncommon to see a fixed problem return it happens. The nature of software development tends to promote losing a fix now and then. The usual reason for a problem returning is a fix for something else, a change, or an addition breaks something else.
Get It Together
You have no doubt seen avatars that have yet to pull their self together. The guy and me in the picture are examples of this problem (1, 2, & 3).
The problem is attributed to download speed. I can easily understand that in #1. But, in 2 & 3 that is me. Just before TP I had my stuff together. I TP to another region and I come unglued? What’s with that?
The interesting thing to note is that all the parts have rendered, just in the wrong places. So, this isn’t just download speed. After all my stuff is in my viewer’s cache. I don’t need to download it. And these things all seem to be going in different directions. That directions thing isn’t a viewer or lag thing. It has to do with how the X, Y, Z axis are setup in the modeling program that made the body or clothes. If everyone used the same orientation, then from my experience things would only be out of place in the same direction. I can imagine attachment points would still produce some initial displacement. But, a dress should then rez over a mesh body, even if both were not in the right place on the avatar. They should at least be in the same wrong place.
I know I get most of my mesh off what seems to be the default right-hand attachment point. So, maybe I make things worse for myself.
But, if bodies and dresses were attached to the same point and the same rotation was used for both when designed I suspect this wouldn’t be such a jumbled mess.
Oh My Butt!!
In #4 my hair has miss located from my head to my butt. This is caused by the viewer and server improperly communicating at login. It can be a real pain to try and fix. So, skip fixing it. Just relog. That fixes it almost every time.
This problem goes away and comes back. I was seeing it less then more. Now it is occasional, like once a week or so.
The New
A couple of problems are new to me. In ‘A’ my avatar has missing parts. This usually happens when I go into fly cam mode and come back to third person view. I have noticed it isn’t consistent. I can’t make it do it when I try. I’m not sure what triggers it. The fix is a relog. A TP to a different region doesn’t do it (B & C).
Odd Glitches
Then there is ‘B’ where a dress that fit earlier (A) is leaving my butt hanging out (B & C). This too usually requires a relog to fix. You can see me with the problem in two different regions. A TP didn’t do it. Moving the camera away from the default rear view to cam on something or fly view for my SpaceNavigator seems to trigger it.
My thinking is that when I take my avatar out of the ‘interest list’ there is a chance it will come back wrong.
It is possible to use an alpha layer or Slink’s controls to make those poky-out body parts disappear. I normally set up my alpha or Slink settings when I dress. But, I try to buy clothes that fit without having to tweak Slink or use alpha layers. So, this poky-out things is a little annoying.
Summary
None of these are big things. Once upon a time when we had the teen grid it much more of a big deal to have genital parts rendering before the clothes. That age of innocence is gone.
Nor are these things we have to suffer with… just relog.
Nor are these things I can cause to happen on demand. I need to spend more time working on what causes them. Until I do, it makes it hard to file a JIRA Bug Report. Without a report, the Lindens can’t do much. So, I just continue to hope a new viewer release will fix them or that I can get to where I can make one of these happen when I try to cause it.
If you can reliably repeat any of these problems, please file a JIRA.
I don’t experience the same problems – well maybe once a year.
As a sorta tech head – the fact that is seems to be happening more with time, indicates to me that it might be hardware related, and my first thought is try changing your router. Next thought would be your network card.
The “ass-tachments” problem was solved back in 2007 (by Nicholaz Beresford) and never came back in the Cool VL Viewer ever since… I’d suggest you try it and see by yourself.
LL’s viewer and all TPVs using their insane, race-conditions riddled, plain bogus COF code have seen attachments issues coming back and forth over the last months, indeed because of race conditions between viewer and server; instead of rewriting the culprit code properly (actually, from scratch, like I did), LL added yet another layer (attachments tracking) to the mess, which only causes more potential race conditions to arise instead of properly fixing the existing ones !
This said, some of the issues you saw are perhaps not strictly COF code related: rigged meshes, in particular, will appear attached to (and following the movements of) their attachment point (often the right hand, since it’s the default attachment point for objects) instead of properly rigged to your avatar, and this until their current LOD is fully downloaded by the viewer (so a bad/slow network connection, or a change of LOD such as the ones that can happen after a TP or when using the camera and zooming out/in can indeed cause temporary “misplaced meshes” issues).
I hadn’t thought of LoD loading time being an issue…
Thanks.
I have seen nr. 1 yesterday for the first time, mabye because i watched login. But the clothing got pilled back to the avatar in a few seconds. Using latest firestorm.
Looks for me it’s a server side problem.
Hennri gave a good explanation of possible cause in his comment.
There are times when things move into place quickly, seconds, as is your experience. Other times it takes minutes. I see the same problem in various viewers. They all seem about the same.
The combination of things that can cause the delay is extensive. It could be server side. But, most of the problems in SL are never so simple. All the simple problems get fixed.
All these problems used to happen to me pretty much every day and I was constantly rebooting to fix the broken up clothing, or patiently waiting for my body parts and clothes to realign into where they should go. When I teleported and arrived in shambles, I would ask nearby friends how I looked and to them, I looked normal. The broken up body pieces attached to weird places is only something I see for some reason.
I am not sure if this solved the problem, but I reinstalled Firestorm on my computer and it never happened again. Nothing else changed that I can think of.
The other night I was dancing with a friend; to him, I was an orange cloud, to me, he was completely invisible. We exchanged photos to prove our vantages, then he relogged, but I didn’t. When he returned, all was well. I’m not tech, so have no idea what happened. Anybody know?
Anyone know? Sort of…
When we login or TP the viewer and server have to get in-step with each other. That doesn’t always happen. Then you see problems like the ones you mention.
At login there is a lot going on. Its fairly common for the viewer to miss something the server says in the initial flood of information. A TP creates many of the same conditions. When we relog the process is repeated, a second chance to get it right and it usually does. The chances are greatly improved by the CDN- Content Delivery Network. Often on your initial rival the CDN is having to charge their cache. This places load on the server. The second time there is less load on the SL server. So, when the viewer says, ‘Huh?’ The server likely hears and clarifies.
If this is a frequent problem, check your connection. http://blog.nalates.net/2011/10/26/troubleshoot-your-sl-connection/ A good internet connection does not mean you have a good connection to the SL servers.
So, from my experience issues 1-3 at least are just rigged mesh not fully rendered. If you were to rez the items in world they would appear arrayed in the same fashion. Generally the issue fixes itself once the weighting gets loaded.
Issue A is a LOD issue – parts of your mesh body are rendering at a lower LOD and this causes gaps between the alpha cut sections. B and C are probably the same issue and can be explained by the lower LOD not fully covering the full LOD mesh beneath it. LOD issues can generally be resolved by selecting the object with a right click (or from inventory / outfit with a right-click edit)
All of these issues can be affected by http_fetching, so that’s a good troubleshooting point. It’s also worth noting that simplifying and reducing your ARC can help – high render cost items are more likely to have these issues.