Second Life: Those Scripts You Wear, Which Are Pesky?

I was reading a thread in the forum where the Opening Post (OP) was asking how to deal with scripts. They went somewhere and found out they were wearing too many scripts and were threatened with ejection. Been there done that… it’s been awhile.

About Land – Script Info – Firestorm

Of course, there are the devices that will tell you your script weight. (Weight Scale – free) These generally provide an aggregate weight leaving you to try and figure out which scripts are heavy and lite.

However, the viewer has features you can use to make life easier. In ABOUT LAND (FS: World->Parcel Details – LL: World->About Land) there is a button (bottom-left) labeled Script Info. That pens a panel with the tabs; REGION and AVATAR. (see image) You can see it lists the script weight for each scripted item you are wearing.

NOTE: 2020/05 – Some time ago the Avatar tab was removed. You will have to use the method below to get script info.

You can also right click the ground and select ABOUT LAND.

Rolig Loon describes what each column is about;

  • Size (kb):Indicates how much memory is used by the script(s) in the object.
  • URLs:Indicates how many URL(s) the object is using.
  • Object Name:Name of the scripted object.
  • Location:Name of the object’s attachment point.

You can see the LOCATION is not working in FS 5.0.1. Nor does it work in LL’s Alex Ivy Second Life Project Alex Ivy 5.1.0.504536.

Area Search – Firestorm 5.0.1 – BIGGER IMAGE

This part of the ABOUT LAND feature works whether you own the land or not.

Whirly Fizzle points out you can use Firestorm’s Area Search (World->Area Search – also a main screen button if enabled) to get more information. You do have to set the filter options.

  • Top menu bar of Firestorm: World -> Area Search
  • Filter tab: Exclude Objects -> Untick Attachment
  • Filter tab: Exclude Objects -> Untick Temporary (for Maitreya)
  • Filter tab: Only list objects that are -> Tick Attachment
  • Find tab: Owner -> Enter your user name.

To get even more detail:

  • Select all listed items, left-click first and shift-left-click last item in list
  • Right-click the highlighted items and select Script Info.

The result is a detailed list of your scripts prints in Local Chat. It includes the number of scripts and the number of running scripts. You also get a number telling you how much of the frame time is use by each script.

Area Search Extra Detail in Chat – Firestorm 5.0.1 – BIGGER IMAGE

Whirly, our resident pest control expert, thought she found a bug: No mesh Maitreya attachment will display in [Firestorm’s] area search. The problem is because Maitreya uses ‘temporary’ attachments. So, you have to untick Temporary in the Exclude section.

Consider

A script could use little memory and be furiously busy eating up frame time. If scripts get busy enough and eat enough frame time a region will start to lag. The scripts run in the region server. So, a crowd of script heavy avatars will pull a region’s performance down.

It isn’t just attachments scripts that contribute to the server load. Every script in the region is contributing. These tools will let you find problems scripts, attached and other, just change the filter options to target your suspect.

Scripts that use a lot of memory, busy or not, create challenges for region crossing. All the script memory and state has to be passed from the departed region server to the arriving region server. At some point several megabytes of memory will take long enough to transfer that the process times out and you teleport fails.

So, the information is good for figuring out a number of problems.

3 thoughts on “Second Life: Those Scripts You Wear, Which Are Pesky?

  1. Some of the information in this article is either misleading or incomplete. For instance, the memory indicated is maximum possible, not what is actually being used. Most scripters are too lazy to limit the script memory and so they report a maximum of 64kb when really maybe 6-8kb is being used. Another issue is that some items have repeated scripts in them that occupy the same memory space and do not duplicate for each script, even though they are reported as separate.

    All in all, those scripts that run non stop reporting people’s memory usage often times take up more resources than the person being threatened with ejection. Not to mention that the most lag inducing event that can happen is a teleport. So ejecting people actually causes more lag than just leaving them be.

    IMO these lag detection scripts are everywhere because they prey on people’s confirmation bias and actually do nothing to help the problem. In reality they just end up costing business owners lost sales because of the negative customer experience.

    • Script detection scripts that limit entrance to events are debatably a good or bad thing. I think they do more good than harm. If nothing else they increase SL user awareness of the need to keep their script count/weight low.

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