General Computer Stuff

Second Life® Performance Benchmarking Report: 2008-Era Assets vs. Modern Animesh/Bento/PBR

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This is a research project I took on so I would know how to answer the uninformed grievance posters. You probably know some of them if you participate in the SL Forum. They complain and gripe. Whatever you challenge them with, they ignore. They don’t mind contradicting them selves.

The claim came up that Linden Lab® was not upgrading SL as they should or at all. I play in SL every week… almost daily. You’ve seen me post benchmarks on various viewers and features of SL. But if I wanted to prove I know what I say is accurate, what could I point to? There isn’t a “thing” or “article”. So… I had AI do the research and write a report. The report follows.

You’ll see the AI setup the comparison by figuring out what SL was and is now. It got pretty detailed. After all that is done and it makes all its disclaimers, it gets to the comparison.

What can you do with this information? Other than embarrass the dofuses? Actually, if you are considering upgrading for better performance or saving money on a new computer then this is a guide to what to spend money on and where to save dollars.

Executive Overview

Over roughly fifteen years, the dominant performance bottleneck in Second Life® has inverted. In 2008 the viewer was network- and asset-stream-bound: scenes had to be downloaded over a connection that the official wiki described as adequate at only 500 kbps, then transformed into a 3D view in real time (SL Wiki: Lag). Assets were tiny — a classic system avatar cost a baseline of just ~1,000 complexity points and rendered as a handful of baked-textured mesh pieces (SL Wiki: Mesh/Rendering weight).

By 2026 the picture reversed. Bandwidth and caching improved one to two orders of magnitude, but asset complexity grew roughly two orders of magnitude — so the bottleneck migrated off the network and onto local GPU rasterization, CPU draw-call setup, scene traversal, and VRAM/texture pressure. On mid-range hardware, a crowded region of modern avatars collapses well before the network does. The limiting resource is now compute and memory bandwidth inside the user’s own machine.

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What If This Breakthrough Changed the Second Life World We Travel In?

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I saw this way interesting video. It is about how we are mapping the world into 3D space for computers. It is so good it is being used to train pilots for rescue missions in dangerous terrain. Also for training self-driving vehicles.  So, can we walk our avatars through such a world?

The interesting part of Bilawal Sidhu’s “Craziest Mapping Breakthrough” is not the map UI. It is the idea that this tech could eventually change the 3D world we move through, especially for sailing and flying in spaces that feel bigger and smoother than today’s 256×256 regions.

So… instead of dreaming about a shinier World Map window, think about longer, more continuous routes. Less “box to box,” more “real journey.”

Where SL Is Today

Second Life’s foundation is still the region grid: each standard region is 256×256 meters, with teleports, crossings, land impact budgets, and simulators all tied to that. It works and it is part of why SL has lasted this long.[2][4] Or so some think.

You feel that grid most when you travel. Sailors in Blake Sea, pilots over mainland, and drivers on Bellisseria roads all hit the same issue: region crossings can be smooth or they can be… memorable.[5][6][7] Duh!

LL has been modernizing in other ways — performance, mobile viewer work, better onboarding, and AI helper experiments — but the 256×256 region structure is still the skeleton everything hangs on.[8][9][2] So… can that change?

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Second Life Viewer Troubleshooting

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Over the years I have seen Second Life™ and the viewers we use change. Computers, screens, speakers, joysticks, and video cards have all advanced as well. But when things go wrong the types of problems and how to troubleshoot them has remained mostly the same. And when it comes to “which viewer” they are all the same for troubleshooting purposes.

We now have Artificial Intelligence (AI) and it is advancing. It is possible to use AI to help troubleshoot. But it can add some complication. But give it a try.

Troubleshooting with Firestorm Viewer

Here I’ll cover the basic and advanced steps needed to troubleshoot issues. Basic understanding of where a problem may exist can save you days of work… literally

Do you actually have a problem?

There are ‘problems’ and there are ‘glitches’. Problems are persistent. Glitches are transitory. They do not repeat, consistently.

Glitches are fixed by shutting down the viewer and relaunching. This is normally the first step in troubleshooting. Some glitches confuse Windows/Apple operating systems and the computer needs to be restarted, second step a issue persists. Network glitches are fixed by restarting your modem/router/gateway device, often the third step.

The point here is these steps are easy and quick.

If after the restarts the problem persists then you have a ‘problem’.

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Windows 11 Coming This Year

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Microsoft announced the coming release of Windows 11 June 24, 2021. So…. Will Second Life run on Win11? Yes. There are very few changes in Win11 that would effect how applications like Second Life work. So, we expect the change over to be a non-event for SL users.

Windows 11

So… then what changes?

There are lots of articles out written by the beta and early adopter users. A change is the opening menu. One of the changes in the menu is Live Tiles. If you use them, this change will SUCK. They are gone. But, in return, we get Windows Vista-like widgets… Oh Great!

We get a new Microsoft Apps Store… I never thought of the store as part of the Windows Operating System. But, that is in the update news. The main talking point is they are making it easier for you to find apps. I’ll take that to mean, we have changed our advertising strategy.

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Second Life: Is VR Likely?

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VR for Second Life™? Hamlet just wrote about SL and VR. See Is Second Life Too Technically Limited To Create A VR Version For It?

One of the people that came to SL from Myst Online, Adeon Writer, is quoted and has opined in the article’s comments about what is technically possible.

i9-9900k – October 2018

Like most things, anything is possible. But that doesn’t say anything about whether it is likely or reasonable. Both likely and reasonable are generally matters of opinion and the answers are a matter of who you ask. And in matters of opinion, there is generally no final or definitive answer. So, it is a matter of understanding another’s viewpoint and reasons for their opinion.

So, will we have VR or can we have VR? The will and can questions have very different answers… probably. We know we can have VR because it has already been done. So, that answer is out of the realm of opinion. The Lab made a VR viewer for SL years back. Two more VR viewers have been made since then. One shortly after the Lab discontinued their VR viewer. Another just recently. So, can? Yes. As a fact, it has been done.

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Second Life – How to get better image quality…

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There is an ongoing quest, for those of us texturing clothes and things in Second Life™, to upload better quality images. So, here is some new information on making better textures or aka diffuse layers. See Compression Depression.

Beq Janus, is one of the people working with the Firestorm team and has tweaked the mesh uploader and other parts of the viewer, been involved in tracking down bugs, and figuring out workarounds for various problems. Now she is on about a discovery made with the help of Whirly Fizzle, all starting with one of Hamlet Au’s New World Notes posts about Frenchbloke Vanmoer…  who?

Beq’s Blog – February 2019

Whoever, down in the Debug Settings it is said there is some magic. Unfortunately, it isn’t there, often as is the case with magic. The magic appears surprising to some as they do not understand the trick and think the wand, hand waving, and abracadabras actually do something magical.

However, there is a lesson to be learned and another step in the quest for better SL image uploads.

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