Second Life and Virtual Worlds
It isn’t contagious. This problem passed quickly, I think. I didn’t run into it, so it is hard for me to know. But, it revealed another part of how the Second Life™ system works.
Backend Serve updates – there are a number of backend services needed to support Second Life. When the Lab is changing/updating them they generally provide no public notice, unless users need to change behavior, like refrain from transactions or rezzing no-copy items (which hopefully is changing).
You may remember that weeks ago a point came up about how the little profile icons used in chat are never flushed from viewer memory. The more people that enter chat the more memory is used and never released until the user logs off or memory is consumed and you crash. As tiny as they … Read more
Lots of Second Life™ people use the Firestorm Viewer. Creators are certainly part of that group. A number of people think the Firestorm Viewer is to blame for LoD problems in Second Life. Can that be?
Personally I think this is a case of a fascist mind set running the standard victim line and wanting someone else to fix their problems. See what you think.
Every so often I hit a point where my Second Life™ experience sucks from poor viewer performance. When that happens I start changing viewer brands in hope of an improvement. I troubleshoot starting with the easy and work to the hard. But, this time I over looked an obvious problem.
These days I mostly use the Linden made viewer and it is almost always one of the RC versions. I like being on the cutting edge. Over the years Imprudence, Emerald/Phoenex, Exodus, Kirsten’s, and Niran’s were the viewers to use, at various times, to be on the cutting edge. That has changed.
We currently have an inventory problem that prevents logging into Second Life. The currenlty frequent cause of the problem has been tracked down to having Flat Inventory.
A flat inventory is an inventory where thousands of items are in a single folder. Mostly the term denotes an unorganized inventory where stuff is mostly in the root or objects folders rather than being organized in folders and subfolders. As the viewer is downloading inventory folder by folder a folder with thousands of items can take too long to download and cause a time out. This jams up the login process and you get a failure message.
There are problems and then there are the symptoms of problems. Just as many health problems produce a fever as a symptom, multiple problems can cause attachment problems.
That said, this symptom has been know for a long time. The image shows my hair appearing attached to my butt for a really sophisticated look… not. I’ve seen the problem on and off since I came to Second Life™ in 2008. Now I am seeing it again. For three or five weeks the problem pretty much disappeared.
This problem is generally thought to be a timing problem. The information coming from the server is lost or out of order or otherwise arrives in some way that confuses the viewer. The viewer doesn’t figure out that the hair goes on my head. It doesn’t really attach it to by butt. If I walk away the hair is left hanging in space.
This does just happen with hair. I’ve had a foot, hand, bracelet, dress panel, earring, or other attachment suffer this fate.