Sudden Massive Lag Update

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This continues to be a problem for event managers. Toysoldier is getting more and more Lindens to look at the forum thread for BUG-355 – Increased Instant Sim Lag & Avi Crashes During Major Events – sim network issue. (Limited access)

Andrew did not realize people were putting in the tech info needed to actually find the problem in the logs. I hope he has realized and taken a look at the thread: Increase in Instant SIM LAG & Crashes During Larger Events – Network Source?

Simon has responded in the thread: M7808.

Thanks for the reports, Toy … there’s some good information there that seems to shows the simulator getting into trouble when there are network problems.

If you are seeing the problem in your travels through the grid, read the thread so you know what to report and add your information. Please do not add noise. Just saying, “I saw that. Me too.” doesn’t help and actually hurts the process.

Toysoldier asks:

Next time one of your sims encounters one of these major lag events…. take a snapshot of the Advanced Performance screen and post it here.  The important stats to look at are related to the NETWORK stats. 

What has been initially noticed (and we would like more evidence of it from stale sims) is that some event triggers the the sim or the server kernel’s network driver or something related to the network to not process network packets at a normal flow.  Even at a low avi count and with other metrics looking normal, the network stats show unusually high pending downloads and very high un-acked packets.

But, we need more examples (snapshots of the performance stats) of a sim when it has fallen into this state.  Also make sure you mention date/time and the name of the sim. 

The thread: Increase in Instant SIM LAG & Crashes During Larger Events – Network Source?

Second Life Viewer Statistics PING

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If you have looked at the Viewer Statistics (Ctrl-Shift-1), you have likely looked at PING. The term comes from the use of echo location in submarines and other marine uses. The active echo locators make a distinctive PING sound as the send a sound wave out. Electronics hear the echos coming back and create picture for human use.

Lots of PING – Image by: mknowles Flickr

When testing network connections we use a ping. It is actually a command to send a network data packet to a remote location and request a packet be sent back. The travel time tells us how well the connection is working.

What most people likely don’t think about is whether the Viewer’s PING is the same as the PING our operating system generates. For your information it isn’t.

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Second Life Market Place

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A little bit of dialog has started between merchants and Linden Lab. Rod Humble has engaged in the conversation. There is lots of history, debate, drama, and a ton of frustration. If you have never heard of the Lab’s Commerce Team you’ve missed one of Second Life’s great sagas. Well… may be not so great.

International Commerce Center by: jimbowen0306 – Flickr

The short story on the team is: the Commerce Team is responsible for the SL Market Place and I’ll guess more than half of all complaints about Lab’s poor communication ability coming from residents. I’m one that believes they are hiding.

The short story on the Market Place is: It doesn’t work. Yes, you can buy stuff. You often actually get what you buy. But, that does not mean the merchant gets paid. Merchant’s paying for advertising often don’t get the ads. They are often billed for what is supposedly free advertising. Merchant’s product promotions often end up in another merchants store and product images get mixed up between products and merchants… the list of failures is long and this is supposed to be the short story.

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New #SL Mesh Import Information

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It seems Magus Freston has created a viewer patch for a problem with importing animations and weight painting rigged mesh data. He explains over on SLUniverse.

A limitation of the attachment points in the LL character is that many of them have names with spaces, like “Left Pec”. Collada 1.4 doesn’t handle bone names with spaces as space is used to delimit bone names. So the idea is to replace the spaces with an underscore for the collada file so you get “Left_Pec”, which of course SL doesn’t recognize. The patch just translates “Left_Pec” back to “Left Pec” at import time.

Links to the patch and instructions for testing the patch are included in the post.

Darien Caldwell compiled a test viewer for Magus. To which Magus responded:

With Darien’s help in compiling a patched viewer we’ve been able to confirm that the patch works

This means all bones including all attachment points can be weighted to mesh and animated.

The viewer can be downloaded here: Patch Test Viewer. There is no install program. So, if you are not into manual installs in Windows this is not for you.

If you want to be brave and try it, use the link in my left column to get a copy of the Developer viewer. Install that. Download the Test viewer. It comes in a ZIP file. Use whatever to unzip the file into its own folder. It does not automatically create a folder on being unzipped. I had to specify one.

To run the viewer, look in the folder you specified for the unzip. You will find a file named LindenDeveloper.exe. Double click it to start the viewer. The viewer will open and you are good to go.

If you find a bug or have a problem with imports because of bone names, let Magus know. He will want specific information, so provide the details. Use the thread at SLUniverse.

Metareality Week 41

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Another summary of a Metareality podcast. This week the title is: Build a Bridge, which is a sin from Patterns, Linde Lab’s new game.

Metareality Podcasts

The summary is more of an index than I usually make. This is a fun podcast to listen to.

01:15 – Damien Fate – clowning around intro.

02:00 – Minecraft – Is Minecraft or SL better? A huge number of people like Minecraft better.

03:00 – Drax survey of 10 year old Minecraft users.

04:47 – Gianna does have some people from Minecraft now willing to come on the show.

06:00 – Karl didn’t get any art work for Disgruntled Frogs… its back to joke status. Send him some art work and turn it around.

07:15 – Gianna is not confirmed as the most hated person in SL for recommending a polygon limit on avatars.

08:00 – Cloud Party – Max Graf mostly making clothes for Cloud Party. Standard and Hi-Def clothes are part of the polygon limits in CP.

09:00 – Drax on immediate interest for retaining users.

11:00 – Karl on hi-poly mesh and lag complaints.

12:00 – Damien on poly limits.

13:00 – Easy is not always best. Deformer people complaining about automatic weight painting not solving all their problems.

16:45 – Second Life™ an unlimited environment.

17:15 – Patterns

18:00 – Nacho Guy – Doritos Guy – Young kids didn’t see the little guy as a problem. Many SL peeps want to change Doritos Guy and don’t like him.

22:00 – Patterns Drax, Damien using some of the same ideas from Patterns starting out process in SL for new users.

24:00 – Cloud Part tutorial and Patterns intro not the same. Patterns better.

26:00 – Drax asking Damian how he explains SL and his take on the SL stigma. (27:30 answer start)

29:00 – Drax about WoW and SL.

30:00 – Gianna embarrassed about Second Life.

31:00 – Back to Patterns: Seems cool but not currently something to play all the time.

35:00 – Minecraft people were complaining about the Patterns textures.

38:00 – Discussion about Patterns Shape Forge.

41:00 – Long term prospects for Patterns.

42:00 – Lots of people cannot find Patterns on Steam. One has to buy it on the Linden site then go to Steam.

42:30 – Buzz on Patterns.

46:00 – Patterns electricity source? I think a scripting thing… very nerdy.

48:30 – Putting excitement/enthusiasm back in Linden Lab’s products.

49:00 – Pathfinding

50:30 – Communications problems

53:00 – What You Might Look Like Playing Videogames Very Soon

55:00 – Back to excitement discussion.

01:00:00 – Comparing Vale and Linden Lab styles.

01:03:00 – Dan Pink – Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

01:04:30 – Plea to a “copybotting” Second Life resident

01:06:00 – Drax on IP Property… Karl on theft… Gianna on two types of copybot; for resale and for personal use…

01:10:00 – Supreme Court to Revisit ‘First-Sale’ Copyright Doctrine

01:11:00 – Facebook’s First Ad Campaign – Parody of bad marketing… Nothing tech in the whole promotion.

01:17:50 – Coke’s New Campaign – Dancing for free Cokes. You have to see this.

1:20:00 – Burger King Campaign for free burger for Unfriending someone on Facebook… you have to hear the audio…

01:22:00 – Send Karl frog art.

01:23:20 – Damien Fate’s stuff and Botanical. Damien’s Halloween Goodies and see Damien’s FATEisland.

01:25:20 – Drax encourages you to visit: Cica Ghost’s Black And White World.

01:27:00 – Visit PODCAST AWARDS and nominate Metareality in the tech category.