Cartoon of the Day: Laggy Halloween

 

 

 Taken at Club Scorn. Sometimes it can take a while for someone to fully rezz. And at this time of year, a half-loaded avatar can look a little like a Halloween appearance.

By Bixyl Shuftan

 

It Came From Bellisseria Chat: Ways To Die In Second Life

 

 

Posted by Margo Heartsong in Bellisseria chat, one of her Halloween decorations showing ways to die in Second Life. For those who have trouble reading the tombstone, it says "Caught in a laggy region." Margo would say, "This one is the worst (kind of) death" in Second Life. Someone would add, "A slow and painful death."

 

Viewer Developer's Remarks on Resource-Intensive Avatars Sparks Debate

If there's a universal complaint among the residents of Second Life, it's the lag. The slowness in our viewers rendering images of objects and avatars. Except perhaps for those with the most top of the line computers, everyone gets it. But what opinions differ on is what causes it. Over time, people have pinned blame on things from blingy jewelry to breedables to poorly made objects. But last month in New World Notes, an interview with the creator of the Black Dragon Viewer suggested that some of the more popular mesh avatars were actually particularly bad causes, being so resource intensive, they would slow everyone around them. This caused quite a bit of debate about solutions.

Read more in Extra (note, links to NSFW images).

A Crashy Relay

There's been more than a few comments about the lag at the Relay Weekend. Among them, "Is it just me, or is this the laggiest Relay ever?" And there are the jokes "It ain't Relay until you crash a couple dozen times," "Every time you crash, make a donation at a kiosk."

For me personally, I can't recall a time when it was this bad. I was crashing about every second sim crossing most of the time. It was much the same for others, who were continuing to find the sim ahead of them gone (like in the picture above). One friend told me among the luminaria on the side of the roads, one had been named, "In honor of the sim ahead."

Fortunately, there were options, such as dialing back on one's viewer. Though if one wants to take pictures, such as myself, one can do that only so much. And there are the music events one could stay at and not cross sims, which on my map were well-attended. And of course there was sticking to their team campsite. But if one wanted to go about the sims and take pictures, not much else one could do but restart the viewer a lot. As one friend put it, the Relay Weekend simply stretches the Second Life hardware to it's limits and only so much can be done about it.

Hopefully the lag will be better today.

Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day: Laggy Pants

Taken at Frisland. Don't you hate when your underwear rezzes before your outer clothes, or even worse, your skin and "bits" rezz but all of your clothes take their sweet time.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day: Laggy Pants

Taken at "Meet the Lindens" with Ebbe Linden. Jumpman Lane, the writer of "Slut Magazine," prepares to get in line to get his picture with Ebbe Linden. Unfortunately, he seems to have developed a slight case of "butt lagging."

By Bixyl Shuftan

A Laggy Weekend

If this weekend felt especially laggy, you weren't alone. Some friends of mine told me their movement was slower and were crashing more. This included one pilot at a combat sim whom had trouble keeping her plane straight.

For yours truly, it wasn't just lag that was a problem. At times the viewer would freeze for about 30 second to a minute. And sometimes came the "ping" indicating it had crashed, but would not say so for another few minutes. Flying? I lost control after a minute, and thirty seconds later found myself on the ocean floor without a plane.

By Tuesday though, the problems had eased up, freezing only once or twice after a few hours of being online. I'll pass on flying, though.

Bixyl Shuftan