Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Lag

So I've been thinking about something a lot lately and since I'm in kind of a foul mood today, I figured it was the best time to be a total bitch about it. :)

Lag. Ok, I understand lag. I understand that if you put too many avatars in a place, there will be lag. I understand that too much of anything in Second Life can cause lag. We practically brought down Bluebonnet yesterday by throwing down a billion physical Legos. And I also understand that a person's computer can be the source of their own lag. I understand all that.

However, it stands to reason that if someone around you is scripted all to hell and primmed out beyond belief, that you will be lagged out too, right? I know what they keep saying. "ARC is a myth! It's all a myth!" Well, I've been in SL too long to not know that when an avatar with tails, ears, weapons, bling, and frizzy ugly flexi hair walks by, I'm going to lag. I'm sorry, it's true. If it's never happened to you, you must be on one super powerful computer. Please do not give me all the blog posts on how it's not true. I've read them. They make sense...right until one of those avatars walks past me with particles shooting out of their butt makes me slow to a crawl - and I DO have a powerful computer.

I've been wanting to go to Hair Fair since it opened. I managed to make it in once, but it was so horrible, I ended up crashing out. And the rules are there. Don't wear too much stuff. Don't wear too many prims. Not that I saw many people complying with the rules, but they are there.

People started telling me things to do to reduce my lag while I was there. Put the settings to the very very lowest. Ok, that did help some, but now everything looks crappy. Turn off the sky. Great, now it's like I'm shopping under a black sky. Turn off the surface patch, the water, turn off anything I can. Oh...ok...So now I'm basically just looking at busy sculpties and busy textures. Well...that's cool?

The final straw was when a friend of mine said I could turn off how many avatars I saw. I did it, although it didn't help all that much since the flexied, frizzy, blinging avatar that I was standing near was still there. But it really got me thinking.

If I have to go somewhere, take away EVERYTHING, even the people standing around me, what kind of fun is that?!

I think better sim designs and people following rules set by sim owners would be better. I know that no matter what, fairs and expos are going to be laggy. I expect them to be laggy and I plan my outfit and how I go there accordingly, as do most people who attend these events regularly. But something really should be done, because having to walk around at a 64m draw distance with a flat black sky and no ground and nothing's shiny and 5 avatars are flickering in and out...that does not make me feel like shopping. And a world where I don't feel like shopping is really a bad bad world.

4 comments:

Isle said...

Nicely said Alicia.

I think you just voiced the frustration of hundreds of people.

Aisuru Rieko said...

This is why I mute people because it turns them and their bling and frizz into a flat grey silhouette. I made it through eventually and the ground and builds rezzed ok for me, honestly the textures they used were pretty low, but vendors rezzing was another issue altogether. I keep thinking back to Jewelry Fair when it was under the command of Miriel and she ran it like a drill sergeant. Not popular with designers but you know what? practically lag free. The simplest of builds with the same texture on all, hard set rules about what all you could slap up in your booth, restrictions on how big (actual image size) vendor posters could be. And I think this is the key. WAY TOO MANY 1024 size posters that will never rez in a crowded situation. Ultimately if you've reduced your own prims, blocked all other rendering nightmares out, set your avatar limit to the lowest, you will still have to attempt to rez those posters. I've heard a lot of people who said that long after they could see booths and sculpties they still saw grey boxes and it was the same for me.

Such a huge event needs to be a lot more controlled, IMO, even if designers don't like it. How much good is it doing for their sales when no one can see their posters?

(also the captcha on this is sphyliz lmao)

Alvena Weezles said...

Which is why it supremely frustrates me when i got yelled at by this person which i blogged about.

People like that have no idea of event and consequences and they're selfish! I suppose those people think, hey, since this is a virtual world, its not real, so i can be a jerk if i want to >.<

Amie Adamski said...

I went to the hair bald, with no AO-no attachments and in just a tank and shorts. My ARC was 1. I TP in and the girl next to me had an arc of 3000!! All I wanted to do was eject her from the sim, sometimes I wish everyone had eject rules. I don't understand why people need to have an attachment on every part of their body.

I figured why even bother. I hardly looked around b/c it took forever for anything to rez and I could not walk anywhere.

If you have a pretty skin I don't think the avs look bad bald :P