NaomiLocket Resident This problem has been going on for years. V7.x simply increased the issue. But this has been a major issue long before the PBR release came along. Far too long for someone to have not tackled it already. When we stop and think about it: what impression of SL does this give newcomers when they can't even see other avatars rez? Such major problems discourage the growth of SL, which should concern LL enough to pull this to a front burner.

The problem isn't simple, but the logic is: if the 2D doesn't load, the 3D won't work. If textures don't load quickly, the avatars that use them will suffer proportionally.

Eren Padar It's not just the 2D if you want to talk about historic observations. Considering that old remedies that forced updates included changing active groups - or editing appearance to force a shape reload (unless for what ever reason they decided that moving the shape around needlessly re-fetched things without reason).

However I simply noted that the increase in the issue simply seemed to coincide with having delayed assets and we now have older viewers as well for the time being indefinitely sanctioned. That potentially raises backwards compatibility issues with things like this without even looking at any code. Just as an assumption you'd think some viewers would expect things done within certain time-frames.

No one is really saying this issue did not exist before. It is simply more noticeable with the frequency greatly increased.

NaomiLocket Resident I'm glad you brought that up. I had forgotten about the weird glitch of changing groups causing an avatar to immediately rez. One would think that would give some kinda clue, eh?

Yes, avatar rezzing has been an issue forever. I simply don't understand a company as large as SL not fixing something like that, asap and yesterday. What kind of impression does that have on new visitors?

I just saw a YouTube that someone sent me to, about 20 minutes long of a newbie just raking SL and LL over the coals for extremely poor performance. One of the things he said: "What is it with all these gray cloud avatars around me? They can't even get their avatars to show up?" He actually laughed at the platform saying, "What the blazes is going on with this game?" And who could argue with him.

His observations as a game-saavy but SL-newb were pretty spot on. He noted things such as griefers, being kicked off of land because someone didn't like something he said about ugly avatars, etc. His summation was accurate, and shameful. How is it after over 2 decades SL still can't get an avatar to rez or textures to rez-on-demand (ie, someone is paying special attention to that texture, such as in a merchant vendor). I worked 35 years in the computer field; no other company I know would have tolerated such extremely major bugs for so long.

I'm not just complaining and ranting here. As with you, I'm pointing out seriously major problems that for some reason SL's best coders can't seem to correct. In any other company, heads would roll.

Eren Padar The bigger clue at the moment for the current wave is that, TP'ing out and back in actually does something. At least for my current circumstances the cache hits seem to resolve in time to actually rig peoples loaded bits. But that could just be centered around a distracting but related side issue when the internet connection is degraded so I didn't want to bring up too much. That's why I was more focused on feature changes that introduced asset loading delay for some agents - and fixes focused on shared attachment spots yet to deploy grid wide.

But from a UX observation point of view, it is clear some functions are not repeated when you perform any of the usual actions. Refresh/reset skeleton/ etc etc. There is a condition out there that the rigging of a loaded asset can just get stuck and leaving and coming back forces the process to start over.

NaomiLocket Resident Yes, sometimes TPing out and then back in helps... as the act of re-entering the region forces reloading of assets. Supposedly. Other times as you mentioned, it doesn't help at all.

I tend to believe (after 20+ years on SL) that it's a combination of a severe texture bottleneck and a cache system problem. The cache is viewer side and frankly, that was LL's creation to start with. But the texture bottleneck is assets. Back in 2007 Balpien Hammerer conducted a series of tests that the same textures were being reloaded from the asset server, basically creating a DDOS attack on their own system. Even when he told them this and provided proof, he was derided by both LL and their supporters... for really no good reason. He handed them an answer on a silver platter, and was scoffed at for doing so. I watched that whole process and was even part of it, as I am now.

When we see an avatar that hasn't loaded, that is orange or gray fog, that has out-of-proportion parts or missing parts, if we right click and look at their textures... the textures aren't loaded, even after 30 minutes or more. Something somewhere simply got "stuck". And when Linden Lab states, "It's a Firestorm issue", no... it's a Second Life issue because although Firestorm is a 3rd party product, a LOT of people use it, and frankly LL should be very, very interested in that amazing viewer working correctly. They worked heavily with the Firestorm people implementing PBR (which impressed me, frankly. Good on them!) So what is the problem with everyone getting together and figuring out the avatar and texture loading issue that's been going on for TWO DECADES.

Thus this simple suggestion to FORCE OTHER AVATAR RELOAD. If they can't fix the primary issue, at least give us the ability to have the system focus on totally reloading another avatar from the ground up.

To lighten the mood, an old old joke: How do we know that SL was written by men? Because the bodies and skin load before the clothing. ;D

Kathlen OnyxI use the zoom out and esc esc trick, it often works, but the recent FS version has the other dancers in the troupe wearing two sets of shoes etc. Quite annoying as not sure they actually have, not good for a fast flowing dance show.

Bloodsong Termagant Alchemy viewer has an only show loaded avatars option, so they stay as cloud until complete, so maybe LL need to implement something similar

Firestorm has it too if I recall right.