Thanks so much for this thread. I have had this issue in the past, drives me crazy. It only used to be one or two trees, not knowing what was wrong I would replace the offending plant. Today after restart (Region Excellens) I came 'home' to find half of my elaborate and newly constructed garden a complete mess, loads of tree and plants all showing what Count indicates above. I attach a small portion of what my garden looked like. I have now gone around and 'fixed' all the corrupted trees, the Alpha Mode had been switched to None or Mask.

Thankfully it was a member in the Phoenix-Firestorm Preview group who pointed me to this article.

Please excuse the long comment. A lot of history here.

INITIAL TEXTURE REPORT. Going back almost two decades to 2005. Texture loading bottleneck reported on JIRA by my user (RL computer consultant, system tech and software designer). The report is denied by SL that such bottleneck exists... coincidentally by (no disrespect intended) Dan Linden. Being a "newbie" to SL, my user backs off despite 24 years of real life coding and troubleshooting experience.

REPORT VERIFIED. In 2007 (if memory serves) another user by the name of Balpien Hammerer, a RL tech wizard with heavy experience, precisely identified one bottleneck when he scripted a device that tested texture loading... and discovered that LL was loading the same textures repeatedly from the main asset server, basically performing a DDoS attack on their own asset servers.

Imagine thousands of regions reloading the same textures over and over for tens of thousands of users concurrently. They were working their asset servers to death... and slowing down texture retrieval considerably.

THE DEBATE. Despite Balpien's very visible and documented proof, Linden Lab denied this was happening and a huge JIRA "debate" ensued. The texture loading bottleneck remained. Balpien and I finally gave up the debate in exasperation. (No offense, just historic fact... possibly documented somewhere in ancient archives.)

A FIX. Five years later, in 2010, Linden Lab announced they'd "discovered" a texture loading bottleneck and fixed it (interestingly enough, reportedly the very bottleneck we'd first reported in 2005).

ANOTHER BOTTLENECK DISCOVERED. Skip ten years to 2020. I ran numerous tests and documented data which proved to a highly-skilled tech on Kitely grid that there was a SEVERE texture bottleneck that often caused textures to take 30 to 60 seconds to load. He managed to track down that bottleneck in the Firestorm viewer (which is based on SL viewer code) and write a fix for it. That significant fix allowed on-demand textures (such as vendor textures, slideshows and rezzed objects) to load 15 times faster than previously. I assume this was fixed in the SL Viewer as well. (Hopefully, since the fix code was generously handed to everyone, free of charge.)

MORE BOTTLENECKS EXIST. Interestingly the Kitely tech stated that during his work he became aware of "several additional texture bottlenecks" in the Viewer which would be "incredibly difficult and time consuming" to locate and fix because large areas of Viewer code were undocumented.

ORANGE FOG. Currently avatars regularly fail to load and are orange fog because the avatar textures are getting "lost" somehow during login or teleporting. (We can look at the avatar texture window and see the textures missing.) For some odd reason, changing active groups often seems to force those textures to load, and when they do they load rather quickly.

This experience differs from person. There is strong indication that texture loss is related to ping time, but that is not the only bottleneck. System cache seems involved as well (there is strong indication that cache storage gets "confused" on a regular basis). Texture transmission is often "lost", and texture "forced reload" is actually a part of the Firestorm edit menu.

IT'S NOT A USER-COMPUTER ISSUE. Personally, I own a fairly decent "gamer" desktop with lots of RAM, a fairly fast GeForce graphics card with 6 gigs of on-board RAM, reasonable ping time, and a 4 gig cable modem (rated the best on the consumer market on several review sites) with 300 MBps internet speed-- yet I still experience texture loading issues on a regular basis.

OBJECT FAILURE TO REZ. Currently there is a texture loading bug that causes objects or even entire buildings to fail to appear. The fix: enter wireframe mode (ctrl-shift-R) and exit it again... and entire non-rezzed areas suddenly appear. So the textures have loaded.. but the object simply fails to rez, as if the system has lost track that it's loaded and ready to go. (This could be a separate but related problem.)

The main problem is that unless the user is acquainted with the area, they may not even realize that objects haven't rezzed in their viewer... thus missing a significant portion of the SL experience. If texture recognition is involved in this (and it seems to be), then this is a major problem.

SCULPTIES-- which were a wonderful idea-- have consistently loaded either very slowly or sometimes not at all-- because sculpties are texture-based and their shape and surface textures have had trouble loading just like other textures. Ideally scupties should load just as quickly as mesh (or faster, since they are usually more simple objects), but they do not. Because of this many builders avoid using slow-loading sculpties.

A LONG-TERM PROBLEM. The point of all this comes down to the reality that texture loading issues have existed on SL ever since it first opened its doors, ever since I joined (almost 20 years ago) and continue to this day. Really, by this time if there is one thing SL should have down pat and lightning fast... it is texture handling.

IF THE 2D DOESN'T WORK... The primary point I made from the very beginning is this: "If the 2D doesn't work, the 3D doesn't work."

Texture loading is VERY important. But every time I've brought up texture loading issues in JIRA the response has been lackluster (as we see here). "Issue tracked. We have no estimate when it may be implemented." Sometimes the response has been denial that the problem exists (it did exist, as numerous tests revealed), and even oppositional (as if experienced RL professional users were just imagining all this). I do not exaggerate.

SPEEDY FIX SHOULD BE EXPECTED. Ordinarily we would hope for a response of: "Let's find this bug fast and get it fixed now." Historically we don't see that level of concern. I know LL has a lot on it's plate... but we are discussing basic texture loading and handling, the very core of SL operation.

TEXTURES ARE ESSENTIAL. Texture loading is the life of the system. If textures are lost somewhere in the process... vendors work slowly, avatars don't load, objects fail to appear, signs can't be read, etc etc.

GOAL: ENCOURAGEMENT TO TACKLE THE PROBLEM. I mention all of this for one reason only: to encourage Linden Lab to take texture loading bottlenecks VERY seriously (certainly more seriously than we've seen for the past 20 years). Find texture bugs and fix them... now. I'm not trying to harass, insult or complain. I'm simply stating historic response and failure to correct texture loading and rezzing issues. Experienced techs can testify to the above stated issues and verify the validity of this post.

Texture loading has ALWAYS been an issue on SL. Now evidently it's affecting mesh (which is not surprising). So as I and many others have stated in the past: texture loading and rezzing really needs fixed. This is basic virtual visibility that we are discussing, not back burner minor issues. When textures don't load properly it makes SL look bad, and people go do something else. It is to the benefit (and profit) of Linden Lab to get texture issues fixed as quickly as possible as they are reported.

Thank you for considering these points. We obviously enjoy SL. People would enjoy it even more if textures loaded and rezzed quickly and consistently.

Thank you for the report, Count!

Issue tracked. We have no estimate when it may be implemented. Please see future updates here.