Ups and downs of Avination

This morning, Maggie and I checked up some performance parameters after yesterday's "improvement" roll-out. Yes, I am skeptic about such, after previous experiences of what Avination management has rolled out. This time, two of the paremeters I use to check was much improved though. The simple train I set up in Sweet Hideout managed to make a couple of dozens of full rounds without freezing up, before finally crashing both itself and me riding it. For the last month or so, it has frozen in place for 30-120 seconds several times per 8 minute turn. Also, Maggie was able to ride 4 full turns with it, without crashing, before she had to leave for real-life. That's also a first for the last month or so.

However, it's hard to tell how much is the server software fixes, how much is the almost simultaneous server park maintenance, and how much is simply thorough purging and cleaning from the total and repeated restarts. I guess the future will tell if those improvements are temporary or not. Also, in the morning, there was severe server lag for a while in Sweet Hideout, possibly connected to a couple of visitors since it seemed to disappear with them, and in the evening, while working in our sim BDSM, I noticed far more spurts of server lag than I have before. I guess I'll have to wait some to see if that's a temporary or permanent condition as well.

I spent the evening trying to correct sit targets in some items I rebuilt from prototypes I originally made in Second Life. Having one item with 63 different animations, each with its individual sit target adapting to avatar size, it took a damn lot of time and effort. The reason is some clever fellow obviously decided OpenSim worlds like Avination shouldn't use the same internal avatar sit target as Second Life. Also, scripts seem to work a bit different between Second Life and Avination when it comes to handling sits/unsits in general, as I already discovered with that should-be simple sit-teleport script I had to work out a special solution for OpenSim/Avination with. Even after properly seated, an avatar can slide some sideways on the sit target, which is a major nuisance if the items are designed for precise seating.

I fully understand now why designers and manufacturers of more advanced, complex and functional furniture and devices in Second Life stay the hell out of OpenSim worlds like Avination, as long as those worlds only offer maybe 1% of the Second Life customer base but demands almost as much work, with no guarantee of the device ever working equally well or the world even surviving until they have a chance to break even.

Economy:
2011-05-24: upload -C$50
Avination stats:
2011-05-25 04:15 UTC, 29,840 residents, 7,867 in 30d, 1,059 sims