BattleBeast Breedables – About Sim (Server) Performance
Last updated February 2, 2021
We seem to have a few places in SL where we are continually having to replace or remake animals, and we’ve isolated this to sims that over-burdened. This notecard is a result of some research that we’ve done, along with help from breeders and Linden Labs.
This is not meant as the technical “be all and end all” about sim/region performance, but we’ll try to cover the high points that are relevant.
Each region in SL is assigned to a server, which is usually hosting several regions at once. The servers may vary in size (cpu speed and RAM memory). Every server has a limited amount of
resources which are shared by the regions hosted on that server.
Breedables can put a very significant load on a sim, in two areas: cpu busy, and memory usage. We have gone to very significant measures in order to reduce the load of our breedables, in both
of these areas – cpu and memory. It’s certainly possible to overload a sim, in terms of performance, before you run out of prims. You might still have prims left over, but no more “server power”.
Let’s look at the symptoms of that.
The best information comes from the statistics that are available in most SL viewers. When you press Ctrl-Shift-1 you get a window of real-time performance info from the viewer. We’re going to focus on
a couple of these, in this note:
When you first open Statistics, you’ll see that “Scripts Run” is on the list. This is an indication of how many of the scripts in the region are active. “Script Events” is a number of eps – Events Per Second, that are being processed (the language of scripts, LSL, is an event-based language).
Time is near the bottom of the Statistics list. It’s actually “clickable”, and it will open up a submenu of time-related numbers. Starting with “Total Frame Time” at the top of that submenu, and on down to “Spare Time”, in this order: (they are all in ms – milliseconds)
Total Frame Time
Net Time
Physics Time
Simulation Time
Agent Time
Images Time
Script Time
Spare Time
Total Frame Time is the amount of time for a single simulation “frame” to be processed.
Script Time is the amount of time taken to process scripts during that frame.
Spare Time is what time was left in each simulation frame, after all of the work has been done.
What happens in a region that’s too burdened with breedables? Here are the symptoms:
– Active Scripts will be very high – I’ve seen regions with over 50,000 active scripts at once.
– Scripts Run will be a low % number. Overloaded sims tend to run at less than 15%.
– Script Events will be high – anything above 3000 events per second is usually an issue.
– Script Time will be high – consuming most all of the Total Frame Time.
and lastly Spare Time will be at or near 0.0%.
This is the indication that the sim is simply not able to support all of the processing load that’s put on it.
What can you do? Well, here are some ideas:
– Move to a new sim (Homesteads are notorious for being shared by more regions at once).
– Reboot the server (this will often help stabilize some things, if the performance issues are temporary)
– Reduce the load on the server… perhaps with an approach that some of your breedables are in
Inventory some of the time
– Reduce the number of breedable animals that you have on that region.
– Spread the breedables out across multiple regions
We would love your comments and ideas about this… you can best do this via a Notecard sent to BattleBeast Resident.
An additional resource: this blog post from Linden Labs:
https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/31669-someone-in-second-life-is-doing-something-that-makes-the-whole-region-run-much-more-slowly-than-it-should/
Thanks for your time and attention in reading this.
~ Battle