Being a Ghostly Cloud

When I first decided to look into Second Life, my computer was close to 4 years old---and I hadn't bought it with a sterling graphics card in mind, as my main interests at the time were being able to make decent Word and Excel documents and Power Points, and to be able to enjoy my message boards. Any games I played were undemanding of graphics power.

So when I did look into SL and saw how compelling it could be for me, I took advantage of five years of acquired credit card Rewards points, and got a new computer. Because it was clear that if I tried to enjoy Second Life with my current computer, I'd spend most of my time with a frozen avatar.

And having a quite recent computer, I haven't had to deal with the performance problems with Second Life that I read about all the time in the Forums and various blogs.

Of course I've sympathized with the people experiencing these problems (especially having run into the problems myself). And I could see that the prevailing philosophy of the Lindens---to concentrate on serving those with brand-new computers---would bite me in the arse eventually, as I'm certainly not in a position to buy the latest computer every 6 months.

So I figured I'd have those 6 months of excellent performance, and then have to deal with the frustrations, later. And so it has gone for 3 months or so. No lag, no freezing. A few crashes here and there, but, it would seem, not due to my own hardware.

So, last night: the night of several thousand Ghostly Clouds.

For anyone who didn't try to log in last night, or who was unaffected: at log in there was a message about 'downloading your clothes'. Then you appeared as a white cloud---a single mass when standing, a series of cloudy globes when flying. And you couldn't teleport.

Well, correction: you COULD teleport to certain water sims. But not to all.

I had a pressing reason to want to teleport to one of my properties, as there was another property I wanted to bid on in the next morning's (today's) auction, and I wanted to lower the prices of the parcels. But I couldn't do it. I persisted for quite a while, though I was three continents away from the location. I found I could get from Continent 1 to Continent 2 by teleporting to a water sim. But then I couldn't manage to get to Continent 3, not by any water sim (and I tried all those I could see from the World Map). And everytime I tried to either fly or walk out of the sim I was in, I got snapped back.

So I finally gave up.

Now, I don't think this was a case of my computer being Just That Bit Too Old. I could be wrong, though----maybe it WAS a case of precisely that.

But this was a pretty widespread phenomenon. So the odds are that my computer's age was irrelevant.

It really does bring home the pertinence of the calls for the Lindens to pay more attention to Stability, though. It was an extremely frustrating night. I would think that many people who weren't yet invested in Second Life, would certainly have made the decision to never attempt to return.