The Mesh Investigation Redux - Has Fitted Solved the problems?

Over the last 4 months, I have been settling myself in to getting Fitted Mesh pinned down. Its never an easy process learning, and ultimately finding out what the restrictions and limitations of new technologies are.

In a way this is very akin to my initial investigations in to Rigged Mesh back in 2011 where I spent a very long time learning about Rigging, and what it could, and couldn’t do – with more emphasis on what it couldn’t do.

Fitted Mesh is a very positive progression from Rigging, and finally I have to admit, the idea of utilising rigging is a far more positive proposition.

The ultimate goal here is to lock, stock and barrel, replace the stock avatar with a new one and fitted does make this possible to a degree, but there are still too many draw backs in my books for Fitted to become a new standard.

Fitted Mesh – what is it really?

This is a serious problem really, because like it or not, Linden Labs really don’t have that much of a clue how we use Second Life as designers. Its nothing against them, but truth is, they don’t understand.

From our Perspective, Fitted Mesh should be a swiss army knife. It should do everything. Bodies, clothing, hair, banana ears, tails – the list could go on. The short version is, even if I am being tongue in cheek, the tool should be representative of what our imaginations are capable of, and that’s a tall order.

From Linden Labs point of view, this wasn’t a practical problem of how can they do “this or that”. It was half an ear listening to the needs of the designers, briefly passing over the forum comments and maybe an occasional conversation with someone in world.

I am not being disrespectful there. I understand that if someone was to sit down, and try to take all of what was needed onboard, it would be the scene from the Exorcist watching their heads spin round as they tried to grasp what was being asked.

Going back to the Lab’s point of view though. Fitted Mesh was simply a way of getting mesh clothing to fit better. That’s it – nothing more.

And before they even got it on the grid, loonies like myself were really pushing it beyond their scope.

So... How does fitted mesh work, and why does it work like that?

The first thing to understand about this is that Fitted Mesh isn’t based on the same system as the Avatar is.

The avatar uses groups of Vertices that move, stretch and deform in to different shapes – overall this creates the different shape files.

Fitted Mesh, while based on a part of the avatars skeleton, is different in that all it is, is a series of balloons under the skin that inflate and deflate when you use the shape sliders – putting in simplistic terms.

That means Fitted Mesh is an Emulator, not a like for like system. Those that know this, the Mesh Deformer project was in fact the like for like system, and that for all intent and purpose is dead in the water now.

The biggest issue with the fact Fitted Mesh is designed to Emulate what the avatar does, means that with the complex series of variable available to the avatar, while it does a good job, there are limits.

 New Mesh, same flaws

I have just spent some time reading through my original mesh investigation documents (they are on the site – just got to the earliest blogs).

Since I originally wrote that things have changed not just with fitted mesh but other areas too.

Removing the Physics, and the shape Sliders, and the Appliers (as ADV is now available and I did finally solve the applier system problems) you are still left with some pretty heady issues.

Fitted Mesh is a far more versatile solution with more configurational options and physics. But this isn’t perfect – there are still limitations and bugs simply down to the fact its an emulator.

Multiple clothing layers. Now, this is the show stopper in my books. Some years back I said the best thing to do would be to use the baked textures from the avatar and using scripting, let people apply those textures automatically to rigged / fitted mesh parts. The works already been done.

However as far as I know, this isn’t on the table at the moment. Why – no idea as it really shouldn’t be that complex to do really.

This way, all you have to do to change your skin, clothing etc, is wear the item, and let the bake files do the rest. In theory, this could even solve the problem over alpha masking too by using a mesh hide system or a unique mask for running with fitted mesh.

That said though, I know from all my experiments and testing, that the SL body texture system isn’t capable of handling everything, and the more extreme you push, the worse the system behaves. Not a good thing as you end up with warped, stretched and distorted textures.

Oh, and this could get worse, as SL bakes its files at 512, not 1024 so those distortions will get worse.

Now, realistically this is a shorter list than before, and at least one item on there is possible.

 Have things actually got worse because of fitted mesh?

Well, in one way, they have.

For years now there has been talk and even official JIRA about the AV2 project. A whole new avatar that would be theoretically based on the current SL clothing and skins.

However it would be radically cleaned up, much more configurable, and much higher quality.

However those kind of changes would require a whole new Avatar skeleton, mesh and Slider options. Which means... Rigged / Fitted Mesh items designed for AV1 wouldnt work.

After learning first hand how the SL textures behave with more shapely bodies I think they may even have to redesign the avatars textures too to be more adaptable on extreme areas.

So, in theory, the investment in fitted mesh, may have scuppered the whole AV2 project, although that hasn’t stopped Linden Labs in the past.

Finally, and I may be wrong here, but I was asked “Will Fitted Mesh work with Micro / Macro Avatar Bodies?”

Well... I have experimented, tested etc and even though I have not done this since I worked last on Blender 2.49, I can confirm that sadly, it doesn’t work.

In fact trying to do fitted Micro or macros causes all hell to break loose in world to the degree that on one worn session I had to relog to clear a major viewer error.

What do I want to do tomorrow?

For years now I have run my own businesses although for a time, I ventured out in to the real world.

Ever since I started out working for myself, I have enjoyed that flexibility that comes with being your own boss. However during the time I moved in to the corporate world, shortly before I joined Second Life, I found one of the greatest horrors.

As I got up every morning, I was presented with a question for myself.

“What do I have to do today?”

Its a very simple question with such dark undertones and for me, it represents a question that can be soul destroying.

We all wake up and plan our days, however one of the most subtle undertones that you never understand is you actually never plan your day, the day plans you.

Working for myself, I understood that question from a different angle – its not “What do I have to do today”, but “What do I want to do today”.

Many of us live our lives with those two questions, but even in the vagueness of your “days off” the need to do things often intrudes in our desires to do things we really want to.

Each day I went to work in my Corporate day, I learnt the real meaning of what I had to do on those days, not what I wanted to do.

When that side of my life came to a close, I came to Second Life, it has to be said not in the best state of mind. The question I had asked each day had demoralised me, pushed me down and left me feeling like a horrible person. Thats the world of business – it turns nice people in to monsters.

But Second Life offered me a salvation because, I changed the question.

“What do I want to do today?”

What did I want to build, what did I want to design – I could choose, pour out my creativity, be slightly insane, and enjoy what I was doing.

For two years just about, I had the pleasure of living that question each day but the strangeness of SL started to slip in the door.

It started quietly really. Script Limits. Linden Labs answer to annoying every creator on the grid who built things with scripts in them.

And then, slowly, during 2010, I started asking the dreaded question every so often... What do I have to do today?

With the Arrival of Mesh, the continuing war on scripting, and my products growing more and more technical, there came in day at some point in 2011 when I stopped asking “What do I want to do today?” and started project managing, looking at update programs, searching for solutions, investigating what the new technologies could do.

And sadly, that is where all hell broke loose really... the beginning of three years worth of that kind of stuff.

By the time it hit 2012, I realised all of what I have said above, and needless to say it depressed me. I knew I wasn’t building new stuff, I knew that SL was becoming tiresome and I had to find a way to break out of this cycle.

This is where the origin of “Project Chase your Tail” came from as I started to realise that since 2011, I had been chasing my tail.

It has taken an insane amount of time, effort and thought to create a way to solve all the problems that came from Chasing my tail, but today, I can finally draw a line under it all.

For VSX, the major problems over scripting were solved last year with the release of VSX5 and VSXM – both product lines have radically streamlined scripting thats extremely low cost.

The Unlimited Saga came to an end with Unlimited 3, a system that means I no longer have to update products, but rather the huds cutting down on time, effort and production time.

Finally, the whole Mesh issue. For many years I had an ongoing confusion over mesh. On one side was my desire to make rigged mesh, but the whole series of flaws in mesh threw me in to a tizzy, and at the same time, the issues over how rigged mesh works with skins and clothes left me with a headache. Although unrelated my hands are now untied with the arrival of Fitted Mesh, a product that can do more, and works how I wanted it to in the first place, and although a massive slog, the ADV skins are the final piece of the puzzle so I can now apply skins and even clothes using ADV.

There are dozens of other irritational elements that cropped up over the years, however, as of today, that it. They are all solved, they are all fixed and if I need to do updates to anything, I have already been proactive, rather than constantly being reactive.

Tomorrow is Monday and I think I will sleep well tonight and the first thing that will cross my mind tomorrow is this

What do I want to do today?

Questions Questions...

Well, as Firestorm hold the grid back with their unreasonable month delay in getting Fitted Mesh on the grid, leaving business and users in Limbo while they delay the adoption of fitted mesh, I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday this cropped up.
As I dont know where it came from, I wont include the names...

"Won't take long for TPVs to update to it. it's just copying two files over.
You can even do it yourself. In the viewer install directory there is a folder called 'character', copy the avatar_lad.xml and avatar_skeleton.xml from LL's 'character' directory to the TPV's 'character' directory.
And that's it. There are a few changes for AMD cards to fix some bugs, but overall this all that needs to be done for most people."

Now I wouldnt recommend actually doing this as all sorts of things may go wrong.
However.

[2014/02/20 15:50]  ********* *****: just tried that myself, on FS and seeing Fitted Mesh just fine

So... lets just get this straight.

1/ Go in to the firestorm directory on your PC, copy and back up avatar_lad.xml and avatar_skeleton.xml from the Characters folders.
2/ Download and install the official Linden Lab Viewer. Find the character directory and copy avatar_lad.xml and avatar_skeleton.xml, then go back to the Firestorm folder, and paste them in to the character folder.

Fitted Mesh now works? Apparently it does.

I have had a separate conversation with someone in the know since then, and I was told in a round about way, this is actually how it is. Patching over the AMD card bugs isnt difficult either and the whole process should take a few hours at max. It just a matter of sending out an update.

This leaves me with a large and concerning question.
If users can technically update their own viewer by copying across two files (for the majority to cases) and apparently its a few hours work to convert a viewer to Fitted Mesh, then why is it Firestorm are delaying the release of Fitted Mesh on the grid by an entire MONTH?

I will leave you to try and work that one out as to me, it doesnt make any sense at all unless they are deliberately doing this.

A seriously arrogant error of judgement

Earlier today I had a good rant about the seeming lack of action from Second Life's most used Viewer - Firestorm.

I say this with almost bile in my throat that today, buried somewhere deep in the transcripts of Satudays Firestorm meeting is this quote.

"The next release of Firestorm will be out around March 9th – possibly a little before, possibly after."

I was partly joking when I said it could be weeks or months...

This leaves me in a very bad place for Violet Studios, as it also leave many other mesh creators in similar places.
Fitted Mesh is here, and apparently many TPV makers are now adopting it.
This is a critical update to SL - without Fitted Mesh, you cant see the many things people are designing.

And the makers Second Life's most used viewer are effectively snubbing their users, supporters and even Linden Lab by saying "they really couldnt care - we will get it out when we feel like it".

I have been hearing today that several companies released Fitted Mesh products the moment it was released and over the coming weeks, Fitted mesh will become a popular trending product on the grid.

This is a dilemma.
Wait for Firestorm to do what they do, or get my products out and tell people to stop using Firestorm as "it isnt up to the latest Second Life Standards".

If I wait, I risk being left behind commercially.
If I release, I risk people shouting at me because they are still using Firestorm.

Sadly, considering the sheer volume of time we are looking at here, I dont have much choice really.
I have to do whats right for my business, not for Firestorms user figures.

I have no choice but to advise people to stop using Firestorm as its outdated and doesnt feature the latest critical Second Life updates.
I am sure when they see their user figures dropping through the floor, they may actually have a quick rethink about their pedantically slow release time table.


Sorry Firestorm...

Waiting for the buses... The Fitted Mesh Legacy

Since its announcement in November last year, many designers and builders in SL have as I have said previously been chomping at the bit, gagging for the technology to be developed, tested and deployed.

And its not been an easy wait. Near enough a month back I reported my issues over the official Linden Labs DAE files being borked - now it seems that people have finally noticed this only in the last week.
The simple fact is, I was hoping for Christmas time when Fitted was going to be released, even if I was knowingly being unrealistic over it.

I was guesstimating that Fitted Mesh would arrive on the grid at the end of Feb 2014, and I had my build program in place for this, with new products being tested, built and even boxed up ready for that day.
Imagine the coffee spillage and jaw on the desk, when out of the blue Linden Lab officially released Fitted Mesh last monday. This was unexpected.
I had been following the JIRA on this, watching for issues cropping up, and while it had been quiet and had slowed up during January, occasionally a show stop issue was cropping up.

So... its GOOD NEWS!!! Fitted Mesh is here, its released and is ready for use...
No... its not.

This has left me with a bitter taste in my mouth, as Fitted Mesh isnt here really. The simple fact is, Fitted Mesh requires users viewers to be up to date.
Some people may resist the urge to update to the official Linden Labs Fitted Mesh viewer and personal choice is one thing.
But physically being unable to update to fitted mesh as its not available on your viewer of choice means that officially releasing fitted mesh is nothing more than a joke.

There really are two kinds of SL changes when it comes to technologies and viewers.
There is the minor changes - stuff thats nice to have, features that make life easier, or improve your inworld experience, but they arnt essential.
Then there are the major changes which are few and far between. In fact in the last 3 years I can only remember 3 such instances. Fitted Mesh, Project Sunshine, and surprisingly, the original Mesh.
What constitutes a major change is the fact its an essential and the world will not render correctly if you dont upgrade.
For Mesh - without a mesh capable viewer, the thousands of objects in world using mesh will be broken.
For Sunshine, without a viewer capable of sever side baking, you will see Grey people everywhere.
And for Fitted Mesh, any mesh using the new bones will appear on none fitted mesh viewers as a spagetti string being dragged into the bottom corner of the sim.

Back in late January, the team behind the Singularity Viewer (a frankly excellent Viewer 1 based viewer which is as good as, in my books at least, any viewer 3 viewer), released their Version 1.85.
That viewer offered dozens of fixes, upgrades, clean ups etc, but shockingly, and surprisingly they jumped the gun and integrated in Fitted Mesh.
At the time I questioned if this was a wise move as the JIRA for Fitted was still throwing up bugs, however hats off to them. Not only has that idea worked, but actually found some more bugs for the official project to fix therefore making a positive contribution to the development of fitted mesh.
It also allowed me to do beta testing on Fitted Mesh items without having to use the Test viewer form Linden Lab, which in itself is extremely positive for me.

Now with the official release of Fitted Mesh, and seemingly no changes to the operation of Fitted Mesh, Singularity is much like the Official Viewer, Fitted Mesh ready.

The problem is, Singularity is a Third Party Viewer, and for all its bonuses and smooth operations, its certainly not the biggest.
However, lets just get this straight.
Singularity is based on the original Viewer 1 - Not the latest generation of viewers. And the fantastic team there managed to retroengineer the Fitted Mesh system from Viewer 3 code, and fit it in to a Viewer 1 code, and it works perfectly. That deserves respect.

However, while two major viewers have adopted Fitted Mesh, the largest user base viewer on the grid, Firestom, hasnt got fitted mesh.
I will say fair enough - I got a surprise when it was released, and I was estimating a few more weeks before it arrived. However this isnt another "Facebook" feature - this is serious. This should have been planned out, tested and been ready for release. After all, Firestorm is based on Viewer 3, and the official Viewer 3 has fitted mesh. I know its not a matter of drag and drop, but considering Singularity managed to retroengineer the code and released it weeks ago in their viewer, why have Firestorm been caught with their pants down like this.

Firestorm announced last week that they had delayed their monthly meeting for a week and "Exciting news" would be coming.
Many builders saw this as either something major is going to happen, or, they were going to release the fitted mesh capable version of Firestorm.
This meeting was planned for this last Saturday night (UK time) and I logged in to the Firestorm site on Sunday morning to see what happened.
Short answer was, nothing. There is no new press releases or viewer releases.
In fact its now monday and the firestorm blog is still devoid of information and I had to go over to Nalates' blog to see what the crack was.
After trawling through all the information, it seems Firestorm is still "testing" their viewer. They are being deliberately vague over any release date and this is not good at all.
It could be released tomorrow, or next year for all they are giving us.

And for the first time in quite a while, I am very sad to say, Second Life is now outside of Linden Lab's control. They have officially released a new technology, but the actual practical release date for creators isnt what Linden Lab says it is. Its being dictacted by Firestorm. As the largest user base viewer on the grid, they control which technologies can and cant go "live".
Am I being a drama queen over this? Not really if you think about it.
Can I release any full fitted mesh products using the new bones?
According to Linden Lab, yes I can. The technology is in the official viewer.
Practically though, I can't. Firestorm doesnt have fitted mesh, and may not have it for weeks or months.
If the largest user base viewer on the grid doesnt support Fitted Mesh, then a large percentage of users cant see fitted mesh, other than pointy spagetti. That means practically, I cant release any fitted mesh products until Firestorm updates.
I suppose I could do, but the vast majority of the SL population will not accept having to move back to the official viewer or Singularity, and all I will get is bombarded by angry customers who cant see fitted mesh.

So... I guess we are stuck waiting for the number 22 Fitted Mesh bus to arrive in Firestormville.
I will post more when or even if there is news from Firestom.

Fitted Mesh testing and production & Biting my tongue

Looking back in a week in hell

If you were reading the blog last week, you will have noticed my outspoken and quite upset comments about everyone favourite company.
The issues are now resolved finally and I am back (I hope) to business as usual, however you will have noticed that my comments have disappeared.

I did write up a pretty scathing assessment of the situation last week when it was concluded, and needless to say what I was saying wasnt wrong and was very justified.
However it occurred to me shortly after publishing that final assessment that here was a company that had no issue with denying payments to their customers without warning.
The old saying "Dont bite the hand that feeds you" comes to mind - quite literately.

All I can say is fear got the better of me and that is enough. I will bite my tongue.


Fitted Mesh - moving to the next level.

Having to recover from last week hasnt been easy for me as I did end up so stressed I got physically ill. So, on Saturday I thought I would do some tinkering that ended up getting vastly out of control.

Going back to my earlier work, I took one of my prey boots, and did a quick productionised experiment to see if I could get this to behave, and needless to say, that first experiment came out very well really. The boot looked exactly as it should do in world, textured and operated the same as rigged mesh, but it did work well with the soft deformers too.

So I decided to go to the next stage which was full on shape testing to see where the limits were.
I found out, with boots at least, was there were three problem areas.
The first one seems to be a well known bug over the ankle - the joint seems to misbehave.
The second was the knee angle - this slider only seems to move the leg itself left and right which effectively means knee angle is useless.
The final one is bodyfat. It seems bodyfat uses some odd deformers. The outer leg remain fine, however there is quite a heavy (no pun) deformation on the inner leg that the Collision skeleton doesnt like so you get a clip through overhang.

So first genuine look at Fitted Mesh shows that it cures many of the major issues that were absent in Rigged Mesh however it is still an imperfect system.
However from my understanding of things it never could be perfect.
With the SL avatar, its been set up with deformers. These are physical groups of vertices that are programmed to behave in a certain way. This is a very accurate way of getting things to behave right.
Fitted Mesh though uses the collision skeleton. This actually has zero affect on how the SL avatar does its business on deformers. There is no link between the collision skeleton and the deformers.
The purpose of the collisions skeleton is from my understanding, physics. Take away the avatar, the collision skeletons purpose is to stop you walking through walls or falling through the floor.
That all said, while the body deformers are not directly linked to the collisions skeleton, the sliders that operate the deformers are linked to the collision skeleton.
Its a way of recalculating the mass of the avatar so it can judge if your body size is equal to the that of the body mass on the collision skeleton.

How it does this is almost like spheres of influence. There is a mass balloon inside each collision joint. You go from 50 to 100 on the slider, the balloon inflates.
By rigging the mesh to the collision skeleton, you effectively can inherit the properties of the balloon, so if you are looking at the upper leg, it will inherit the properties of the parent bone, therefore offering the same properties you get on rigged mesh, but will then include the mass balloon too, therefore the sliders will work there too.
However that makes the assumption that the deformers behave in the same way as the balloon does.
For muscles its pretty accurate, but for bodyfat, its not as the deformers alter themselves in a different way.

There... my probably inaccurate overview of Fitted mesh and hopefully showing that while a vast improvement, the system is still imperfect.

I did say though my tinkering as always got out of control.
The reason for that is, I now have a full set of production model Prey boots in world. Literately the whole line and the extras have been built, rigged and fully assembled.
The only issue that really affected the boots would have been the ankle joint, however Prey has even on rigged mesh, had a fixed ankle so that instantly cures the ankle as there isnt one.
At the moment, I am testing them but in a lovely way, I could release these tomorrow without even having to wait for the official Fitted Mesh release.
Why?
Well, this is the secondary quirk of Fitted Mesh. While the Fitted Mesh project is still in beta, the collision skeleton isnt new. In fact its always been there right from the start.
Prey boots dont use any of the new bones being introduced in the Fitted Mesh project, therefore, I am wearing the boots right now using an older viewer without fitted mesh and they look, behave and work perfectly.

I have found a few little bugs I didnt spot, which will require some minor reworking, but overall, I am very happy with how these have turned out. With some in world beta testing time, I think by the weekend I could have the Version 4 Prey boots in store and released.

Sadly though I will have to wait to do more work as above the thight, you will need to have the full fitted mesh viewer enabled and how long thats going to take is a different story.

Issues of Pride and Sloth

This last weekend had been quite annoying for me, sometimes in a good way, but more over in a bad way.

An Issue of Pride.
We are of course going back to Fitted Mesh here, and following my repeated headbanging last week over this, you can assume that I didnt drop the subject.

Teaching yourself something is always key to being very good at what you do. Without knowledge, you will constantly slip up, get stuck, and either fail, or bug the crap out of friends as you stumble along.
Having worked with rigged mesh for two years now, and listening to the fact that the "workflow is the same as rigged mesh" when it comes to fitted, I assumed this was a logical progression.
I never claimed to be an expert or a guru on rigging - its something I am still learning about day by day, but fundamentally I learnt about rigging through a process of trail and error, but most importantly, learning from other people who have been kind enough to share their knowledge.

As of right now, I have Hemi in world, wearing a fitted mesh boot - the same boot I was using for experimental purposes. Although it still needs vast amounts of weight painting work, that boot is pure fitted mesh, it behaves as expected with the sliders although I have to say, the one size fits all theory isnt true - fitted mesh isnt a magic pill for curing fitment problems and you may still end up with 2-3 different items depending on how the items are rigged.
In short - it works and the reason it works is because after looking at Fitted Mesh for a week, I realised that my pride was the weak point. I thought I could do this by myself, but as I said above, I am not an expert or guru. So, I swallowed my pride, and turned to someone who is an expert and the very first test I have done with new knowledge and tools, has worked out.

Where now? Sadly, nowhere. Fitted mesh is still in beta, and its now the process of waiting for things to progess to actual release. So, that project is now on hold.
Quite a shame really, as the boot itself, works both in the Experimental viewer, and the regular viewer.


An Issue of Sloth
This one is not actually directly related to SL at all atlhough it is indirectly causing me massive trouble.
In the UK, the gatekeepers our of internet services are British Telecom - a company who for those that have dealt with them, are pretty much loathed.
Having worked on the internet since 1996, I have sadly had a lot of expiernece with BT, and its fair to say I would rather shove wasps up my backside that deal with them ever again.
They are unpleasant to say the least, and sadly even when you dont deal with them directly, they are the gatekeepers, and even through the many service providers, they still cause you problems.
I was with Sky for a long time... then one day, I couldnt use the internet on an evening properly. I bought Unlimited Broadband from them. BT had imposed a 40 Gig download limit per month on them, and because they were having to use BT's services, I got data restrictions. In the end I had to move.
I moved to O2 Unlimited... everything worked well for a year or two... and then BT once again started causing trouble resulting in me being forced off their service!
I then moved to Talk Talk, who have in fairness been very good, but this time BT has caused an even larger problem that isnt just affecting me that has been coming slowly to a head now for nearly a decade.
In 2002, I moved to Sky broadband and I was told "sorry, you cant have our full service as the local exchange is still under BT's control and we cant put our equipment in - they have said they will be unbundling that exchange soon."
I kept checking on the status of that upgrade to the exchange, and sadly nothing happened.
Back then, the exchange in question was dealing with probably 1000 houses, of which remembering the year, not many of them had the internet.
Since that time, a lot has happened. Due to the proliferation of the internet, the % of people using the internet has gone up massively - in my area 90% of homes now have broadband. So that would be roughly 300 to 900 connections.
Except, there is a secondary issue - local development. over the last 12 years, huge housing developments have been going on local to me adding more and more to the load on that exchange. In fact its closer to 3500 houses now. That is 3150 houses, all trying to get online through an exchange that was originally developed in the 1990's, for at max 1000 homes.
The result is quite frankly horrifying. At 10am in the morning, I am getting a stable speed test of 6 megabits a second. What I should be getting from my connection.
However as you move through the day that speed slows and slow, until at 9pm in the evening, I can only get 0.3 megabits a second.
This, is similar to doing 60 MPH on a motorway, and then at peak times dropping to 3 MPH.
The sad thing is, it has taken me 12 phone calls to talk talk and 2 engineer visits to actually explain what the problem is.
BT have known this was going to be a problem now for over a decade, and going back to Sloth, they did nothing about it until now, as it seems, it has taken a member of parliment (government) and the head of the Fibreoptic Openreach project to have to get involved in a panic.
The largest irony is, most of where I live is on Fibre Boardband - 100 Megabits per second or more.
It is just this one area where its not been deployed due to that exchange not been upgraded.
They are currently doing an emergency deployment of Fibre to our area as the problem has now moved to critical... and after 6 weeks of shouting and grumbling, I finally find out that by the end of Feb, fibre boardband may be availabe to me, and not in the nick of time.
The funny thing is, the exchange in question is still not being upgraded and is actually being bypassed with the fibre system going to the master exchage nearly 10 miles away.
Sadly though, this means my SL connection is almost untennable on an evening - at speeds less than dial up due to the sheer congestion of the current network, SL struggles to work.
That of course means that by 5pm, I have no choice but to stop working on SL - its physically impossible to do more than get IM's.
Roll on March please...