Today I took a regular MM SD35 powerboat for a ride across the Blake Sea, to the far eastern channel and back then turned toward SL New England. I wanted to get a sort of benchmark using Phoenix before I switch back to Firestorm.

I crossed over 50 sims in total but at the 51st crossing I stopped before crossing. I noticed on my mini-map that the region ahead of me was grayed out. I had been avoiding those grayed out sims after I discovered that attempting to cross them will result in a state that leads to a crash.

Region Idling?

So, I waited for the sim which I knew to be ahead of me to “wake up” and show on the map and in front of me. I believed that is what had happened, it was shutdown because of “Region Idling” functionality. I don’t know if it was actually “idling” but there were no other avs in sight, so that’s one of the criteria for invoking idling functionality.

I waited about a minute then the mini-map filled in and the region appeared to have woken up. I believe I’ve seen this happen in the past, but I’ve never made a note of it. Anyway, I nudged the boat across the border and boom, my viewer grayed the crashed.

I don’t know how long it takes all the functionality of a region to awaken if it’s been idling, but it appears to be longer than a couple minutes. Maybe I was so close to the border also. But I’ve observed this on several times in the past.

Phoenix Still Solid

Regardless, I believe that if you avoid those gray or “idle” regions you can cross an indefinite number of regions using the Phoenix viewer. Now to see how Firestorm compares.