How I improve my second life performance and my Avatar is continually in cloudy form, I cant see me

[jazzayesha]

My Avatar is continussly in cloudy form, i tried to logging again and again but still I am in cloudy (smoke) form why, pls help me to see my man visible and secong my second life moving performance is too slow so how I improve my Pc performance as fast as was before.

[Rolig Loon]

OK... Two answers.  First, in particular reference to your cloudiness....

That's a communication problem between your computer and SL's servers. Information about your appearance has to be "baked" onto your avatar on your own computer, saved there, and then uploaded to SL before it's fully visible there. If the necessary information is messed up in transmission, you may end up with a borked file on your computer, or SL's servers may end up with a borked image. Either way, your av's appearance defaults to a fluffy cloud. What works to repair the damage for one person won't necessarily work for the next person, and it may not be the same thing that works for you tomorrow. See the full list of possibilities here >>> http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=fs_bake_fail . Start with the simple things at the top of the list and work down until you find what works for you today.

You may find that the bake fail problem comes back repeatedly, even after you fix it with one of the suggestions on that wiki page. If so, you have a chronically weak Internet connection. There are many steps to take for repairing it. Perhaps the simplest ones -- ones that work best for most people -- are: (1) Don't Use WIRELESS. Wireless connections are inherently less stable than direct cable connections and are more vulnerable to interference. Then, (2) Reboot your router. Unplug it from the power for a few minutes to let it clear its RAM. Then plug it back in and let it get a fresh hold on an IP address.

This bake fail problem will disapear in a month or two, when Linden Lab releases an important viewer update called Server Side Avatar Baking that has been in the works for a while.  Our avatar appearance files will all be moved to SL servers, so that we no longer have to do the download/upload businesss that often results in a bake fail.  Until then, though, use the procedure I described above to fix it.

Now, for your more general question about improving performance, see  http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/How-to-improve-Viewer-performance/ta-p/1316923

[Nalates Urriah]

For the cloud part...

Rendering the avatar is a special case. It is a more complex process than rendering in the rest of Second Life. The idea with avatars is to save CPU cycles on users' computers and the SL servers. The idea requires your viewer to download all the textures that make up your avatar and its clothes; a shape, skin, top, pants, hair, and shoes textures. The viewer ‘bakes’ those into a single composite texture. You see your avatar render nice and sharp when that bake completes. Then your viewer uploads that composite texture for all to see. That saves others downloading all the individual textures and baking them. Your avatar goes blurry as it downloads and decompresses the composite texture you just uploaded and it becomes sharp when that process finishes. You are the only one that sees the double blurry for your avatar.

If that process hangs or fails there is a problem. Where it fails affects what you or others see.

You can try the old standby quick fixes for avatar rez problems:

1. Change your active group or group tag.
2. Press rebake (Ctrl-Alt-R) once a minute for 3 minutes.
3. Change your bald.
4. Change your shape.
5. Move to another region and try 1 to 4 again.
6. Still failing, turn off HTTP Get Texture. – Debug Settings: ImagePipelineUseHTTP = False.
7. With HTTP Get off, press rebake once a minute for 3 minutes. Once baked correctly change ImagePipelineUseHTTP back to TRUE.

When those fail, check your connection as it is the most likely problem: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection

There is a longer explanation of the problem here: #SL Clouds, Grey, and Blurry Avatars.

More in depth fixes are here: Avatar Render Problems: Ghost Cloud Smoke Ball Ruth.

This whole avatar render process is changing now. It will be February or March 2013 before the process is replaced. So, we have to deal with it for now. But see: Second Life Changes Coming

Performance

Improving performance depends on what you think of as performance. Graphics performance is here: Graphics Tweaking for Second Life. That is mostly about visual quality and Frames per Second. 

Second Life for practical purposes tops out at 45 FPS. Viewers can render more, but that is the limit for the servers.

Since human reaction tends to max out at 50ms the Second Life frame time of 22ms is faster than most people's ability to press keys. Since SL combat games run in the server side it is usually network lag and server speed that limit those games. In some SL combat games the 'meter' connections to outside server slow down the systems even more.

If you are looking for more performance advice, look up the Exodus Viewer people and talk with them. They make what I consider the best gaming client for Second Life.