what is the draw distance and how can I find it to change it

[Carmarina]

thanks so much but I've been working at this for hours. I would really love to experienced the site but no matter what I do the lag is bad. Thank you for trying to help me.

[iCade]

It's under Preferences -> Graphics.

Though the higher you set it, the more your client will have to load, the higher the risk of lagging.

[valerie Inshan]

Draw distance means the distance you can see in the far distance. The higher it is set, the more it is demanding to your computer. According to your previous posts, I would suggest you adjust your settings to Medium and the draw distance no more than 128 as per this picture:

As a side note, if you try to enable shadows, ambiant occlusion and/or depth of field, you viewer will be even more slower. 

[Rolig Loon]

For general use, most people find that a draw distance of 128m is more than adequate.  That means you will be able to see things that are halfway across a sim from you.  As iCade says, setting your draw distance to any more than that just makes your graphics card work harder and slows down your viewer.  If you are in a mall or a store than has ziliion vendors, it can be smart to lower your draw distance to 64m or less for exactly that reason.  The Firestorm viewer makes it very easy to change your draw distance by putting that control in the Quick Preferences button that's on your lower task bar.

[Rolig Loon]

This thread is a continuation of http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Getting-Started/My-computer-is-running-slow/qaq-p/2011091 and http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Technical/My-computer-is-running-extremely-slow-what-can-I-do-to-make-it/qaq-p/2011027.  Please do not keep creating more threads for the same question.  When you do that it pushes other people's questions off the main page and denies them service.  It also makes it hard for us to see what other people have already suggested to help you.  If you need to add to your original question, click on the Options link in the upper right corner of your question and select EDIT. Please do NOT start a new thread.