Random lagging on Second Life?

[HenryCrawford]

Hi people!

 

I've been thinking about something I've been wanting to ask about for some time now...The seemingly random amount of lag in certain areas of Second Life. Now don't get me wrong! Second Life is a great game, though it has a few annoying glitches which could be fixed by Linden Labs if they bothered to listen to their players more often. And yes, I realize I could be posting this to a Linden Lab Employee, but I wanted to get the opinions of players about some of the regions in Second Life which lag worse than others.

 

Now...If this thread is not appropriate for this area of the forums, then I will gladly allow a Linden Lab Employee to move it to a more appropriate location. I would not be happy if the thread was locked, but I understand how this can happen sometimes.

 

So onto my point, which is...The amount of lag in certain areas of Second Life (Such as Dead End and other zones designed for active role-play and some of the more crowded regions) is very high and as a result, I am usually forced to lower my graphical settings to avoid crashing or lagging while I explore these areas. And my question about this apparent random lag is...Why is the lag heavier in certain regions and in other places, not so much?

 

Any form of discussion as long as it doesn't result in a flame war is welcome. :manvery-happy:

[Puregriefing]

Hello.

Do you have a list of SIMs you are determining lag?

My Second Life works pretty well all the time in all SIMs. One reason is my computer. It is Highend - like recommended for a griefer. Another fact is the internet connection. Highend too for sure.

Some SIMs are using different windlight settings and objects. Mesh is not heavily loading like sculptures, particles and so on.

The question is, how do you realize that you have lag? Maybe its your graphics you are complaining about.

Wish you all the best solutions,

Griefer Sandra

[HenryCrawford]

Hello, Griefer Sandra!

 

I've never known a griefer to be helpful before. As for my problem, I am not sure I will be able to remember all the names of the sims I gpo to, but Dead End and the two sims on either side of it is one of them. Another one is one of those default home locations which your character teleports to if they do not have a home location or if their current home location is unavailable. I've been to other active role play sims (Like Cadair Braden or however you spell it and Syn City). The welcome areas for those regions is fine, but once I enter the role play area, the lag tends to spike. And unfortunately, lowering my graphical settings does little to nothing to get rid of the lag. And unlike you, I do not have a high-end computer. It's not bad and quite good actually. But I am certain it is not high-end. I am just wondering if I am the only person who is having this random lagging problem. I am certain I am not but I am naturally curious.

[Theresa Tennyson]

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HenryCrawford wrote:

Hi people!

 

I've been thinking about something I've been wanting to ask about for some time now...The seemingly random amount of lag in certain areas of Second Life. Now don't get me wrong! Second Life is a great game, though it has a few annoying glitches which could be fixed by Linden Labs if they bothered to listen to their players more often. And yes, I realize I could be posting this to a Linden Lab Employee, but I wanted to get the opinions of players about some of the regions in Second Life which lag worse than others.

 

Now...If this thread is not appropriate for this area of the forums, then I will gladly allow a Linden Lab Employee to move it to a more appropriate location. I would not be happy if the thread was locked, but I understand how this can happen sometimes.

 

So onto my point, which is...The amount of lag in certain areas of Second Life (Such as Dead End and other zones designed for active role-play and some of the more crowded regions) is very high and as a result, I am usually forced to lower my graphical settings to avoid crashing or lagging while I explore these areas. And my question about this apparent random lag is...Why is the lag heavier in certain regions and in other places, not so much?

 

Any form of discussion as long as it doesn't result in a flame war is welcome. :manvery-happy:

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A lot of it has to do with the textures that are used on objects and avatars. Your viewer will only allocate a certain amount of memory to loading textures and if this fills up it needs to clean out some of them and load others, and this takes time. Most 3D computer game-ish environments are made by a small number of people working together who optimize things like textures used, but with Second LIfe you'll come across places with objects made by literally dozens of different people, all of whom use different textures and many of them use larger files than are absolutely necessary.

I find this especially bad in regions with a lot of small mesh objects like stores and gacha yard sales and I have a theory: Before, small objects generally used more prims and therefore you couldn't have as many objects in a region than you can with mesh objects because a small mesh can be made very efficiently as far as physics goes. However, the efficient meshes may well be coupled with inefficient textures, so the fact that the sim can support more objects means that the number of textures increases and therefore lag increases.

[Lewis Luminos]

Try to take note of whether the lag happens only when facing a certain direction. If so, you can bet your bottom dollar that the area you're looking at is full of (usually un-necessary) 1024x1024 textures and sculpt-maps. If it is variable you may be looking at too many avatars wearing too many of those textures.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Another possible cause is too many scripts or poorly written scripts. Role play areas generally have a lot of scripts going either in the objects on the sim or in the weapons, HUDS, and other things people wear there. Scripts can be written in different ways to achieve many of the same results.  Some use server resources more efficiently than others and some are lag monsters.

There is also collision of physical objects.  If a lot of that is happening it can cause lag too.  A lot of weapon projectiles, vehicles and other things that are common to role play sims are physical and can cause collisions.

In short, a well built and run role play sim will have minimum lag because they use textures, scripts and physical objects effectively.  But even the best can be laggy if there are a lot of people there that are laden with lots of huds, fancy textured clothing, and are using a lot of scripted things such as weapons.

[Sassy Romano]

I sometime suffer from weird graphics lag where I can be reduced to a slide show frame rate from otherwise good rates, it's usually in complex areas where there are complex, mesh, sculpt builds.

What's odd is that turning off advanced lighting will instantly make it jump back to good double digit frame rates and then I can turn advanced lighting back on with no reduction in frame rate.

I have no explanation for this.