Jsut joined SL why does this game run so slow?

[Eveningdust]

This game is sooooo slow loading! I don't understand how you can play it.

[Coby Foden]

It's possible that your computer is too slow. Second Life is quite demanding beast for computers. Please post your computer info here so we can see what you have.

You can get the info from the viewer menu: "Help, About Second Life". Copy and paste the info here. Thank you.

[Bree Giffen]

Here are the system requirements for Secondlife.

 

http://secondlife.com/support/system-requirements/?lang=en-US

[steph Arnott]

Could be many reasons,your computer is not upto the specification required, your Broad Band is slow, your anti virus program is checking every update from SL, etc

[Sassy Romano]

Aside from what the others have said, I suspect that you have a graphics card that's simply not up to the job.  I'll guess at it being an Intel integrated graphics since they are the absolute worst.

The other thing to realise about Second Life is that it's not a game in the sense of what you might be used to.  (I'm not going into the debate about whether Second Life is a game or not) but in "games" that you may be used to, they comprise highly optimised, pre-rendered content that is installed onto your PC.

Second Life differs since the content here is made by us, yes, US, the residents - we make SL, not by a gaming company and it is downloaded when needed and rendered.

As such, the content isn't necessarily as optimised as it should or could be and it's certainly not pre-downloaded ready to instantly pop onto the screen.  As a result, your network connection needs to be adequate but that's usually the least of the important factors, graphics card being right up there at the top.

I have a high end PC, I have absolutely no problems running SL but there are always places that take longer to render, especially the scenes with lots of objects and textures.

[Stephi Catnap]

Its sometimes slow when you log in to a new place for the first time.. once you visit that place again everythings much quicker, or could be your PC

 

[MoiselleErin Teardrop]

SL didn't used to be so slow. Then they started adding updates and tons of silly useless features and finally it slowed down. I imagine SL is probably a lot of fun still if one has all these requirements but who wants to update their machine just to get into any particular game?Yeah there are older viewers but to see the latest and greatest stuff you need really modern stuff or you have to do a bunch of fine tuning in preferences. It becomes more of a nightmare than anything.

 

[Sassy Romano]

---

MoiselleErin Teardrop wrote:

... but to see the latest and greatest stuff you need really modern stuff 

 

---

Just to comment on that, you really need to NOT have a typical cheap but modern laptop with an integrated graphics card, the worst option for SL.

This is important because you can go out today and buy a brand new laptop (or desktop) which is 64 bit, SSD drive, lots of memory, Windows shiny, whatever and then try to run SL on the most basic graphics capability of all and wonder why "this game runs so slow".

It would be like buying the most shiny new dual oven cooker with super spiffy hobs, extractor fan, plate warmers and trying to cook when all that was inside was a candle.

[KezarBane]

I have this issue too, the worst graphics card available so I am on a break from SL until I get a new laptop.

[Siggy Barbosa]

I got on for the first time in a good number of months last night and it ran llike absolute crap. I notice the latest SL viewer is hugely different too. I'm running the same system I always have and the last time I got on, it ran far better. 

[fallenidols]

Compaq Presario Cq56-112nr

windows 7 home premium service pack 1

8 gb of ram

[Marigold Devin]

Welcome to Second Life Forums, fallenidols, and indeed to Second Life.

Useful information for us to try and help you would be:

Type of graphics card?

Type of broadband service? (Speed test?)

Do not run Second Life wirelessly - this can slow you down/ cause you to disconnect.

Did you read the Second Life System Requirements page, the link of which was given earlier in this thread? 

Also, does Second Life run slow for you everywhere, or just if you are on a busy sim? In places where there is a lot of information to render, scripts are running, this can slow you down enormously.

 

[fallenidols]

I read and meet the recommended requirements.

 

But my Graphics Card is ATI Radeon HD 4250

and I do use home wi-fi.

SL works fine on my Dell Inspiron 11 2-in-1.

[Madelaine McMasters]

The Radeon HD 4250 in your Compaq Presario scores 106 on the graphics benchmark used by this website...

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

The Dell Inspiron 11 graphics system (Intel HD Graphics 4400) benchmarks at 545, more than five times faster.

I think this explains why you're getting poor performance from the Presario.

[fallenidols]

Thank you.

[Sap996]

In my laptop its also running slow my laptop is not a gaming laptop, but I think it can run Second life fine because it  ran other more demanding pc games fine, please need help.

my laptop got

AMD A8 6410 clocked at 2.0Ghz quadcore with inbuilt 512mb graphics 

8 gb ram 

2 gb deidcated graphics AMD Radeon HD8570

Wifi Speed around 25mbs.

 

[cykarushb]

@Sap996, alright, SL is very CPU intensive and due to something i cant remember with how SL's render engine works, it requires a processor with solid single core performance. And that APU does not have very good single core performance at all.

Its very similar overall to my Athlon 5350. Which is a 30$ SOC APU for AM1. Compared to a processor like an i5 4460 with a really good single core score, note the single thread rating being nearly double that of the A8 or my Athlon.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2266&cmp[]=2195&cmp[]=2230

Thats likely your bottleneck with SL, SL likes single core performance while many games can work with a lot more cores. GTA V for example runs fine on this Athlon 5350 with a 750ti, but SL doesnt most of the time.

The HD8570 isnt a bad card either but its nothing special, its between GT730/740 performance (for people who dont know how to reference AMD cards since their naming schemes are awful). It will handle SL fine and dandy, even the lower power mobile variant.

Since the A8 6410 is BGA, its not upgradable, really you're just going to have to suffer with that single core performance. Note that in SL 15-25 fps is considered pretty playable. I get ~15fps average with the Athlon alone using the integrated R3 graphics, simply because the CPU bottleneck is that bad. Adding the 750ti brings that to maybe 25-35fps on average. But there are people with i7 7700k's overclocked, dual 1080ti's and all that, and theyre still getting sub 60fps because thats just how SL is.

[Sap996]

thanks I guess I have to play second life in other pcs, so for now no sl.

[Sap996]

but If I had gotten 15 fps I would be happy but I am getting 1-2 fps with this specs is this normal ?

 

[Cackle Amore]

Assuming you're using the default viewer from the site, go to preference, find the graphics page, and turn off shadows. For some reason they thought it was a good idea to have shadows be on by default, atleast that tends to be the case anytime I've used it in recent years, and shadows are quite a heavy drain of power since it's all real-time

Edited November 9, 2017 by Digit Gears

[ChinRey]

5 hours ago, Sap996 said:

but If I had gotten 15 fps I would be happy but I am getting 1-2 fps with this specs is this normal ?

It depends a lot on where in SL you are. The fps you can achieve in Second Life depends mainly on how well optimized the content you see around you. Some content creators and land owners are quite lag concious, others don't seem to grasp the idea at all.

Even the lightest SL environment will be quite a bit heavier on your gpu than the average modern computer game though. There are always so much more content for your computer to handle here than in a focused game build.

Can I ask you a favor btw?

Go to http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Coniston/191/186/1803 and see what fps you can get there. That area is designed to be about as light to render as a crowded SL scene can possibly be and it would be itneresting to hear if you can get a decent fps there. You may want to type ctrl+shift+Y to force midday light settings there though. One of the tricks used to reduce the render load doesn't work very well with harsh light settings and light settings don't come much harsher than Second Life's default sunrise and sunset ones.

[Penny Patton]

On 2/4/2014 at 8:12 PM, Eveningdust said:

This game is sooooo slow loading! I don't understand how you can play it.

The biggest reason is that Second Life has never attempted to encourage people to optimize the content they create in SL, so content creators tend to do things like use too many large textures on every surface. The largest textures SL supports are 4BM in size. A dozen of those on every attachment worn by an avatar adds up fast. You need to download all of those textures the moment they come into draw distance, which sucks up bandwidth. The result is that you're hit with both graphics lag (low framerates and heavy stuttering as SL attempts to load textures and models) and heavy latency all the time.

As ChinRey points out, some people are conscious of these problems and attempt to craft environments that are easier to load and render, but these creators are few and far between. There's no easy solution until Second Life's developers decide to make a serious effort at mitigating the problem. I'd suggest a few sims that are good easier on the videocard but all of them are adult locations. Doomed Ship isn't too bad, but it's an older sim. It existed before mesh import was an option so it uses a lot of sculpts, a prim type which is not easy to render. Still, go there with a draw distance set to under 100 and you should see better performance than you'd experience in most SL locations. I'll post the SLURL below:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Gibson/117/23/754

[Anna Nova]

My graphic card (GTX 1080ti) scores 13496 in the passmark test (http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php), and sometime I get 20fps....

 

[Zeta Vandyke]

15 minutes ago, anna2358 said:

My graphic card (GTX 1080ti) scores 13496 in the passmark test (http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php), and sometime I get 20fps....

 

Have the same card and was on 17fps last night. I did have all settings to ultra and shadows on. Must say, even on 17FPS the game experience was still good enough.

[ChinRey]

11 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

Doomed Ship isn't too bad, but it's an older sim. It existed before mesh import was an option so it uses a lot of sculpts, a prim type which is not easy to render.

I think I should mention Vintage Village at Verdigris too:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Verdigris/61/43/71

It was made from prims and sculpts by Oriolus Oliva who later added a few meshes by Hattie Panacek. Both of those people are not only great artists but also masters at content optimization. Better hurry though. Oriolus is giving up and has offered the sim for sale. Some of his fans are trying to preserve it but it's 295 dollars a month in tier so it's going to be hard for them to finance. And if they can't do it,Vintage Village may be gone tomorrow.