Why is my avitar always a cloud?

[Dudesky Lemon]

Ever since the last viewer updatre, my avitar has been a cloud and the locations and other avitars take forever to rez. I'm running Win 7, and updated my graphic chip.  Any suggestions?

[Madelaine McMasters]

Hi Dudesky,

This sounds like classic "bake fail", and maybe it's just a coincidence it happened right after an update.

Here's a page that deals with bake fail, and is applicable to most SL viewers...

http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/fs_bake_fail

The slow rezzing for other avatars makes me wonder if your update settings changed. Make sure your Draw Distance hasn't increased.

And finally, I usually throw the following link at almost everybody, because so many problems are caused by SL's finicky nature with regard to internet connection quality (not speed). There are lots of good ideas in Nalate's article that are worth knowing about, just in case...

http://blog.nalates.net/2011/10/26/troubleshoot-your-sl-connection/

Good luck!

[Rolig Loon]

The fact that your computer has a graphics chip instead of a dedicated graphics card may have something to do with it.  SL residents with Intel graphics chip often have performance issues.  As Maddy says, your immediate problem with bake fail is most likely due to an unreliable Internet connection, but if this is a chronic problem you will probably not get much better performance unless you lower both your quality slider setting and your draw distance to values that your chip can handle.