Lag? 10 tips for a faster Second Life

[Maxim Ouachita]

Let's improve your experiences with Second Life. Nobody needs a super computer to enjoy Second Life. Just work with the following useful tips to run Second Life faster:

http://janicouachita.blogspot.com/2014/04/lag-10-tips-for-faster-second-life.html

[Drew Bhalti]

Setting the bandwidth above 1400 does nothing btw, it's a known bug.   so your example of 3000 is a bit off.  

[Penny Patton]

This is aimed more at content creators than the average user but too much texture memory use is a huge problem in SL.

Using too many large textures results in:

• SL taking longer to rez, since it has to download all those huge textures.
• Kills your framerates by exceeding your graphics card's VRAM.
• Prevents you from enabling shadows which also relies on VRAM.

 So, Content Creators, be responsible and use fewer, smaller textures. Don't waste texture memory by creating textures with huge empty spaces. Remember that the only way anyone can even see the full resolution of a 1024x1024 texture, even if their screen resolution is 1900x1080, is if that texture is filling almost their entire screen. That almost never happens unless you're talking a large wall or ground texture, or if you use a 1024x1024 texture to wrap around a large, complex model instead of multiple smaller textures.  For example, if it were possible to replace all jewlery textures in SL with a 64x64 texture, most people would never, ever notice.

 

Content creators should also try to avoid using "blended alpha", use "masked alpha" instead wherever possible. Masked alpha lacks all the problems present in blended (ie: textures flickering through each other) and is a lot easier to render, meaning higher framerates. Hair, plants, walls with holes in them, etcetera should all generally be using masked alpha instead of blended. Blended should be for things like water, smoke and light effects, and glass where you absolutely cannot get away with a solid window texture.

[Phoebe Avro]

You forgot the most important thing:- drop draw distance down to the minimum you need!

[Jenni Darkwatch]

Agreed for the most part, though one correction: Hair will look like crap with masked alpha. Reason: There's no way to simulate fine hair except with partial transparency. On the other hand, trees and plants can quite often be switched.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Jenni Darkwatch wrote:

On the other hand, trees and plants can quite often be switched.

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Be careful when you go around your sim though to change your sculpted or prim plant's alpha mode. Changing to alpha masking lowers the actual rendering cost, but it also changes the way LI is calculated. With alpha masking enabled, your sculpts and prims will be counted as mesh objects, with a potentially huge increase in LI.

[Jenni Darkwatch]

True Not a prob for me, but a good point.

[Sassy Romano]

Am I missing something about Avatar Imposters?

The advice to set avatar imposters to 1 seems to be opposite to the ideal of improving performance since that means that all BUT one avatars in a busy region will need to be fully rendered.  Setting it to much higher will allow the viewer to draw a low resolution 2D sprite rendering of more distant avatars than just one.

[Coby Foden]

The impostor setting means: "Maximum number of non-impostor avatars".

So for example setting it to 10, means that 10 avatars in the scene are rendered fully, all the rest will be rendered as impostors.

[Sassy Romano]

Yes, i'm sure the viewer used to present it the other way around?

Thanks though, I was right in what it did, just that the web page mentions "set imposters to 1" when it should really say "set NON imposters to 1" which is completely the opposite effect.

[Coby Foden]

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Sassy Romano wrote:

 

Thanks though, I was right in what it did, just that the web page mentions "set imposters to 1" when it should really say "set NON imposters to 1" which is completely the opposite effect.

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Yes, the web page "Ten tips for faster Second Life" indeed should have said "set non-impostor avatars" instead of "set impostors". Even the picture from the viewer preferences on that page shows "Max. # of non-impostor avatars".

The blog writer -->   (:matte-motes-whistle: :matte-motes-wink:) has been sloppy with the term in the text raising confusion.

[Snugs McMasters]

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Sassy Romano wrote:

"set imposters to 1"

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Why didn't I think of that long ago?

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Penny Patton wrote:

 

 So, Content Creators, be responsible and use fewer, smaller textures. Don't waste texture memory by creating textures with huge empty spaces.

 

Content creators should also try to avoid using "blended alpha", use "masked alpha" instead wherever possible. Masked alpha lacks all the problems present in blended (ie: textures flickering through each other) and is a lot easier to render, meaning higher framerates. Hair, plants, walls with holes in them, etcetera should all generally be using masked alpha instead of blended. Blended should be for things like water, smoke and light effects, and glass where you absolutely cannot get away with a solid window texture.

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Yeah... over the weekend I was messing with a full perm kit that had a 1024x1024 texture for an item the size of my ears... way too much.

 

Blended alpha versus masked alpha... how do I make each of these? This is one I was not aware of.

 

Use Image Sprites:

Here's a tip for HUD makers and others with state change items (like a button that changes when you click it):

Use one texture, and paint all the buttons and letters on it - like a grid from A to Z, 0 to 9, and some arrows.

- Then just use texture scaling and position to move it when its acted on.

In web work this is called 'sprites' and is used to make all of the UI graphics on a webpage one image, and then CSS styles crop and move the image so you just see parts here and there - it DRAMATICALLY SPEEDS UP image download.

If you examine the styles that come with JQuery you can see examples:

 

Imagine if every icon on that was a different file in your HUD. Everytime people clicked something, it would need to go download again. By putting them all in one file - you download once, the file stays small, and clicks are instant in changing the look of the item.

If you've ever noticed how "Contest Boards" take time to rez names between pages... that SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN. But their makers do not know this very common simple web-design trick, that also would work in SL. Every letter seen on one of those boards should be all in one common master texture file like above, not their own textures. Putting them all in one file would mean instant changes when new names come up for display - and a LOT LESS LAG.

 

- The same can be done to texture objects. If you have an object with a bunch of small 64x64 textures, combine them all into one file, and just scale and position the texture to show only the parts you need for a given face or given prop.

That's how this one is done:

That we should ALL recognize. But I almost never see this done for things like a collection fo linked props on a clothing item - like say a backpack with things attached to it.

[Codex Alpha]

Another good strategy would be to educate creators and land owners, and the creators of the props themselves to optimize their texture images so they load quickly, and are related to the size and use and tiling of said textures.

Downloading 20 x 2048MB images that are used to detail coffee cups, fence post ends, a 'freebie' box, a lightbulb, is most likely the main cause of lag on any parcel I enter.

Unless a visitor is looking at an object right up close,and it requires that level of detail, we could all go a long way to solving lag by not adding to it ourselves in our designs.