Viewer Graphic Settings?

[Sofiee Aiten]

Well, I built a PC and I can finally play SL on high with a great FPS! With my lats desktop, I played SL on the lowest setting and only got around 4 FPS. You can all imagine how over the moon I am right now. 

Anyway, now that I am in with the cool kids what are some ideal graphics settings on the viewer to enhance my Second Life experience? 

 

What are y'alls set to?

[Sassy Romano]

Ultra

[ChinRey]

With the SL Viewer I use default High most of the time to avoid lag (I'm rather sensitive to lag ) Sometimes I switch to ultra.

When I take pictures, I try both High and Ultra to see which works the best - the answer to that isn't always the obvious one.

With Firestorm I usually use High with ALM switched on. If the lag gets too bad, I sometimes go down to mid but usually I switch to a less heavy program, either the SL Viewer or UKanDo.

Of course, when I check my builds, I switch between different settings to get the best possible idea how they'll look to others.

 

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You didn't how much you've upgraded your graphics card but here are some general tips how to optimize performance:

• Maximum bandwidth (Preferences -> Setup in the SL Viewer, may be located elsewhere in other viewers). You probably want it to be somewhere between 1000 and 1500 but it can be an idea to experiment a bit. This is one of the settings where too much is just as bad as too little.
• Debug Settings - > mesh2MaxConcurrentRequests: Increase to at least 16 (I have mine set to 64). The default 8 is not nearly enough with the amount of mesh we have today.
• Mesh Objects Details (Preferences -> Graphics -> Advanced -> Objects or Debug Settings -> RendervolumeLODFactor). Try to keep it down, it adds a lot of extra load to your graphics card. 1-1.25 is enough to view all well made objects. Unfortunately there is still a lot of faulty mesh and sculpts around and you may have to increase the setting to compensate for that.
• Graphics -> Advanced -> Draw Distance. Probably the biggest resource sink for the poor graphics card. Try different settings to see what you're happy with.
• Graphics -> Advanced -> Advanced Lighting Model: Switch it on if it isn't by default. Yes, it adds quite a bit of load, but it's worth it!

 

Then some good/bad news: The SL experience isn't nearly as dependent on graphics quality as many people seem to think. Right after you've upgraded, you'll be amazed at how great everything looks but it won't take long before you get used to it and stop noticing. Same if you reduce graphics quality. It looks bad at first but soon you just mentally adjust to the situation.

Lag is a far more important user experience factor and it's a good idea to let the computer use at least some of its new-found powers to render the scene faster rather than in greater detail.

 

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Finally, this may be a bit off topic but speaking of user experience, the biggest potential improvement has nothing to do with graphics quality at all, it's the point of view:

http://pennycow.blogspot.no/2012/01/improving-sl-camera-short-version.html

and

http://blog.nalates.net/2011/07/24/second-life-camera-position-tips/

[Ohjiro Watanabe]

If you want some more settings to play with try Black Dragon viewer.