Can't move forward or backwards

[Dendail]

My W, D, and ↕ keys no longer function to allow me to move so I have to move my clicking with a mouse which is really annoying for me.  I didn't even change anything for this to occur so I have no idea how to fix this.  Please help.

[Lindal Kidd]

Hello @njamesn, and welcome to Second Life.

Social Island is a sort of special case.  There are actually several identical copies of Social Island, but there is one difference between them.  Once you leave Social Islands 1-5, you are counted as an "experienced Resident" and cannot return there.  Only "new" accounts and authorized volunteer helpers are allowed.  Social Islands 6-10 are open to all Residents, and you can go there freely.  Why is this, you ask?  LL is conducting a study to see if having live helpers, but excluding residents who may not have newcomers' best interests at heart, provides a better New User Experience.  Thank you for your participation as a guinea pig! (kidding).  You may find the Social Islands on your World Map (shortcut: CTRL+M).

As for lag, it might be your connection, or it might be your PC.  Or, it may simply be all the avatars running around a crowded place.  However, you should expect SL's performance in terms of frames per second to be much lower than other games you may be used to.  SL has to do a lot more downloading, because most of its content is user-generated.  It's not optimized for performance and can't be downloaded in advance while you watch a cutscene.

If you'd like our take on your computer's specs, get them from the viewer's Help/About Second Life menu item.  Copy and paste them here.

[Rolig Loon]

You didn't say which viewer you are using, so I cannot tell whether it's one that resets your Preferences automatically when you upgrade to a new version.  In any case, that may be what happened, so check the WASD setting in Preferences >>> General.  You may have just had an automatic upgrade and not noticed it.

 

[Dendail]

Hi thank you for the reply but I am using the Second Life Standalone Viewer if that helps?  Sorry I am still a bit of a newbie when it comes to Second Life so if that isn't the information you are looking for then could you elaborate?

Also I checked the Preferences >>> General and unfortunately I fail to see anything that would outright prevent my movement.  The "Affects Movement" key checked.

[Cinnamon Mistwood]

I dont use the official viewer, but the one I do use has a "move lock" button as an option.  I have incidentally clicked it and spent ages trying to figure out why I wasn't walking, running, flying even after a relog.   Perhaps you have the option as well.

[Dendail]

Finally figured it out.  I used the "Release Keys" under the advanced settings and it took off an item I had that allowed others to interact with me.  It's entirely possible the item bugged and couldn't register that one one was interacting with me any longer.  Thank you all for trying to assist me with this problem.

[Nalates Urriah]

On 4/22/2017 at 9:56 AM, Dendail said:

Hi thank you for the reply but I am using the Second Life Standalone Viewer if that helps?  Sorry I am still a bit of a newbie when it comes to Second Life so if that isn't the information you are looking for then could you elaborate?

Use the viewer's HELP->ABOUT... to collect info about your viewer and computer. Even the 'standard' Linden made viewer is constantly changing.

If the arrow keys stop working it can be lag, yours or the server's. If the <- and -> arrows spin you and the ­­­up and down arrows have no effect it is very likely lag.

[Darla Hadisson]

I know of someone who has been having the same kind of problem as of lately.  She was not only unable to walk when logged on, but after a few seconds it automatically logged her off.  What is going on?  Is it possible she has an outfit she is wearing that was causing problems?

Edited January 31, 2018 by Darla Hadisson

[Rolig Loon]

51 minutes ago, Darla Hadisson said:

I know of someone who has been having the same kind of problem as of lately.  She was not only unable to walk when logged on, but after a few seconds it automatically logged her off.  What is going on?  Is it possible she has an outfit she is wearing that was causing problems?

Almost certainly not. Usually when that sort of thing happens, it's almost always because you have a flaky Internet connection that is either dropping data packets or has spikes of long ping time. If either of those happen, your viewer gets out of sync with the SL servers, you experience severe lag or freezing, and then disconnect. The standard things to try are (1) get off of wireless -- use a direct cable or DSL connection to the Internet, and (2) reboot both your router and your modem, then restart everything.

[njamesn]

Hello I created a new online second life account social island is the first place to visit. Moving around was fine but when teleporting back to social island by selecting the home button with the house image on it the message I received said Teleport Failed. Sorry. you do not have access to that teleport destination. If any of you know what that means and what are the reasons why I cannot teleport to that destination again. Second life seems to be very unwilling to give me the accurate information I need. Secondly by going into destinations and finding newcomers friendly it teleport s me very successfully into social island 10. But as I got a brand new computer I would have thought there would be no problem moving about at all. But unfortunately the moving about isn't easy as it freezes or what you people call it lag? again no explanation why. Is it a lot to do with the internet connection downloading the graphics or is it the hardware in the PC? as I am being quite fussy when a new program has been download from the main website I do expect everything to work properly. Second life must be able to except all display cards not just the once they pick out. 

[Nalates Urriah]

@njamesn You are deliberately blocked from returning by the Lab. Once you leave the new, basic noob area you cannot go back.

SL has more than its fair share of jerks and griefers. They LOVE to take advantage of the new. So, like most games the Lab protects the new when they first come in.

As this was your first post, it is obvious you know little about SL and the Lab and what is going on or what they do. You probably should't have emphasized your ignorance.

When you travel from region to region you are literally moving information from server to server. The server you are leaving packages all the  information, sends it to the server handling the region you are entering, the info is unpacked, and then you begin moving again. The viewer attempts to extrapolate your movement while the servers do their thing. Some viewers provide the option to adjust or disable the extrapolation.

The more scripted things your avatar has attached, boat or whatever, the more data has to be packed and sent. All those scripts and their run-states have to be restored. Thus the server performance hit we see when an avatar enters a region.

Servers have a lot to do. As the number of people in a region goes up the data being handled increases exponentially. You can press Ctrl-Shift-1 to see Viewer Stats, which is stats in the viewer not about the viewer. You will be able to see when a region is overloading. For sailing and flying look at Script Run %, a server-side thing. Anything less than 40% and you'll start to have difficulty controlling the vehicle.

Most games download all the content before launching the game. The content in SL is well over 200 terabytes. As you move through SL you are constantly downloading stuff and discarding stuff. Power users here up their cache size to the maximum.

SL uses OpenGL has the graphics system. They constantly work at improving and perfecting the rendering in SL. However, Apple is moving away from OpenGL and pushing for their own system, Metal. ATI and Apple have weak support for OpenGL. It isn't a matter of SL supporting various graphics cards as much as it is the cards supporting OpenGL. It is also a problem of old versus new graphics. The Lab targets a wide window of graphics capabilities. Yet, they tend to avoid dependence on the newest features not in older cards. It is an ongoing revision/update process balancing old and new hardware versus performance.

[Lindal Kidd]

Hi @njamesn and welcome to Second Life!

When you create your SL account and log in to the virtual world for the first time, you go to one of several "Learning Islands".  Once you explore the tutorials there, you take a portal door and are teleported to one of several "Social Islands".  Here, there are other tutorials and a pavilion of portal doors that can take you to the wider world of SL.

As Nalates says, experienced SL residents are prevented from accessing any of the Learning Islands, and also Social Islands 1-5, to keep out those who like to prey on (or at least harass) newcomers.  Once you, the new resident, leave Social Island you are considered an "experienced resident" and can't get back there.

However, several of the Social Islands (6-10) ARE open to all residents.  If you want a refresher on some basics, you can teleport there.

There are also resident-run help areas for newcomers.  You'll find several of them in the "Newcomer Friendly" section of the Destinations Guide.  Some of my favorites are Caledon Oxbridge University, New Citizens Inc., and New Resident Island.

To run well, SL needs both a fairly capable computer AND a fast, reliable internet connection.  Both Nvidia and AMD Radeon graphics cards work well, although Nvidia has a reputation for having the fewest issues.  Integrated Intel graphics can also work, but not the very earliest versions.

Even the best computer and fastest internet won't run Second Life at the kinds of frame rates you may be used to with other games, because so much non-optimized, user-generated content is constantly having to be downloaded.  In low lag areas, such as high up in the air above 1,000m, you can sometimes get frame rates over 100 fps.  In the same region at ground level, where there is much more to be rendered, that can drop to 20 fps or even less, especially in crowded places.