Tips and Ideas To Help My My SL Experience Better

[RoseBeMine]

Hi,

I'm around 2 weeks old to SL and I was wondering if there are any tips or tricks aka tweaks that I could do to my viewer to help the performance. Example minimise lag and loading of things?

Sometimes my viewer lags badly and sometimes it's not to bad. Sometimes some people avis load and sometimes they don't load at all!

Thanks.

[Canoro Philipp]

you can turn down your graphics under Me > Preferences > Graphics

if you dont see many options, click the advanced button and you can slide all those effects to the bottom, then try turning them up until you feel comfortable with the balance between quality and performance.

also, you can go the the Setup tab in the preference window, and increase Maximum Bandwidth, so everything loads faster.

[Charolotte Caxton]

What viewer are you using and which graphics card?

[RoseBeMine]

I'm using a viewer downloaded from project snowstorm (Second Life 3.2.5) and Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller. My partner is going to buy a new graphics card for my computer soon.

 

 

[Poenald Palen]

OK, for those who want the short version, bold will lead you to faster answers.  For those wanting to read a tiny bit of a more 'power user' writing (but only slightly! I am not king of all nerds....although when I want to move fast...I turn off a lot, no water and so on....I have both the advanced and develope menu's enabled at all times and use them alot! I am not a n00b here!)

Gosh...I turn off texture downloads if I want to move fast. If I let everything download (sometimes) it will sort of be a good experience with little lag. But, a person TP's in, then it lags. More to load. My PC is old, slow...well, almost everything! The GPU upgrade changed things dramatically though! BUT, network stuff can be an issue.

But, enabling advanced and developement menu's is maybe something some are afraid of doing. Sometimes you can change things and have a hard time finding out how to change them back.

So,  my simplist tips to use so you can get better constant performance (frames per second) tonight/today are:

1. Turn off uneeded software and make sure you don't have network activity (if you share an internet connection, just check the little lights and ask people if they can reschedule or find a time they are not using the net) and make sure updates, software downloaders/virus database updaters etc. are not running and hogging up bandwidth.

2. Simply reduce the size of the SL window to get a bit better overall graphics performance.

 

If you want to read some more about monitor resolutions for helping you today (before you get the GPU), then read below.

You may also like changing the monitors resolution to a lower setting. 800x600 works quicker for me, but exact numbers are sort of a bit hard to list here because monitors are different dimensions etc. Most of the time this is very very easy, has a failsafe 'do you want to keep these settings. Click in 15 seconds" type of message. If anything goes wrong and you cant see this (i.e try not to set yoru moniter lower than 630x480, and even that resolution can cause some problems and SL client sometimes does not run with this because all the User Interface bits are off the screen) AND one more tip. Before you set your monitor to 800X600 or around abouts, you should really luanch the SL client, log in, and set the preferences (ctrl+p is a quick way, otherwise the 'Me' menu might help...they still call it that in snowstorm?) for the UI scale lower (to the left) in order to see all the buttons and options. The new 3.0 series looks like this might not be needed, but just in case. Everything gets bigger and a bit more square/pixelated. But, you get faster frames per second. SL sort of maxes out at 45, that is what the simulators put out and many animations are not higher than that! So, you may be able to get 100 frames per second with a nice USD$200 GPU, but SL is pushing out 45 frames per second...so, you get more or less the same look as a slightly lower cost card...well, from what I have heard. I have not seen it with all the bells and wistles turned on (love shadows! hate my ATI card for not doing well with this.

 

Which brings me to another sort of well known wierdness. SL sort of works better with nVidia cards due to the relationship offered (or at least some kind of way nVidia uses OpenGL...uh, this is all code and programming stuff basically)  or some other oddity in how nVidia is with thier drivers. ATI have more mhz for the dollar, from my quick checks of prices now and then. I went with ATI. I regret it! I did the first time I went with ATI as well! I like the card, I like the way other games look, I like the price to performance....but for SL....wish I could have got the nVidia that is equal mhz and ram speed. I do NOT like the lack of shadows. I hate it. I iike all the new SL lighting and shadows make so much of a difference...I get like 2 frames per second (which is sort of normal) BUT...still switch them on for some pics! I can't use shadows now! It seemed like every other updated viewer seems to not support my ATI card for shadows! It did before...now, they will not work. SO, for SL only....might as well get a nVidia.

What would I do if I looked for a card today? I would look for:

1. 600mhz at least of clock speed.

2. nVidia (if it was ONLY for SL)

3. At least DirectX 10

4. DDR3 (or maybe DDR4 or 5 is out by now) ram (though I have heard otherwise...some seem to think these ram chips where unstable...so, maybe ignore this. BUT, they are usually with faster speed of GPU ram loading...so, I think see this on high performance cards.

5. Visiontek. LIfetime warrenty. Plus, the one I got lasted....but I pulled the side of my PC! I lost one to heat, so never again. The PC is loader, but I also put it under a desk to shut it up a bit. Not only that, but cooler air seems to be down there...so it is happeir. Visionteks lifetime warrenty is a good idea to me, but maybe they are bumns and never pay up? Lol, I know a not well known ram company DID honor thier warranty, and the ram worked fine...so I trust this company as well.This card had way better cooling fan, the other had a tiny thin heat sink....it died It was almost as quick as the HD whatever I have now, though did not have the openGL or directx support this newer one has!

6. Good reviews and so on, see if it overclocks well or whatever you are into. If you wish to overcock (i don't, I just don't see the point for SL lol. BUT, shadows working might have got me to do it...they stopped supporting them for my card and I suspect it might have also been that the card is an older one and a tiny bit slower...sad. No shadows .

 Uh....yeah, keep a modern 600mhz+ nVidia GPU in the PC and keep those shadows! I actually have a more detailed response with shortcuts to really push the performance up. BUT, you end up with a half grey view and no sky, no water and so on...it is ugly, but fast and for racinig cars! lol. So...I will not dig it out right now.

EDIT: this might help a bit, a chart of GPU card/chip typical performance with SL! http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Typical_Frame_Rate_Performance_by_Graphics_Card/GPU. I see my card is on there, and yes...sub 20 frames per second! BUT, I have a slower system bus and RAM, plus a single core CPU! So, some must be getting better performance. I can get it over 20 though. But using 800x600 resolution, turning off shaders, turning off water and going to very lightly built sims that are restarted often for performance...and being alone. I use this for testinig high speed driving...so, sort of essential. I get 30 frames per second+ at points, but mostly around 20-30 with it all sparten like in the looks department...it is like a broken PS1 on a really nice tight resolution TV! lol.

[Innula Zenovka]

Since it's an intermittent problem -- you say sometimes it lags badly and other times not -- the problem might be to do with your ISP (though it's difficult to say on the basis of the information you've provided -- anyone's viewer is going to run slower in a crowded club than on an empty sim, for example, and if there's a lot of textures to download, that takes time, too).

Following these suggestions might help.

But since you say you're hoping to upgrade your graphics card, I agree that a good Nvidia card will make a big difference, as will -- of course -- a fast cable connection.   If you get an Nvidia card, following the advice here about tweaking some graphics settings -- basically telling the viewer not to bother with some things and to let the card handle it, instead -- makes a big difference.   On V3 and V3-based TPVs I can increase my framerate by about 20% or so, simply by changing those settings.

[Venus Petrov]

Welcome to SL and the forum!

There are wiki pages full of helpful information.  For example, here is one that provides tips on reducing lag.  As with all wiki pages, you can use the search box on the left column to find information on a whole host of things.  Bookmark that page.

I hope you enjoy your SL experiences!

[RoseBeMine]

Thanks for the help. I think my best bet is geting a new graphics card.

[LoveAngeL Lyre]

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RoseBeMine wrote:

Thanks for the help. I think my best bet is geting a new graphics card.

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That 's that best if you can handle the cost. However follow at fist the suggestions you got here.

[Bree Giffen]

My tip is to 'turn off people'. I don't mean being ill-mannered and unsocial. I mean pressing ctrl-alt-shift-4 to turn off all avatars. This makes the world load faster (at least for me) and when everything has loaded I turn people back on with the same key press.

[Ceka Cianci]

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Bree Giffen wrote:

My tip is to 'turn off people'. I don't mean being ill-mannered and unsocial. I mean pressing ctrl-alt-shift-4 to turn off all avatars. This makes the world load faster (at least for me) and when everything has loaded I turn people back on with the same key press.

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i wish that worked for chat too lol

[Rhys Goode]

In my case, I found that a lot of the lag was associated of the wifi router I was using to connect to the internet.  BTW, wifi is specifically not recommended somewhere, but I know a lot of folk who use it because they have no practical alternative.

At least in SL, wifi "noisiness" results in packet loss, and packet loss can give terrible lag and "rubber banding".  You can see packet loss info in SL from the Help menu > about SL, or with the statistics window, ctrl-shift-1. 

If you are regularly higher than about 1%, packet loss is likely the source of a lot of your lag.  Did a lot of travel recently, found that some wifi connections gave almost no packet loss, and some gave 5 or 10%.  The later were unusable, even when the download bandwidth tested out high.

Good luck!