Genesis Montagne

It's cold and snowing in my RL, so I've escaped to my SL beach house to live in denial.

I know this is an older post but as someone who has used an A10-4600 APU powered laptop to play SL I felt I needed to pipe up. I was regularly able to get very playable framerates using my laptop in "High" and even occassionally higher settings with shadows enabled. Of course much of this has to do with how capable you are with tweaking your graphics settings. Remember that draw distance is ALWAYS a major killer of performance. I find that if I maintain my draw distance at 88 meters for general use you can use one of these A10's with shadows enabled quite comfortably. There are other tweaks people should use to make their experience a better one. Here is a post by me outlining the settings I use to get nice stable performance in Ultra from one of my more powerful systems. The same principles can be applied to any system to help improve SL performance. Of course you are always able to increase draw distance in calmer environments or when taking photographs and it will work reasonably well in those circumstances for short time periods. Sadly, one area I can't give you advice on is the state of AMD drivers on Linux as the laptop I mention above came preinstalled with Windows 8 and was upgraded to 8.1 by myself. I know in the past AMD drivers were less than efficient for OpenGL based software like SL on the Windows platform but I would say if they are at least "decent" the power of these little chips are impressive and make for a very enjoyable SL experience. Good luck to you on your purchase!

He had a funny and effective security orb that I still have and use from time to time. It had a small sentinal that would chase intruders away. I'm unsure if he is still in world but he had a small store parcel on mainland not long ago. I haven't checked recently to see if it is still there.

I don't mean to revive a dead post but wanted to add a bit of information. Actually, Lumiya has never been free on Android. It is a one time paid app ($2.95) and it is then free to use after the initial purchase. I'm not sure what cryptic was charged but I've had Lumiya installed for over a year now and its been great for accessing SL when no computer is available and other than the initial purchase price I've never been charged other fees. There is an iOS and Android app that is out there that does charge a monthly fee to use, I believe its called Mobile Grid (unsure?) but that is a different program from Lumiya on Android. I believe Mobile Grid's fee is 250L$ per month. There are other options as well depending on what type of phone you have. You didn't state what type of phone you have so I have no idea what to recommend for you. Good luck!

Thank you Rinnie! We love you here at Sublime and hope you come back again and again.

Hello Shilo, I know this is an older thread but I'm hopeful I can still be of help to you or others who have similar questions. I have a system with lesser specs than yours and regularly get higher frame rates than you listed. Tweaking SL graphics settings to get best performance can be difficult to figure out. I regularly get high frame rates in crowded areas by using these general theories when setting up my graphics in any viewer. FYI, as odd as this seems I regularly see better performance using LL viewer over Firestorm. My go to viewers are as follows Catznip for general use, LL viewer if I want great performance using materials/shadows and advanced lighting settings. Please note I am showing you higher quality settings as I believe your system is capable of using them. Less powerful systems should drop Shadows/reflections/Draw Distance/Object details and Sky quality to help with their experience I set my graphics preferences as follows and they work well for me and countless others I have helped over the years. I'm going to use Linden Labs release viewer in this example but the settings will work in other viewers as well. The buttons may just be in different spots. I'll be going down the graphics settings from Left side to Right if this is helpful for you to follow along. 1. Enable Advanced mode under your graphics tab in preferences, you'll find that button on the bottom toward the right side of the preference window. Left Side 2. I have nearly every option selected on the left side. All but "Depth of Field" (Not because it bogs me down, but because I don't care for it.) So to be clear I have Transparent Water, Bump mapping and shiny, Local Lights, Basic shaders, Atmospheric shaders, Advanced Lighting Model and Ambient Occlusion enabled. I believe your system is more than powerful enough to do the same. 3. I usually have Sun/Moon + Projectors enabled and Reflections set to Everything as well as Avatar Physics set to High. In the below screen shot I have lowered these settings to Sun/Moon and All Avatars & Objects in order to eek out additional fps. Right Side of the Graphics Control Panel 4. Draw Distance: This is the NUMBER ONE killer of SL performance. It is also the biggest stressor on your computer system, CPU & Graphics Card. Just because you can set your draw distance to 512 or 1024 meters doesn't mean you should. If you are in a busy area, it is always best to drop your draw distance to something reasonable. To give you an idea, I rarely bring my draw distance above 96 meters unless I am using an SL vehicle and need the additional view range to manage terrain/curves/obstacles. In many situations I keep it at 88 meters and up it only if I need to. SL needs to load every individual object in a scene separately and therefore taxes both the CPU and graphics cards accordingly. Learning to keep your draw distance in check will make your experience so much better. 5. Max. Particle Count. Particles can also be a stressor, Sims and locations with heavy particle use will lag a viewer. In fact, particles cause lag to the viewer and not the server as they are drawn viewerside only. Dropping the count down to the 4,000 or 2,000 range can also be helpful. Mine are set to much lower as at the moment I am in a particle heavy area and wanted to limit them. 6. The following settings can be left on high without sliding the bars all the way to the edge. Its hard to explain so I'll post a picture to show you what I mean. Notice how Objects, Flexiprims, Avatars & Terrain are set to High but the sliders are not completely maxed. Its a subtle difference but every fps counts. You'll also notice that I have Trees turned all the way down. The tree setting is for LL Trees, not sculpted or mesh trees you see in 99% of SL. Very few people use LL trees and unless you are on a sim that uses them, this should just be turned as low as possible. Additionally, you will see that my Sky settings are set to Mid. Sky is another setting which will greatly impact your performance. I only raise my Sky detail if I am taking pictures or enjoying a Sunrise/sunset/starry night and want the full effect of the situation. I would suggest you do this as well in order to obtain best performance. 7. Avatar Imposters should be enabled and will actually help your performance not hinder it. Hardware skinning I leave on as it has caused me issues disabling it. Avatar cloth is really not necessary, it was a neat feature not widely used particularly with sculpt clothing and I don't believe it works with mesh either and thus is not worth the extra horsepower. Hardware Settings 8. Anisotropic Filtering I leave disabled, it even states in the viewer this will slow you down. If your goal is increased FPS, cut this as well. 9. My anti aliasing is disabled...if I do enable it I do not raise it past the base of 2x. 10. Enable Vertex Buffer Objects: Your card is new, so it should work ok even though it is an ATI which has had trouble with SL in the past due to their previously lax support of OpenGL. Much has changed over the years and ATI has vastly improved their support of OpenGL and I would argue is a better supporter of the Opensource community as a whole these days than Nvidia. Play with this setting with your Statistics bar open and see what performance you get enabled and disabled and use whichever works best. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Enabled will give you the best performance. 11. Max your texture memory as I'm sure your card has more than enough to spare. 12. A lot of comments on here mention your network speed. I agree with the advice you were given there but am doubtful that network speed is the cause of your drop in frame rates. Network speed would likely be responsible for slow loading and rubberbanding and bad sim crossings as well as teleport failures. I hope this was at least a bit helpful to you. Please feel free to contact me in world if you have additional questions or would like to try some different tweaks. Genesis

Angel Alphaville wrote: No it didn t help. Well, I suppose its good that I didn't promise it would, right? You put in the same bag people from opposing sides in a debate that is almost religious. I did nothing but offer a suggestion to those who were having difficulty adjusting. As for a religious debate, I have little time for it as I have more important things to worry about in life than to elevate a UI to such a level. Moreover, it's clear which "side" you are, in other words, it's clear you haven t even used V2 at all. I have no idea what "side" you are referring to, if you are assuming that I was a fan of the 1.x interface then I can happily tell you that you have no idea what you are talking about. I have been an SL resident for 6yrs and have used nearly every viewer out there, many on a regular basis. From LL releases including Developer, Snowstorm to Nicolaz, Henri, Emerald, Cool, Kirstens, Dolphin, Imprudence, Firestorm, Phoenix, Restrained, Catznip, Exodus and Singularity. I don't mince words, if I was a fan of 1.x I'd have stated so. I preferred the Viewer 2 interface because it was cleaner and more refined but all of them have their strengths and weaknesses. I like the 3.2 interface as I like the ability to relocate my buttons and customize my viewer to meet my needs, I also like the ability to completely remove it if I don't want it there. The separate windows are an annoyance but nothing I won't eventually get used to. I would have preferred if they maintained the "drawer" concept while allowing us the ability to move things around. But hey, I don't have the dev team on speed dial so I'll make do. I am not afraid to learn new interfaces as I enjoy playing with technology. The fact that I don't whine about changes and simply adjust does not place me in any camp. Save your fanatacism for someone else. Use my suggestions to make do or ignore them, downgrade or use a different viewer. I honestly could care less as its your personal choice and none of my business. Thankfully there are tons of options out there for us to make use of that will keep those of us who just want to enjoy SL (people like me) out of this holy war some feel the need to take part in. Enjoy your fight, but I'd advise you to relax just a little, k?

Ceka Cianci wrote: I am constantly looking at skins..i think i'll start making a notecard of the good mens skins i see when i am looking.. i am always coming passed them in my searches.. i always hear how men have the hardest time finding good skins..a lot are tucked away in stores where the creator makes both male and female.. i'm curious..when men look for skins do the mostly look in the mens only stores for them more than they do a store that would be for both male and female? i always see a small selection of them compared to womens skins in most of the stores..i'm wondering if that just turns men away to larger selection stores? or do they look at all the options.. i know you can't answer for all men..it's something i end up asking just to get a good idea..because i think you guys could benefit from some of us hard core shoppers..we are in every nook and cranny of these places.. and i'm sure the creators would enjoy you finding them as well hehehe *winks* As you said, I can't answer for all men but when I shop for skins I am extremely picky about what I purchase. I, like many men, do not change my skin often. I believe I've done a hand full of upgrades in 6yrs on SL. From a pure cost perspective I've noticed that there tend to be fewer low cost/high quality skins available for men than women. My most recent skin cost me over 2,000L$ for one bald, one hair base set, no shape or frills. In comparison I have seen several high quality female skins on the market for 800-1,200L$. I think that many skin designers know that men upgrade less frequently and thus the cost penalty. As for where or how I shop, I did what many do, I asked for suggestions from friends (usually female friends). Researched popular skin designers on the Marketplace along with conducting my own searches (for ebony, black, african american, african, ethnic, etc.) as well. I also check to see if some of the popular designers of female skins also serve male customers. Once I found a designer that seemed to produce quality products I'd visit their store to try demos. I also searched in-world using much of the same criteria until I found something that I liked. Hope that helped :smileywink:

First people complained and screamed about the sidebar being there in the first place. Now its gone and people are screaming that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Just proof that you cannot please everyone no matter how you try. But there is help for those of you who are missing the "old/new" interface. SL remembers the locations of windows once you open and place them. If you like you can open each window, move and size them in the area where your sidebar used to be. Close them and re-open them to find they are exactly where you left them. Granted, its not exactly what you had before, the Tab Buttons will no longer slide out from the sides of the viewer but its close and leaves us with a workable UI for both camps. Hope this helped a bit!

We're out here, hangin' everywhere and anywhere on the grid. A lot of the difficulty may be around finding quality skins of color. I personally dread when it is time to upgrade my skin because I know it will likely take forever to find something I want to wear. Especially for black males, while there is no shortage of "gangsta" or "thug" skins on the market the selection dwindles down to a very few if you are looking for something less "hardened" and stereotypical. I'm not a gangsta irl, I don't want to look like one in SL. I have also met a number of people who play avatars of another race in SL. Whether it be asian, black, indian, native, pacific islander, or white. SL is a place where we can be whatever we want any race, sex, or fantasy creature we can dream up. I spent three months getting to know a neighbor on a sim where I rented only to find out "she" was a "he" down the line. I thought I had a lesbian couple living next door only to find out they were straight, he just enjoyed having a female avatar on SL. So, what does this tell us besides you never know who you've already met? That SL is truly a place where looks can be deceiving.

LOVING the new interface. I had posted a long review about viewer 2.0 backin 2010 on the forums that asked for many of these changes and thought I would never see them (for anyone interested in seeing that post you can view it here.) implemented. The only thing I would ask for to make the interface even more customizable is the addition of a "small spacer" and "large spacer" button in the Toolbars window. This would allow me to separate button sets along the side of my viewer and many applications/browsers support this feature. It shouldn't be difficult to implement now that they have gone this far. Do this and I can think of no better viewer experience out there. Now if only we could get the performance where we'd like to see it! Thanks!

Correct, the original poster made that generalization, I did not. I did however state that I had experienced this personally as well. For some unknown reason it has been Phoenix users who I have seen this with not users of viewers such as Imprudence, Kokua, Cool VL, Kirstens, Dolphin, etc. Why? I do not know or claim to know. Perhaps that is one of the downside to establishing a loyal fan base. You see much of the same thing with Mac vs Windows vs Linux enthusiasts. To a degree it is harmless to mildly annoying when caught in the middle of it. I thank you for your suggestion on how to deal with these zealots. I have it down to a science these days and as an educator I tend to use it as a teaching moment. I was not surprised at all by the reception he received, in fact I rather expected it. Nor do I neglect the fact that this is a commercially driven venture. As an American I am very supportive of commerce in general. LL is supportive of these ventures as well provided they can profit from them also. In fact, many of us are here in SL with hopes of making money while we play. I am vehemently opposed to the belief that all should be available for free. That being said, the roundtable discussion was not centered around commercial/opensource ideology, all at the table agreed this was a fabulous option for roleplay communities or private regions and a potential money maker for the developer. You've made some points here that weren't part of my previous message so I'm unsure of the reasoning behind their mention here but to discuss the opensource nature of many TPV's. There have been several viewers developed with commercial ties in the past and it is completely acceptable for commercial entities to develop and distribute commercial TPV's as the LL license allows for that. There is no reason for a chilly reception by the user base any more than there was reason for it when the Emerald team released multiple attachment points and breast physics which other viewers did not support. It comes down to choice, if you want see those particular items, download and use the appropriate viewer, if not don't. I do not see the harm in allowing this viewer to exist on the TPV directory with a focus on use in standalone communities of Sims owned by the developer or any other region wanting access. There is little difference to this than privately owned communities requiring group membership to access the land. Or roleplay communities that require the use of DCS/CCS scripting in order to participate in the activities. I hope he resubmits and is successful moving forward it communities such as these would be visually stunning to see. On land, I don't see anything in your statement I disagree with. User behavior is hard to pinpoint. Some will see a huge bonus in utilizing the additional prims for the creation of a truly immersive landscape and leaving the "real land" for wandering/homes/accessible content. Banning practices are as they are, no claim was made that the owner was in violation of the TOS. I simply stated that they reacted in a manner that I found unacceptable. We cannot control this...I spoke more to this issue in my above posts. Lastly, the inline response....I responded to the post at 3:30AM during a relatively sleepless night. Perhaps my vision was off but I had italicized your comments as well as noting them in quotes and used a darker font for my comments. It looked readable and I was able to see the separations clearly but I realize not all users monitors may differentiate between these differences. I chose to forego the process this time, I hope it helps. Thank you for your comments!

Thank you, I do not believe you and I are far off on the matter of banning without reason. I would like to point out that the developer of the viewer has certified compliance with the LL viewer policy. If LL truly believed it was non compliment it would be banned from use on the grid something that LL could easily do and has done in the past with malicious viewers detected on the grid. This viewers application was rejected for listing on the directory only and does not appear to be in violation of any terms LL lists in own policy. The reason for rejection is not one of the imposed requirements and is questionable on the part of LL to say the least. The developer has posted source code for download and review on the viewer download page. I agree that some land owners simply do not know and may be banning based on the 3rd Party Viewer Directory. There is probably little that can be done here as ultimately it comes down to fear of the unknown. I had not considered the reality that many land owners are not techies, do not experiment or keep abreast of new technologies/new viewers or advancements. In that regard they could simply be doing their best to protect residents/business owners by taking a overly heightened alert stance. As an estate manager if I came across an unknown viewer I would do some research prior to resorting to the ban hammer. I do realize that there will always be those who shoot first and ask questions later...or perhaps never question at all. I still do not believe that ignorance is a justification for any action. We all should make the effort to make informed decisions and think for ourselves. A lemming mentality is never one I would for which I would advocate. Thank you for pointing out something a "nerd" like me can easily forget.

Marigold Devin wrote: Genesis Montagne wrote: Qwalyphi Korpov wrote: Genesis Montagne wrote: 2. Listing on the TPV Directory is not a requirement. If I wanted to download LL source and create my own viewer for my use or my friends use, that is completely fine to do. Not being listed on this directory is not an acceptable reason for banning. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Really it's completely fine to ban with or without a reason. One persons acceptable is another persons not acceptable. The fact that we have the ability to ban without reason does not mean that it is acceptable to do so. By that logic the fact that it is possible for one to grief, steal, harm or otherwise disrupt others is equally as acceptable to do at will. Just because something isn't mentioned in a TOS does not mean that the practice is ethically acceptable. Those who would look to a TOS as a holy grail instead of realizing that it is merely a guideline put in place to promote ethical treatment of eachother in this virtual world are missing the point. Not every scenario is or could be outlined in it and there will always be individuals out there who will read between the lines and find joy in "technically doing no wrong." We are raised from children to recognize and choose between right and wrong, and whether we choose to denounce such behavior is a personal choice. I always remain hopeful that people would keep an open mind, or at least investigate prior to making blanket judgements but do realize that many do not. I still feel comfortable with my statement and respect and appreciate your response. Gray areas exist (thankfully) in a free thinking society so there will never be complete agreement on any topic. It's not acceptable that the man in front of me on the bus picks his nose either, but neither is it against RL TOS. The man may well have been brought up to know picking his nose in a public place is not acceptable, but he has the right to do it if he wants, so he does it, perhaps even knowing it is turning the stomach of those sitting behind him. But that's real life, and although Second Life is "ruled" by real life values - moral or otherwise - I would personally totalyly agree with Qwaliphi's statement "... One persons acceptable is another persons not acceptable." Anyone can ban whoever they want from their land. That is their right and choice. It is our right and choice whether to be butthurt by such action. No one is claiming or has claimed this action was against the TOS. I do not know how or why the discussion of whether a TOS violation has occured or not is being mentioned. There are many unethical, unfair, discriminatory and short sighted actions which take place in SL and RL every day that are not technically against any written rule, regulation or law. There are certain standards or "Golden Rules" which we as a society attempt to live by that would hopefully speak to ones individual sense of right/wrong/injustice thus encouraging us to stand against. This is what I did, in the end, my statement is my opinion, one I continue to stand by and one that some seem to agree with. Again, no claim has ever been made as to the legality of such actions only the ethics of them. I am surprised that a statement condeming the banning of a completely TOS sanctioned use of a viewer would create such a strong defense of what many have agreed is a short sighted and ultimately silly response by the land owner. Please do not mistake a defense of my position as an indication of an emotional or "butthurt" response to the action. I am neither offended or impacted by any disagreement to my beliefs nor am I personally emotionally impacted by the banning. In the end I am quite content with an agree to disagree resolution. Thank you for your opinion.