Current Mood:  sick
As many pettes encounter this unfortunate and distressing circumstance, I am sharing some tips for reducing it.
My apologies for the post that follows not being couched in Aristasian terms, but the matter tends to be technical
and I have left the original form of the tips unchanged:
HOW TO REDUCE CLIENT-SIDE LAG Server issues are at Linden Lab. Nothing you can do about that. “Client side” is your SL software setup that is running on your computer. There is a lot you can do about that. Here are several suggestions, some free and some that will cost: 1. The not-free suggestion. If you can afford it, get the heaviest duty computer and graphic card you can buy. It is amazing what a dual-core or quad-core computer does to lag issues. It is doubly amazing what happens when you slam a high-level, high-memory graphics card into your system. Rule of thumb: the better your graphics card, the better SL runs. There will still be significant lag, but it will go from frustrating to tolerable. Now for the free ones… CLIENT-FIXABLE THINGS * Reduce your draw distance (EDIT / PREFERENCE /GRAPHICS). While it limits visibility, a draw distance of 64 requires far less graphics processing than a draw distance of 256. If you have a low-end graphics card, this one step will do more to reducing lag than anything. At the time of this writing, you can buy a new, 320meg Nvidia 8800 graphics card for under $300. If you can afford, it, that’s the way to go. (Other graphics cards are viable as well. That’s just the one that’s popular with the SL circles today. Great blend of price and power). * Turn off “fog”. (EDIT /PREF / ADV GRAPHICS). This is counter intuitive, because to turn off fog, you have to set it to the max rating of 4.0. Fog is a graphic. Fog lags. It’s unnecessary. Turn it off. * Turn off “clouds”. Same concept as fog. To turn off clouds: ctrl-alt-shift- (minus sign) * Turn-off other rendering you don't need. CLIENT / RENDERING / TYPES & CLIENT / RENDERING / FEATURES. Experiement to see which ones you can live without. * (EDIT / PREF / ADV GRAPHICS) menu, set “maximum particle count” as low as you can accept. * If you have a really lousy graphics card, disable bumpmap and shiney in “Graphics Detail”. It will seriously reduce your SL viewing experience, but it will also seriously reduce client-side lag. * Turn “Avatar Rendering” to normal. (Note, each one of these suggestions will reduce graphics performance, so it’s a fine balance as to what you want to leave on or turn off. But at least SL will continue to work, even though the experience may not be as detailed as one would like. If you want detail… install that new, expensive graphics card). * Well, bottom line, if you are having really serious lag, turn everything in the GRAPHICS DETAIL tab as low (or off) as you feel accpetable. The lower/off you go, the less graphics-based lag. * TURN OFF MUSIC AND VIDEOS. If you want music, use your own local music player. SL music lags. * EDIT/PREF/ADVANCED GRAPHICS: Turn off antistropic filtering. Turn down Outfit Composite Limit. * Turn OFF voice chat. Despite propaganda and other nonsense, every “feature” added to the system increases lag. (I mean, get real PR department). Yes, SCULPTIES, FLEXIS, and TORTURED prims lag. Every single “feature” added to SL increases lag… so shut off the unnecessary ones (and only you can be the judge of what is unnecesssary). I’m sure there are may other suggestions. These are the easy and available ones. Now, for things you might not be able to control. SIM ISSUES If you are a sim or major-land owner, you can control these things to an extent. If not… if you’re on the Mainland, you just have to live with it, cos LL sure isn’t going to moderate it software-side. LOL * Keep scripts low and simple. It’s true, the fewer the scripts, the less lag there will be. Avoid scripts that use “timer” and “open listen” functions (that respond to general puplic chat commands. /63 etc type commands or touch-mens are just fine). * Avoid particle excess. * Keep prims as low as possible. * Where possible, use 128×128 or 256×256 textures. Try to never exceed 512×512. * Avoid odd-size textures (137 x 429). * Keep the total number of textures to a minimum. The more different textures used, the more the simulator has to load. * Avoid the use of excessively tortured prims. (Basic shapes are the best shapes. * DEFINITELY avoid sculpties and flexis where possible. You want to see some real lag… set out 300 flexis blowing in the wind, or 300 large-size sculpties moving around on avatars. For an example of serious avatar lag… hang around dragon islands. ; ) (I love dragons, but they do lag). * Keep personal bling and prims to a minimum. An avatar wearing 800 prims can cause more lag than an entire sim put together. * Limit SOUND devices. Every sound device added to a piece of property increases overall lag. * Ignore propaganda. The claims that “lag is caused by client issues” is just plain bogus. Even empty sims can lag (yes, it’s been tested). Fact is there are serious server/asset issues with Second Life and no amount of client content correction is going to fix that… because that is Linden Lab side. The platform is very unstable, it’s just that simple.
It is hoped that these tips will prove to be of help to you, dearest friend and reader <3
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