THE REAL WAY TO REDUCE LAG by Wayfinder Wishbringer Lag is a major issue on Second Life. And it's a very controversial issue. Quite often Linden Lab Corporate PR puts the blame for lag unfairly on the customers and completely ignores server-side issues. So I figured I'd write my own anti-lag article here, and hope it helps. FACT: No matter what you do, no matter how well your sim is designed, no matter what settings you use, you are STILL GOING TO LAG. Why? Because Second Life has serious programming and server issues. It's just that simple. SL lags in and of itself and there is NOTHING the user can do to stop that. FACT 2: Three years of complaints about lag and it's only gotten worse, so until LL changes its management viewpoint, there is still going to be lag. LL keeps adding new "toys" that lag the system even further, so until some serious re-thinking and re-structuring is done, if anything lag is just going to get worse. 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: * 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. Bottom line though, SL is poorly designed (sorry, them's the facts) and makes far more demands of your computer equipment than it has any right to make. So the more powerful your equipment, the better SL operates. 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] * Same 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 OWNER LAG REDUCTION 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 (listens that respond to general public chat commands. However, /63 etc type commands or touch-menus are 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. 300+ prims, many of them sculpties, and every prim scripted does not make for a low-lag avatar. * Keep personal bling and prims to a minimum. An avatar wearing 800 prims and bling scripts 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. * In the WORLD /REGION/ESTATE area, DEBUG tab, there are a couple of useful items regarding script performance and collisions. Use them. For example, the Script list tells which scripts are operating. Even more importantly, if you press the TIME heading TWICE, it will list the top script time abuses. Anything that is .1 or above is excessive. It is best to keep scripts t under .05 in operation. If you find a script that is excessive, you can click on it twice to produce a beacon that will help you hunt it down. If there are scripts that are runing at .2 or above... they might be considered excessive and need either re-written or replaced. Most merchant vendor systems run at .02 or below. Keeping track of lag-causing items on your sim can greatly reduce overall sim lag. The same holds true for colliding items. In truth, you will want to alter or remove every item on the sim that has a collision state. Bring that figure to ZERO. Do we know that of which we speak? Elf Clan has been in operation for 3 1/2 years. Our sims, ElvenMyst and ElvenHearth, are two of the most beautiful, texture-rich and activity-full sims that can be built... and they operate at 10.5 TFT (total frame time). Most sims operate at 20, 22, or above. We know how to reduce lag. : ) The above tips will hopefully help you to do the same. OK, I'm sure I haven't covered everything, but this is a bunch of it. There are likely deep- down tweeks (difficult to do and potentially dangerous) that might reduce lag more, but these are the main concepts. Hope it's of benefit in helping folks to improve their SL experience. Best wishes to all!