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Horrible delay

Nitro Electric
Registered User
Join date: 9 Apr 2003
Posts: 5
04-10-2003 18:36
Hi, just started today.

I got through the tutorial thing ok(although lagged a little).

I got the the main world and everything just started lagging horribly.

When I hit W to walk or fly or anything it is delayed like 5-10second before i actually move and sometimes I cant stop moving. The bandwidth bar at the bottom right says I am between 50-300kbs most times.

When I chat with people my message doesn't appear untill about 5 seconds after I type it and sometimes the recieved messages appear 2 or 3 times at different times.

My system specs are as follows
AMD athlon XP 2200+ at 1.8Ghz
512MB DDR333 RAM
ATI Radeon 8500 128mb DDR
Cable Modem

If anybody can help me I really think this game looks incredible and I don't know what to do. I am also an engineer so I can pretty much tweak anything on my computer.

Is there a port I have to forward to my computer on my router .. I wouldn't think so because i can somewhat play, but I don't know.

I play other online games like Battlefield 1942 and Diablo 2 and have minimal problems with those.

Thanks again..

Nitro
Nitro Electric
Registered User
Join date: 9 Apr 2003
Posts: 5
04-10-2003 19:26
I reinstalled the client and now I am invisible. Same problems still persist.
Scripter Bach
Registered User
Join date: 9 Apr 2003
Posts: 13
04-10-2003 20:44
Nitro please remember that this is a BETA so you cant compare it to games such as Battlefield 1942 and such...although I have to say you have a problem there if you get lag cuz I have everything the same except im on a gefroce 3 ti 500 and i really dont have a problem. only maybe when i start walking i get lag for not even 1 second and then everything is fine....however i do have major sound problems :mad:
Nitro Electric
Registered User
Join date: 9 Apr 2003
Posts: 5
04-10-2003 21:30
well I wasn't really comparing it to those games.. just stating the fact that my internet connection is otherwise pretty good.

I don't think it has anything to do with my computer. I even turned the cache up to 1000mb and it didn't help.
Scripter Bach
Registered User
Join date: 9 Apr 2003
Posts: 13
04-10-2003 21:37
well like i said we have pretty much same system except the fact the video cards are different.

couldnt be just the game since its in beta, i dont know can be many things really :(
Jericho Powers
Hero Without A Cause
Join date: 31 Dec 1969
Posts: 166
04-11-2003 09:39
It may help change your view distance down to 64, that way it won't have stream as much stuff at once. The option is under your preferences on the login screen and also ingame, but I am not sure which dropdown menu it is.
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Skylar Stone
Registered User
Join date: 31 Dec 1969
Posts: 16
04-11-2003 09:57
This may or may not be related to your problem. When I first tried the game it was so laggy it was unplayable. I reinstalled the drivers for my motherboard, and the gameplay became ~80% smoother (and very playable). You may have considered this already, so take it for what its worth.
Nitro Electric
Registered User
Join date: 9 Apr 2003
Posts: 5
04-11-2003 10:06
Its not FPS lag, its lag for walking and when I click on things and whatnot.

When I spin the game runs very smooth at high FPS but I can't walk or fly or select items or chat without there being a 5-10 second delay on everything.
RYGAR Grimm
Technomancer
Join date: 25 Mar 2003
Posts: 184
04-11-2003 10:37
Dude deal with it i get 900 ping and im on cable pluse it lags with my 2.4 ghz
1 gb of ram g-force 4 ti 4200 128 mb card.......
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Ama Omega
Lost Wanderer
Join date: 11 Dec 2002
Posts: 1,770
04-11-2003 10:47
If you have a fast connection make sure in your network settings in SL to set it to 500kbps. IF after doing this, or when you are experiencing this delay, in the bottom right corner the little bar second to the right turns red, or even moves much at all, then go and lower the network setting. That second to last bar is packet loss.

Also make sure your not running stuff in the back ground, have the latest drivers (except for nvidia where you want 41.09) for graphics, sounds and motherboard. Setting cache to max is good if you have the space, it will lower your network lag as well as the lag of others. Don't try to download stuff in the background while you play this game.
Aaron Linden
Linden Lab Staff
Join date: 19 Nov 2002
Posts: 59
04-11-2003 12:37
A couple of comments...

1. There are some known problems with the ATI Radeon 8500 and its drivers. If you're using that card, you probably want to run on the Catalyst 3.1 drivers (not 3.2). (We're working with ATI on getting the bugs out of their next driver version.)

2. Find out if the problem is your computer or the simulator server of the region that you're currently standing on (or flying over). Press Alt-1 to toggle on and off the statistics display. You'll see a list of numbers and charts. You can open and close the different categories by clicking on them.

If the problem is the simulator, you'll see a low "Simulator->Sim FPS" (< 100), a low "Simulator->Physics FPS" (< 40), and/or a low "Simulator->Time Dialation" (< 0.9). ("FPS" is "frames per second. "Time Dialation" is an indicator of how much the server has to slow down you movement to keep everything in sync.)

(If you're interested, you can tell how fast your own computer is running by looking at "Basic->FPS". Yesterday's average for all users was 18.0.)

We've been doing a lot of work to optimize the simulators, but there are a number of regions that are heavily built up and/or heavily populated that are running much slower than we'd like.

If a region is being frustratingly laggy, in the short run, try moving to a less populated one. Nitro, since you ran reasonably well in the "Prelude" tutorial, you'll probably do ok if you avoid the slowest regions (such as Natoma).

Hope this helps!
Aaron
Nitro Electric
Registered User
Join date: 9 Apr 2003
Posts: 5
04-12-2003 09:29
Ok, I logged on and it just started working fine. The only thing I did was move the draw distance down to 100. I don't know exactly why, but it just started working with way less lag.

I will try out the older driver.

Thanks for the help!!
:D
Ama Omega
Lost Wanderer
Join date: 11 Dec 2002
Posts: 1,770
04-12-2003 10:44
The 'why exactly' is that you moved your draw distance down.

Your client must download everything within that draw distance, and it does so in a full circle around you. That is why spinning may be smooth and walking may not. The issue with the delay on touching things is probably related.
Doug Linden
Linden Lab Developer
Join date: 27 Nov 2002
Posts: 179
04-12-2003 15:16
Actually, there are a couple of potential reasons for severe lag between you pressing a button, or pressing enter on a chat and seeing something happen.

One reason for this is the reason that Aaron mentioned - some of our servers are heavily overloaded, and are just running slow.

However, there is also often lag that happens as a result of using too much bandwidth.

In particular, DSL/cable modems have input and output buffers, which they put packets onto when there's too much traffic to be able to transmit it right away.

So if you have 128Kbps upstream from your DSL connection, and a 64Kbit buffer, if too much data is going down the wire, you can see up to a half-second delay before the DSL modem even puts the packet that we transmit onto the wire. On my particular DSL modem at home, for example, I'll occasionally see about a 1 second delay on the pings.

The best way to tell if this is happening is to look at the ping numbers in the statistic panel that Aaron just mentioned (should be in the first few values in the upper right. If you see a ping that's up in the 500 or 1000's, the network is probably being saturated.

There are currently a few known issues (which we are working on) where on startup or teleport, we can end up overfilling our upstream/downstream transfer rate, causing lag for the first few seconds after those events.

If you are having problems outside of those times, it may be that you are running other applications on your system that are using up bandwidth (especially upstream from your house to the net). In particular, file sharing applications like Kazaa and Gnutella can use upstream bandwidth, and increase the amount of lag you see.

- Doug