Graphic guides for newbies.

Heya all, hope this is the right place to ask.

Could anyone point me in the direction of any quick and dirty guides for newbies on how best to optimize Second Life graphics? My main issue being texture load times and other such issues. I have searched the forum, but I’m unsure where to actually start looking, or what to even look for.

I seem to have a problem recently when shopping and exploring. Up until a day or so ago, I could fly around browsing the shops, looking at all the amazing pictures of outfits on offer without a care in the world… but recently it’s just unplayable up to the point where I just cba to even bother. Pictures take forever to part-load now. I even go away from the computer for a few mins and come back and very little has changed - still grey boxes in places and some fuzzy half-loaded images. Some of them do load fully, some of them never do even when in front of my nose. Objects are fine, its just the pictures on walls that frustrate me.

I suppose I’m asking what graphics options I should be playing with, and if there are any guides for them and what the individual sliders and numbers mean. I’m a tech virgin tbh, so the simpler the better. I have been messing around with bandwidth and cache size settings, tried emptying the cache, tried leaving the cache alone, restored defaults, but can’t seem to make any noticeable difference. As I say, it’s a recent problem in my short time here, and seemed fine when I first started Second Life. My computer isn’t anything special, but otherwise runs perfectly on medium settings. Is it a regional problem maybe? Are there any ultimate top 5 tips on how to optimise the graphics and image load times? Are there things I should just not touch, and doing so might cause poor performance if I do? Or are there any changes or updates I might have missed that might have made a difference?

Thanks in advance.

Each computer is unique with all the different hardware installed and configurations so it's hard to tell anyone some magic settings that will work. But, generally lowering your draw distance to around 96 meters seems to work for most people. Turning off particals helps too, but you loose a lot of nice effects by dong that. Keeping your cache size at about 500 megs is probably about as good as you can do (though there are arguments both ways on that subject). Bandwidth should not exceed what your computer is capable of processing..........you won't ever get that 1500 megs that is the top of SL's scale so I would say keep it about 1000 if you have a reasonably fast CPU and graphics card. If you start getting packet loss it's probably time to adjust your bandwidth down a few more notches.

And, SL has been acting up the last few days so most of what you are experiencing is probably due to that........it'll clear up sooner or later

And welcome to the forums.

Thanks for the reply. I'll wait it out then if SL is acting up

Sure, check the wiki.
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/About_Lag