Horrendous lag

I am on the trial period right now.

I saw that the game requires broadband when I read the system requirements. I am on satellite, which has relatively poor latency but is good for downloading.

Satellite is awful for twitch games, but the majority of MMO (A tale in the desert, Dark Age of Camelot etc) work fine with it.

However, with SL I am experiencing lag that is unusually bad. We aren't talking 4 or 5 seconds here, more like 20-30. I can understand satellite causing some lag, and the fact that the game seems to wait for the server to respond before your character moves probably doesn't help, but even that shouldn't be causing such horrible lag.

Anyone have any ideas? I would really like to try this game out.

It's two-way satellite, right? Not downstream satellite, upstream dialup? What is your ping time to www.secondlife.com?

SL should be pretty bad on satellite, but not as bad as you're saying. It's possible that several factors are coming together to cause the problem. Even satellite should be under 5 second ping.

Try the network-related tips here.

The lag is bearable today, but I get disconnected usually every five minutes or so into gameplay. This is probably because I am on a wireless network. The host computer isn't suitable for games, so there is no way for me to get a direct connection to the satellite modem. This has not, however, been a problem in the past.

Are there any options left for me?

well also SL uses UDP not TCP primarily i believe and satelite is absolutely atrocious for UDP stuff.. since theres really no way to guarantee any kind of concurrency or ordering to anything, and if something comes in in the wrong order its another TWO round trips before it'll get back to you again but that *ALSO* might be out of order etc etc

jus don use satelite if at *ALL* humanly possible, literally a 28.8 dialup would work better for SL, play wise (tho would look atrocious since the world wouldn download really)

Oh, heh. Yes, if you're on satellite AND a wireless LAN, it's almost certainly not going to work properly.

If it's possible for you to either move your computers around or try a cabled connection, that might work. It still wouldn't be fun, though.

I will have to cancel my account then. I wanted to try this game, and it really is a shame that game developers don't give a second thought anymore to people who can't get cable or DSL in their area.

its not that they don't give a second thought its just that satelite is such an atrociously bad connection for *live* data

Its allright for web surfing if you don't mind the large wait after each click.. and its okay for downloads from the web and some of the file services...

but *ANYTHING* that requires active two way communication absolutely will be horrible over satelite.


There are rumors of a much lower (closer to earth) satelite system in the planning stages... not having to be geosynchronous it may end up with pings in the 200ms range... compared to the 2000-4000ms (2 to 4 second) response times with current systems though it'll be a godsend for those without direct broadband access