"I Can See For Miles and Miles..."

Wow! With the new version 1.6 combined with preview screenshots from 2.0, I tweaked my draw prefences and suddenly I see so much more without noticeable framerate drops.

I remember last Summer, I could stand in the middle of a sim and barely see to the edges with a 64m draw distance. I settled on 192m after the December releases, anything higher bogged me down. But now, I'm clear sailing at 288m. And can hit 320m with just minor slow-down... I'm impressed. It seems much more immersive the farther I can see towards the horizon. And flying at cloud-level really offers the sense looking out the window of a small aircraft.

At the same time, the SL world seems so much smaller. Back when my draw distance was set at a tiny 96m, a sim was huge and the entire grid seemed infinite. I remember looking across the void sim east of Phobos and feeling as if the body of water was an ocean. Now, I stand at the same spot and clearly see Baker... the void sim is now a small pond with land visible all around.

Has anyone else bumped there draw distance higher with success? I'm at 320m with fog ratio at 2.5.

:Edit: I'm editing instead of replying to this thread because I don't want to bump it. Basically, I thought maybe the new version allowed me to nearly double my draw distance... but I'm embarrassed to say that it's more than likely because I disabled my audio and video streams with the new version. Ooops.

Not yet. I really like Linden trees.

Heh, personally I always keep it at 64 and would even like to make it shorter.
The less you see, the less you download... and I pay for my bandwidth.
The only thing I really need to see is the object I'm working on.

Strangely enough, when I started I was able to have a draw distance of 512m with local lighting. As time went by I had to steadily reduce it to maintain the same framerate and now it hovers around 200m and no local lighting. All this despite going through two computer/videocard upgrades. Chalk it up to "your mileage may vary" I suppose.

Heh, been to my place lately? My average object is way bigger than 64 meters long. No way I could do that.


I've got the same issue. I used to be able to max out draw distance and most other settings and still get 20+ FPS. Now I keep it at 128 and I'm lucky to get 12 FPS. This change coincided with a definite slowdown in my DSL service, so I've blamed it on that, which is unfortunate since it's the one thing that's beyond my control to fix.

me too julian. i'm down to 128m at best with 2-2.5 fog and a frame rate in the teens. not bad, not a good as it used to be either.

maybe it's just fate.

I seem to see more fog than i used to. I used to keep my fog ratio at 4 for maximum clarity. I didn't notice the fog at all. Now with fog ratio still at 4 I see fog. Drawing distance remains constant at 128.

Back when I started and hung out in Cordova, with a much less good video card, I used to leave the draw distance and get fps of 12 or 13 when looking toward abbottts emporium, which is prim laden, and 20 to 30 when looking west, which was vacuum back then. Now I find that I do ok leaving it at 128 almost all the time, anywhere, , unless I particularly want to see far, or there is exceptional slowness going on.

I really liked it back when 512 worked ok in more places.

I have never found the fog to affect the fps. It just makes it more of less foggy. Do other people find it affects the fps?

it would be cool if there was a feature to go along with the one that drops your draw distance if your frame rate falls. i want one that raises my draw distance if my frame rate goes over a certain amount.

Can you set your <draw distance> to the max, and set the <drop draw distance> frame rate to that higher threshold? How much does the draw distance decrease when the drop draw distance is applied?

yeah you can do that the thing is once your frame rate dips and it lowers your draw distance it never raises it again. you have to do it manually every time. which sucks. so we need something like the lowering preferences we have now only to raise it if our frame rate gets over a certain amount. automatically i mean.

edit: could be wrong but i *think* when it lowers the draw distance it cuts the distance in half each time down to the minimum. or at least goes by the whole 32, 64, 128, 256, 512 thing.