A Few Random Questions

I have seen a million different answers from different Sims for these questions. This forum seems to be more reliable than asking in-world so...



1. Does setting Terrain Detail to "High" slow down the Client much? I have toggled a few times, but I wasn't sure if that setting was the one causing lag, out of the big collection of Graphics Options.

2.. Does the amount of particles emitted from an object slow-down performance on the Client side? A "poofer", for example.

3.. Is the Friends list in the communication window broken for everybody, or just some of us that use the "default" Release Client?

4.. What are the biggest advantages you have noticed, of having a higher speed (DSL) connection in SL?

5. When you don't own Land, (actually RENT Land, regardless of what LL named it) what is the best public infohub/location to set as Home. By this, I mean...a location with fewer builds around. (I don't want to load more textures into my Cache than I have to, every time I log in)

#3 - I can't see who's online through my 'friends list' on the regular viewer. You can check in your inventory under calling cards.

#5 - Botanical Gardens offers people to set their home there at a certain spot (you rez in a three sided area with empty water on the fourth side, not too many textures to load)

*edit: oops, sorry. I thought you meant any place to set for home - not on your particular 'rented' land.

1. Setting terrain detail to high, will stress your video card a little more--client side only.

2. Increasing any graphical quality will put more strain on your GPU and CPU.

3. It's not borked for me...sometimes it doesn't work, but rarely.

4. I'm not sure, I've always only used it on Cable and T1 connections. On slower speed connections you'll notice a slowdown in many different aspects...any data that is streaming from one serve to your computer will be slowed.

5. The best place would be a designed hub I guess...a location that is set up specifically for incoming teleports/guests. As long as the atmosphere is achieving the feel you want of your build...it doesn't matter how cluttered it is. Just try and make it...quality. And if guests are to explore other areas of the sim (or shops), make sure the teleport hub is set up to guide people clearly in the right direction.

Hi, John, and welcome to the forums!

First off, we aren't Sims®...that's another game. We're Residents. "Sims" are the regions we inhabit.

1. Terrain detail. I pass on this one.

2. Particles. Yes, a higher number will increase the load on the client. You can set the amount of particles you see at any given time; my default value is 4096.

3. The Friends list is broken, off and on, for everybody, not just users of the new RC.

4. Higher speed connection = higher frame rate, faster texture loading. Better performance all around. Make sure your ISP doesn't throttle you based on a pre-set download volume. Those on FIOS systems report the best performance, on cable modems next, on high speed (3 to 6 MB/sec) DSL next, "ordinary" DSL last. Dialup is not robust enough to run SL. I have also heard that satellite internet is not good.

5. All of the public infohubs are infested with "regulars". But you don't have to leave your home set to any of them. Many public places will allow you to set your home position there. For quite some time, my home spot was at on the grounds of Callatropia, the big hair store. The newcomers' school where I teach, GQ Start, can also be set as a home position.

Before we get started, what do you mean by "answers from different Sims"? Are you referring to people as sims, like in the The Sims Online, or something? Or am I misunderstanding your meaning of "answers from" and your use of the capital S?

In SL, the word "sim" stands for simulator, the server side software & hardware that runs each region. I'm not sure what you might have been trying to say if you did in fact mean that simulators have been giving you answers.

The representations of people in-world are called avatars. But it would be a little weird to say "an avatar gave me an answer to a question" (although its not entirely unheard of to talk that way). An avatar is just a vehicle, driven by a person. It's the person who gave the answer. Generally, we just call people people, or sometimes "residents".



The short answer is that ANY increase in detail, including terrain detail, slows down the client. The question of by how much will depend on how good your hardware is. If you're not noticing much difference in speed at the various settings, then go ahead and leave it all the way up.


Again, ANYTHING that needs to be drawn by the client will slow performance a bit, including particles. And again, precisely how slow things will get depends on the abilities of your specific hardware. If you feel particles are slowing you down, you can lower the total amount of them that can be drawn at a time, or you can turn them off altogether.


Do you mean today?

There are a number of things that seem to be held together with scotch tape and bandaids. Presence reporting is one of them. Sometimes it konks out; sometimes it works.


Well, I wouldn't call DSL "higher" than anything except dialup. In most cases, DSL is the slowest "high speed" Internet you can get.

But to answer your specific question, the faster your computer can talk back and forth with SL, the faster things will happen. Objects and textures will appear sooner, uploads will take less time, actions that require feedback from you will execute more quickly. In short, exactly what you'd expect.


There's no answer for that. SL changes literally every moment. Today, a particular location might be a barren wasteland; tomorrow it might be a sprawling metropolis.

1. Does setting Terrain Detail to "High" slow down the Client much? I have toggled a few times, but I wasn't sure if that setting was the one causing lag, out of the big collection of Graphics Options.

Whether Terrain Detail will slow your Client down depends on your system specs. If you have a high-end system, you probably wont notice much of a difference at all. On a low end system, it may be one of many things you need to lower in order to eek out a reasonable frame rate.

Of all the settings, however, "Draw Distance" has the most noticable affect on client performance and framerate.

2.. Does the amount of particles emitted from an object slow-down performance on the Client side? A "poofer", for example.

See answer to #1. Note that regardless of the number of particles being emitted around you, there's a limit to what your client will render, which is the setting "Max Particle Count".

3.. Is the Friends list in the communication window broken for everybody, or just some of us that use the "default" Release Client?

I think we need more detail on what you mean by 'broken', in order to say whether what you're seeing is a known issue, or a individual one.

I'm not aware of any known client-related issues myself, however.

4.. What are the biggest advantages you have noticed, of having a higher speed (DSL) connection in SL?

Packet Loss is the most noticable difference, not to mention the ability to play streaming video or audio. When I've tried to connect to SL over dialup, streaming video & audio isn't even possible.... and my packet loss is through the roof.

When packet loss gets high, lots of strange things happen - from lag, to misordered or duplicate chats - to crashes. Suffice to say, the more bandwidth you can throw at SL, the better it performs. An average DSL connection is usually fine for most folks.

5. When you don't own Land, (actually RENT Land, regardless of what LL named it) what is the best public infohub/location to set as Home. By this, I mean...a location with fewer builds around. (I don't want to load more textures into my Cache than I have to, every time I log in).

There's lots of locations out there - it'd be hard to reccomend one. If you're a new resident - the Shelter is a great place to set as home, and there's always folks around that like answering questions, or just helping out in general. Of course, I'm a bit biased there

yes

Not overly on any system I've used...

On a small laptop with an unsupported graphics chip I could show any number of particles with no slowdown.

If you bring up the stats info (ctrl-shift-1 iirc?) you can see your FPS and adjust accordingly, as you change things in prefs it will vary so you can find out what affects your system or not. Draw distance is the biggest thing of course, the other things add up incrementally. You can actually set your draw distance below 64 through the debug settings in the client menu under RenderFarClip (making it 50 on my old laptop gave me double the FPS!)

On a slower connection, the biggest difference I saw was textures coming in slower, if someone used a poofer, my screen filled with grey squares until they floated away.

Hi again, thanks for the help!

By "Sims" I actually meant places in SL, where I got Notecards that suggesed, or required certain user settings to cut lag during my stay. I can see how my sentence would be easily misleading. After reading a few of the Notecards from these places, I realized that, although they had a really high amount of traffic, and buildings with a lot of detailed textures, they gave different answers.

I got a Notecard at Midian City that suggested something like "set your cache to 200, and bandwidth to below 400", but another really crowded place (another role playing area) gave me a note suggesting to set bandwith to 200, which made me laugh out loud.

I joined the Group: New Citizens Incorporated last week, and I have gotten a few answers from them, but just as many of you have pointed out.. it looks like the hardware of the computer, and the DSL, Cable, or T-1 speed, is really what makes the big difference.

I'm on a 6.0 Mbps DSL connection, but it looks like even DSL might be outdated a lot sooner than I had thought.

I also have a 6 Mbps DSL connection. It is more than plenty fast enough. On my main computer, I keep the bandwidth cranked up, and I still have enough left over to also have my alt active on my second computer--and stream music up and down (while DJing).

Why do you think it will be outdated soon? (I must admit, though, I'm considering an upgrade to 10Mb DSL 2).

I have mine set to 16. It's wonderful, I tell ya. I don't miss the extra bling at all

In my experience, lowering most of the graphics settings can help get things rezzed faster, but at the cost of aesthetics.



Yes in the sense that there are more items to rezz, especially if there are a lot of dynamic particles.



It depends on the day of the week, the phase of the moon, and whether or not the god of Linden Interruptus decides to take a day off. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.





Erm, as opposed to dial-up?




Well, you don't need to own land to set a home login point. You just have to be a member of a group that owns the land in question. So you can find a nice island sim with no traffic, see if you can join a group there, and set it to home if you wish.

Mine is at just 256 (I think), but I might decrease it even more, I haven't made up my mind yet.



Well in the last year or so, I've been hearing more reactions to DSL when described as "high speed internet" that sound a lot like the following, so I think I'm missing out:






I think we might finally be living in a day where DSL will become like audio cassettes, and it would be nice to be prepared, but that's a separate thread

If you belong to the NCI group, there is a place that they maintain, where you can set home. My sister uses that as her home location. i think it's near the sandbox and free item vendors.

That is because for many people, the most readily available DSL isn't that impressive--768 Kbps is still pretty common. However, DSL has a number of (potential) advantages over cable--primarily, since it is a direct connect to the central office, your speed won't drop if your neighbors are doing a lot of downloading.

Fiber isn't quite a reality for many people yet. It is inevitable that there will be new technologies, but DSL has some life in it yet.

Thanks Jannae as a matter of fact I am a member of NCI, and I help other people out when I can, NCI is great for all of us who are learning, old or new...I love it. I'll be sure to check that out, thank you




I guess when you live in a city of over 2 million, as compared to other people who might live far from thier neighbors, choosing between DSL and cable becomes more of a preference.

I would be ecstatic just to have a T-1, and forget about speed for a while

T1 is only about 1.5Mbps. Unlike ADSL, it is symmetrical, so the up and down speeds are the same. I think I'd rather keep my 6Mbps DSL and dream of a T3 line (44Mbps).

Oddly enough, DSL is unavailable in many areas in the US. I can get cable, but not DSL. This happens in large cities, as well as rural areas. There are little pockets that are too far from the central office device. Mind you, they still send out letters telling us we can get the service. They just can't deliver it =here=.

Oh thanks...I learn something new every day. Yeah, a T3 sounds like what I was thinking of. Wow, what a rip for the T1 hm?



I worked for an ISP like that before, I am pretty surprised that there are so many areas within a 20 minute drive from cities, that can't get DSL. I guess it's better for the cable companies though.