Any idea what is causing such massive lag?

I've read through this forum a little and I keep seeing the response that it is not the fault of the viewer. Ok, then would anybody happen to know what else could be causing lag like this? Not being sarcastic, being completely serious. A week before the viewer was released I ran this game in any location on either perfect or near-perfect framerate. Now when I log in I get so little framerate that the game normally is just a big grey splotch that refuses to load. It takes me about six minutes to load my fiances home when normally it took 20 seconds or so.

If this is not the new viewer, what is it? I enjoy SL, I don't even mind giving them the occasional dollar or two for a neat toy. But at this point the game is totally unplayable, I can't even see my own avatar let alone any scenery.

Newbie here to SL, but thought I'd chime in. I've noticed some lag too, things taking time to Rez after teleporting etc. But not as bad as it seems you're experiencing. To help us diagnose...

1. What type of connection are you using? Cable/DSL/Dialup/other?
2. Do you run any peer 2 peer file sharing programs in the back ground?
3. Are you running over a wireless connection?
4. How much RAM does your PC/Laptop have?
5. What type of speeds do you get at places like Speakeasy.net or other online broadband speed test sites?

1: I am on Comcast High-Speed, it's cable, about 16mb per second
2: I run nothing else in the background except google messenger
3: Wired, not wireless
4: RAM is...*checks*...3 gigs
5: I don't believe I've ever been to them so I'm not sure. Most things like MMORPG's run at perfect speed on near-max graphics settings for the most part.

I did update my graphics drivers and that did nothing to fix the problem this morning, I figured that would have had a decent shot of being the problem. Sadly...nope

The lag meter is showing red for network, saying possible bad connection or file sharing app. I have no file sharing apps running at all, and my connection should be great all things considered. Second Life just seems to either hate me, or hate the new setup it has...just not sure what to do.

[edit]
5: I just tried speedtest.net for Kuwait City:

I think something may be interfering with my connection...that seems really really slow. Then again, thats Kuwait right? For New York I did above average.

[edit2]
Well, I tried more things. I set Second Life to a specific port and forwarded that port in my router, still no changes. I tried setting the MTU also and that did nothing.

From Kuwait City? Quite a long trip for the packets. The lag you see is almost certainly caused by the roundtrip time for your datapacket to get to the backbone provider in your country, reach Europe, cross the Atlantic either by satellite or optical subsea cable, enter the backbone in the US, then reach the servers in Texas or in California.

Assuming you are windows user, try this:

Start / Run / cmd - this brings up a command window.

in the command window type "ping secondlife.com" and see how long it takes a packet to reach the webservers, which are in the same building as the sim servers. My guess is your TTL is around 1.5 seconds.

Also, this kind of lag is why we cannot play games like SL and WoW via satellite connection.

Lag can have various reasons:

Client lag usually happens when there are too many textured objects within your viewer range and you run all the shaders available. You can reduce client lag most efficiently by reducing viewer range and switching off atmospheric shaders (which are the worst lagger there) in the custom graphic preferences. Switching off Basic Shaders and turning down rendering quality CAN add to a better client performance as well, but that depends on your GPU.

Client lag can be caused by outdated drivers for your GPU and too many running processes, a lack of VRAM or RAM and every other system hardware related effect, but it´s pretty hard to figure out what exactly causes the entire system to lag down SL software.

Btw, some firewalls cause BAD client lag, because they slow down data transfer, especially some vista firewalls.

You cannot influence serverside and connectivity lag at all. While Client Lag usually is noticable only by the viewer software dropping frames (which will reduce smooth motion), server and connectivity lag is causing very slow texture loading, delay in IM and chat, running against walls (he he), avatars not rendering, teleport failures and all this. This is either related to LL server overload, network problems or some ISP problems.

There can be a mix of client and server/connectiity lag. But if your IM and chat works fine, textures do not take HOURS to download and only your framerates are bad, the lag most probably is related to the SL viewer software. Try to tweak the graphic preferences then.

Consider that LL raised GPU requirements steadily over the past four years, so a GPU which was top notch in 2005 is no longer capable to run SL in highest quality or even midrange quality anymore. Anything below an nVidia 8xxx WILL drop frames, regardless how fast your CPU is, which amount of RAM (tho more RAM always helps) or how fast and reliable yor connection is. Most laptops older than one year cannot run SL smoothly, some not at all (intel chipsets).

I think that's where that particular speedtest server was, not where the OP is..

Running wireless would have zero effect on the viewer frame rate.
Communications issues would have zero effect on the viewer frame rate.

Communications issues can cause slow rezzing and other kinds of lag, but they don't cause a slow viewer frame rate. I assume by "frame rate" you're talking about control-shift-1 frame rate, at the top. The "lag meter" also shows 3 indicators; and IIRC the top one is based on the viewer frame rate, the other two being communications and server status.

Try downloading an older viewer (sorry, but I don't know where to get them) and see if your issue goes away. If it does, then it's a viewer issue. If it doesn't, it's not. It could be that someone overbuilt a neighboring parcel, for example.

There is a way to run an older viewer even if it's a "required update". I don't remember the details on how to do this. I do know that the 1.22 viewer I compiled myself still runs -- a good thing, since any SL client I download now gets quarantined by my anti-virus software and I can't run it (even with the anti-virus turned off, and I don't have the option of uninstalling it).

Have you tried an older viewer to see if it really is the new one that's causing your problem? You can use any client you want by adding (on a PC, not sure about MACs) a string like "-channel old" to the invocation string (for example, just add that to the end of the Target line in the shortcut that you use to start SL).

If you need to download one of the old ones: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Old_versions

Good luck!
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Paravane is right, my location is New Jersey, not Kuwait. I just picked a place I figured had horrible reception as a test.

My ping time is only 88ms so I'm going to go and try to mess with shaders and view distance to see if that does anything.

Also, yes, I've tried to load older clients. It used to work completely fine, but now they do not, which makes me think that somehow, something got changed in the way SL is trying to connect with my computer. I don't know what or how yet, but something is sure being wonky.

[edit] Apparently I never had atmosphere shaders turned on. Not quite sure how to change my viewing distance, but I have the feeling that isn't what is causing the problem at this point.

"Time to load" problems and "FPS" problems can be totally unrelated. In general, loading problems are usually either problems with the sim or network and FPS problems are usually something that's wrong on your PC.

Does either problem happen only in one place? If you go to an empty region, does the problem go away?

Are you running virus scan software? Have you added SL as an exception to it?

Defragged lately? How much free disk space do you have? What's your SL cache set to?

Tried turning off your cable modem for a few minutes?

I do have anti-virus running, but I also tried to run without it.

I have no firewalls running at all other than the one built into the router, and that is set to allow second life on a specific port (which is set in second life also).

The lag is everywhere, even when I lag underground where there is basically no textures to load at all except a basic brown wall I lag.

I defrag pretty much once a week and have something like 300 gigs free space on the hard drive.

I emptied my SL cache already, and it is set to 500MB

And I have tried to give my modem a "break" but that didn't do anything either

[edit] Every now and then my network orb turns yellow and says I'm greater than 600ms. Still normally red-lighting though. My client is also always red-lighting for some reason, even underground where I know everything is loaded. Not much to load...

I misread. Sorry about that. Explains your good English, too

In addition to the other issues, I too am seeing problems with the sims. I keep getting red flashes on the mini map which happens when a server hasn't spit data at the viewer for some amount of time. It appears to me that there is either some problems with the hastily pushed-out server code (that accomodates the new Adult stuff) or a problem with net congestion in the server rooms. Since we all know what happens with any server code change, I'm inclined to think that the servers are "stuttering" all over the place.

We may be stuck with it until the next server code fix.

This has been happening for a while now..

Yes, first week of June was about the same time I began noticing lag problems too.

Dunno if this helps... I installed the 1.23.4 client, instant lag, unplayable lag even... Nothing loads, TPs take longer, huge chat lag (type about 20 words before the first even appears on my screen where I type), animations either wont load or take forever to load...

So I load the 1.22 client again and all lag is G O N E ! ! !

I dont see how this is an issue with anything other than the client itself...

One game I used to play got tired of all the free players on their servers, they changed the graphics stuff they use and now you need really big vid card and really FAST CPU not to mention a ton of RAM. Maybe this is all part of LL's strategy? people with slower PCs often are not able to afford to put money into a game and the best way to loose those "drains" on a game's economy is to make it so their PCs cant run the game.

A couple years ago I would never believe such things about LL.. but now? I dont put anything past them.. including starting to charge a subscription fee for adult SL access in the near future.

So for me.. I am a verified adult who wont be able to access any adult fun since I cant run the 1.23.4 client.

Thanks LL

Have seen same problems with unusable levels of lag, worse over the last 2 weeks since the 1.23.4 viewer was launched, and worst in the last week.

Have tried 1.23.4 and also a revert back to 1.22 - the latter is somewhat better.

Am running 1.23.4 still on one desktop which has a GTX 260 graphics card, and yet 1.22 is doing better on an older desktop with an 8xxx card! Same network and connectivity for both machines. I'm quite convinced this is at least partially viewer-related. Teleports especially are affected for me, with far more timeouts and "you have been logged out" on 1.23.4.

There is not the slightest doubt that at least a part of it IS viewer related. LL changed something in the rendering pipeline, especially dynamic loading and rendering of textures, and they embedded a real BAD piece of coding for so-called "shadows" (another useless and senseless attempt to tweak and patch OpenGL and a stone aged rendering engine beyond absurdity).

Anyway, 1.23 really is slower than 1.22. But 1.19 was much slower than 1.18. and 1.15 much slower than 1.14. This is "reliability" for users in a linden sense. A new GPU each year will help, or replacing the entire coder...err copy/paste snippets staff.

Tried Snowglobe and there was so little lag, it's like going back to last Christmas or even a year or more ago! I tried it on my least powerful graphics card (8xxx GEForce) and Win XP PC, which had been hiccupping with 1.22 (backed down from 1.23). I went for an extended tour on Snowglobe through two big castles at IJD and had no real issues. Also did some inventory shuffling and building without issues.