My Secondlife is Almost Unplayable

Ok almost every time I play Second Life something is wrong. First of all, the most common error is where I start it up and it is loading and it says 'Downloading Clothing', then it shows a message saying that my clothing is still loading. Then it starts where I cant see anything except for the sun and everything else is red. Ive waited for more than an hour and it doesnt do anything, and i cant move or anything even though i cant see myself. If i log off and relog on, it usually does the same thing every time i relog on. Then i usually do one of 3 things that seem to fix it. I either wait for like 20 mins and do it again, uninstall and reinstall it, or reboot the computer and try it again. Now some times it doesnt work but when it does then something else always seems to happen in-game. Like if im building something, all of the sudden i cant delete anything or duplicate anything, then i try walking and flying and it wont let my, i can just look around is all. And no amount of waiting or anything else will fix it. Then when i log out and log back on, the downloading clothing thing comes up again and i have to do what i do above to fix it. The other thing that happens in-game is like i like start flying but then keep going and dont stop and nothing helps. Or the same thing will happen except i just keep walking.

My friend seems to have these very same exact problems on his computer and i mean the exact same problems. Does this happen to anyone else? Is there anything i can do to fix it? Uninstalling it and reinstalling it, or logging onto another account of mine dont seem to help at all.

Thanks for any help, as I sure could use it!

'Downloading Clothing'
annoying yeah been around for months usually at peek hours/patchdays

cant move or anything
Sim died, connection did or sim is heavy dilated and slowdowns (usually image time or physics latter is nearly always vehicle/gun)

cant delete anything or duplicate anything, then i try walking and flying and it wont let my, i can just look around is all. And no amount of waiting or anything else will fix it.
^see above^

I have some problems too, but I can still play. Walking around is quite a pain many times, because the surroundings load slowly and my avatar walks forward like in some nightmare where you try to run really fast but you are moving only slowly or not at all. I have fixed this so that I wait like 5 to 10 minutes when I get into a new area. And I walk with small amounts of steps, then stop, then walk some more. If I try to walk long distances with one breath, then the avatar starts sliding like a zombie and I cannot stop him, until suddenly the avatar teleports back where he was a moment ago where he is now ready to walk some more.

Ok, my internet connection is only adsl. But its wierd that I can zoom instantly with mouse look, but walking is painfully slow. I mean that my walking is not only slow, but laggishly slow. The mouse look just teleports around the sceneries like a weightless pixie spirit.

Flying is faster than walking not only because you fly faster but because it does not have that much the nightmare walking effects. I do not dare to fly too much at one breath, because I am afraid that it crashes. Then of course if there are areas where there is high lag stuff like high resolution images or lots of scripts, then I have to leave that place because my game gets bogged down by a swamp of lag.

One thing that I hate is that the surroundings do not follow the avatar too well. Like if I am near to a wall and turn around, then my eye point of view dashes behind the wall, and I only see the wall and my avatar is on the other side of the wall. Sometimes the viewpoint adjusts correctly, but there are lots of situations where the viewpoint gets behind a wall while turning the avatar.

Sometimes the client software crashes, but not too often. Then there have been many various kinds of bugs and other annoying features, too. And then comes the fact that there has been land price soars, pondering whether to move into an island or to stay on mainland, etc etc. SL is playable and its an interesting concept as a virtual world, but I say that there is much to develop it further.

What are your computers specs?
(operating sys. cpu, memory, gpx card etc. Dual Core?)

adsl what are your up/down Kbs?

What do you have your settings in preff. set at ?
(Darw distance, cashe, any thing like shiny water or Avatar vertex ticked?)

For quick repplies it helps to always post your systems specs in a technical forum like this.



Dell XPS-700 XP media
Intel Core2Duo 1.86ghz
Nvida 7900GT 256mg
2 G RAM
DSL 3000kbs down/750up

Dell Dimension 8400
Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.00GHz
2.99 GHz, 512 MB of RAM

Thats pretty much all I know about my computer.

(reposting here as well as I posted this elsewhere for the clothing issue)

I actually discovered recently it as my bandwidth/computer causing this crash and not the Sl client. Once I changed my bandwidth and behavior and WHAM no more issue. Try this:

First I assume you are not dual logging if so then these can still be followed but you might fail regardless.

1) REBOOT and run SL FIRST. Sometimes it's a memory/resource issue. Yes these aren't suppossed to happen anymore but they do.

2) DO NOT RUN ANYTHING ELSE. I'm serious. no IE, no nothing. Makesure all the items that start up when your PC does are done booting and doing thier thing before turning on SL.

3) Do not loose SL focus. Do not check yahoo IM, etc. Infact if you need to shut off such programs as they can change your focus to the IM screen.

4) Even if your screen seems locked up and your mouse can move then click on the button! Sometimes it is frozen as it works and then will hiccup past and you can easily help it speed along by giving it a nice click on that button ahead of time. TELL IT WHO'S BOSS! .. kinda ^_^

EDIT: Specs (don't have I tested this on 5 systems. Newest one is not in front of me but is a home built.)

how about the graphix card?
if its intergrated its not going to give you any SL playability at all.
also 512 MB is pretty low for SL, the 3 ghz Pentium 4 should be plenty fast.

grab a mininum of 512 mb more of ram.

open SL in the help tab click about secondlife.

it will list every thing you need to know including what the graphix card is and if its compatible.

I run at 100FPS+ most the time. but with even a budget Nvidia fx card you should be getting better preformance than you describe.

It's not possible to run at 100 FPS all the time, because even the server sims aren't running at 100 FPS.

-peekay

My info:

CPU: AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3200+ (1796 Mhz)
Memory: 1024 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: Radeon X1300 Series x86/MMX/3DNow!/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 2.0.6232 WinXP Release
LLMozLib Version: 1.1.0 (Mozilla GRE:1.8.0.8_0000000000)
Packets Lost: 3309/12198 (27.1%), now its: 450/18901 (2.4%)

Drawing distance: 96

yes I know Peekay
But I float in that range all the time I know the sim is max 45. and I actually get funny performance burps while running that fast. why I run the dual core at times as it slows it to a reasonable 30-35. but set on (1) CPU I get the crazy fast FPS.

But its where the bar rides 50% of the time, certain islands especially.

you confuse server fps and client fps, totally different thing

this is funny

these are my specs:
DL/UL 1024/128 (bandwidth)

desktop:
Pentium IV 2.4ghz (cpu), 750Mb (ram)
Intel Extreme (graphic card)

laptop:
Pentium IV 1.8ghz (cpu), 512Mb (ram)
NVidia GeForce (graphic card)
-----------------------------

because cpu and memory the obvious thing is that thegame should run better on the desktop than the laptop, but the real thing is I can play very well on the laptop (excpeting that after some hours i got to exit and login again when I reach the memory limit),
- while the desktop is unusable, my avatar take double the time than my laptop to walk so it is painful to play there

i know it must be because of the Intel Extreme graphic card (not suported by Second Life), but how comes that i can play a lot of other games that make an exhaustive use of graphics?

I made a post you may find useful...

SL lagg and how to live with it

Hope that helps?

"i know it must be because of the Intel Extreme graphic card (not suported by Second Life), but how comes that i can play a lot of other games that make an exhaustive use of graphics?"

Secondlife > OpenGL
most games > direct3d

Intel extreme / onboards are bad at OpenGL

maybe you shouldn't hangout in the lagpits of SL, the sluggish movements put me on this track.

Other than that, well get a true video card.

Thank You, I think that advice really helps. I put for example particles to 50 and internet connection lower than the speed measure said. So far everything goes much better. Though some certain places still cause lag.

this definately helps. thank you very much

I made a post that you may find useful Lag in SL and how to deal with it

A game like SL requires a user/server ping in the region of 250 or much lower. A lot of 'generic offerings' from ISP's aren't suitable as they would only account for general useage.

Hope this helps.

For future information.........the idea of doing all that fixing little bits does help for atime. But it does not last when your system is not up to standards.....

Agreed, However like a car, if you don't service it or keep it tuned, you can expect performance to degrade over time.

The PC world has become full of jargon and certainly when you read so many magazines the one peice of jargon which I would welcome someone taking out a lawsuit on the industry, is the saying 'Future Proofing'. The very nature of the PC is open architecture designed into the original core design. People are led to believe they are actually buying something that will last 'infinity' which of course they are not. You can 'teak' a PC buy adding/swapping elements of it, to change some of its abilities.

Ultimately, when playing online games, we are all subject to the dynamics of the ISP and Nodes of connection to the destination. ISP's advertise such wonderful bandwidth, again making people believe they are this exclusively, yet rarely publish the Contention Ratios. Little gain to pay for say 5tb bandwidth, if you share that with half a continent! The same is true for Ping times, the length of time it takes for you precious packet of data to reach its destination, then return, and resends due to packet loss (packets have only a finite lifespan to prevent them living in caches awaiting processing and becoming obsolete).

I have always 'upgraded' my PC's by part swapping, for at least 3 generations of OS's from Windows, unless there were too many upgrades required at the same point, to co-oinside with the usages, and recyled to other PC's I run to do such tasks as acting as a 'Dumb' server where say High Graphics usage is not required.