Slow running

A couple of months ago i played SL for about a half year and it worked just fine ! now that i wanted to start playing again it runs unbelievebly slow i dind't changed my graphic card or anything any help would be great. Ash

What kind of computer and Operating System (Mac or Windows) do you have?

The first thing to note is that the system "streams" a lot of data to your computer - so if your Internet connection is slow, or is being used by other programs, it can adversely affect performance.

Secondly, are you sure you have the latest drivers and updates for your video card and Operating System?

Third - are you running any other programs at the same time as SecondLife? Any virus scanners, "system tools" (like Norton / Symantec SystemWorks), file-sharing programs, or ANY other applications? On a Mac, look down at the "dock" for the symbols that applications might be running, even if no windows are visible. On Windows, look at the "Taskbar" to see if any programs are running - and also look at the "System Tray" (next to the clock) - some programs run on Windows without showing anything more than a little logo down in that corner; but they can still be slowing your computer down. You should attempt to close all of the programs that you can, before running SecondLife.

In the game, you can press "ALT-1" to bring up a stats window that shows some vital performance information (pressing "ALT-1" again will close it). There are a lot of different read-outs, but the one you should probably look at first is "FPS", or "Frames Per Second". FPS is how quickly the graphics card can re-draw the screen - you should be aiming for a value of 25 or higher, when you're in an area that doesn't have many other players around. If you see this value above 25 and the game feels slow/sluggish, then I would guess it is networking troubles causing your problems. If you see this "FPS" value lower than 20 or so (again, assuming there aren't many other players nearby), then your graphics card may be struggling to keep up with the game. Having a lot of prims and/or Avatars in view will always slow down your system some - but you should try to set things up to handle at least a moderate amount of "stuff" on the screen at once.

Hope this information helps. Give us details and I'm sure folks here might be able to trouble-shoot further!

Take care,

--Noel "HB" Wade
(Tread Whiplash)

P.S. If your "FPS" is low, you you can alter some Preferences under "Preferences..." from the menu at the top of the screen (once you're in the world). There are several graphics settings under the "Display" and "Options" tabs that you can try to lower, to improve performance. Here are a few to try:

Un-check the "Disable Far Clip" option.
Un-check "Local Lighting".
Un-check "Anisotropic Filtering".
Make sure you select "Normal" or "Bump Mapped" for Avatar Rendering.
Set Terrain Detail to "Some".
Check "Avatar Vertex Program"
Lower the "Draw Distance" to 96 meters or so.
Try lowering the "Object Detail", "Terrain Detail", and "Avatar Detail" sliders.

Depending on your graphics card, a combination of some or all of these will improve your game's performance a fair amount.

In addition to all that, make sure you're not running any viruses or malware by giving your computer a good solid scan with your virus scanner and the spyware removal tools that are out there like Ad-Aware and Spybot S&D

FPS of 25?
I don't think I've EVER had an FPS bigger than about 15 in SL...

Siobhan -

Then its time to turn down those graphics settings!

As much as I abhor having to look at less-crisp / lower-detail objects in any game, it sure is nice when its not a slide-show!

Its imminently possible. I can get 30 - 45 FPS when there aren't many Av's around in a typical sim.... And I'm only running an Athlon 1.4Ghz, 384MB RAM, and a 64MB GeForce3. Its all about the tradeoffs you're willing to make.

Take care,

--Noel "HB" Wade
(Tread Whiplash)