Possible to play on dial-up?

I logged in the game, and it continued to download for quite some time, i'm betting with all those textures and sounds etc etc theres no way I could play this could I?

Ah well, maybe someday they'll get broadband where I live

Mmm....
I -think- that there are a few dial up players running SL, just move your settings -way- down and expect to be slow. Good luck!

I understand no - and that it impairs sim performance if you try (there's an old thread saying that time spent on retransmit is very high if a user tries to connect using dial up).

We discourage residents from playing on dialup because their experience will be significantly degraded. Also. players on dialup will significantly impair simulator performance for the reasons Roberta cites.

Yes it is theoretically possible. But even if you set all the settings down to the low end, disable sound, set draw distance down to the minimum, etc., you will experience such severe lag that you won't really be able to do much.

Too bad there's no last resort dial up setting that alows one in-world without draining the sim. Even if it with no sound, in black and white, with crude blocks where objects should be, it would be a nice option for checking and responding to instant messages when the dsl or cable was down.

Here's an interesting lag perspective. I wonder if there'd be support for an estate setting that only allowed an av to teleport into the region if their round ping was over a set limit?

If the Lindens set these to higher levels on new mainland sims, that might make the land more valuable to people with killer connections that didn't want to be drug down by the presense of avs with slower connections.

Uwaaah, sorry for hassling the sims with my dial-up! I did not know!

I did experience extremely laggy performance last night when I logged on for the first time. My own avatar took forever to load on my screen, and movement problems were so severe that I accidentally ended up miles away from the tutorial island before getting to the second checkpoint. That could be bad for my learning curve.

I was planning to suck it up and continue playing like that until the start of college in the fall, when broadband Internet connections will be offered to all students, but if it will decrease the quality of the game for other people in the same sim, then I will wait for college to play the game again. Thanks for getting this information out.

Violet, sorry to hear about your tribulations of dial-up, but i also say "good on ya'" for waiting until you can log in via broadband in concern of other people and overall performance.

just saying thanks and we can't wait to have you as a full time SLer!

same with Ifan, whenever you get broadband, we'll be waiting for you. (have you checked into FiOS?)

Does this also include internet-capable cell phone networks with load speeds of up 250 kbps? Sometimes, when I'm travelling, I use one to go inworld and "speak" to people.

What is FiOS?

I just recently read that google dropped $100 million on the BPL (broadband via powerlines) technology. I hope that takes off really soon, gaming has become harder and harder for me as of late.

Also said that 2 / 3 of people in the U.S. are unable to use broadband What year is it again? Sigh.

I've been inworld on dialup a few times before. Here's the way it generally goes:

As long as you stay in an area that's cached on your hard drive, you can see the world. Never try to go anywhere new, especially via teleport.

Chat doesn't work, but IM does.

Movement controls are sparratic at best.

Building works pretty well, as long as you don't try to use any textures you don't have cached.

Uploads work, but they take a long time.

You can see other players, and they can see you, but if the area you are in is crowded, you won't be able to move or to see other people move. Avatars ghosts are common.

I have successfully used accessed SL using my Verizons cell phone National Access Plan while traveling, it runs at speeds up to 250kbps.

Exploring and moving around is laggy, but once you are where u want to be chat, IM and building stuff works pretty well.

Get the unlimited plan for $79 per month, SL exchanges a lot of data so the lesser plans, limted to 20 MB for example, will end up costing you an arm and a leg.

i read about BPL and it sounds promising, but only if the price is no more than $50/mo.

because...

FiOS is Fiber Optic broadband service. Verizon is offering it (where available) at 3 different levels:

1 - Up to 5 Mbps/2 Mbps @ $39.95
2 - Up to 15 Mbps/2 Mbps @ $49.95
3 - Up to 30 Mbps/5 Mbps @ $199.95

-

i can't find exact pricing for BPL, but it seems it will be somewhere in the $29.95 - $39.95 range. i also remember reading that it's upload cap was about 5Mbps.. if this is the case, it should be worth the price and an option for those not wanting/needing the higher priced, yet faster and more stable, FiOS.

If dialup is such a problem, then what is the minimum bandwidth to not cause problems?

I have 512k ADSL but seem to have difficulty getting to the Linden servers, so I rarely see more than 150K coming down, usually more like 100K is this causing a problem too? or is the issue more one of latency