Lag database

post your best guess at the level of lag* for the amount of avatars/prims within a certain distance.

*time to rez etc

Ummm... on what kind of machine/connection speed?

Typically I run my 1.7ghz, 512RAM, ATI 9600 Pro, cable-connected box at 128m of draw distance. I rarely have a problem with loading everything in more than 60 seconds... but I get lots of "popup" from the low draw.

My lag times are also manageable, usually. But this depends greatly by sim. To be blunt, this question is extremely broad... and as a result, hard to answer.

so each sim will have different possible lag problems? how would one know if they have a fast of slow sim? does a faster sim get advertised as such and thus command higher prices or it it just luck? like maybe the sim is on a faster hard drive in the LL server shack?

based on the maximum and minimum settings needed to experienceSL, how many avatars can congregate on an average-speed 512 space before lag times become intolerable to you?

Definitely. The easiest way to tell is by bringing up the debug menus (ctrl-shift-m, was it?). Ctrl-Shift-1 and Ctrl-Shift-2 are extremely useful as to determining a sim and client's health. Usually, one should look at Sim FPS (anything above 300 is usually considered decent) and the breakdown of sim CPU usage. The client window with Ctrl-Shift-2 also breaks down everything that's lagging you. This will usually tell you what's going on.


This can be found in About -> Second Life. Look for the sim number in this dialog. Usually, the rule of thumb is the higher this number is, the newer the hardware. And no... faster sims usually don't command a higher price, because "sims" change the actual server they're being run on frequently. Usually, this means higher performance over time.


There's a hard cap of the number of avatars within a sim. Usually, I think this is around 30-40. Lag in these cases varies widely, depending on what your camera is rendering, what the avatars are doing, what scripts they're running, and the number of prims/torture settings attached to those avatars.

Anyway, I realize it's a lot to take in... but once you get the hang of it, it's easily second nature to track down what the problem is.

thanks jeff, great info.