The three FPS statistics

Could someone explain what the 3 FPS stats indicate?

The first, in "Basic", is currently showing 3.1 FPS.

The second, in "Simulator", named "Sim FPS" is showing between 42 and 45.

The third, in "Simulator", named "Physics FPS" is between 44.7 and 44.8.

Basic is your graphic card's FPS (what's drawn on your screen)
Simulator FPS and Physics FPS are how fast the sim and physics engine are running.

There's info on the stats display in the Frequently Asked Questions section of the Knowledgebase at http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=174 .

Ok, that's interesting.

So I take these results to mean that my computer's CPU is fully up to the task, but the graphics card is not.

no

the first value ecompass your computer fully, it mean that with yur current hardware/software combinaison, the engine cannot draws more than 3 images every second, this depend a lot of the current scene complexitt too (there is no computer i believe that can have a decent number of fps in a crowded club, but this is mainly due to too complex avatar attachments and visual effects)

the two other values are from the Linden labs server it indicate how many times per seconds the server is simulataing the world and the physical model

Thank you. And bummer.

...is to figure out what graphics cad your computer has, and whether it is possible to replace it with something better, such as the nVidia 7600, or higher. You need an open PCI-e slot, I believe.

You can fool with the preferences a little, and it might help marginally, but not a lot.

Yeah, unfortunately this is a notebook, so there's no possible upgrading. That's a topic for another thread: "What setups reliably get >40FPS?"

If you use the (F1) key well your playing the game can better explain it during that time.

better yet read this.............

http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=174

I saw that KB article before posting, but it's not clear there that the Sim FPS values have no relation to the actual FPS you'll see on your client computer. "All of the numbers below are for simulators running on a single simulator per CPU." is especially unclear -- it assumes we know how many CPUs are running a simulator, for instance.

CPUs currently run one simulator for the vast majority of SL. There are no known sims that have more than one CPU core running them.

Some sims are void sims, simply filling in ocean in gaps that used to be voids, or their equivalent elsewhere. On these performance is poor (but not completely useless), one CPU core runs four of these sims.

Can I also ask why you want basic FPS >40 all the time, which is what I think you're asking? SL actually runs smoothly and useably with client FPS >5 or so and I survived for a few months on FPS more typically around 2. As also noted it depends quite a bit on where you are. Over the weekend I've been in a club, a busy mall, a ground level home and a skybox. Using precisely the same set up and preferences, I've had basic fps of about 2, 0.3, 12 and 35 in the different locations due to different graphics loads.

Nothing less than 16fps should ever even be considered interactive framerates, let alone 5. I can tell you with absolute certainty that if I was ever getting less than 15fps "typically" I would never return to SL. Maybe >40fps is unnecessary, but it is certainly desirable. Seriously, you are one *very* patient person to put up with 2fps. I am frankly amazed!

At 20 FPS or below games are really jerky, and in SL it's hard to get around. I feel like I have to push my avatar through the sludge. The statistics don't indicate any network problems, so that leaves me with a graphics deficiency.

When you say the game runs "smoothly" at 5 FPS, what do you mean? It may be that we have different definitions of smooth.

Most of the games I play, on the Xbox or my desktop, run over 30 FPS. I haven't tried SL on the desktop yet, but it "only" has a 9600XT.

Actually the FPS thing is misleading. One of my relatives is running SL on a Mac and she never getsmore than about 15 FPS. Strange thing is SL is smoother on her mac than on my Windows machine at 70 FPS. Being a MacMoron I really can't explain it.

Sludge may be things like time dilation... which would be a sim fps of less than 45. Anything less than about 42 I become aware of. (42 isn't randomly plucked from the air, I checked yesterday, suddenly aware of "treacle movement" and it was steady at 42.)

Smoothly... able to move, stop, manoeuvre in a given space and feel like I have control. I can do that with basic fps of <10 quite happily in almost all circumstances.

That said I'm on a mac... and mac's do run things differently. I've almost always used a mac for accessing SL and rarely get these sorts of silly frame rates I see others talking about. But, I recently demonstrated something about SL at an interview on a fairly good PC. With my mac's default preferences I was apparently drawing 70fps rather than about 20 in a place I know well. In terms of user experience, that 70fps was terrible, I had no control, not because I overshot, but because it was far, far jerkier than my normal 20 and the rendering, particularly when moving was bizzare to put it mildly, making me totally unsure of where I was despite the fact I knew I was walking on a flat, unobstructed surface that *wasn't* what I was seeing.