New viewer particles issue.. solution?

I have a fireplace with a chimney, which uses the free smoke script, and a waterfall that uses it as well, but seems with the new viwer, that the partcles changes are not consistant.

I know they are supposedly emulating the old system, but in th eold viewer, I had a constant stream of smoke from my chimney, and now just a puff or two every 30 seconds or so.

tijkme of day, and server laods do not seem to effect this, so I'm guessing that the script is just not working properly now.

Anyone know of a good particles smoke script that works properly with the new system now?

Does it work when you first log in? I've noticed that particles diminish over time, when I get inworld all of the particle effects look just great, but as time goes on less and less particles emit until finally I see none at all.

There is a sample smoke script in the center of The Particle Laboratory, which would probably be a decent place to start from...

It will probably require some learning how to adjust it to 'fit' to your particular particle need.


The old llMakeFire type functions were very different compared to the new(er) llParticleSystem in that you had to have an active script constantly updating the effect with the old functions.

The new functions are a 'set and forget' style, which contributes less to script lag and network lag.

It sounds like your old script is using one of the old functions... and it's also possible that your effect is competing with other nearby particle effects which can make displays look rather feeble.

Anyway.. good luck to you!

I'l look up particles lab in sl, and see what I can discover... thanks for the tip

Ok, looked at the smoke script in the particles lab, and it has the same issues with the most recent particles emulation.. only one particle every 10-20 seconds.. hardly "smoke" by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm wondering what the particles effects in the lab looked like prior to the new particles implimentation?

So now I'm still in need of a smoke script that actually works properly

I think the new viewer broke particles - some of the First Look versions had the same kind of problem. After a while, all emiters seem to slow down to a trickle. A relog fixes the problem for me but it comes back after a while.

When I upgraded to the new viewer, I couldn't see any particles. Had to increase the number of particle settings from 1024 to 4048 to get decent particles.

Hmmm I'll try that increase trick once they are back online again.

The last "official" word, was that they had implimented the old particles sysetm in th enew one, and that it was "mostly compatible" however some changed might need to be made for full backwards ciompatibility.

When I used to get a slow constant stream of smoke partciles, one puff every 10 seconds just ain't the same.

If increasing the particle limit works, I'll report that back to the thread.

yep, inmcreasing to 4048 does indeed get you closer to that old particle look.. goo tip!

Now I wonder how bad a club with a buttload of particle effects is gonna lag and look?

(And this is with the most recent update)

If you're seeing the same problem with the sample from the particle lab, then it's time to start looking around to see if your display is competing with other displays nearby...

Under the View -> Beacons -> Particles you can turn on cross-hairs on all particle sources near you....

Often, I'll turn on the debug "Client" and "Server" pull down menus with (ctrl-alt-shift-D), and then toggle off the drawing of trees and prims... with: ctrl-alt-# and ctrl-alt-(

This pretty much removes everything except land, sky, water and avatars... so any nearby particle sources should be easily visible.

Traditionally, there can only be 4096 particles drawn at a time, regardless of how many emitters are creating them. Look for something with lots of tiny particles, and then see if you can talk the owner of it into using a different effect to be a little more neighborly.

There ARE problems, apparently with the first look and new "optional" client with profound drop offs in rendered particles... whether it's due to unseen emitters being counted against the total viewable, or failure to forget emitters that were in view, I'm uncertain.

If anyone has a clearer reproduction of the "particle shortage" problem, please let me know!

Particles can be guilty of creating "rendering lag" most vid cards out in the last year or two can *easily* handle the max setting for particles (8k). If scripts are constantly turning particles on and off really quickly that can result in some sim and network lag as well.

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(the default particle setting is still 4k I believe, I haven't installed SL from scratch lately to verify.)

Default particle setting is 1024... just checked. Increasing to 8000 seems to not impact framerates here, so I'll stick with that for now! (new dual core system with a new ati 1950 pro video card)

and yes, turning on that particle emittier display DId show a buttload of new ones in my location! Discovered 3 empty clubs with all sorts of blingy garbage running.

Man, I REALLY wish there were areas designated as commercial and others as private residence.. that would solve SO many issues.

Zoning works in RL.. why not just use a system that already has been proven in rl?