I keep seeing images from Second Life® that look better than mine… well, technically they are better. Better resolution, crispness, and contrast. So, I decided it was time to review my graphics settings computer and viewer-wise.
Now there is no single “best” Second Life® graphics setting. A quiet home, a detailed PBR region, a shopping event, and a machinima set impose very different loads on a viewer. Old or new hardware can carry different loads. There is the matter of Personal Taste, which determines what you want to see. There is no ‘right’ setting. Try for the best visible quality and acceptable frame rate and stable texture loading that YOU enjoy.
I am an NVIDIA user/fan. So, most of my images and writing are NVIDIA related. But similar settings apply to all video cards. You just have to figure out which of the settings I refer to are in your graphics control panel by a similar name. A.I. can help.
For NVIDIA users and actually others, most of the picture-quality decisions belong in the Firestorm Viewer itself. The NVIDIA Control Panel should make sure Firestorm uses the discrete GPU and avoids unwanted driver overrides. Current Firestorm builds also differ from many older guides: the central controls are now in Preferences → Graphics → General, with additional tabs for Hardware Settings, Rendering, and Depth of Field.
As of 9/22/2026, the NVIDIA graphics driver is version 32.0.16.1714 (617.14). You can check your version in the viewer’s Help->About… panel.
Short version: Use a per-program NVIDIA profile, keep filtering quality high, and let Firestorm control antialiasing. In Firestorm, use the General tab for shadows, ambient occlusion, screen-space reflections, mirrors, draw distance, avatar limits, and LOD. Save separate presets for everyday use, photography, and crowded events rather than treating an all-maxed setting as a permanent default.
I have my everyday settings tweaked mainly for quality. For flying I change to more performance-oriented but I increase Draw Distance to 512m. For panoramic views I have a total max on quality. These are all saved as presets.
The Current Firestorm Layout
Open Preferences with Ctrl+P, select Graphics, and start with the General tab. The quality-and-speed slider is useful as a starting point, but it does not replace setting the individual controls. This is where you experiment to learn what your hardware can handle. The screenshot below shows the current arrangement used by recent Firestorm versions.
NVIDIA Control Panel: A Clean Firestorm Profile
Open the NVIDIA Control Panel → Manage 3D Settings → Program Settings. There are two versions of the control panel. The new panel is available in the App and the legacy panel is available from the Windows menu.
To see the choice, click START, the leftmost toolbar icon. Enter NVIDIA. Do NOT click Settings.
Select the NVIDIA Control Panel.
Add Firestorm’s executable, usually named Firestorm-Releasex64.exe. This will be in the C:\ drive in C:\Program Files\Firestorm-Releasex64. A program-specific profile is preferable to changing global settings, which can alter behavior in unrelated games and desktop applications.
(Image Panel)
| NVIDIA option | Recommended Firestorm setting | Reason |
| Preferred graphics processor | High-performance NVIDIA processor, if shown | Important on laptops with hybrid/integrated graphics. |
| OpenGL rendering GPU | Your NVIDIA GPU | Explicitly directs Firestorm’s OpenGL renderer to the discrete card. |
| Power management mode | Prefer maximum performance | Reduces aggressive GPU downclocking while Firestorm is active. |
| Texture filtering – Quality | High quality | Prioritizes image quality over small filtering optimizations. |
| Texture filtering – Negative LOD bias | Clamp | Can reduce texture shimmer on distant or sharply angled surfaces. |
| Texture filtering – Anisotropic sample optimization | Off | Avoids a quality-reducing optimization. |
| Texture filtering – Trilinear optimization | Off | Retains maximum filtering quality, at a small performance cost. |
| Anisotropic filtering | Application-controlled | Let Firestorm manage its own rendering. Verify viewer-side anisotropic filtering in Hardware Settings if it is available. |
| Antialiasing – Mode | Application-controlled | Do not force conventional driver antialiasing onto an OpenGL viewer. |
| Antialiasing – FXAA | Off | Can blur the viewer UI, text, and fine texture detail. |
| MFAA | Off | Usually provides no benefit unless an application uses compatible MSAA. |
| Low Latency Mode | Off or On; test before using Ultra | Ultra is not automatically better in a viewer that is often CPU-, region-, or scene-limited. |
| Vertical sync | Use the 3D application setting | Let Firestorm control it first. Use the driver only to address persistent tearing. |
| Max Frame Rate | Optionally cap near monitor refresh rate, minus 2–3 FPS | Can reduce needless 100% GPU load, heat, and fan noise in easy scenes. |
| Shader Cache Size | Driver Default or Unlimited | May reduce repeat shader-compilation stutter. |
| Threaded optimization | Auto | The conservative normal choice for an OpenGL application. |
| Image Scaling / NIS | Off | It is a scaling/sharpening feature, not a native-resolution image-quality improvement. |
| DSR/DLDSR | Off for ordinary use | Potentially useful for an experimental screenshot workflow, but expensive and capable of making the viewer interface uncomfortably small. |
| Triple buffering | Off unless using V-Sync and testing shows a benefit | It is relevant only in specific V-Sync circumstances and can add latency. |
Avoid forcing FXAA, driver sharpening, or unusual compatibility overrides simply because they help another game. Firestorm’s interface and OpenGL pipeline do not behave like a modern DirectX game. Forced effects may soften text, create artifacts around alpha textures and hair, or do nothing useful. Often forced antialiasing will blur the user interface text.
Windows laptop check
If you use a laptop, be sure to check that it is using the built-in dedicated GPU. To save battery, the OS will turn off the GPU and use the CPU’s build-in GPU simulator.
- Open Windows Settings → System → Display → Graphics.
- Add Firestorm’s executable if it is not already listed.
- Choose Options → High performance and select the NVIDIA GPU.
- Close Firestorm completely and restart it.
By changing this in ‘Graphics,’ you allow the GPU to be turned off when not needed. You’ll have to ask A.I. how to do this on a Mac.
There is more… scroll down for the page links.