Tips

How To get a Faster Second Life

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Several people in the forums are asking how to get better Frames per Second rates and why their computer is so slow running SL. Several are asking about upgrading their computer for Christmas or getting a new one. So, I decided to write a HOW TO specific to Second Life so I could avoid repetitive forum posts…

Speed Hump? - Image by TheDarkThing - Flickr

Even if you never want to open the computer’s case, this information will help you know what to have your computer tech upgrade for you.

First consider what we are working with, other games have better graphics and performance than Second Life. When comparing SL with other games, one is wise to remember that most things in the SL world are made by novice content creators. Render efficiency is not foremost in their design goals and that shows in SL frame rates. Take a look at: Typical Second Life Frame Rate Performance by Graphics Card/GPU. The page was last updated in August 2011. It shows an nVidia 470 getting about 45 FPS.

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#SL Viewer 3.2 Keyboard Shortcuts

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The keyboard shortcuts in the SL Wiki have been updated to show shortcuts for version 3.2. This is the one with the new user interface. You could memorize them and remove all the buttons from your viewer setup. Not something I would do. But, there are some handy shortcuts. I’ll explain some of the ones I like.

The wiki page: All Second Life keyboard shortcut keys.

For User Interface (UI) developers there is a special page for working out shortcut keys based on operating systems. See: Shortcuts SL-UX.

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Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection

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Troubleshoot Your Second Life Connection

I made this post to avoid typing this information into the SL Forum a gazillion times. I was answering this type of question for the third time today. (Last updated April 2023)

There are a number of reasons one cannot log in or stay logged into Second Life. One of the more significant reasons is a poor connection. You may have a good Internet connection and a bad connection to SL. A poor connection can be caused by multiple problems in different locations. In this article, I try to give you some troubleshooting tips to help find where the problem is and who can fix it.

The problem may be in your computer, router, modem, ISP’s hardware, backbone hardware, Linden Lab’s hardware, or their software. We need to figure out which.

I’m Windows-based. So, this article is Windows oriented. But, all the same problems exist for Mac and Linux users. The Mac and Linux users will have to translate Windows commands. Sorry. I just don’t know them.

Troubleshooting

In the Viewer

If you can log into Second Life, do so. If not, check the grid status to make sure it is not a problem with Second Life. Or look at the concurrent user graph at Etitsup.com. You should see a smoothly curving line. An abrupt drop shows a general problem.

Also, try logging into a different region. Before logging in open Preferences->General->Start Location – Show at Login and enable the option. After closing Preferences, you’ll see a new field by the login button, ‘Start At:’. Try a Linden-owned region like Pooley or Furball. If you still cannot log in skip down to On Your End and SpeedTest.net.

Update: Jan 2018 – SpeedTest.net has changed. They no longer allow you to test to a city or server of your choice. So, for these tests, the site is was useless for our purposes. You’ll have to Google for an Internet speed test on a specific server and hope to find a good one. I’m looking… Found – see: Internet Speed Tests. – Update April 2023 – The Firestorm Viewer Team has information up on testing your connection speed HERE. The article has been updated but while they tell how little the Max Bandwidth setting will affect performance they also left all the advice for what it can affect from days of old. Don’t expect much from tweaking your bandwidth setting.

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New Development Viewers

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I came across an old wiki page that is getting new updates. Rob Linden started the page in 2006. For the last few months Oz Linden and Wolfpup Lowenhar have been updating the page almost weekly. If you are interested in what is going on in viewer development, you may find the page interesting.

Downloading test builds

You can get versions of development viewers made by the Snowstorm Team and TPV Developers.

Be warned that these viewers may have more or less problems than the current stable release of the SLViewer or related TPV.

The Snowstorm download on the ‘test builds’ page seem to the the same link found on the Snowstorm Project page.

The latest Snowstorm Development Viewer is: Second Life 3-1-1-242785 Development.

Consumers’ Guide to Mesh Clothes

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Tateru Nino of Dwell On It linked to Satiated Desires’ post, A consumer’s guide to Second Life mesh.  This is a must read for Second Life resident considering buying mesh clothes. No tech or geek, just the stuff you want to know.

If you think I’m geeky when explaining mesh, check out Satiated Desires. Satiated explains things in plain English.

I did notice one inaccuracy. When one rezzes mesh for the first time one cannot be sure the creator understood how many prims the object actually costs. Everyone is learning. Also, if you scale it up or down, you can increase the Land Impact cost. This can trigger things to return when its Land Impact cost exceeds the land’s limit.

Satiated says this could cause part of your home to be returned. Until recently the things returned were unpredictable. The Lindens have been working on that. Now the most recently changed thing should be returned. In most cases that will be the mesh object you just rezzed.