How To get a Faster Second Life

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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Second Life Viewer Breasts Physics

OK… this is the third article about breasts. I’m not obsessed with breasts. It’s more a fisherman and bait thing. 🙂 The Mesh Project Viewer Snapshot (2.6.3-255638) has the new feature. The Project Viewer available today is (225675), which does not have the new feature. Whatever, the Project viewers are only for the curious or those helping develop the Mesh Project.

New Physics Type Clothing Object

If you look you can notice at the bottom of the Mesh Project Viewers page is a list of older versions. 225675 is the current Project version today. That page shows the two previous versions; 225641 and 225624. I tried both and neither of those have the feature.

Now things get a bit interesting. In the current version of the viewer that item is not in the menu. So, while the video upload date is 4/2, the viewer version (225638) is dated April 1. OMG!

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RedZone Privacy Issues Develop – Review

RedZone Spyware

Spyware in SL - Image by: Anonymous9000

Update: 2011-3-2RedZone removed from market place. Quickware detector disappears. CDS remains but the product description is gone.

Update: See JIRA SVC-6793 vote and watch.

More people are becoming aware of what RedZone (RZ) is and what it means for their privacy. From June 2010 to February 2011 people have changed from ‘wus zat?’ to ‘WTF is being done about RedZone?’ Alphaville Herald has been reporting the state of RedZone and resident reaction along with the Labs actions. I am getting more curious about RedZone (L$3,999 in Market Place) and decided I needed to review the product and state of drama around it.

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Second Life Clean Install

UPDATED: March 2015.

There are a number of tutorials and “How To’s” for doing a clean install of Second Life Viewers. Several viewers have their own instructions in their wiki or forum. I’ve read through a bunch of them. In general they seem to be written by a one-viewer user with some minor concessions to the possibility one may be using more than one viewer. I’ve had over 15 viewers simultaneously installed and working. I’ve also had things horribly balled up. So, I’ve experimented with several different clean install processes. This is what I’ve learned about Second Life Clean Installs.

Second Life Clean Install

Cleaning – By: Chicago Art Department

Warning: This is Windows oriented. I don’t do Mac, sorry. And I don’t have any running Linux boxes. The difference in how a clean stall is done is mostly in file locations.

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Phoenix Viewer Fixes

Bunches of people have had problems getting Phoenix to run. Actually regardless of which viewer you use you are likely having problems. Tuesday Linden Lab rolled out a server upgrade, so hopefully some of the problems will stop.

For those having problems there are two things to consider. The Phoenix Viewer Wiki article: Troubleshooting and Quick Fixes. The other is the Phoenix Viewer Additional Downloads.

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