Post by Ivan Uralia on Jul 11, 2007 17:25:20 GMT -5
Greetings from Mons Grand Casino!
We hope this informational manual will assist you in reducing your amount of lag when in in SL by explaining how it happens and how to deal with it.
First off, most lag is on the client end...your computer. We will cover some settings you can change in SL, things for your RL computer and things you can do in-world to make your experience better.
YOUR SL SETTINGS:
Press <ctrl> <P> to get your Preferences menu. Be sure to click <Apply> after selecting changes or they will not register.
Network tab:
1. Reduce your bandwidth to 500 kbps or less. This setting is important because it effects everyone around you as well as yourself. If you ever walk by someone and lag out, its probably because their bandwidth is too high. Turn around and mention it to them or IM them, they will end up thanking you for it.
2. Set your cache to 200MB. You can set it higher, but if you do purge the cache regularly to keep it working efficiently. Higher cache sizes will slowly degrade performance over time. If you set it too low, then you are downloading things over and over again. 200MB seems like a reasonable compromise in size and performance.
Graphics tab:
1. Turn your draw distance down between 64 -90. The lower this setting is, the faster you rez. If your computer is having to draw an entire sim at one time, that is a heavy strain. If it is only drawing textures from what is within 100 meters it will load faster and reduce your lag.
Adv. Graphics tab:
1. Try to determine your computer's graphics card memory and match it up with the available choices. You do not want to have a setting higher than your graphics card's on-board memory. this applies to actual memory on the card, not the shared memory from your RAM that many new cards count as memory.
Audio & Video tab:
1. If you do not need to hear the audio stream or see the streaming video that may be available, uncheck both. Even when not watching or listening there is bandwidth dedicated to it.
YOUR COMPUTER:
1. Your graphics card is constantly busy because things are always moving, rezzing, disappearing and textures will always be loading as you move around. Your video drivers can have a big impact on your performance because of this. Video card manufacturers are always finding faster ways to do things and they incorporate them into newer drivers. You should update your driver any time you find a newer version.
2. Do not run multiple applications if not necessary. Your CPU does a lot of the grunt work in bringing SL to you. Bogging it down with other programs running is a great way to lag yourself quickly.
3. SL runs as designed at 1 gig of memory. If you are at 512 or less, you should upgrade as soon as you can. More memory than 1 gig has little effect.
REDUCING LAG IN SL:
1. Remove scripted items that listen to the main chat channel. Objects like animation overrides, weapons, shields, bling, etc. all listen for commands from the chat channel. This means every device in the room with chat commands is filtering every single thing passing through the channel for command words and who said them. A poker table of 10 people with huggers, AOs and flip titles can lag an entire sim if they are wearing enough of them. Even turning the items off will not help as they are still listening for the on command. Remove these items and remove the biggest source of lag.
2. TP when you can for traveling. Walking running and flying (the worst) keeps your equipment constantly updating and will lag and crash you. If there is a large distance to cover, just pull up the map and tp to the other side of the sim.
3. Playing gestures and sounds are a sure fire way to increase lag. They will decrease your bandwidth and increase time dilation and sim FPS rates.
4. In the upper right corner of your window, you should see two small vertical indicators. The one on the left is your packet loss measurement and the one on the right is your current bandwidth measurement. Letting your pointer hover over these meters will give you a reading of their current measurement. Bandwidth is not as important of an indicator of lag as much as packet loss. If you see ANY indication of packet loss it's not good. Occasional packet loss is normal. If you are getting significant amounts of packet loss in quiet areas you may need to adjust your Bandwidth under your Preferences / Network tab below the 500 suggested earlier. If you never have packet loss feel free to bump up your bandwidth and you will load faster.
We hope some of this information is useful in helping you control lag issues. This information was compiled from several sources and is not the property or opinion of Mons Casino or it's employees. Hope to see you lag-free at the tables!
The Management of Mons Grand Casino
We hope this informational manual will assist you in reducing your amount of lag when in in SL by explaining how it happens and how to deal with it.
First off, most lag is on the client end...your computer. We will cover some settings you can change in SL, things for your RL computer and things you can do in-world to make your experience better.
YOUR SL SETTINGS:
Press <ctrl> <P> to get your Preferences menu. Be sure to click <Apply> after selecting changes or they will not register.
Network tab:
1. Reduce your bandwidth to 500 kbps or less. This setting is important because it effects everyone around you as well as yourself. If you ever walk by someone and lag out, its probably because their bandwidth is too high. Turn around and mention it to them or IM them, they will end up thanking you for it.
2. Set your cache to 200MB. You can set it higher, but if you do purge the cache regularly to keep it working efficiently. Higher cache sizes will slowly degrade performance over time. If you set it too low, then you are downloading things over and over again. 200MB seems like a reasonable compromise in size and performance.
Graphics tab:
1. Turn your draw distance down between 64 -90. The lower this setting is, the faster you rez. If your computer is having to draw an entire sim at one time, that is a heavy strain. If it is only drawing textures from what is within 100 meters it will load faster and reduce your lag.
Adv. Graphics tab:
1. Try to determine your computer's graphics card memory and match it up with the available choices. You do not want to have a setting higher than your graphics card's on-board memory. this applies to actual memory on the card, not the shared memory from your RAM that many new cards count as memory.
Audio & Video tab:
1. If you do not need to hear the audio stream or see the streaming video that may be available, uncheck both. Even when not watching or listening there is bandwidth dedicated to it.
YOUR COMPUTER:
1. Your graphics card is constantly busy because things are always moving, rezzing, disappearing and textures will always be loading as you move around. Your video drivers can have a big impact on your performance because of this. Video card manufacturers are always finding faster ways to do things and they incorporate them into newer drivers. You should update your driver any time you find a newer version.
2. Do not run multiple applications if not necessary. Your CPU does a lot of the grunt work in bringing SL to you. Bogging it down with other programs running is a great way to lag yourself quickly.
3. SL runs as designed at 1 gig of memory. If you are at 512 or less, you should upgrade as soon as you can. More memory than 1 gig has little effect.
REDUCING LAG IN SL:
1. Remove scripted items that listen to the main chat channel. Objects like animation overrides, weapons, shields, bling, etc. all listen for commands from the chat channel. This means every device in the room with chat commands is filtering every single thing passing through the channel for command words and who said them. A poker table of 10 people with huggers, AOs and flip titles can lag an entire sim if they are wearing enough of them. Even turning the items off will not help as they are still listening for the on command. Remove these items and remove the biggest source of lag.
2. TP when you can for traveling. Walking running and flying (the worst) keeps your equipment constantly updating and will lag and crash you. If there is a large distance to cover, just pull up the map and tp to the other side of the sim.
3. Playing gestures and sounds are a sure fire way to increase lag. They will decrease your bandwidth and increase time dilation and sim FPS rates.
4. In the upper right corner of your window, you should see two small vertical indicators. The one on the left is your packet loss measurement and the one on the right is your current bandwidth measurement. Letting your pointer hover over these meters will give you a reading of their current measurement. Bandwidth is not as important of an indicator of lag as much as packet loss. If you see ANY indication of packet loss it's not good. Occasional packet loss is normal. If you are getting significant amounts of packet loss in quiet areas you may need to adjust your Bandwidth under your Preferences / Network tab below the 500 suggested earlier. If you never have packet loss feel free to bump up your bandwidth and you will load faster.
We hope some of this information is useful in helping you control lag issues. This information was compiled from several sources and is not the property or opinion of Mons Casino or it's employees. Hope to see you lag-free at the tables!
The Management of Mons Grand Casino