More often than not, in a social situation on Second
Life© (SL), either you experience lag, or hear someone complain about it. Even
in instant messages on SL, lag sometimes makes words get mangled and out of
context, and sometimes what you say disappears completely.
What is lag and what
causes it? How can you minimize lag? Stareyes Galaxy got on SL to find out.
Linden Lab (LL) maintains a web page for the “minimum
requirements” to run Second Life, and looking at that page, both the hardware
platform and the network connection have a profound effect on how you are able
to utilize the capabilities of SL.
In order to experience Second Life in its full glory, a
“gamer” computer is required. These can have multicore processors and 12 to 16
GB of Ram, and a similar amount on the graphics accelerator card as well. This
capability allows the computer to fully render the mind-boggling detail to
practically an infinite draw distance. I once heard an avatar boast of his USD
500 graphics card. He thought he was, of course, happily “lag-free”.
Some third-party viewers (TPVs) are designed to provide a
compromised or non-existent graphics environment to allow for the basic instant
message and chat capability. On these, lag is virtually nonexistent, connecting
on a mobile phone over a WiFi network for instance.
Lag can make your avatar freeze, and as the viewer
controls are graphically rendered, often trying to help the situation while
logged on is ineffective. In some viewers, there is a “Lag Meter” under the
Avatar tab. This can be accessed by opening the “Avatar Health” dialog there.
While not an accurate way to determine the magnitude of lag, it can tell
roughly where the possible lag problem lies.
Network: Reading SL Wiki sources, it appears that at
least 500 kb/s speeds are required. Most modern home connections exceed this,
but sometimes the main connection resources are shared with other computers or
other programs on your computer. Running SL on a laptop over WiFi also will
slow down your connection speed.
Memory: The
minimum requirement is 512 MB of RAM. This will cause a lot of cache swapping
with your hard drive, so a larger amount is advisable. The more the better!
CPU
and GPU: the minimum requirement here is quite modest, so even
older home computers can run SL, even with Pentium 4 class CPUs. Depending on
your viewer, you may benefit from going to faster CPUs with 64-bit operating
systems. Graphics Processing Units
(GPUs) are sometimes integrated on your motherboard. These are quite often
subpar with regard to modern gaming requirements. Follow the SL “recommended”
configurations to upgrade to a dedicated graphics card. Simply by running SL
with the viewer window minimized to a smaller but still manageable size will
help, especially if you normally would use full screen on a high-resolution
monitor.
Server: The
servers that SL uses need to send out the data pertaining to the sim you are
on, not only to you, but to all other users on the same sim, at the same time.
If there are a lot of users, the sheer amount of the data will be slowed down
by lowering the frame rate of rendering. In this way, the server will ensure
that everyone on the sim gets an optimal user experience, with regard to what’s
going on on that particular sim.
Avatar: We
have come a long way from the original”Ruth” avatars to how we want to present
ourselves today. With regard to avatars generating lag, one must assess the
impact of each body part and wardrobe item. Every prim is an object to store on
the sim, and to be rendered to all users. Every script as well will take up
server resources. Hair and dress resize scripts, bling in jewelry, particles…
all that will appear as an item to distribute to all users of a sim. Take a
crowded event, and the effect is multiplied by the number of users in a
power-law fashion. Particles are particularly annoying, as the script for these
is only needed to initiate the effect, but the actual rendering is done on YOUR
computer! Therefore, entering a social situation where a lot of avatars use
particles will make every user experience lag in some way.
Symptom:
“Swimming in treacle”: This is manifested by your inability to
move, slowing down of the viewer frame rate and the user interface not
accepting your mouse or typed input with acceptable latency. Walking around
feels as if you are “swimming in treacle” and typing is the same way. Sometimes
you cannot even mouse over a window and close it by clicking on the “X”. The
reason for this is most likely at your end of the connection, and you should
check with your computer’s “Task manager” if you have programs open that hog
your resources. The most common
SL-related issue is that the viewer cache is too full, taking possession of
your computer’s memory. Clearing cache should be done periodically, as the
viewer loads textures in cache memory files that are in turn loaded to the
run time memory. I once was able to regain motion by doing this, following the
guidance from my viewer’s support pages. Other issues may relate to un-optimized
“Preferences”. You may simply have set your graphics requirements too high, and
lowering these, especially from the “Ultra” setting helps mitigate lag. If this
is not enough, you should disable streaming music and media as well. Rendering
distance is also a factor – in most social situations, why would you need to
render objects that are farther than say, 128 meters?
Symptom:
“I see grey people”: this is usually seen as you enter a sim with
a large number of avatars or “sculpty” objects on it. These days, mesh clothing
and other prim-laden wardrobe and accessory items need to be transmitted to
your viewer from the sim server. You end up “seeing grey people” – as the
avatars take a long time to render on your screen. The reason underlying this
problem is your connection speed. The server will try its best to feed your
viewer with the data you need to see that avatars and sim objects correctly,
but it will take a finite amount of time to pass the data to you. The only real
solution to this problem, if it occurs frequently, is to upgrade your
connection. In your SL viewer, also setting the graphics preferences, cache
size, and maximum bandwidth to coincide better with your actual capabilities
will help.
So, to beat lag, next time how about you think what you
can do to improve the situation, not only for yourself but for the avatars
around you? Is it really necessary to be at the ready to resize your hair or
skirt at any given moment? If not, make a copy of your resize attachment and
edit it with the scripts until you are satisfied, then remove the script from
the “contents” box in the “Edit” menu. Is all that sparkle really necessary in
your jewelry? If not, go find similar items that have fewer scripts. If in
doubt, examine your load on the sim and find the most likely culprit items that
generate lag. Respect script limits where the sim owners warn about these.
Empty your texture cache regularly, and use the best possible connections.
Revert to text-based viewers such as Radegast, or use your mobile viewer if you
cannot connect reliably on the graphics viewer of your PC. If you still are in trouble with lag, avoid
crowded sims, and those with lots of detailed texture.
The single thing that seems the simplest to do when you
experience lag is to sit down. Movement, especially with avatar physics, is
very intensive for the server-side computing. Once you ”sit” on something, your
avatar gets locked on that prim, and the movement effect is greatly reduced.
Minimum and recommended system requirements for running
Second Life: http://secondlife.com/support/system-requirements/?lang=en-US
SL wiki on lag:
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Comments will be reviewed and posted within 24 hours. Please note any abusive content or outside promotional links may not be approved.