User:Jaszon Maynard/Jaszons sandbox Performance

I'm currently developing this article and will probably eventually publish it to the wiki

Second Life is very demanding on most computer systems. Due to the unusually dynamic, user-modifiable, constantly changing nature of the Second Life world, you may never see it display as smoothly as you would in your typical 3D computer game. However, it can be well-enjoyed nonetheless.

Performance in Second Life is primarily affected by your computer and the speed at which it is capable of drawing the world that is Second Life. It can also be affected by other factors, such as the quality of your Internet connection, as well as problems occurring on the server computers that are running Second Life. Performance can be improved by changing settings in Second Life, though in some cases you may not achieve satisfactory performance without hardware and software upgrades (new computer, or new CPU, memory, graphics card, newer drivers, etc).

Types of Performance Problems in Second Life

Low Framerate (FPS)

The Second Life program may be asking your computer to do more than it can handle, and if your computer hardware is not powerful enough, or not setup correctly, it cannot draw the Second Life world very quickly. This will result in a low framerate (also called low FPS, frames-per-second) and your view of the world will be jerky and stuttering, more like a slideshow than a movie.

Lag

If your Internet connection is not good enough, or if the Second Life program is overwhelming your connection with the amount of information it is trying to download, you may experience various kinds of Internet-related lag. What is happening is that information flowing between your computer and the Second Life server computers is making that trip too slowly, possibly with data getting dropped (lost) and needing re-transmissions. This often results in events being delayed in Second Life. For instance, you may try to make your avatar walk, but it may take a long time for it to respond to your attempt to make it walk. Then, when you attempt to stop walking, your avatar continues walking longer than you wanted it to. You may type some chat text but it doesn't appear on the screen right away. Or someone may reply to a question of yours but you don't see the reply for a long time after they wrote it.

avi fps plunge target 10fps

Short Guide to Improving Performance

mention mac vs windows vs linux

settings packet loss disable voice

Full-Length Guide to Optimizing Performance

expanded lag meter