We’ve all experienced lag around Second Life…
Dances appear jerky or our Avatar stands stock still whilst a dance loads, textures don’t load so people and things look grey or the world takes a long time to load. These are all signs of lag and mostly it’s caused by people wearing items with lots of scripts – they can be clothing, hair or HUDS, it all contributes because all of the Avatars in a place are programs running on a computer. Currently we’re on a type 701 server which is running 10 other regions as well as ours – so it’s doing a lot of work.
Like all computers, they have a fixed amount of memory and a processor of a given size BUT here in Second Life, that computer is providing everything you see around you from the sky above to the land you’re on (and the land next door) as well as providing the data for your clothes, the person next to you and all the things you see around you. Because of this, there are optimum limits for the size of scripts as well as they’re number and the time they take to run.
If you’re being nagged by our Script monitor, then you’re over what would normally be regarded as sensible limits – and you’re probably finding that things get very laggy at times.
What can I do?
- Remove any HUDs that you dont need – most clothing or bodies only need the HUD to set them up, once they’re done you can remove them until you need to change.
- Don’t wear Radar HUD’s if you don’t need them – the Firestorm radar is far better.
- Don’t wear a dance HUD unless you have friends with you – most HUD’s run a script for every possible person they can dance.
- Remove any resize scripts from jewelry or hair – a lot of the time you can make a copy of the item as a backup then delete the scripts from the item you wear. The video below helps explain the process of doing this.
There are plenty of free Lag Meter HUD’s on the MP (or ask one of us to pass you a copy) – simply wear that and then remove items you suspect may have scripts in to see how your count drops. It’s perfectly possible to survive a couple of hours in SL with less than 35 scripts!!
If you’re using Firestorm on Windows 10 – there are also a series of files that need whitelisting to prevent Windows from whining – you can find the wiki article on what to do here
There’s also an informative article on the Second Life Wiki – click here.
Have a look at these two video’s too…