LAAAAGGGGG!!!!!!!

Lag is how users refer to the slow reaction time when using Second Life. It is a symptom with a variety of causes; When you log in, there are a number of components which have to work together smoothly to minimize lag.

What most users are not aware of is that second life being graphics intensive, most of the time lag’s main cause is user related, since the program uses a lot of your bandwidth to communicate with the Linden Labs servers. Second Life is both large and “live” (constantly changing), so some very fast algorithms (ie BSP trees and pre-compiled maps) used in other 3D games can’t be used here, meaning that the data to create the 3D effects has to be downloaded and transformed in 3D in real time.

Before filing a complaint or contacting your real in-world real estate agent, there are a few things that you should check to make sure lag is not exclusive to your end. Most second life viewers -the official one and the third party viewers- have an inbuilt lag meter, generally found in Help > Lag Meter. The Lag Meter breaks lag down into Client, Network, and Server lag, with corresponding lights -or bars- for each lag type.

The Client indicator will explain -when maximized- your current frame rate -images downloaded per second- and will advice you on solutions to solve lag on this end -generally reducing draw distance helps -or the quality of your graphics-.

The Network indicator will show how fast your computer is communicating with the servers, if the connection is too slow then you can surely expect to experience lag -closing a few programs running at the same time and using bandwidth usually fixes that problem.

If the Server indicator is not green, there’s nothing much you can do as this means the lag issue is coming from Linden Lab servers’ end.

In-world, remember that scripted items worn on your avatar such as HUDs (heads up display), rings, hair, shoes with resizers also use bandwidth to communicate with the server and this -if traffic is too high- adds to lag for all people on the sim; so make a habit of removing all resize scripts and unnecessary-permanently-worn HUDs to make the experience more pleasurable and enjoyable for all users.

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