All scripted objects in Second Life produce lag to some degree. Luckily for us, Ozimals has done everything they can to produce breedable pets with minimal lag. But there are still some steps you can take to reduce the lag caused by your bunnies on your sim. In order to do that, you must first understand the different types of lag on Second Life as well as how to optimize your settings to reduce the lag you experience.
Lag
People use the term a great deal, but usually without really understanding what it means, what causes it or how to deal with it. Some of the things suggested to reduce lag have little or no effect.
First of, “lag” is a catch-all words that actually covers 3 very different things, and it is important to distinguish between them. Most lag reduction methods only deal with one of these 3 aspects.
Network Lag
This is when you have connectivity issues. There are problems somewhere in the network between your computer and the LL servers. This usually can be noticed when you start to experience packet loss. (Press Shift-Ctrl-1 and look at the top, packet loss; ideally this should be 0%; if it isn’t you have a connectivity issue and are losing data.)
Client Side
Everything you see has to be drawn by your graphics card. When there is too much to draw, when your computer cannot keep up, you experience client-side lag. ARC (Avatar Rendering Cost) is part of client-side lag, as the name itself says. There are many things you can do to reduce this, without having to ask people to adapt to you:
- Reduce your draw distance (do you really need to see 512m away, especially at an auction for example?);
- Turn on avatar imposters (this makes drawing of distant avatars much faster);
- Disable atmospheric shaders (which serves to drastically reduce how much your computer has to render, as the sky alone is very graphics-intensive);
- If need be, inhibit the rendering of other avatars: Advanced -> Rendering -> Types -> Character (or, if you use Emerald viewer, derender them).
Client side lag is local to YOU. It is a direct result of how powerful your computer is. It is no one else’s fault if your computer cannot handle a specific situation. So if you’re in a high-lag setting, adapt temporarily as described above.
It must also be pointed out that client side lag does NOT affect things like scripts, at all. It has zero impact on a SIMs performance. That is a myth.
Server Side
Server side lag is caused by several things, independently. There are two major causes; all others are secondary and negligible. They are, in order of impact on a SIM:
Avatars. People, even wearing nothing at all, with an ARC of 1, and no scripts, will lag a SIM. The SIM needs to keep track of where each avatar is, to prevent them walking through one another, floors, walls, etc. Avatar movement is VERY high when it comes to server side lag. Sitting down reduces this lag significantly. Your avatar, in fact, becomes linked to the prim you’re sitting on. So, if you’re attending an auction, please sit on something.
Scripts. This is common knowledge. But many do not realize how heavily scripted they are and how badly this affects a SIM. If you know you’re going to a busy event, then remove all scripted attachments. An AO in an of itself is negligible when compared to hair that is resize-scripted. Keep the AO, and instead ensure that your hair, shoes and other attachment has no resize scripts in them. (There is no good reason whatsoever for anyone to be carrying around more than 100 scripts on a human avatar, even when in full RP attire, with combat HUDs.)
Contrary to popular belief, prims do not lag a SIM – or more precisely, their effect on lag is miniscule compared to the two things mentioned above. Scripted prims cause lag; unscripted ones do not – relatively speaking of course.
So, if your going to an auction, please be seated as soon as you can, and remain seated. And before you arrive, check your attachments (hair, shoes, etc) to ensure that they are unscripted. To those running auctions, I would strongly suggest that you ask attendees to do these things; a badly lagged SIM affects the bunnies we all so prize.
The “Mono Freeze” Bug
That’s my name for it, not an official one. I’ll try to explain in simple terms. In brief, any time a mono-compiled scripted is rezzed into a SIM, the SIM suffers a small “hit”. (By “rezzed into”, I mean not only objects rezzed in-world, but also avatars TPing into a SIM – as well as leaving!)
This effect is cumulative; every time a mono script is rezzed, the negative effect sums to the previous ones. For any single script, the effect is tiny, but they add up. And eventually it becomes noticeable: the SIM begins to freeze. Everything in the SIM stops, you can’t move, you can rez, and all scripts stop completely. As it gets worse, the freeze effect lasts longer and longer. It becomes easy to predict when someone has arrived or left a SIM simply because suddenly you can’t move.
The only solution to this, at this time, is to restart the SIM. That clears the effect, but it just starts building once again, eventually requiring yet another restart. Anyone who manages a SIM will be well aware of this, especially if the SIM is very busy. But they may not be aware of the cause.
The cause is, as I said, mono complied scripts. And so we come to yet another reason why people should remove all resizers from their hair, shoes and other clothing attachments. If you don’t, be aware that every time you enter or leave a SIM, you are having a serious negative impact on it. This can range from vendors failing to deliver products, to, yes, rabbits that suddenly stop eating.
This bug is amply documented here:
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-4196
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-3895
Linden Labs attempted to release a fix for this, but it caused more problems that it solved, and so was rolled back. Thus to date, this is a pending issue.
Particles
Contrary to popular belief, particles do not “lag a SIM’. Their effect on a SIM, on the servers, is in fact close to zero. Particles are almost entirely client-side. They are rendered on your computer, by your graphics card, and in fact, do NOT require a script to keep them going. They need a script to initiate the effect, yes, but afterward the script may be removed and the particle effect will keep going forever – until another script is dropped in to turn them off, or the object is taken or deleted.
If you find that particles are “lagging you”, it is wrong to ask that the effect be stopped. Instead, stop it yourself, on your own computer. That way others, who are less affected, may continue to enjoy them.
You can disable particles in a number of ways:
- View -> Beacons -> Hide Particles
- Advanced -> Rendering -> Types -> Particles
- Preferences -> Graphics -> Custom -> Particle count (set to 0)
Doing any of these things will stop particles “lagging you”. There is no need to ask others to degrade their SL experience on your behalf. Also, again, particles do NOT cause server-side or script lag. Even if the scripts are not removed, a single one uses 0.02ms script time.
Owners of venues that have a “no particles” policy may mean well, but are unfortunately misinformed. Again, particles do not lag a SIM, and are very easily dealt with client-side as I described. Those venue owners are aiming at the wrong target in trying to reduce lag: particles aren’t it, scripts are – as are moving avatars. You can’t remove the avatars of course Smile but you can request that they not show up with heavily scripted attachments.
(Having said that, every little bit helps when it comes to reducing script lag, so if you have a particle effect that does not require the script to be in it at all times, remove it.)
Bunnies
A few words on the bunnies now. They are in fact VERY well scripted, kudos to the team for that! They do cause some lag, but then, all scripted objects do. (The only “lag free” SIM is one with nothing on it, at all.)
Now I’m going to refer back to [the beginning], where I said that avatars are the primary cause of SIM lag. That is in fact a special case of a more general phenomenon, called “physics” or “collisions”. Anything that is physical is handled in a special way by the servers: they need to constantly compute whether a physical object (or avatar) will run into something, and prevent it from doing so. This calculation takes priority over everything else a simulator does.
Avatars are, by design, physical – unless they sit on a non-physical object/prim. (Try it: rez a cube, sit on it, and then edit the cube; you can drag yourself through a wall. You become part of the cube’s link set and so become non-physical. But I digress.)
Bunnies and most SL moving pets are also physical. If you have them set to hop around, you are adding a LOT of server-side lag to the SIM. This is why all bunny markets require that bunnies on sale be set to no movement. If you breed on a rented parcel, be aware that having rabbits set to movement on, will create a great deal of server-side lag.
