How to Get the Fastest Frame Rate

The following is a transcript of "Traveling Avatar's Quick and Dirty Tips for a Richer Life," a podcast from QuickAndDirtyTips.com. The audio program is available via RSS feed here and at TheStreet.com's podcast home page.

Will Ross here. Welcome to The Traveling Avatar's Quick and Dirty Tips for a Better Second Life. On this show we discuss tips and tricks for the game Second Life, created by Linden Labs.

So I got this email from SeatPilot Rider, a ranger trainer on the Everwind Sim, and I thought it was sort of interesting:

"Hello,
In SL I am helping others to increase their frames per second, mainly for melee combat. I know all the basics in preferences and how to turn off all prims, etc. ... but I was wondering if there is anyone you may know who has some advanced tips (in the client and server parts of the menu, for example) to increase FPS. I searched the blog and did not get very far. Any help is greatly appreciated."

The reason I found this interesting is most SL players don't look beyond reducing lag in terms of game performance, because most SL players aren't hard-core gamers. Now as we've discussed before, lag and frame rate, or frames per second, are two different things.

Lag is just a delay in the information getting to your machine from Linden Labs. Push too many people or too many scripted objects onto one server and that machine has to do a lot more work to get you your game data in a timely fashion.

Frames per second, however, has a lot to do with your machine and it's something you can influence. So if you find yourself getting cut down by that furry in manly combat over and over again, just think H. O. S. S.! Oh boy! I love acronyms!

H. O. S. S. stands for (fanfare) hardware, optimization, software, system settings. Because computers are so different, I can't give you specifics on this; think of this more as a strategy of attack. And before we get started, put down your shopping bag and strap on your rifle, because if you really want your machine to be lean and mean, you need to stop thinking Second Life, and start thinking first-person shooter. Because if you really want a fast-moving machine, you need to be thinking Gordon Freeman, not Governor Linden.

There is no lag at Black Mesa.