Second Life Lag

Network Lag
​Network lag related to the network connection between your computer and the Second Life™ servers.  
  • Downloading visible items and inventory items
  • Downloading avatar information to render them
  • Downloading physics information, avatar movement, object movement, collision data, etc.  ​
Client-Side Lag (Viewer / Graphics Lag)
  • Everything that needs to be drawn (objects, avatars, etc.)
  • High Draw Distance - high draw distance increases the number of objects in visible range, therefore your viewer requires more memory, is more graphics intensive and requires more processing power.   
  • High LOD  (level of detail) - High LOD prevents the pre-planned decomposition and rendering of an object.  Using the standard LOD setting helps prevent lag because pre-panned information can be used to help render objects.  Using a different value for the LOD setting causes your viewer to re-compute information about each object to render it.  Additionally, if the draw distance is very high the graphics card can render details which cannot be seen by the naked eye.
  • Object Animations - Any change of an object, such as texture changes, animation, color change, or movement causes the object to be re-downloaded.  
  • Textures (bigger than 512px)
  • Particles (using large textures)
  • Sounds
  • Light - Any additional light sources generates higher demands on the graphics card.
Server / Region LAG
  • Avatars
  • Downloading (see Viewer-LAG)  - Any Viewer-LAG items can effect the performance of a region. Each incoming avatar must download everything to the cache.  Note: Now that Linden Labs has instituted a distributed content store, downloading textures does not cause server / region lag.
  • Scripts - The number of scripts is not as important as what the scripts do and how much memory they consume.  Why scripts are not listed as Viewer-LAG?   Simple scripts that make visual changes are usually some of the smallest and cause a low load. That scripts by presence alone cause LAG is wrong.
  • Objects (rezzing) - Frequent rezzing can stress the region.  Temp-rezzers which rez objects every 60 seconds are definitely LAG producing. Note, teleports by avatars also count as a rez.
  • Object Animations - ​Any physical movement of objects can stress the region, this includes vehicles of all kinds and pathfinding objects.
The most lag inducing thing in Second Life™ is Physics!  The physics of a region is computed 45 times a second by the the region servers.  Every avatar that is standing or moving and any objects that are moving contribute to the physics calculations.  
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