We spoke earlier about how to improve second life performance and this one is a short addition to that. Actually, this is a shameless theft of wisdom Torley shared in his new Tip of the Week video.

As the new viewer came, some changes are introduced. One of the most loved is WindLight, that is if you don't have an ancient graphics card as yours truly has. There are three more, and less eye catchy things…

1. Lag meter is a nice thing. It tells you if you are in yellow or even red zone with your performance. That is something you usually see without any meters when your avatar is hitting the walls and all the people around you are dancing in half-second steps. Useful thing about it is that it tells you what is probably wrong, so you (maybe) might do something about it. You reach it via Help menu → Lag Meter.
   
2. Graphics settings three tabs in Preferences all went to one big tab. Just to check: you know how to get preferences window? No? OK. Either Edit menu → Preferences, or ctrl-P. Now you know. Then you click Graphics and you see something like this
   
   

   One of the really great things are those avatar imposters. Non-techie explanation: when there is a lot of people around and things become heavy to deal with (no, not your social life and drama, just the performance of your software) there is no need to get into details of all the avatars around. So, if you have checked this option, the distant avies will not be rendered as avatars but as little two-dimensional pictures, just like sprites in the games we played some twenty years ago. (No, I am not a teenager, nor in my early twenties.) You won't notice the difference, except that things will go smoother (again, we're speaking about software, not your social life). The box you need to check is in down left corner. How distant avatars should be to send them to the system from the past century is regulated by that slider on the right: Mesh Detail → Avatars.

3. Network activity strips have disappeared. You know those two in the top right corner, one to tell you how many data is flowing through your cable and the other to tell you how many of it you have lost. Those were useful, but they are no more. I tried to get them back hoping that they have to be turned on somewhere, but had no luck. So, tell me if you know where they are before I start filling JIRA. 

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