So Much Better!

Hey, it’s a Berry meme! I couldn’t resist doing this one because as I mentioned earlier, I also got a new computer this month. Although, after looking at her new set up, mine is definitely not as fancy! That’s okay, though. She does way more pics than I do. 🙂 I’m just thrilled to death that I’ve been able to hang out with my family, run around for hours, do gyazo gifs, and no crashes and barely any lag. It’s awesome!

1. Share any of your computer specs (video card, memory, etc..) Click here if you don’t know any of those things or just share the year you bought it.

* I fully admit to being the least techy type person ever and I have no idea what any of this actually means. My computer is a Dell Insperion 3847. Processor is Intel Core i5-4460. 8GB of RAM. Video card is nVidia GeForce GTX 550Ti. I have Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1.

2. Which viewer do you use most often?

* I use Firestorm, the 64 bit one now. I’ve heard the official SL viewer is good these days, but I need to use a viewer with RLV because the girls use the Yuus/Nuu HUD and it’s required for that. I don’t like to have more than one viewer installed on my computer at any time because I’ve heard switching back and forth a lot can lead to inventory loss. But again, I’m not techy, so that could have been a load of smoke. 🙂

3. What is your FPS (Frames Per Second) when you have your graphics on ultra?

I turned it on Ultra to take this picture and it booped on down to 7.2 FPS. That’s probably not awesome, huh? LOL! But when I have it on high and don’t have shadows on, it’s 80 FPS. I only turn on ultra to take pics, so I guess it’s okay. Turning shadows on tends to make tiny mesh look gross [as you can see on my glasses] so I don’t have shadows on too often. If there’s a setting to make tiny mesh not look icky, please let me know.

4. How often does Second Life crash for you? Is it usually just a viewer crash or your whole system crashes? What are you usually doing at the moment of the crash?

* I have not crashed once since getting my new computer!! Before, with my old one, I couldn’t turn around in our house without crashing. I couldn’t even be IN the house half the time, and forget it if other people were around me. If I was anywhere with a sim surround? Pfft. That was almost an instant crash unless I could derender it real fast. It seemed like sometimes all I had to do was breathe and I’d crash on my old computer. This one is sooooooo much better!!!!

5. Do you know of any tips or tricks in the settings that would improve performance?

* Well, on Firestorm, I tend to disable the bridge thinger and not wear it. On my old computer, that helped a lot. Also, I turn off the HTTP textures thing. I don’t know what that does, but I know on my old computer, it helped. I also don’t have on anisotropic filtering most of the time, unless I’m taking pics. And I don’t know exactly what this does, but I uncheck the “Enable Streamed VBOs” box, too. Supposedly that helps. I’m not sure where most of that is on any other viewer, but on Firestorm it’s under the Hardware tab under Graphics in your preferences. Even though I probably don’t HAVE to do any of that now, I still do it kind of out of habit.

If anyone knows how to make my antialiasing look better, though, please let me know. For some reason since getting my new computer, I feel like I lost a setting or something because I have the AA at 4x in my viewer and it’s not QUITE as smooth as on my old craptastic computer. And also, please help a girl out and tell me how to make mesh look better when shadows are on! It’s sad when my necklaces get all crazy looking, you know?

How Sweet It Is

So for the past couple of years, I’ve been working on a computer that is painfully outdated. The video card was decent enough and all but it was just too old and patched together with bits and pieces of extra parts. Heck, I was still working with Windows XP despite the fact that everyone was scaring me by saying I NEEDED to get at least Windows 7 immediately. But I made it run and I made it work for me because unfortunately, the budget just didn’t allow for a new computer. At least, not a new computer that would run Second Life any better.

The past few months have been rough. Any thing I’ve done with the family has been done with a lot of crashing, or I have to derender EVERYTHING around me to just stay with them. All the pictures I’ve shown that I didn’t take from someone else’s Flickr have been done with my computer grunting and wheezing next to me. But I kept going because I love SL, I love taking pictures, and what else could I do? SL helps me more than any drug when my anxiety gets really bad, especially since my anxiety attacks usually happen at night when I can’t go out for a walk or anything. I love it.

But even with my love for SL and my family, I’ve been getting more and more discouraged. All the decorating I did in our house was done slowly and with a LOT of freezing and crashing and I couldn’t really be in the house anyway. It was easier to be out on the beach, but not that much easier. I couldn’t visit my girls’ rooms or go see the Oleanders or go shopping at any events until almost the last day. Staying up on my platform was basically becoming my SLife. I started to just not want to log in at all.

I’ve been hoping for the past few months that maybe for my birthday this month, I could talk to my RL partner about a new computer. But a few weeks ago, we had to have work done to our house that put pretty much everything out of the budget for a while. The joys of home ownership, am I right? *laughs* So I put the thought of a new computer out of my head and tried to figure out how to make mine chug along a little longer.

However, I forget that my RL partner pays more attention to me than I realize sometimes.

This morning I was getting myself ready to head out to see my parents for the day when a very normal-for-us thing happened. I heard a THUMP! Then a DINGDONG as the doorbell rang. Then VROOM as a truck drove away. My RL guy is kind of an Amazon freak so we get packages delivered almost daily. [these packages almost never end up anywhere except in the living room, unopened. I dunno.] On my way out the door, I noticed the big box on the porch said DELL. It’s not too uncommon for computer equipment to end up on our doorstep due to his job. For the briefest moment I thought, “Wouldn’t that be nice if it was a new computer for me?” But I put it out of my mind because I knew it couldn’t be for me.

But guess what? IT WAS!!!!

When I got home this evening, he came out of his office and handed me a box. “This is a power supply. You need to open up this big box, then open up your computer and pull out your video card and hard drive. Then pull out the power supply in this computer and install the rest. Good luck.”

Well. *laughs* I’m not the most technical girl in the world, which he well knows, so he DID most of it because I was unscrewing things that didn’t need to be and obviously I don’t know where everything goes. But I did help!

After installing a few things and then going to get dinner, I was ready to get into Second Life.

Holy… I’d forgotten how FUN it can be! My sister pulled me over with them and for the first time, I didn’t have to immediately start derendering her landscaping. I could cam all over their land! I could run around with the kids! We went shopping and I was able to chase Riley all over the sim! We went to look at hair and I was able to do Gyazo gifs for the first time ever! We went to try out dances and I had no problems! After I said goodnight to them, I was able to go shopping, then do to a blog post with shadows! I could run around our house and then sit and enjoy it.

I’m so so happy right now. And so dang grateful that I’m as loved as I am – in both worlds.