Tips and Tricks

For your best experience on our sim (and Second Life in general) we recommend using some settings like below:

Setting up your Camera:

We tried to keep things in a realistic size, which means, that the height of some ceilings and tunnels might interfere with your default camera settings.

For an overall better experience in Second Life we recommend to change the camera angle besides a few other things.

You find the settings in the 'Advanced' menu (Advanced -> Show Debug Settings).

Another window opens, enter the word 'rear' in the searchfield and select 'CameraOffsetRearView' (see screenshot).

Change the angles like this:

x = -2.6

y = 0

z = 0

Feel free to experiment with the settings. You may have to get used to the new view for some time, but once you have, you'll never go back ;)

Setting up Advanced Lighting Model (ALM):

For a more realistic experience we highly recommend to enable 'Advanced Lighting Model'.

It enables the 'materials' feature on viewers which support it (f.e. Firestorm), and it creates a more realistic light setting.

See the difference below (Pictures are taken directly in Second Life without editing afterwards at all, view in 16:10):

Picture taken without ALM at 3:00 am and at 9:00 am:

Picture taken with ALM (no Shadows):

Picture taken with ALM (with Shadows) - Correct view:

If you don't enable 'Shadows', even an older computer can handle this feature at a decent framerate.

Of course it is much nicer with 'Shadows' enabled ;)

The settings can be found in the 'Graphics' tab in the 'Preferences' menu (Avatar -> Preferences), see screenshot.

Facelights / Attached lights...

Yes, they are forbidden here, and here are reasons:

  • SL can only show up to 6 lights in your vicinity. Since lights are used to create a nice atmosphere on a sim, a facelight disables the light(s) on the sim around the wearer and destroys the ambiance - for the wearer and for others around.

  • Most facelights are set up completely wrong. There are facelights with a light radius of 10 meters and more, which means everything around turns into plain white. Enable ALM (see above) and you see why facelights are not welcome on many sims ;)

Draw Distance:

A draw distance between 64 and 96 meters is normally enough. You avoid or reduce viewerlag by setting the draw distance low.

For outside we recommend 192-256 meters and a LOD Factor of 4 to see everything, if your computer can manage that setting at a decent framerate.

To easily change the draw distance in Firestorm, just type 'dd x', where 'x' stands for meters. For example: dd 64 sets the draw distance to 64 meters.

How to set up an Experience:

To activate the Experience "[GA] Products by Gwen Setzer & Amelie Sawson", open the parcel settings from the menu:

  • World -> Parcel Details -> Experiences

  • Press the "Add..." button (in the "Allowed Experiences" section).

  • The window "Choose Experience" opens. Enter/paste the name of the experience ([GA] Products by Gwen Setzer & Amelie Sawson) into the searchfield and press the "Go" button.

  • Select the experience and press "Ok".