"images/second" indicates how many images per second are displayed. This value is limited to 60
because your screen can't display more anyway.
By checking the 'unlimited' option you can measure how much your PC could display without this limitation.
"max view distance" indicates how far you can see, in meters. By default 1024 m.
If the display is too slow you can decrease this value.
"lights active" indicates the maximum number of lights displayed. Some graphic cards
slow down the display significantly at night when many lights are on, in that case decrease the value
"max lights" to display only the lights near you.
"particles active" indicates how many particles (snow, smoke) are displayed at most.
If the display is too slow you can try to decrease the value "max nb of particles"
or reduce the distance at which particles are displayed "max particle distance".
"texture memory used" indicates how much memory the graphics card uses to store textures.
If this value increases beyond 600, 700 or 800 Mbytes your PC may slow down or DirectX may give an error.
Then reduce the "texture level of detail" value to 11, 10 or 9, which will reduce the memory consumption
but can make some textures a little blurry.
For example, a level of detail of 12 has a size of 4096 x 4096 pixels (2^12 = 4096) and consumes 64 Mbytes.
"use graphic card" indicates if Planet uses your 3D processor (GPU).
If this option is not selected, Planet will use only your main processor (CPU).
On some older PCs this option is not available.
This option should always be selected because it speeds up the display a lot.
If you change this option you have to restart Planet to see the effets.
"compute avatars in the graphic card" should be checked because on some PCs it speeds up a lot the display.
On some older graphics cards this can however display weird triangles instead of avatars,
if this is the case do not check this option.
"sort transparent textures" should always be checked otherwise transparent textures are not displayed properly.
"apply shininess on textures" should be checked to display the reflections.
"sun and moon shadows" displays shadows for all objects and avatars.
This can however seriously reduce the number of images per second.
"allow video/audio streams" allows you to watch video or hear audio streamed from the internet.
If you enable "Windows 10", Planet will process video/audio fully in your graphic card using Windows 10 Media Engine;
if this causes Planet to crash, disable this to process video/audio on the CPU.
You can check "defragment cache" from time to time if you have a non-SSD hard disk.
The next time you start Planet, the large cache file on your hard disk will then be defragmented
(it will take 5 min).
This has no effect if you have an SSD hard disk, so electronic.
The "Reset to default values" button resets default values that are normally suitable for everyone.
Refresh rate of your screen
If Planet lags and you have a brand new laptop, you can check this:
click on the Windows desktop, Display Settings, Advanced Display Settings, and see how many Hz your screen is set to.
On some new laptops it's set to 144 Hz.
We changed it to 60 Hz, no difference and it is much faster (the PC has to calculate much less frames per second, of course)
Planet slow at startup, when teleporting and riding in a car
If Planet is slow at startup, when teleporting and riding in a car,
it's probably because your PC has a HDD disk designed for archiving
instead of a new SSD that allows fast random reading of the cache.
Check your drive's performance for random 4k readings.
Installing Planet on an SSD can speed it up to 8 times compared to an HDD.
If you are unlucky enough to have an HDD, you can improve performance slightly by defragmenting the disk
(in Windows, click on C: Properties, Tools, Improve Performance) and by defragmenting the Planet cache
(in Planet menu Tools / Graphics / Defragment Cache).
Which PC do you recommend for Planet ?
- First of all, you need a PC with Windows 10.
- The processor is the most important, it is the engine of your PC.
Intel produces 3 categories of processors:
- the light i3 for surfing the internet,
- the mid-range i5 for the office,
- and the i7 for gamers (3D games).
For Planet we recommend a medium i5 processor.
If you like to chat in full silence, we don't recommend an i7, nor a graphics card
like nvidia/geforce/radeon because your PC will then need a noisy cooling fan that
will activate when you launch Planet.
- For RAM memory, 8 GB is enough.
- We strongly advise you to use an electronic SSD hard disk which will allow a very fast access to the cache
(a mechanical HDD is more suitable for archiving).
So in summary: Windows 10, i5 processor, 8 GB RAM, SSD disk.
In 2021, the average price of such a PC (without monitor and keyboard) is about 600-800€.
To chat well, we recommend a separate comfortable keyboard (test it in the store beforehand
or buy it online for example at https://keyboardco.com/ if you want a mechanical typing keyboard for 200€).
Also essential if you want to build on Planet without damaging your eyes: a large desktop monitor.
The speed of your internet connection is not important for Planet, because after all the 3D world is loaded
on your hard drive, Planet uses very little internet.
"images/second" indicates how many images per second are displayed. A value below 30 indicates you're lagging.
The first thing to do then is to enable the option "compute avatars in the graphic card" to see if the value increases.
On some older graphics cards this can however display weird triangles instead of the avatars,
if this is the case do not check this option.