It’s not that every conversation in Second Life turns to Debug Settings, but every conversation about Debug Settings draws everyone’s attention. It’s like getting a car and poking around under the hood, we are afraid to experiment. We pay attention and take notes, and try to remember the tips that are shared.  I have collected a fair number of tips and arrange them in reference to why you might use them.

For a comprehensive list of Debug Settings, check out the Second Life Wiki. Berry did a recent post featuring her favorite Debug Settings.  If you have more debug tips, please add them in comments. I would love to add them to this list.

Update: Lette Ponnier wrote a response providing some context and clarification about how some of these settings can reduce performance. I agree, when I am not taking pictures, I change many back to default since I don’t need that level of detail anymore. I had thought that the categories provided enough context to make that clear, but value her clarification.

Mesh is not showing up properly

• Meshbytespertriangle: 128
• Meshmaxconcurrentrequests: 128
• MeshminimumByteSize: 1

Sculpts are not showing up properly

• RendervolumeLODFactor: >3

Building

• MaxDragDistance – limit how far a select prim can run away
• UISndObjectCreate – Leave it blank to make the build sound go away.

In-world Experience

• PlayTypingAnim – False (turns off typing)
• The camera and focus offset settings for a more realistic experience (see Nalates article)
• NearMeRange=sets the search range for nearby avatars
• Inventory Linking = True (allows you to paste links to inventory)
• RenderUnloadedAvatar – Load avatars in your view.

Machinima

• ZoomTime = increasing this makes the camera move more smoothly

Photography

• YawFromMousePosition = 0 (stops your head following the mouse around the screen!)
• RenderAutoMaskAlphaDeferred=True (Use alpha masks where appropriate, in the deferred (‘Lighting and Shadows’) graphics mode)
• RenderAutoMaskAlphaNonDeferred=True (Use alpha masks where appropriate, in the non-deferred (‘Lighting and Shadows’) graphics mode)
• RenderDynamicReflections=True – makes shiny objects reflective (unsupported graphics feature that will crash some folks and isn’t exactly bug-proof)
• Render Glow = Sometimes you want to turn this off because the glow washes out your photo. However, it does not always get rid of all the glow for some reason.
• RenderGlowResolutionPow – lower this number to reduce the glow
• RenderDynamicLOD – Set it to “FALSE” to get a more natural distance in a landscape.
• Torley Linden has an overview of all sorts of settings for photos.
• Depth of Field settings and camera tilt from Second Life Wiki

Performance

• RenderAppleUseMultGL=True (The default it False but for Mac users on new machines, it should be set to true)
• ToastGap = 0
• RenderFarClip = allows you to enter draw distance numerically instead of with a slider. Sometimes setting this to 0 and then back up can make a slow-rezzing place rez faster.
• noinventoryLibrary=True – gets rid of the Inventory Library