The end of SL for Mac?

I gotta say this latest update that made WindLight official for all clients was awesome.
Since RC1, in any mac I got my hands on (late 2006 iMac with a 7600GT and a brand new macbook pro 15'' with an 8600) the SL client is completely unusable.
Any setting I put it on, it goes fine for a minute or two, then slows down to 1 fps (yeah, 1), becoming completely unusable.
Nothing seems to affect this, even on lowest settings, it goes hypersmooth for a minute and then down to 1 fps, completely choppy and unpredictable performance.
Is anyone else having this problem? I find it kinda weird to have it on 2 computers.
Note that the first incarnations of windlight (first look) were perfect... what happened in the middle of the road, Lindens?

Yeah, I'm having the identical problem on the same macbook pro. The problem appears to be that the OS X version of the client is a straight port from the windows version (as is the linux version), taking into account almost nothing that OS X is actually capable of, and pretending that it handles things like memory management and threading the same way windows does.

And then there's the questionable NVIDIA drivers from apple, which of course LL tends to blame...

And as they blame it, I can run world of warcraft with every setting pumped all the way at 55FPS without issue.

Y E S

I use an iMac 2.16 Intel Core 2 Duo, ATi,RadeonX1600 256MB, 2GB RAM.

and SL is not realy nice to play with the 1.19.1 (4) Client.

Please Linden, don't forgett the Macs

I've been reporting the same issues with viewers since 1.18.4, but no-one else seems to have the same problem as me.

1.18.3.5 was ok, then with the update to 1.18.4 none of my groups listed and I had to force them to list first thing when I logged on or they didn't show up at all (doing a Search).

At the same time I couldn't tp without getting grey-screened, upload files or save notecards.

These were the first things I noticed. I then tried all the subsequent viewers, RCs and Beta to see whether it was aberrant - but no, in fact it got worse.

1.19 series added the extra 'feature' of parcel info not listing at the top of the screen until groups were forced to show, then About Land fields not available anyway. Also not only could I not tp, but couldn't even walk or fly across a sim boundary without getting crashed out.

On top of this, to move from one parcel to the other, the parcel info didn't transfer, so things like media streams didn't change with physical relocation of my avatar.

So I kept reporting it - Tickets 4051-4578282, and 4051-4574674 and Jira VWR-5521 and kept using 1.18.3.5 which was a bit crashy, but everything worked fine...

... up until yesterday when LL in it's utterly insane version of wisdom - made 1.19 mandatory.

I've done an AppZap of all versions of SL and a clean install of the main viewer - no change, downloading and installing OnRez (which is really slow to load) still no joy - and Nicholaz - again no joy - although Nicholaz is the best of the bunch.

Can anyone - PLEASE point me in some direction where I can get some idea as to what's going on. I"m running a MBP 2.16 with ATI X1600 card - ADSL broadband 256 none of which had problems with 1.18.3.5.

This issue seems to be restricted to the newer MacBook Pros, which LL are citing in the known issues section during updates. My recommendation would be to use boot-camp to install a Windows version onto your machine and use SL under that, if you can get a hold of Windows cheaply though. $300+ isn't worth it if you only want to run SL (unless you're losing at least that much by not being able to get on it), but only if you have all the latest OS X updates and are still having trouble.

Mac optimisations are one of the things I'd like to look at with the viewer open-sourced, but as with most things I don't have much time and the SL viewer is a complex program, meanwhile I have no job so need to get a source of income first =(
Mac optimisations are going to be a bit tricky as well; as OS X.4 (Tiger) and upwards have much better libraries for really boosting performance, but a lot of people still use OS X.3 so that makes optimisation a lot more complex; instead of just including a new library and calling a few functions I'd have to write a ton of code that wouldn't be half as good.

But yeah, the Mac viewer's general slowness aside, there is something seriously wrong with SL on newer MacBook Pros. For those of you running Leopard on MBPs, have you downloaded the graphics update for OS X? For many people it has really helped, since it is intended almost specifically for those machines.

I have a 2.16Ghz iMac (256mb Radeon X1600) and a 2.4Ghz MBP (256mb GeForce 8600), both with fully-updated Leopard, and I can't say I am having trouble with either of them. Granted that the Mac client has always been slightly slower than the Windows, but I can't see any performance problems compared to the last version, and in fact over the last few months clients have _definitely_ been getting better.

System Version: Mac OS X 10.5.2 (9C7010)
Kernel Version: Darwin 9.2.2
Model Identifier: MacBookPro2,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.33 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 3 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Chipset Model: ATY,RadeonX1600
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)

NO Problems !! - Can even run two clients without breaking down....

I have to say I am getting the same issues. I am MAC OS. Before this was mandatory the 1.19, I was running fine, with no crashes. No that it is mandatory, I can't even log, and move.. I log, takes 5 mins to rezz as much as myself and a few inworld...

I know its hard for everyone at LL to update on different versions... But please remember... that us Mac users are becoming more frequent, and we spend money just the same as others (WINDOWS LINDEX) for the amount of issues we Macs are having we are losing our money on things such as rent and what not.

Please give us at least 1.18 back and or let us know that we can use it still... this upgrade is great for everyone but us.

If anyone can figure out a way to use this, can you please let me know!

THANK YOU!




Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook2,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MB21.00A5.B07
SMC Version: 1.13f3
Serial Number: 4H710DZMWGL
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

I run a pre-intel G5 which is capable of running EVERY other 3D game or application on this world on high speed - but it does NOT run Second Life anymore since LL upgraded to 1.19.1.

Constant total system lock ups while performing various tasks, a performance loss of more than 50% in comparison to the Nicholaz viewer i stll use and so on.

I am abou to quit this here, cause I am totally fed up. Are there any suggestions on hoe at lest 2/3rd of ALL Mac users worldwide (i gues only 1/3rdare using the Intel/PCI-E Macs now) can keep their SL going?

Apple did not support PCI-E until 2006, okay, but LL should know that most Mac users cannot simply upgrade their GPU (mine is a 9800 ATI)

Does anyone know a workaround?

PowerBook G4 - Can not load inventory since about a week now. The viewer goes into a spin. Same with OnRez viewer. SL never quits cleanly either. Always crashes. TPs are a hit or a miss.

Hmm, by the sounds of it you have a similar machine to my old one (G5), but I had the NVidia 6800 Ultra card, which ran the Windlight viewer really well. I'm afraid I can't offer much help in your case, but it seems like it may be the graphics card that SL is struggling with currently.

To the folks having trouble with SL slowing down on Macs, LISTEN TO ME PLEASE.

Go into advanced graphics options and DROP THE GRAPHICS MEMORY SETTING TO HALF OF WHAT YOU ACTUALLY HAVE.

This should COMPLETELY fix the problem.

I don't know *WHY* LL is still shipping the client with the video RAM usage equal to RAM on the card. This is what is leading to 95% of complaints about the Mac client at the moment, as Apple has fixed their video drivers and there are no longer any glitches or issues there.

This has been a problem for two years now and it's still ongoing. Mac OS X uses a lot of GPU RAM for itself, and you need to reduce SL's usage to keep video RAM from running out which causes texture thrashing.

Notice that it runs well for a few minutes; this is because not all the textures have loaded yet. As soon as they do load and video RAM runs out, performance will fall through the floor.

Heed my tip; this post's text should be branded into the side of the Mac port maintainer so he FIXES this default once and for all.

-Zorin, exasperated.

I have never considered having any more problems than most people usually complain about. on the whole i have had a very good SL experience.

Machine Name: Power Mac G5
Machine Model: PowerMac7,3
CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (3.1)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 2.7 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.35 GHz

Chipset Model: GeForce 6800 GT
Type: Display
Bus: AGP
Slot: SLOT-1
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: nVIDIA (0x10de)

I was having the very same problems running on iMac 2.33 Ghz 4 mb ram and Nvidia 7600GT 256. Talked with live support a few times but they didn't have a solution.

Every now and then I delete thewhole secondlife folder from library/application_support to clear cache. Today I also cleared cache from the prefs panel from SL. That seems to work for me. I am on a regular 10 fps all maxed settings in Windlight.

Hope this helps,

Amiryu Hosoi

Riht, that´s my impression, too. Seems as if the ATI AP cards don´t get it right or vice versa. The system itself is fast eniugh for this, no doubt.

Anyway, the slider trick helped, so it seems to work at kinda acceptable speed with Atmospheric Shaders disabled. Nevertheless, i think I´ll go for that 300+$ flashed for Mac 7800 GS, seems to be no other way, apart from switching to the dark side or buy a damned expensive brand new one only for SL..... Sigh.

Thank you so much, Zorin. I stayed in-world three hours longer than I intended to last night because I'd gotten used to just checking the clock on crashes. I'm still getting the occasional beach ball freezes, but that's much more bearable.

If there will be no improvement to the viewer this will be the end of SL for me, as I cannot even log in with my Mac G5 OS Leopard. Have tried all the viewers, Release Candidate etc. Sad...

Considering that Macs account for 20% of the computers sold in the US (and this number is growing), LL had better stop ignoring Mac development.

It's not enough to say "install Windows and run it in Windows."

All of my creative applications such as Adobe CS3 are in OS X. All of my code editors such as BBEdit are in OS X. Booting into bootcamp means that I lose all my apps that I use for texture work and scripting. So why the hell would I want to do that?? Also, when I was running SL in Windows, I got the blue screen of death with fair regularity.

LL just needs to stop having soirees and conventions, and working on crap-ass features nobody needs such as voice, and fix the damn client!! HIRE SOME PROGRAMMERS LL

Do you still have the .dmg's of any older clients? you could use an open source patch so you can still use the older client on the G5.

MacBookPro3,1
Intel Core 2 Duo
2.2 GHz
Memory:4 GB 800 MHz
GeForce 8600M GT 128 MB NVIDIA (0x10de)
Mac OS X 10.5.2


impossible performance. Sad. Much worse than my older Imac.

Blessings on your house and all you descendants, Zorin. This seems to have fixed my issue, at least so far.

Edit:
Nope, spoke too soon. It seems to have reduced frequency but it is still happening. On moving my av or my camera, I get places that make the screen go not quite blank, but there are light blue streaks like rays coming up from the lower left corner. The menus all go away and I can see little glowing spots where lights or white areas would really be. Moving can bring the screen back to normal. It only happens when there are lots of avs present. I get this on both the RC and the main viewer.

I have a 2.33 17" MacBook Pro with an ATI x1600

I am one lucky girl - I never had the problem of broken graphics in SL. But a week ago I had the problem (fragments in strange colors) appear in Google Earth. So perhaps it is not a SL problem at all, but something else.

Even halving my video ram usage does not fixes the beach balls and the occasional lockups.

When will this get fixed? not seeing any probs with any other apps.

All right, I accept I'm thick, and I'm very new to SL, but where do I find this Advanced Graphics option? I'm running SL 1.19.1 on a Macbook with a dual core 2.16 Mhz processor and 2 GB of ram.

I thought it would be in the preferences, but the only thing to do with graphics in there is a slider labelled "Quality and Performance". There are two buttons on that window, one for "Recommended Settings" and one for "Hardware Options". No sign of any suggestion of advanced graphics at all.

All advice gratefully received.

Dave