Problems with MAC

I have an Airbook and am having problems connecting to region. On the rare occasions I get connected to Help Island there is no avatar present and just a lot of water. Any help would be appreciated because I really want to try this game. I have never played before and am really excited.

The Airbook only supports wireless connections to the Internet, right? SL does very poorly over most wireless connections. Too much data being transmitted in a way that is not fault-tolerant. That, in itself, may be your problem.

That said, some people still do use Wireless to play SL, and though they crash more often, they don't freeze like you are doing.

Before you log in, go to the Edit menu and open your preferences, and try turning the graphics options down to a lower level. Also, try toggling some of the options like VBO and Paletized Textures. Too high a graphics setting for your wireless bandwidth, or one of those odd graphics options, may be to blame.

Is it a brand new one with the nVidia 9400? If not it's only got intel integrated graphics, which, iirc are not really supported. A wired connection could possibly be achieved using the USB port but on the first gen Airbooks the "gpu" was onboard intel. If it is a brand new one w/ the fancy new nVidia you might want to try a wired (via usb dongle) ethernet connection to see if that helps.

Hi There. I dont have an airbook, but I do connect wirelessly with both a macbook and a macbook pro. I freeze occasionally and have somewhat poor performance in some sims. I set my graphics settings to the minimum, or low quality (just above the minimum setting). This seems to help dramatically.

Ok its official. My airbook sucks. I have a GMA X3100 graphics card and don't have enough MB to support it. I suppose this is the price you pay for beauty. For some reason I was able to log on but then there is no sign of an avatar, the screen is blue and it looks like I am in a watery grave. I will accept defeat and go into the corner to cry softly.

I use a Macbook (not pro) when I travel which doesn't, according to LL's recommendations, have enough video memory to run SL. It's not the best SL experience ever but it does ok even wirelessly. You might try looking at Edit -> Preferences -> Graphics and uncheck "Hardware Skinning" if it is checked. I was logging into one of the Opensim grids lately and couldn't figure out why I was nothing but attachments and eyeballs until I looked and saw it was checked and as soon as I unchecked it, poof... there I was! Good luck.

I sometimes use SL on a Macbook with GMA X3100, and I always use SL over a wireless network connection. I think this is quite similar to your system and it works fine. I always run SL in a window though, I don't know what impact this has. I can even select the 'Ultra' graphics setting and SL remains useable usually at around 9 or 10 fps if I turn down the draw distance to 160m by selecting Custom. I wonder if clearing your cache might be worth a try, this is in the Network section of Preferences. If that doesn't make any difference, I think I would try to run a different version of the viewer, the release candidate or one of the third party versions.
I have tried the 1.21.6 version from:
http://hyangreflections.blogspot.com/ it's a little complex to set up, be sure to read the instructions.
Good luck.

i have bought an imac recently (the most powerful ones) and i am having loads of trouble with sl! i get the "your account won't be avaliable till..xxxx.." too often and i can't imagine whay...the graphic card is supposed to be awesome..i connect via wifi to adsl connections... can anyone tell me what the problem is?

Thanks...it is getting so damm annoying...

I've been getting that message too just recently, and I've had my imac for over a year, so it may just be a coincidence that you started getting it more right after you bought your imac. Plus, I crash a lot more with the newest release and release candidate clients. Hopefully, LL will fix these issues soon... normally, SL runs wonderfully on my imac.

Hi all.
I run wireless for hours on end on my macbook pro. Most of the time my draw distance is around 400 meter, and most graphics maxed out. I do get a bit of lag in places with a lot of avatars or many large textures, but nothing that is a major problem.

I use the cool SL viewer - before switching to it I could barely move....

Cheers, Boreal

Hi Betty, Would you mind posting the configuration of your imac? (processor speed, graphics card, screen size and finish). I have heard such awful reports from those trying to run SL on the new imacs that I am thinking of buying one from the last generation, which yours seems to be.

Also, does your imac have the new mandatory glossy screen? Again, reports on the glossy screen are mostly negative, so I'm hoping I can find a matte finish one from a former gen. Thanks!

Hi Bay, It does have the glossy screen, which I have gotten used to. My husband tried one of the iMac's the generation before mine (I got this right after they came out) but it had problems with SL and a lot of texture flicker, and he ended up exchanging it for the same one that I have. Here are the specs:

2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
OS 10.5.2
20" monitor
Ati Radeon HD2600 256 MB VRAM

I looked at the Apple site and noticed that the most powerful iMac listed has the NVidia video card rather than the Ati that the others have. I know I have read on the forums that the newer Nividia cards have issues with SL. If you decide to exchange it, and have access to an actual Apple store, you can go in and download SL and test it out there. I downloaded SL and played with it on every model they had except the Mac Pro before I decided on mine!

Drivers up to date?

Speaking to the person who suggested that the wireless connection was at fault... that's completely untrue. SL is more than capable of running beautifully and with very high frame rates over wireless connections, even slower hookups. As it happens, the MacBook Air has extremely fast Wi-Fi built-in, supporting the fastest 802.11n draft specs. Assuming you're connected to a decent base station (Airport Express, Airport Extreme, or Time Capsule for example), you should have no problems there whatsoever.

The two main issues you're going to be facing with the first generation MacBook Air are processor and graphics. Before you go cursing Apple remember that the MacBook Air was not designed to be a gamer powerhouse computer. It was a compromise of form and function designed for those who needed the utmost in portability and lightweight computing.

In the processor department, you have a specialized version of the CPU. It draws a lot less power, it generates less heat, and it runs at a slower speed. Perfectly suitable for your everyday applications like email and web surfing and whatnot, but less than ideal when running advanced 3D programs (which is what SL is considered).

In the graphics department, Apple went with the Intel integrated graphics controller. Just like with the processor, it's perfectly suited for everyday stuff, just not what you'd want in order to get maximum performance in games and 3D software. The Intel integrated graphics has moderate performance, but then offloads some of the work back onto the processor and system memory. This saves on cost, power, and size and for a lot of manufacturers it's a reasonable solution. Unfortunately you're feeling the performance hit a little more than most others because you're already using a processor that's running at a slower speed.

If you haven't already picked up some tips on how to tweak your settings, here's my 2 cents for you.

First up, change those preferences. CMD-P to bring up the preferences menu, and then click on the Graphics tab. First click on the HARDWARE OPTIONS button on the lower right side of the window. When that opens, change your Fog Distance ratio to 2.5 or even 2.0. That's the setting for SL to use to make the far-off distance appear hazy/foggy.

Then click OK to get back to the main Graphics window. Click on the little checkbox for Custom (white box on the upper right side). Reduce your Draw Distance. This tells SL to only draw objects that are within ___ meters of your avatar. When I was on my old computer, changing this setting made all the difference in the world. While I was dealing with connection problems and stuttering/skipping animation, the silly game was trying to draw every prim for hundreds of meters in every direction! Lower the number, and you're telling SL to focus on what's closest to you.. what matters most.

You can also adjust any of the other sliders to lower the settings, but my advice is to hit OK at this point and see how those two changes affected your system. You can always hit CMD-P again and fine-tune things.

There's one more thing you can do to help your machine perform a little better, but this one is a bit nerdier You have to go into the debug menu. You do that by pressing CTRL + Option + D. Now you'll see a menu called ADVANCED right next to the HELP menu in your viewer window. Click on the ADVANCED menu, then go down to RENDERING. When you click that, a sub-menu opens up and about 3/4 of the way down the list is an option that says RUN MULTIPLE THREADS. Click on that to turn it on (if it's on, you'll see an X next to it on the menu). That tells SL to use both of the cores in your processor. Once you've switched on the RUN MULTIPLE THREADS option, I very highly recommend you press CTRL + Option + D again to hide that advanced menu. That way you won't accidentally click something else in there that might cause problems.

Sorry for the long-winded reply, I hope some of that info proves helpful to you!

Ty betty and everyone for the info...going to check some options on the imca...such a powerful machine shouldn't have trouble with sl....

well, not necessarily.
Airport 802.11n, for instance, is much more robust.

Joseph, thanks for the help! My SL is working now.

You're welcome.
Try switching between the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands so that you can see where you get the best results.
Also, a pure 802.11n network achieves a better throughput than a mixed 802.11b/g/n network.
Check these settings with Airport Utility.

I am getting nothing but "grey beings" with the new client. Run a MacBook.
Also takes forever to get "textures" on stores and the like to rezz.

Any tips?

I am just thankful I didn't toss the old one.

Hi Ceera, normally I agree with you. On this one, at least our personal experience is different. We run a mixed Airport wireless network. The primary Airport is connected to the cable modem and it's an /n (the faster of the two Airport routers). Our Macs still use the slower /g network. Granted, we have some pretty solid graphics cards, CPUs, and RAM in our Macs, but we routinely get 30-40 fps in SL. It drops in some of the laggy sims, especially while shopping. We spend about 2/3 of our time either on a private sim we own or on Nautilus and get excellent throughput...so I am not too sure wireless is the culprit.

I've been running SL on a few different machines (Windows, linux and OSX) over wireless for over 3 years now.... its never been a problem. People with wireless tend to crash more? get real... i havent seen a crash in months. i have 2 machines currently running off my MBP wireless (my wireless card died in a linux box so i have it plugged into my MBP to share the wireless connection) and can run 2 SL clients and more stuff all at the same time and it runs great.