Hi everyone,

I have been in contact with Apple regarding this issue. This is what we know:

• There are driver issues specific to the nVidia 8600M GT on MacBook Pros.
• Apple knows about this.
• nVidia knows about this.
• Other graphics-intensive apps are seeing similar issues.
• There is no date for a fix right now.
• I am having regular follow up calls with our Apple Partnership Manager.
• This is high priority for Second Life, but there is not much we can do at Linden Lab.

I am sorry for the lack of updates. I'm not convinced this is anything more than a summary of what we knew before, but I'm hearing that's better than silence.

Another workaround (aside from relogging) is to toggle fullscreen modes. This deletes and re-creates your GL context. Thanks to Runitai Linden for that insight, and other debugging help.

I don't know who to blame here (Second Life, Apple, Nvidia), but this situation is rather bizarre. I have the same video card in a linux laptop and Second Life works flawlessly there once I install the nvidia linux drivers. No pink colors instead of proper textures everywhere, and no system crashes after a few minutes. You expect an out-of-the-box experience on a Mac. Instead, it's been disastrously bad, and it's been more than two months since VR-1749 was posted.

Does this mean titles like World of Warcraft also crash after a few minutes on the new mac book pro hardware? You'd think that if this is so, Apple would give it a bit higher priority. If not, that makes one wonder whether the viewer couldn't be changed to work around this problem. A cursory googling around doesn't seem to uncover significant problems with WoW on this hardware, but it's hard to be sure.

I don't want to whine. It's just a really frustrating situation and you'd think at least progress could be reported after 2 weeks. Or alternatively, the lack of progress could be reported together with an idea of what is actually causing it. It's not like the card doesn't have working video drivers and one wouldn't believe Apple shifts significantly different OpenGL drivers on Mac then on Windows or Linux... But something is holding this up, so it doesn't appear as simple as a driver update.

There is a new workaround for this issue. Scot Linden discovered that you can use a different driver for this video card and the computer should not crash. He wrote up instructions on the Second Life wiki. Apple has not committed to a date for a fix, but this workaround should help. Hope it works as well for you as it does for me!

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/MacBook_Pro_2007_Graphics_Freeze_Workaround

+ poppy

You mention that this replaces the graphics driver. It does not; the system still runs Second Life using the Nvidia driver. Choosing the renderer type in the OpenGL Profiler merely changes the GL feature set that Second Life is allowed to use. The X800 feature set must lack a feature that the Nvidia 8600M has, a very particular feature that tickles bugs in the Nvidia 8600M video driver.

This may be a good way to debug the issue. Start modifying the X800 renderer profiler step by step until the problem recurs. The last feature you enabled is the one that is buggy in the driver, and you can provide this information to Apple/Nvidia.

I'd do this, but I don't have the hardware in question. I'm just following this issue because I know people who do and are annoyed they can't use SL well.

Good luck killing this bug!

>Start modifying the X800 renderer profiler step by step until the problem recurs.

I meant, start modifying the X800 renderer profile step by step to match the Nvidia profile until the problem recurs.

When SL is not focused, the code inserts sleeps into each frame so that it uses less CPU and GPU. If you watch the framerate when you're focused and unfocused, you'll notice it goes down considerably when unfocused. This is done so that if you need to work on something else while SL is running, it won't slow down your machine excessively. I threw quite a cheer when they added this feature, as it means I can be logged into SL idling while working on something else without my machine running hot as hell. It is perfectly normal behavior.

So don't worry about it, things are fine with this workaround, it seems.

I just read a post on the mac forum by Kosmo Linden stating that he has been testing 10.5, have you done any tests of 10.5 on the MBP to see if it cures this jira problem?

Also; Below is a recap of my recent experiance with Apple on this problem:

just got my MBP 2.4 with 8600 M GT graphics back form Apple Care, THEY insisted on replacing the logic board and graphics chip set saying it would help the driver problem, BY the way the Apple Rep did go to the SL Jira site and the WOW support site to read up on the problems, after which he kicked the issue up the the engineering dept, after a week the Rep got back to me saying the YES THERE IS A DRIVER PROBLEM but replacing my logic board and graphics set will help, Well it didn't help, same problems as before. YES the jira workaround does stop the crashing and the memory leak but at a cost, it is an extra step to start up the viewer and the graphics are not as good as using the native drivers.

Thanks for telling about your experience with Apple support!

Unfortunately Mac OS X 10.5 is pre-release software covered by Apple's NDA, so I can't really talk about it. Since it's in development whatever I would have to say would probably be obsolete next week anyhow. Apple gives seed releases with an ADC select account, if you need a copy of the latest OS X 10.5 seed. http://developer.apple.com/

It was so disappointing to see the same performance lacks as before on ths computer! No improement at all, at least nothing noticable. Only difference is, that the second CPU core now is significantly used, may be due to the OpenGL2.0 features.

The workaround described before (https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/MacBook_Pro_2007_Graphics_Freeze_Workaround ) does not work anymore! In opposite, the machine freezes up and must be switched off by pressing the power button after a while.

Unless Apple issues a new graphcs driver for the 8600 close to the offical release of 10.5 on Oct 26th (this is the announced date in Europe) we won´t see SL running on the MBP with nvida 8600 even under Leopard. I am almost speechless.

Go to the URL below for an update of Lepard with WOW and the SL wiki workaround;

[URL] http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=942814498&sid=1&pageNo=9 [URL] post #160,

The poster said that the wiki workaround works for WOW on Leopard beta 9A559. Good for WOW users, not good for SL users.

If they are not acknowledging the problem, is there something we can do as a community to put some pressure on Apple to update their video driver? I.e. we can go put up a few web pages saying: don't buy a mac book pro, as their video driver absolutely sucks and Apple isn't doing a thing about it? If this is indeed Apple's fault, we should make them feel it.

This is getting silly. You can install a version of Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon for free and have this video card work with SL (though I noticed some unstabilities if combined with desktop effects). You can install bootcamp, with a driver selection made by apple itself, and it will work. It's just not Mac OS X that will work. For a top-of-the-line Apple model this is extraordinarily disappointing.

I'm betting the problem is fixed in both.

They probably just wanted to fix all the problems people were having in one or two major releases than to spend time preparing, testing, and releasing a driver update for a small percentage of users having problems.

At least, one can hope. If this problem is not fixed in 10.4.11 or leopard I am going to lose a lot of my faith in Apple.

And I'm a big customer. I own a Mac Pro and an (unaffected, but the issue still concerns me since I like recommending Apple to friends on SL) first gen Macbook Pro.

We shall see very shortly.

-Zorin

i´m with you, looking and crying on this topy since i got my new MBP, 2 months or so, and i´m frustrated like HELL!
booting XP EVERYDAY, cause like you all i need to work in sl...makes

WTF apple?

my Q is:
i "heard" from a friend who got a mbp 2 weeks ago, that it´s runnig fine on osx.
i couldn´t belive, and i did´t saw it (just on the phone),
so can anybody varify?

greetings from new BERIN

and BTW, i´m thinking on giving up on waiting..reselling..., will there be a fix at ANY time?

So, if you tell us what we can do to make Apple experience this as a serious problem, that is, what reporting mechanism, and those of us who follow this issue follow through, then there might at least be hope for a solution.

Again, this is NOT an SL software problem... but the lack of feedback about what we can do, for the past month or so from LL is an SL problem. The machine freezes. This is a major vulnerability in OSX, I would think, that a user program can crash the system pretty much at will. How long until somebody comes up with an exploit that kills all MacBook Pro machines, when run?

And if it's Linden Labs responsibility to make their software work for us on new Macs, then please talk to us! Let us know you are aware and that something is happening!!!!!

I feel like we are all speaking into a black hole and no one is listening. For sure it seems like no one with the authority is answering!

...Now what, LL? You're not communicating with us, and I hate to say it, but in six months I think that a skilled team of developers like yourselves would be able to isolate the cause and develop some sort of internal fix.

What's the hold up?

I do suspect LL is right and the bug is related to Apple's display drivers. The same video card works fine under Windows and Linux, and the SL client isn't significantly different under those OSes. The display drivers shouldn't be much different either, but apparently Apple still can't get this right easily for some unknown reason - the updated display drivers they released recently didn't help.

So perhaps we do need to complain to Apple, but what do we tell them? The few reports I've heard from people complaining to Apple is that they had their video boards replaced for no reason whatsoever, and still no fix. LL is the group that can give details, we can't. We don't have the details.

I think we need to get organized. Our tasks:

• somehow petition Apple. I know nothing about Apple. It's my wife's laptop that's broken. How does one approach them? They have a bugtracker, as Orson Dahlgren created an Apple bug about this: 5578350. Is it possible for arbitrary users to get logins and comment on issues there? We could swamp this issue with activity.

• I'd be very nice if we could something more in the issue than "SL doesn't work!". We need "Please fix the blah blah, which when used in blah mode leads to memory leaks in blah blah" in as much detail as we can. Poppy, is there any particular OpenGL access pattern that SL uses that is causing this leakage? Technical details, please?

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1234146
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1164357

It appears very clear that this isn't a LL issue but an Apple issue, at least that is the consensus on the boards and from those who seem to be in the know. It seems to be an issue that is only affecting the latest 2.2/2.4 MGh core 2 duo MBP with the nVidia 8600M GT video card. I have been writing about this issue for a few days on the Apple discussion boards, and I recommend that anyone who is interested in this issue do so as well. I'm also going down to the local Apple Store this afternoon to get as much info as I can and communicate my displeasure. If I discover anything useful I'll bring it back here.

If this problem is indeed a driver issue then it has been going on for months, and I find that disgraceful. This laptop is advertised as a graphics powerhouse, unfortunately it seems that the video card makes it fairly dysfunctional for any high-end 3D graphics work.

Let's keep shaking the tree and communicating.

"Certainly we've filed our share of bugs in Radar, but we've never seen a case on the MBP where framerates start good and decrease over time. I personally own the 2.2GHz with 8600M and WoW plays great on it."

So there you go. Another major company working in development of OpenGL-based software has stated that they have never experienced this issue. This would make fixing this problem Linden Labs' responsibility.

I would like to note that there has been six months of development time, and LL has still been unable to provide us a single bit of information on what causes the crash. If it were a graphics driver issue, you'd be able to at least tell us what calls are causing it. At the very least, you'd be able to provide a halfway-decent explanation as to what was happening. But no.

All we see is 'apple is aware and we are working on it.'

Sorry. It's pretty shamefully obvious you're not.

How is it possible to say "...but we've never seen a case on the MBP where framerates start good and decrease over time..."

When at least one of the threads on the WoW boards (see Mu Bickcin's Oct 22nd post above) has 200 posts talking about the problem of MBP with faltering framerates?

If the developer has a MBP that is one of the computers that seems to be one of the batch that is affected, maybe he has some info that would be helpful? I don't think it can be reasonably doubted that there is a problem that is endemic to the computer itself since it effects more then one application (WoW and SL) and can be lessened or alleviated by using the Radeon X800 XT driver workaround posted above.

Again, not trying to argue, just tying to figure out where the actual problem lies.

I do think it would be appropriate for Poppy to comment at this time to let us know where things stand, it has been over a month since we have last heard from LL. Maybe with only 24 votes it is a low priority?

That doesn't mean, of course, that this isn't a frustrating issue but it is good to hear back directly from Apple that they take ownership of this problem and are working on a solution. It also means that, though LL may have issues with the SL client, they don't own this problem.

Just letting you know.

I decided to give LL the benefit of the doubt, and did something crazy and e-mailed Steve Jobs. I got a call from Apple the next day. Today, someone called me from apple and gathered all the information I had about this problem and are going to look it over. They say that the software engineering group will be contacting me soon, and I'll pass along all the information that's on this page to them.

If this is an apple issue, this should make them aware of it. That said, the person who called me today was skeptical.

I have a MBP2.4, as I informed in my previous posts and am affected by this graphics hazzle with SL. But I have another Apple Computer...it is an iMac 20 2.16 with ATI 1600 graphics. SL works fine on this computer until OSX 10.4.11 - BUT it doesn´t work well with Leopard 10.5 at all! The behaviour looks somewhat similar to what we all experience with our MacBook Pro´s: starting with a decent famerate the performance slows down gradually until the system is almost not usable any more. This behaviour is confirmed by another person using the same type of iMac, he is an IT pro, just for information. Having this problem looking the same upon first view on total different graphics cards gives me the strong feeling, that LL do use a simple shared code without thorough porting and optimization to OSX. As a matter of fact, at my home SL runs on both much different Macs under Windows, as it can´t be played on OSX at all.

Sorry to say, but this gives me the strong feeling, that the issue is at least a shared responsibility and LL carry a heavy load of responsibility for this. At least they must be blamed for very poor information provision.

BTW, can anyone please explain to me, how to issue a thread concerning the above mentioned iMac issie with SL?

After 18 months in SL this seems a deal breaker, i cannot trouble shoot.
I have left comments on Apple discussion pages as well but seems very hard to raise with SL as i am a basic account holder.
regards

It would be helpful if we could know whether the WindLight First Look behaves better or worse than the default viewer on your machines with regards to this issue (both with the default graphics settings and after setting the graphics preferences to "low").

Thanks for the input! Every bit helps us in finding a solution.

I understand that this may not look, I just want to know that there is in fact a new infrastructure to be testing. (I am currently using the WL Viewer with the Open GL Driver workaround and although I do not lock up, I do have crummy performance.)

Thank you.

I am on a MacBook Pro 2.4ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB 667 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM using a GeForce 8600M GT.

I don't have this hardware so I can't test myself, but give Windlight a try and post your results here so we have more information. Thanks!

Guys, be careful with just reporting "it works!". The default settings of the OSX WindLight Viewer are set to minimum! It is no surprise, that you get 15fps on a decent 2.4GHz machine with nvidia 8600M graphics when no shaders are on, viewing distance is just 64m , no bumpmapping or local lights are on. The default graphic settings are suitable to a computer toy, not for a up to date high end computer. But even under these lower-limit settings the performance is not smooth, often the screen is not updated for a few seconds. FYI, the default settings on my second computer, an iMac 20" with ATI 1600 graphics, are much different and seem to be much more appropriate to the hardware.

Once you step by step increase the graphic details, all issues already reported several times here and elsewhere come up again. I am really embarrassed about this situation. I am spending a lot of money in SL as a very active Premium Account Member owning a reasonable amount of main land. I am paying Linden! And still, even after half a year I can´t see progress, Oh yes, I know, that SL is Open Source. But the use of SL is purely commercial (which I accept), so I expect a decent support from Linden!

I think Linden knew well about the problems on this particular nvidia hardware as they decided to set all to minimum. To make it short: under the circumstance, that almost no graphic tasks are assigned to the graphics card, the WindLight Viewer might work! But this is not why I spent 2,400EUR for a high end computer to in the end switch the graphics card off and let it do Kindergarten soft rendering. And still today the Apple MBP with nvidia graphics is not mentioned in the "not compatible" list - which is close to cheating customers.

Dear BigPapi: take a MBP 2.4 with nvidia graphics, log in to SL, go to areas with lots of textures and light animations ( I can provide several URLs, if you need any) and play around with the graphics details. It won´t cost you more than an hour to figure out exactly, what issues there are with this hardware. There´s is no random behaviour, at least from my perspective everything is reproducable.

Come on, please - give us the feeling, that we are heard!

Since BigPapi asked for input, and Poppy wrote: "he feels confident he can name sets of calls that are problems on certain sets of hardware, and that's what needs to happen.", I'll note the following:

The hardware by itself does not appear to be the issue. Second Life runs stably on Windows XP using bootcamp on the same machine. I can also report that the same graphics card model works fine with SL on a Linux laptop (though different hardware).

Anyway, probably just a slightly mischosen sets of words, but to make clear to BigPapi what's going on. I hope that he's also confident he can name sets of calls that have problems with the Apple version of the nvidia drivers, and not with the nvidia drivers on XP.

I also hope he actually has a MBP with the right hardware available to perform tests himself. It rather worries me that we get the feedback to start trying out stuff ourselves; to debug this kind of stuff it's essential the developers have access to this hardware themselves. This problem can after all be reproduced quite easily, at least in the coarsest sense of getting a hard freeze.

I believe LL can understand our frustration by now. We've been waiting for a while. We know it's a tough problem to solve, but we'll understand better when we see evidence of serious attempts to resolve it, something that had been somewhat lacking...

1) We're actively trying to fix this and have in fact been testing on the MBP's in question. In fact, Poppy was simply the person to which this bug was assigned, the WindLight team has also been investigating the issue in parallel which explains the sudden handoff to me (I've already been looking at it for a while). However, asking the community at large to test a particular viewer (in this case the latest WindLight) allows us to confirm how broad a particular problem reaches and if any of the recent changes that have shown slight improvements in certain cases actually help or not. In this case even a negative response (ex. WindLight viewer also broken) is still helpful to us as it lets us know that this is still in fact a broad issue that needs our continuing attention. Which is clearly still the case and is exactly what I expected, though it never hurts to be better informed.

2) We know this is not a hw issue, as the same machines running Windows XP under bootcamp perform REALLY well. We also know that it is an issue within Apple's OpenGL drivers and we've been communicating to them what standard OpenGL calls are currently making the driver freak out. However, even though the problem primarily lies in the GL driver and not in Second Life, we're none-the-less actively searching for work arounds that will not expose this bad behavior. So far we've had little success in doing so, but this is still a very large priority for us and we will continue to work on it until it is solved.

3) The lack of updates on this issue does NOT mean we haven't been working on it. In fact, we've spent more time working on the MBPs than any other individual graphics card, as it's drivers are particularly flaky. It sucks that I can't do more than ask you to please be patient while we continue to look at the issue. As soon as substantial progress is made on this issue I will post an update here.

Thanks!

This issue with the latest MacBook Pro hardware needs to be addressed on Linden's web site and Apple's web site. Apple continues to offer SL as a download from their OS X download page and they even include a Second Life icon in a stack in a screenshot promotion for Leopard but there is never any mention of any possible freezing the system or the required hard reboots. Neither of which are good for our systems. Apple sales of laptops continue to increase over desktops. We want SL to run on OS X.

Thanks.

But, for those who are new, I was one of the very first to buy ths MBP hardware in Germany, as I had placed a pre-order. A few days after recognizing the problem, I already posted first details about the problem in forums. Later on you will find neutral failure descriptions and findings from me in the concerning JIRA threads, the Apple forum and most important German SL and Mac Forums to collect information and opinion from other users impacted. What I found as let´s say advanced non-pro is, that almost everybody has the same problems. They don´t seem to be random. I think I have done my bit. But if I read, that the assignee could not work on it, as he had to fullfil other tasks, it was impossible to hold back my disappointment any more. But I am back to normal now...

It appears more and more obvious to me, that this issue has not reached the priority level at Linden and Apple as it should have. I am pretty sure, that Apple doesn´t have interest in being widely blamed for poor graphic driver support. We angry users could blackmail them easily and somebody might even do that once. This makes me feel, that the right persons at Apple are not really aware of this problem. I made my mind up and I like to share my thoughts with you:

1) What can we do to ring the alarm bells at Apple on the right level?

2) BigPapi, I understand from your words, that the issue already has been analyzed in detail, but you struggle to either make Apple fix their bugs or create workarounds on SL side. Is this correct?

3) If you need public test support: can´t we actively support the debugging by doing some testing for you? Wouldn´t it make sense to create detailed test scenarios we users could work on and report back to you? I am open to give any support within my capability.

4) The fact that SL doesn´t seem to work well under Leopard in general makes me especially worried. As said before, we already switched to using Windows on our 2nd Mac, an iMac 20 with ATI 1600, as the SL performance with 10.5.1 is unacceptable bad compared to 10.4.11. The stuttering behaviour feels quite similar to the problems I see on my MBP with the nvidia card. This makes me wonder, if the problems are really purely Apple/nvidia driver related? It looks to me like a more general missmatch between Linden´s and Apple´s understanding about OpenGL.

5) I really, really encourage Linden to highlight the Apple hardware/OSX combinations we users consider as "not compatible" on the Second Life website! It is not acceptable, that users like me (and others, as I already know) buy this Apple hardware especially for playing SL and we all fall in a trap. This MBP 2.2 and 2.4 MUSST be marked officially and visibly for every newbie as "not compatible"! I can´t emphasize this enough, especially after more than 5 months of Linden being aware of the problem.

I hope my suggestions make sense and I cheer everybody at Linden, especially BigPapi up, to bring this issue forward! I am sure we impacted users will support in any way.

Regarding your post here on Nov 27/07, there IS ONE THING YOU CAN DO for us MBP owners; tell us the reference number of this problem that Apple tracks it by! That way WE can contact Apple and demand they take action. Without a way to reference this problem to Apple, the Apple reps give us owners the runaround and don't even admit that there is a problem. Please help us.

thanks for the update, much appreciated. But i also I agree with mu Bikcin, a direct way of communicating this issue to Apple would be nice.

I am going to start using the Windlight Viewer to see if I can generate and pas on data. I figure any information can only be helpful.

I do agree with the others who have posted mentioning that the affected MBP should be put on the "Not Compatible" list, maybe with a short explanation of the issues that are being addressed. I also agree that it would be nice to have a referral number to enable any individual who is communicating with Apple regarding this issue to avoid starting at ground zero every time.

Thanks for keeping us informed!

And in general, stick to the edge of an island - looking out towards the sea gives me a decent framerate, facing inland the number of prims in view gets too much and everything grins to a halt.

Second Life - the only Virtual Reality that's measured in Frames Per Minute.

I have a 2.4GHz MBP and have definitly been having the nVidia problem. I have been using the Nicholaz viewer recently to see if that would help (not really) and have upgraded to Leopard. I haven't had the same experience you have had with ridiculously low frame rates (as in 15 fpm).

Mind you I still have the "runs fine/starts chuging/locks up hard" issue we have been discussing but Leopard doesn't seem to be causing me the same problems you seem to have. In fact no change I have made since upgrading to a MBP has seemed to have much real effect on this problem. There may be some slight improvement with the Nicholaz viewer, as well as the OnRez viewer (haven't had a chance to test the WindLight viewer yet) but nothing really significant. I still believe, because of experiences I have with other programs that really push the graphics card with a lot of changing data, that the problem is based in the nVidia card and is centered in the driver and how it handles open GL.

Leopard hasn't impacted this issue for me one way or the other...though that is just my experience.

Been having lots of very positive conversations with Apple and their GL and driver teams. They've been extremely pro-active and helpful.

Apple recently found the source of the bug in the driver that was effectively causing any non-trivial shader in our system to fallback to software rendering (aka slide-show time). At the same time they also found a workaround, which I am in the process of implementing. However, the workaround isn't simple and will require a lot of work on my part to do properly without breaking anything else, so please be patient with me just a little while longer. I am actively fixing this right now. That's right fixing, not investigating.

Regarding your comment dated 12/20/07:

Has Apple indicated that " Apple" is going to come out with a GL driver update to fix their driver bug? The fact that you are doing a workaround to fix this does not give me much hope that Apple will be fixing the problem soon and as this problem affects more than SL, that does not sound good to me.

I took a break from SL for a long time because I got so tired of all the crashes. I heard that they had fixed these issues so I decided to try it again.

The issues persist.

If I'm running the Mac client, it goes for a few minutes just fine but periodically it will completely lock up the computer for about 30-120 seconds. There will either be a spinning beach ball, or there will be very erratic cursor movement with the cursor flying all over the screen around the edges anytime I try to move the cursor.

If I wait then it will snap back out of this freeze and start working again. But sometimes it never snaps back out and I have to physically power the computer off.

I do a lot of high-CPU-intensive tasks like audio recording with drum machines and virtual instruments, Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, etc. and this computer NEVER crashes during any of those tasks.

Second Life is the ONLY thing that crashes this computer. It's really starting to f****ing tick me off because I bought this computer specifically to run Second Life, back in June of this year. And for the last 6 months, all it does is freeze and crash whenever I run Second Life, whether in Mac OS X or Vista.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY IN SIX MONTHS THE SECOND LIFE DEVELOPER CANNOT FIX THIS PROBLEM. I have spent over $200USD on Second Life during this time (which is nothing compared to what some people spend, I realize), and nearly $3000 on computer hardware for Second Life, and I find it completely unacceptable that paying customers like myself get absolutely no support or any sort of action to resolve these issues which essentially TOTALLY CRIPPLE the Second Life software!!!

At this point the only natural thing to me seems to start a bad press campaign against Second Life and Linden Labs for failing to address the crashing issues in this ridiculously long amount of time. People should be aware that they should not use Second Life since it's highly likely that Linden Labs will not bother to address any bugs that cause debilitating crashes, while meanwhile Linden Labs spends inordinate amounts of developer resources developing useless and unwanted features like Voice Chat and other crapola that nobody asked for or uses.

I upgraded to Leopard specifically in the hope that it would fix the Second Life crashing issues, but it did not fix them. They just changed slightly.

So what am I supposed to do? HOW DO I GET SECOND LIFE TO WORK WITHOUT FREEZING AND CRASHING MY WHOLE COMPUTER??

=GE=

I have the same problems, with the same notebook, but read the blog carefully ... the problem is in the NVIDIA and Apple drivers, not in Second Life. Linden Labs is working to find a work-around, but the problem is Apple and NVIDIA. The only exception is, it would have been really, really nice if Linden Labs had posted, as often requested, the best way to contact Apple to get pressure on them to fix their driver software. They never did.

In the meantime, see the workaround using OpenGL Profiler and the Radeon X800 driver. Okay, you will lose a tiny bit of resolution, and some hardware acceleration, but your computer won't hang (negative acceleration for sure anyway). It really does work... and SL runs okay.

Please, Lindens, please please post the most effective way for us to contact Apple and tell them how unhappy we, their customers, are at their inability to fix their own driver software, and, it is NOT only Second Life that hangs!

I take this occasion to summarize the situation, as I see it today:

There are TWO issues:

1) Technical issues
2) Problem/crisis management issue

=> 1) MBP/nvidia: The technical issue was to determine the root cause of the problem and according to BigPapi´s posts it looks like, that both Apple and Linden have found it and are working on creating either workarounds (Linden) or real bug fixes (Apple). Unfortunately it is still not clear, if Apple really fixes the bug(s) on their side

=> 1) OSX Leopard: there is a massive performance problem with SL on OSX 10.5.x Leopard, which does not exist on 10.4.x. This is not targeted by this particular thread, but I mention this to be complete.

@BigPapi: could you let us know the latest status regarding the progress on your side of the hard work and also what Apple does to move forward? It sounds, that you could establish a quite close relationship to the Apple dev team. Please let us participate a bit more...!

=> 2) The problem and crisis management

Yes, the bug is categorized as "critical"! The problem management at Linden is poor. The public interest represented by the votes on this thread might look quite low. But has anyone responsible ever checked the international SL Forums? They are full of negative comments about Linden AND Apple. Both really lost quite a bit of reliability and brand image due to this bug and especially the poor problem management. This is, what many people, including myself and of course Gistya, are blaming Linden for. And they are right! 6 months without noticable progress, with only limited information distribution, with a workaround, that imho does not work acceptable at all, and last but not least the fact, that STILL the concerned hardware officially is not marked as in-compatible (!!!) - 6 months, where we felt left alone, which is weigh too long.

SL is not only a game. SL is a prototype of a new commercial virtual business world! Linden promotes SL like this and they are right to do so. But to be "professional" not only means to have a cash flow in the system. It also means to be customer and service oriented! The minimum a pro in case of problems would expect is proper communication and frequent status updates. But all this has not happened until now.

I understand, that BigPapi does a damn good job at programming a workaround and the communication with Apple. Many thanks for that!! But it looks like, that he is also responsible for handling the communication to outside, which in respect to the seriousness and the negative side effects of this issue can´t be effective. It is a basic rule that the people working as problem solver should not handle the public communication. They need a back up by somebody else. This problem has the potential to leave a quite bad brand image for both, Linden and Apple. This is an issue any marketing guy could make sleepless. But both sides still do not react accordingly, which means, it has not been escalated to the right persons yet.

@Logan, I fully agree to you: we users offered our particular help and support, but we got ne feedback. How to escalate this issue? Who are the right persons? How can we actively support? We all want SL on Mac OSX. We have been and are willing to spend time and efforts to get SL back to Mac OSX (yes, let´s remember: this is not only a MBP/nvidia related issue, there are others concerning OSX Leopard in general as well!)

I really believe a big team has a louder voice than a single person, even though he might be a software engineering genius. I cheer the Linden software dev team up to make more use of this public power to resolve your issues! We are ready - just waiting for advise!

I wish all a happy new year!

Is there some way that we can band together to protest this issue with Mac and nVidia?
Does anyone know contact information?
Should we post comments daily so that LL has some leverage when calling their Apple Partnership Manager?

I'm tired of waiting on this because my investment in this hardware is depreciating every month.

Please, LL, please give us a contact at Apple so that we can stop bugging you, and start bugging them instead!

I have been waiting on VWR-1844 (https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1844) and MISC 591 (https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-591) to be addressed. If you look, there is a myriad of common complaints on new generation computers with Vista and with SL and unfortunately the meta issue tracker here does not link them, instead people continue making new issues which means it won't get fixed.

Pull your thumbs out LL. This is ridiculous. Or give me a refund as you obviously are not fixing this. Stating it is an Apple issue is incorrect - I'm running a PC as per my attachment on VWR-1844 and I am able to recreate exactly what is happening on VWR-1978. This is an nVidia problem and an SL problem.

Fix it and stop giving repeated answers which state nothing.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html

Also, those who have posted the occlusion fix should know that the fix is for MacBooks not MacBook Pros. The only known workaround is here: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/MacBook_Pro_2007_Graphics_Freeze_Workaround and that is unacceptable to me. The other was posted by Poppy Linden in August that said, "Another workaround (aside from relogging) is to toggle fullscreen modes. This deletes and re-creates your GL context." I a haven't tried this one, but I will as soon as I can.

Keep commenting and keep sending feedback to Apple until this is fixed PERMANENTLY rather than some obscure workaround.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html

The one you posted is for MacBooks, not MacBook Pros.

Is this really an Apple problem? Or is it a SL problem?

I think it's all of the above. However...

Second Life is the ONLY GL program that I've seen run so unreliably on Macs. World or Warcraft, Quake 4, even some Windows games running under Crossover are more stable than SL.

Both of my Macs are normally rock solid. SL is the only application that has ever made them kernel panic. Period.

Quake 4, which is more graphically intense than SL, runs like silk on my Mac Pro with Radeon X1900XT. I don't play World of Warcraft, but a good friend of mine does, on a Radeon 2600HD based iMac. It runs like silk, unlike SL which runs slowly and unreliably. Supposedly WoW runs like silk on the Nvidia Macbook Pros, too.

I'm not sure what you guys are doing that's causing the OS X GL driver to screw up, but you seem to be the only ones doing it. Other software runs fine. Perhaps the Windows and Linux OpenGL drivers are more tolerant to your methods, but don't you think it might be a good idea to modify your methods slightly to avoid tickling these horrid issues?

I was starting to become disappointed at Apple for "crappy drivers" until I realized SL is the only trouble-maker. Apple may have some fault, but I believe your coding methods have the rest.

There are MANY issues with SL and Macs, but the concern I'm referring to is regarding a specific issue with the MacBook Pro that has the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics. The fault lies SQUARELY on Apple and nVidia on this because SL is not the only application this is affecting. I would agree that it is frustrating to have SL not run as smoothly as WOW. I have no idea what the differences are in how that works, but I really don't care. It should work. My desire to have SL working faster was the major reason why I bought the MacBook Pro; so, I would appreciate any help you could give in sending feedback to Apple about this because they haven't been helpful. I can use SL and other high-end graphic card using apps for about an hour or so before EVERYTHING locks up. I can't even force quit the app. I didn't have this much of a problem on my iBook with a G4 processor. sigh

I use macs at work (and school) and pc at home, already 10 years. Always proud on macs, on how they work amazing on graphics. And it is. I am a graphic designer and illustrator and I work on sl too as a designer.
I CANNOT and don't want to put my hands on my graphic cards driver, I need it clean and perfect, how can I possibly work on a bad driver not at max res?
Apple is what it is today for agencies and designers, we buy macs, we work on them, we make apple live mostly. All the creative sections , most of them, work on apple computers.
This is the same in SL, where the two biggest commercial incomes comes from land managing and design products.
I need to move a lot, and cannot always access my pc for SL. On the other hand why should I need the pc for doing so?
Enaugh with tech data, I want the product I purchased work fine on what is meant to.
Nothing more.
Thanks to anyone who is helping in that and making notice this huge problem. But I believe Mr. Linden and Mr. Jobs shall have a lunch together and understand how this can become a serious marketing problem expecially if you deal with designers. I am not angry, but very frustrated.
Wish for all of us this gets fixed soon.

I want to also make known an issue about Civilization III, it don't runs on macbooks because the driver and graphic card don't manages 16bit, so you cannot play it because it's a too low res.
The official apple answer is that we all know macs are not made for games. Now, what if I tell you that I am a designer who makes graphics for 16 bit softwares?
I am doubting the policy of all that new thing about the graphic card and so on.

p.s.
(this post goes on macbook feedback on apple too)

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1757?focusedCommentId=41431#action_41431

It looks like they shed some light on this issue and are close to release a fix based on Windlight Code!

Did you run system update multiple times (to make sure you actually get the opengl graphics update, which doesn't install as part of the 10.5.2 update)? If you didn't then you actually haven't update properly.
Did you clear your cache?
Can you PM me your exact graphics settings for second life?

Thanks!

However, I need more info to be able to actually narrow down the cause. So I have three quick tasks for anyone seeing this issue that would help me track down the cause of this issue faster:

1. Please post a slurl here to any location than causes the slowdown issue on the WindLight client with 10.5.2 + graphics update.

2. I suspect the issue lies in video memory usage so it would also be helpful if you can press "control+shift+1" to bring up the frame stats. Click on "Simulator" so that section collapses. Now, expand "Advanced" and then expand "Texture". I'm interested in the value that appears in "Bound Mem" at the very bottom of the Texture section. Please note what this value is at for corresponding slurls (and viewing directions) that trigger this issue. Ideally, there will be a threshold in "Bound Mem" above which we can see the performance slowdown and below which we do not.

3. Does setting "Preferences -> Graphics -> Hardware Options -> Texture memory" to a value smaller than this "threshold" help things?

I have encountered 1 very predictable problem and another intermittent problem

UI freeze for more than 1/2 minute periodically (like every 5 min?). It is most noticeable when you are in a private chat with someone because it stops the conversation. Everything on the windlight screen freezes. Can't type or select any menu entry. But I can access desktop menu bar at the top and the dock. Eventually, the UI unfreezes and I'm good to go again for another few minutes. This occurs no matter where I am in SL.

The other problem is a completely none responsive screen. Windlight UI doesn't work, top menu bar and dock doesn't work. I have to resort to rebooting the system. Haven't found any reproducible scenario yet.

Have anyone else encountered the temporary UI freeze?

I teach in Second Life - twice a week. I need a reliable machine.

Performance is not affected by where I am. I am very careful about doing anything unusual, or asking my Mac to do two things at once. I use Windlight, because it has voice. System freezes often , but if I wait a minute or so it unfreezes. Hard crashes about once or twice per hour's use (better than before, but still not good). I can't see avatar's hands move when they type, a big annoyance in a classroom situation.

I have a copy of Leopard sitting on my desk. I'm afraid to install it, things could get worse. I've been waiting since October for improvement ... check this page nearly every day...like everyone else. Thanks for your help so far.

MacBook Pro - Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz Memory: 2 GB
GeForce 8600M GT - no new driver available
Using 10.4.11 - everything updated
with windlight.

" UI freeze for more than 1/2 minute periodically (like every 5 min?). It is most noticeable when you are in a private chat with someone because it stops the conversation. Everything on the windlight screen freezes. Can't type or select any menu entry. But I can access desktop menu bar at the top and the dock. Eventually, the UI unfreezes and I'm good to go again for another few minutes. This occurs no matter where I am in SL. "

for me the same.

Macbook Pro 15" 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo
4GB Ram
10.5.2 + graphics update
Windlight Client 1.19.0.79674
Cache cleared several times.

A few more info bits.

80044 didn't completely freeze my screen (mac dock + top menu bar inaccessible) at all last night during my 1+ hour usage. Temporary UI freeze is the same as before. It doesn't seem to matter how long I've been on SL and occurs fairly immediately.

Only other thing running on my MBP is Safari. I'll try running it with no other app next time. During one of the temporary hangs, I popped up iStatPro and it seem the CPU was burning quite a bit of time in "System".

I also boot Windows XP on my MBP just to run SL. This is my main SL usage mode until 10.5.2 when I decided to give Mac Windlight a try again. I have not encountered the temporary UI freeze issue ever on the XP SL client (I use SL client rather than Windlight there just because its a bit faster)

Here are my two most recent crashes and one of the SL locations where I crashed recently. Hope this helps!

Cheers

Sephora

Cheers

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macbookmacbookprokeyboardfirmwareupdate10.html

BTW, I have not experienced the dramatic slow down to 1.x fps since more than a week, which is surprising. However the 4.x fps slow down is present all the way. I also still experience the SL GUI freeze appearing any few minutes with one processor core up to 100% for 10 to 20 seconds. This is especially embarrassing, as it does not only stop any communication I am in, it even does not stop the last movement you did - my avatar behaves kind of strange to others during that time...

Since the Leopard graphics update I have not experienced any viewer crash (except the "natural" crashs we might accept one time as normal, same as we accept the presence of Windows viruses as "normal", even though this is a ridiculous wrong thinking...)

It might be off topic, it might not: I like to highlight again, that on my second Apple computer, an iMac 20" with 2.16GHz processor and ATI1600/128MB graphics the 4-5 fps slow down is present on 10.5.x as well, while it is not on 10.4.11 (both WindLight and standard client)! I really think it is worth to have a look at the general compatibility between SL and 10.5.x Leopard. There are major issues. I tend to think, that these make it even more difficult to drill down to the MBP specific slow down root causes, as there obviously is cross-interference.

I tried texture memory to values lower than 96MB - it seems to improve the situation! At present I use the minimum value of 32MB and the slow downs are much less, also the minimum fps now is 9 instead of 4. Can anyone confirm this, please? The more reproducible information we provide, the more we can help BigPapi.

I am a bit curious about this texture memory parameter - does this somehow relate to the VRAM size? Or is this completely different and managed in the system RAM?

@BigPapi - I have no idea if this is related: the landmark function of widely used Mysti Tool (a multi-function HUD with lots of useful functions) does not work well on the SL OSX client. The landmark function requests a LM from the map, which shows up. But most of the time the LM displayed in the map is not the one requested, but remains in or close to the region I am in. Also map display itself is slow ond graphics content often incomplete compared to the behaviour on the Windows SL client. I mention this, as this function always appeared to be related to the graphics issues we have with 10.5.x in general and MBP in particular. Half a year ago this Mysti Tool could not even open a map - it simply showed up with no graphics in it at all. Now, after the various fixes on OSX-SL and Apple drivers, this basically works, but still not reliably. All I said refers to the same Mysti Tool version, no change at all over the months. If I log in by the SL Windows client, the Mysti Tool works absolutely fine and fast.

Macbook Pro 15" 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo with 8600M GT/128MB VRAM and 2GB main memory
10.5.2 + graphics update
Dazzle First Look Viewer 1.19.0.80267 running in a window that doesn't quite fill my screen.

You can find this viewer here

http://secondlife.com/community/firstlook.php

UI is sufficient fast. Still a little short freeze once in awhile. Hope others trying this have as good of a result as I am having.

• Second Life 1.19.0 (80267) Feb 19 2008 12:12:32 (Second Life First Look Dazzle):

• fps slightly lower than on current WL...44
• slow down to 2-4fps when using 256MB texture RAM setting after few minutes, slow UI then
• when setting texture RAM to 128MB or less, slow downs clearly decrease, fps stay at 6-8 fps as minimum even in difficult environment
• camera panning not smooth
• UI is generally slower, than on current WL-...44

BUT: I don´t experience any UI freeze, which was present on WL...44 and current release candidate any few minutes for 10 - 30 secs! Nothing like this. This is against your finding and makes me think the following:

• actual VRAM size and texture memory settings are related to the slow downs (openGL2.0 issue??)
• There is a difference between WL/RC candidate and the Dazzle viewer, as the Dazzle viewer does not show the embarrassing UI freezes any few minutes, as both others (at least on my computer)
• as the difference between Howard´s and my computer is mainly video RAM, there might be even a link between above two items

@Howard: could you double-check about the UI freezes? I mean, are these really these 100% freezes reported by several people already? Or could it be rather a temporary massive slow down, but not a real freeze? I am afraid it is important to check, if your and my computer really behave differently, or not, as this can guide BigPapi in a certain direction.

@BigPapi - is there anything we can concretely do to support? Unfortunately I could not find any correlation between the Bound Memory and the slow downs as you hoped to discover so far.

EDIT: if the Dazzle UI really would be just a cosmetic thing, certainly this wouldn´t make the freezes disappear. But as I looked into the release notes, I found:

"* Enhancements to the UI texture rendering system "

This means, that apart from the pure design changes there is a rendering process modification in the Dazzle viewer! Is this possibly the key to get rid of these UI freezes?

I did play around with VRAM settings. Have no carefully measured data to report yet. It almost seems the less I set (I was running with 32MB or 64MB most of my 2 hour session last night) the smoother it feels.

The reason I tried the Dazzle client is because it's release client number is 1.19.0.80267 which is higher than both latest WL number (1.19.0.80044) and the standard SL client (1.18.5.3). These numbers looks suspiciously close enough that made me guess they shared most of the code base. If so, Dazzle is the most recent code base with all the "fixes". This is the reason I tried it.

The other thing the Dazzle does is use similar graphics features as the original SL client. This is a lot less taxing on the machine than WL. BTW, while I was running Dazzle on my MBP, the fans seems quieter.

So I kinda figured Dazzle might not push the graphics as hard as WL (same as SL client) + latest code base (incorporating all the 10.5.2+graphics update fixes) which makes it attractive to give it a try.

Perhaps someone more familiar with the client code base can comment on this theory?

In terms of temporary UI freeze, definitely still occur for me. Occurance frequency feels same as before (once every 5-10min). However, now freezes lasts only 10s or so.

Last week I checked in a change to default the 8600M texture memory slider to 96 MB, which seemed to make things much better for me once I was actually able to repro the issue. Anyone experiencing a significantly lower framerate than normal using WL should also set their texture memory to 96 MB or lower, but keep in mind that this change won't take effect until the scene gets paged out of memory (slowly spinning around 360 or logging out and logging back in would make it do so). So, lowering the slider without spinning around or relogging won't show an appreciable difference in framerate. I'm still investigating the root cause of this issue.

WORKAROUND:
1) Lower Preferences->Graphics->Hardware Options->Texture Memory to a value below 96 MB
2) Slowly rotate the camera around in a circle OR log out and log back in (if the former doesn't work)

MacBook Pro 15" 2.4, 2G Memory
8600M GT 256MB
OSX 10.5.2 + Graphic Update
XP under Boot Camp
SL: 1.18.5.3 (OSX/XP)
WL:1.19.0.80044 (OSX/XP)

Unless it's a problem with my invidual MBP, I noticed that in some areas where I used to pull from 12-15FPS, with these latest clients, I only pull about 5 or so. The UI freeze in OSX, makes it drop even further to about 3.

I have tried taking the Texture Memory below 96MB but only get a marginal 1FPS increase from what I was already running before. Even at low settings, I still get a low framerate. And it's not on the OSX side either, this apparently affects the XP side as well.

Same NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT's but with 512MB of memory on the higher end models.

Have been running Dazzle for like 3 days now. Good enough that I deleted my XP partition on the OSX which was used only to run SL.

Hangs and crashes are infrequent enough for me now to be acceptable. Speed is reasonable (client VRAM set to 32MB)

Anyone else finding this usable for them?

Windows end only seems to yield a marginal speed increase over the regular and WL clients. OSX's freezing problems still there and only getting about an increase of 2 FPS over the regular and WL clients there.

Have tried setting the VRAM to 32 for the dazzle client but it doesn't affect performance in a positive way.

I like to point your attention to the 10.5.x/Leopard vs. SL compatibility issue. I tested all SL versions not only on my 8600 MBP, but also on my imac 20" with ATI1600 graphics. I found, that besides the regular UI freezes all other graphics issues are present on the imac as well, even though it has a totally different graphics hardware! The slow downs are there, the panning is not smooth either and the fps is generally to low for a nice SL feeling compared to SL/Windows on the same computer. May be the issues we look at are not really 8600 related issues any more? Or at least not 100%?

I know several people running SL on a Mac, but no one uses Leopard OS because of the poor performance. All use 10.4.11 - except those owning a MBP with 8600 graphics HW, as they suffer from the driver incompatibility with 10.4.11.

EDIT: Sorry, I forgot: there are G5 CPU users who do use SL with 10.5.2 and who don´t have these specific freeze issues on WL..44. The issues seem to be Intel-code related.

All this talk of Dazzle being better too sounds strange. If there was truly no real big changes made to the underlying UI code, then the main release client should run as well as Dazzle, shouldn't it? If Dazzle really does freeze that much less than the main viewer then perhaps some investigation should be conducted as to the differences.

Also, what about the RC viewers? They have new interfaces in them like the new Windlight viewers, but without the Windlight code. What do those run like for you?

The dazzle and the standard viewer show the rather irregular freezes similar to what VWR-2051 reports. But these stil are easier to accept as the WL ones. Another difference is, that the dazzle freezes push up one CPU core to 100% application CPU load, in opposite to the WL freeze, wich pushes one core to 100% system CPU load (detected by "menue meters" CPU load bargraph)

It just seems to me that a lot of the issues experienced after the fix came for this issue (assuming it was fixed) are just general SL issues which users who aren't familiar/aware of are attributing to this issue.

Some say they have no performance gains over the Windows viewers which leads me to think it's a general SL viewer issue, others say they do, which suggests its a Mac/Leopard thing. There's so many software/hardware combinations and existing issues that it's going to be really hard to identify each one.

I can just add that I had the exact same freezes with Tiger as I do with Leopard, and I have experienced them on all the computers I've tested on, irrelevant of hardware and software/OS. They all suffer the same general freezes which I believe are VWR-2051 – even if the issues causing it are probably more than one single issue creating the same effect. Also like you, I get freezes when I'm not moving/haven't moved, not cameraing. Just typing or whatever. It happens whenever. Just a lot of the times it is worsened 100 fold by camera panning. I've always suspected it's related to visible/invisible object rendering and cleanup, and/or the LOD scaling. But I'm no expert, so I can't say for sure, and that discussion is probably better under the correct issue...

Rush, I am using Leopard (10.5.2) with Macbook Pro AT x1600 graphics. I can run WL 19.0.2, Dazzle, and Nicholaz build successfully. I play SL hockey so performance is a big deal for me. I find Dazzle is the best, I was able to get from 33 to 12 fps last night with the sim holding 43 Avas running Dazzle.

Regarding what is the correct issue I still think this thread is appropriate, as I see a difference between the behaviour of my MBP and my imac in regards to freezes. As this is the MBP 8600 umbrella thread the freeze discussion should remain (also) here until it is for sure, that this is a general SL problem and not a specific 8600 one.

Patrice, I believe it is already confirmed, that not the avatar rendering is the problem, either if they are just few or many. The fps drop problem seems to be related to texture count, texture memory consumption, OpenGL memory allocation...somehwere in this area. This is my understanding so far. Of course once such slow down has affected the system, also avatar performance will drop down drastically. Lucky you that this des not happen to you!

BTW I see a difference in camera panning performance between WL and Dazzle/standard client. With the standard client the picture shows ripples or even kind of blocks when panning fast, whilst the WL keeps the display more clean during panning. But still not as clean as the Windows client.

Obviously the effects we discuss here are so much related to the SL environment, that it is difficult to give precise and broadly confirmed information to the dev team. Let´s try this anyway - this is the only choice we have, if we want the OSX SL clients to be improved, I am afraid...

I have a Macbook- Just bought it 4 weeks ago (right before the very new MB's came out grumble)

GMA X3100 chip and I have 4 gigs of Ram (my vendor's gift for Price protection). Within 2 mins, it crashes and burns. I'm running SL on my 5.5 year old Dell PC.

This isn't why I bought a mac! I'm really frustrated that there doesn't seem to any answer (cant imagine how you guys feel after 6 mos!!!) and it seems that with the Macbooks (not pro) there is even less info. I've tried all the different clients- windlight, the SL client, the Beta, and still no love. The Wiki workaround seems to be for MBP's- anyone know anything for MBs?

This is really crushing.

1. I think it would be a good idea to attach a sticky to the SL Forum/Mac Issues to give an overview of which current Mac models work best with SL, to try to avoid disappointments like Swanhilde experienced.

2. Is it possible that the UI changes in the Dazzle client cause an improvement in overall speed. It looks as if they use a different library than the old UI (common to the standard client and WL client). Just throwing it out.

• Windlight started up with with impressive frame rate and felt very smooth in a sim with reasonable complexity. But my IM text just seem to echo (character showing up in window after you type) fairly slow over time during my use so I gave up and tried the latest SL client.

• SL client ran very well. IM window (UI in general) had a ~10 second freeze maybe every 10min or so. Definitely good enough to use. Similar to my experience with Dazzle (1.19.0.80267).

MBP 2.2GHz Core 2, 2GB, 8600m GT 128MB
10.5.2 + Graphics update
32 or 64MB texture memory setting on any client

Interested to hear other's experience.

SecondLife_1_19_1_0_RC (this has merged with the WL, right?)

• acceptable-to-good fps, still Windows version feels much smoother (panning, texture loading)
• slow-downs down to 1-2fps after 10-20 minutes, depending on picture content, not recoverable, need to relogg
• During slow-down GUI is painfully slow, chat and IM vrtually impossible due to heavy delay ("echo")
• Regular GUI freezes with spinning beachball any few minutes for about 30 seconds. Happens even when only chatting, but seems to appear more often directly after heavy panning or a TP.
• Map-based HUD functions, like Mysti Tool landmark function, do not work properly. Map mostly (not always!) shows wrong destination. On Windows these functions always work fine.

Worth to mention, that except the regular GUI freezes all above problems apear on my imac 20"/ATI1600 with same OSX version as well! Therefore I don´t think above problems are only MBP nvidia 8600 related. I believe these issues need to be put in a more general context.

MBP 2.4 / 4GB / 8600 / 256MB, 10.5.2, graphics update 1.0 (enjoy the freezes...), 32 - 256MB texture RAM setting

Just looked at my mother's new Macbook air- same chipset as my Macbook so there are going to be some unhappy Secondlifers if they buy airs.

MBP 2.2GHz, 2GB, 8600M GT 128MB
OSX 10.5.2, Graphics Update
SL RC 1.19.1.2 texture memory set to 32MB

Hardware:

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.5 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP41.00C1.B00
SMC Version: 1.27f1
Serial Number: W88XXXXXXXX
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

Graphics/Displays:

GeForce 8600M GT:

Chipset Model: GeForce 8600M GT
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 512 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0407
Revision ID: 0x00a1
ROM Revision: 3212
Displays:
Color LCD:
Display Type: LCD
Resolution: 1440 x 900
Depth: 32-bit Color
Built-In: Yes
Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Supported
Display Connector:
Status: No display connected

Memory:

BANK 0/DIMM0:

Size: 2 GB
Type: DDR2 SDRAM
Speed: 667 MHz
Status: OK
Manufacturer: 0x7F7F7F7F7FF70000
Part Number: 0x00004B363435365536314535363637460000
Serial Number: 0x00000000

BANK 1/DIMM1:

Size: 2 GB
Type: DDR2 SDRAM
Speed: 667 MHz
Status: OK
Manufacturer: 0x7F7F7F7F7FF70000
Part Number: 0x00004B363435365536314535363637460000
Serial Number: 0x00000000

Here is really bad UI hang case I found

Hope on a dance ball with someone
Enable voice chat with that person

The screen freezes all the time. I get maybe 1-2 second of usage in between 20+ second of freezes.

MBP 2.2GHz, 2GB, 8600M GT 128MB
OSX 10.5.2, Graphics Update (latest updated everything as of 5/2)
SL: 1.20.5.86279

Another simple reason is that my MBP graphics suddenly card became defect and the computer is in repair because of a blown GPU. But still I try any new SL client version in my iMac - but did not continue using any so far. I have no idea what is so difficult in supporting SL on the Mac? It must be a really heavy job, as professional SW developers work on all these issues.

I have run the activity monitor and when the system begins to lock up the system resources go thru the roof. I have since installed the Nicholaz client patches and things are much better. The following is my config:

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.5 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP41.00C1.B00
SMC Version: 1.27f1
Serial Number: W8810AY6YJY
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

GeForce 8600M GT:

Chipset Model: GeForce 8600M GT
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 512 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0407
Revision ID: 0x00a1
ROM Revision: 3212
Displays:
Color LCD:
Display Type: LCD
Resolution: 1440 x 900
Depth: 32-bit Color
Built-In: Yes
Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Supported
Display Connector:
Status: No display connected

Anyone know the status, and if it is safe (hardware concerned!!) to use Second life? And anyone has experience to run SL from Win XP in VMware? Does it run slower or faster than run from a normal XP config using bootcamp.

Can we receive some results on this issue for once? Since I read other Mac edition issues are being resolved all the time. Or are we just forced to live wiht this and wait till we all buy a new Mac within a few years or may be next week when this one on my desk burns down?

Answers please we are a quarter further Papi!! thank you.

@BigPapi, I know you worked so hard on fixing issues and served us clear improvements. Many thanks for that. But in a nutshell, I consider the overall performance results on this computer as not acceptable. But I noticed positively, that the NVIDIA 8600 graphics card has been deleted from the Mac system compatibility list. This at least is honest and fair and helps new users not to run in the same trap, as we all did.

have MPB 2.4 and geforce 8600 - and have been seeing beach balls, system lockups etc.

All fixed now, performing a very simple operation: disabling Vertex Buffer Object in Graphics/Hardware options.

Since then I've had a few crashes but no other problem - and no lockups. I can play with the drawing distance (up to 512 without any major problem) and spin the camera as fast as I like.

I'd like to thank Awake Linden for suggesting this fix in the Mac users group chat, Sleepy Linden for posting it here months ago and Geek Linden for having VBO turned on as a default setting.

SMT

As a test I loaded up a movie in quicktime and let it run for 5 minutes while editing video in photoshop and having firefox open and other apps. The system resources look reasonable, the heat spiked at 48 degrees C and the system did not report the load that just SL running reports. Is the viewer grabbing all th cores etc? What IS it doing?

I spend a dreadful amount of time daily clearing cache, rebooting and relogging, restarting my modem and internet connection, taking on and off all attachments and turning off all my AOs, restarting the two sims I have control over; all of these measures desperate attempts to get some work done and to spend some quality time with my sl partner... But even setting graphics settings to the lowest possible values, after a few minutes in world I still can hardly move, can hardly move my camera, pics and map appear very slowly if at all, clothes take ages to come on/off, objects rez very slowly if at all, editing notecards or scripts slow on the borderline of impossible to do.. And this is when sim stats are top notch, top scripts safely below 5 ms, no colliders, ping times are good.

I'm still using the same MacBook Pro configuration as always: MacBook Pro w OS X 10.5.3. 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor; 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, 256 MB VRAM, and of course the infamous nVidia GeForce 8600M GT graphics card... Some periods everything works really well with this configuration; Friday was when this last happened. But most of the time SL is just not useable. Please please please try to find a solution to this asap!

Actually, the crashing has been somewhat alleviated, perhaps because I'm no longer attmepting to do anything in world such as building e.g. But the superglue lag is still there.

I am now constantly monitoring my connection stats and sim and all of these were fine both before and after the current period of low (=no) performance.

I'm using a a MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 0.5.3. 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, 4MB L2 cache, bus speed 800 MHz, 256 MB VRAM. ADSL modem 24 Mbit/sec ; computer-modem connection via ethernet. Nothing exceptional about connection speed or packet loss.

I've tried both the RC and the regular client and none of them work so at the moment I have no possibility of doing anything meaningful in SL.

All the symptoms are the same as in previous reports the about severe lag using the MacBook Pro. Hence it would appear that perhaps a solution similar to that applied to earlier server versions might at least partially remedy this problem also this time. Is anyone checking up on this?

Linden Labs, PLEASE, take some action so Mac users can use your beautifull program again, and I mean with that Mac Intel users, on PPC platforms everything is working fine, but still lesser performance than Windows users ...

I'm affraid you will have to write code from start, since cocoa and carbon apps are very different ...
The problems began to be seriously with the Windlight viewers, those are very beautifull and high tech, but simply UNUSABLE on modern Macs ...

HELPPPPPPPPP PLEASE !!!

And pls don't say : Apple should fix this, as it is a MAJOR problem with the Mac OS X operatins system, where your LL viewers are not optimalised for Intel Macs ... Soon there will be ONLY Intel Macs, and no more Mac users able to run your viewers ...

With the OnRez viewer on a Mac, there is NO problem, you LL, should be do better, no ?
I hope...

Seems to me this is something the Lindens ought to know about; might help point at what the problem is and would be a very useful tip to get from the help desk...

All Nvidia G84 and G86s are bad
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/09/nvidia-g84-g86-bad

The Inquirer: All Nvidia G84s AND G86s are bad
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/07/11/the-inquirer-all-nvi.html

Linden Lab, pls hire a Mac programmer, and solve this for all of us, please ?

I used to have terrible problems with my 07 MBP with the NVidia card. After the last big update of Leopard in July, they disappeared. I am using the newest RC, and I froze for the first time in weeks yesterday – then I realized that I was cruising around SL at high resolution, with both photoshop and dreamweaver open. That was a bit much to ask.

I did the workaround mentioned earlier in this list, but it hadn't helped that much. I really think it was the update. Anyway, no problems here, which suggests that it is a problem we can solve.

My 2 cents

Okay, spoke too soon. While there is a significant reduction in hangs and crashes its far from consistent. I get less hangs and beachballs, but they still do appear from time to time and stay for a while than. No real pattern to see when it happens, the only thing thats consistent is that it happens more often if more than 3 AVs are close and almost never if alone.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2377

MacBook Pro: Distorted video or no video issues

Symptoms

In July 2008, NVIDIA publicly acknowledged a higher than normal failure rate for some of their graphics processors due to a packaging defect. At that same time, NVIDIA assured Apple that Mac computers with these graphics processors were not affected. However, after an Apple-led investigation, Apple has determined that some MacBook Pro computers with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor may be affected. If the NVIDIA graphics processor in your MacBook Pro has failed, or fails within two years of the original date of purchase, a repair will be done free of charge, even if your MacBook Pro is out of warranty.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-10077

Thank you !

Firstly, I run a 3.06/8800GS 24" iMac with whatever the latest OSX release is (this post will be here for a while and the OSX builds aren't static)...

Ok, on to observations:

If I run the SL viewer, it will lock up within 30 seconds to a minute every time. These lockups last for between 15 and 30 seconds and halt the entire OS (beach-ball), then repeat. It is possible to wait out the lockup and close the SL viewer during the operational times.

Once I've run the SL Viewer, any other OSX native 3D application will run at drastically reduced rates. One example of this is "World of Warcraft" which if run post-SL, exhibits 10-ish frames per second. Rebooting the system will fix this and allow other 3D apps to run at full fame rates (WoW normally runs at around 60fps on this system).

If I clear the cache on the SL viewer, using the option on the login screen then restarting the viewer, the SL viewer will run well for some time (ranges from an hour to all night), but the next time it is run with the cache present, the lockups will return. In light of this I have had some success creating a ram disk when SL is run specifically for the cache files. The ram disk is then destroyed when the SL session ends, thereby making sure the cache is 'clean' every time the viewer is run. Note that sometimes this only works for an hour or so before the lockup symptom returns.

Hopefully this helps.