Alonguy Posted June 19, 2013 Share Posted June 19, 2013 Hello all.. I've been having a problem with every SL viewer Ive tried when it comes to turning on shadows. I'm running it on an Alienware m11x with Windows 7 64-bit, 8 GB of RAM, Intel i5 CPU, Nvidia GeForce GT 335m GPU.I primarily use Firestorm viewer, but this has also happened on the first party viewer, Niran's, and Exodus. The problem is, I can run the game on ultra settings with no problem, but whenever I turn on shadows, I only get to see them for a few minutes before my game crashes to this - http://i.imgur.com/zr9LwmC.pngI've tried increasing the graphics timeout in the registry, and that usually results in this crash followed by a BSOD moments later, so it's no good...Today, I even reinstalled Windows (due to an unrelated problem with Ubuntu and accidentally my Windows partition, oops. XD) and installed the latest drivers from Nvidia, and I still have this problem. I heard it may either be a bad OpenGL implementation in the viewers, or lack of good OpenGL support on my machine. Or it could be that it's a POS Alienware falling apart after only a year and a half... or all 3, I dunno.Anyways, does anyone else have this problem or know a possible fix for it? I've tried everything I can find. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkAngelofSin Posted June 19, 2013 Share Posted June 19, 2013 As of late yesterday I have been experiencing a problem very similar to this. I have uninstalled and reinstalled a lot of different viewers, also tried going to previous versions. That did not work so I began updating my drivers and installing updates to my computer. Even that didn't work. I type in my name and password to the login screen and it starts loading up. Everything seems to be going fine and about halfway through the login screen it completed closes out giving no error message, only a report crash dialog box. I am at a loss as to what more I can do. (my login screen before the crash) I am on an Acer Aspire 4530 laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium Service pack 2 with a NVidia GeForce 9100M G Processor: AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core QL-60 1.90GHz RAM: 2.00GB System Type: 32-bit Operating System Firestorm 4.4.0 (33720) Apr 22 2013 02:49:33 (Firestorm-Release) with OpenSimulator support Release Notes CPU: AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core QL-60 (1900 MHz) Memory: 1790 MB OS Version: Microsoft Windows Vista 32-bit Service Pack 2 (Build 6002) Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce 9100M G/PCI/SSE2/3DNOW! Windows Graphics Driver Version: 7.15.0011.7566 OpenGL Version: 2.1.2 RestrainedLove API: (disabled) libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/1.0.0d zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1 J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.1 Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000 Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded) Voice Server Version: Not Connected Settings mode: Phoenix Viewer Skin: Vintage (Classic) Font Used: Deja Vu (96) Draw distance: 128 Bandwidth: 500 LOD factor: 2 Render quality: High (5/7) Built with MSVC version 1600 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jenni Darkwatch Posted June 19, 2013 Share Posted June 19, 2013 Possibly overheating. Laptops aren't built for gaming, sorry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anpe Rau Posted June 19, 2013 Share Posted June 19, 2013 I often use SL with Firestorm on a M11x, too. My advise: Dont activate shadows on that machine - or reduce the graphics settings somewhere else. It is too much. When I got the same message again and again with my desktop PC (where shadows are ON) on a sim with tons of particle emitters it helped to reduce the amount of rendered particles. To me SL seems to have some kind of graphics engine that allows asynchronous rendering of different effects ... and a problem with it. On my Alienware laptop i have shadows set to "none". Shadows are real frame rate killers. And not only in Second Life. If you visit sims with many complex sculpties or meshes you would not be happy with shadows enabled. Even if your viewer wouldnt crash. The BSOD is a problem that - in my opinion - cant be caused by the viewer. Do you use the graphics drivers from Dell or the ones from nVidia? Try the ones from Dell. They are old and a bit slower - but I think they are more reliable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nalates Urriah Posted June 19, 2013 Share Posted June 19, 2013 You likely have a driver problem. The error you are seeing is common on older versions of the nVidia drivers. The current version is: 320.18, I think. Check the nVidia site. If you haven't, create a Second Life game setup in the nVidia control panel. Set it for PERFORMANCE. Make sure multi-threading is on. Older advice around SL is that the viewer can't use multi-threading. That advice is way out of date. When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. If the viewer will at least show the login screen, get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. Help->About... provides all the version numbers we need. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post. Without this information, people are going to have to guess at what the problem may be. Then you can trial and error you way through our guesses. Alienware is a laptop designed for gaming... Heating can be a problem too. Get the free program GPU-Z and check your tempertures. If you are running hot, find the manuals for disassembly of the unit. You'll be able to figure out what may need to be cleaned and how to check that your fans are running. SpeedFans (free) will also tell you if the fans are turning at max RPM when your heating up. Make sure your not blocking air flow. If your setting the laptop on a desk, put something under it to raise it farther off the desktop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kwakkelde Kwak Posted June 20, 2013 Share Posted June 20, 2013 Nalates Urriah wrote: Make sure multi-threading is on. Older advice around SL is that the viewer can't use multi-threading. That advice is way out of date. Could you explain how to enable it then? This is my typical taskmanager view when running SL: I have four cores with two threads each, so it looks like SL is using only one thread of only one core to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theresa Tennyson Posted June 20, 2013 Share Posted June 20, 2013 Alonguy wrote: Hello all.. I've been having a problem with every SL viewer Ive tried when it comes to turning on shadows. I'm running it on an Alienware m11x with Windows 7 64-bit, 8 GB of RAM, Intel i5 CPU, Nvidia GeForce GT 335m GPU. I primarily use Firestorm viewer, but this has also happened on the first party viewer, Niran's, and Exodus. The problem is, I can run the game on ultra settings with no problem, but whenever I turn on shadows, I only get to see them for a few minutes before my game crashes to this - http://i.imgur.com/zr9LwmC.png I've tried increasing the graphics timeout in the registry, and that usually results in this crash followed by a BSOD moments later, so it's no good... Today, I even reinstalled Windows (due to an unrelated problem with Ubuntu and accidentally my Windows partition, oops. ) and installed the latest drivers from Nvidia, and I still have this problem. I heard it may either be a bad OpenGL implementation in the viewers, or lack of good OpenGL support on my machine. Or it could be that it's a POS Alienware falling apart after only a year and a half... or all 3, I dunno. Anyways, does anyone else have this problem or know a possible fix for it? I've tried everything I can find. First of all, are you using the LATEST latest drivers from Nvidia, 320.18? Those drivers have caused problems for a limited number of users but for the ones that ARE affected it's CRAZY bad. 314.22 seems to be the most trouble-free Nvidia driver recently. Also, GT 335M is Nvidia-ese for "I'm a mediocre graphics card that's older and below the middle-of-the road in a comparison with other cards from my series and it sure doesn't help that I'm stuck in a laptop." I wouldn't expect it to run shadows well, especially if your draw distance, etc. are turned up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theresa Tennyson Posted June 20, 2013 Share Posted June 20, 2013 DarkAngelofSin wrote: As of late yesterday I have been experiencing a problem very similar to this. I have uninstalled and reinstalled a lot of different viewers, also tried going to previous versions. That did not work so I began updating my drivers and installing updates to my computer. Even that didn't work. I type in my name and password to the login screen and it starts loading up. Everything seems to be going fine and about halfway through the login screen it completed closes out giving no error message, only a report crash dialog box. I am at a loss as to what more I can do. (my login screen before the crash) I am on an Acer Aspire 4530 laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium Service pack 2 with a NVidia GeForce 9100M G Processor: AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core QL-60 1.90GHz RAM: 2.00GB System Type: 32-bit Operating System Firestorm 4.4.0 (33720) Apr 22 2013 02:49:33 (Firestorm-Release) with OpenSimulator support Release Notes CPU: AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core QL-60 (1900 MHz) Memory: 1790 MB OS Version: Microsoft Windows Vista 32-bit Service Pack 2 (Build 6002) Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce 9100M G/PCI/SSE2/3DNOW! Windows Graphics Driver Version: 7.15.0011.7566 OpenGL Version: 2.1.2 RestrainedLove API: (disabled) libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/1.0.0d zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1 J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.1 Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000 Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded) Voice Server Version: Not Connected Settings mode: Phoenix Viewer Skin: Vintage (Classic) Font Used: Deja Vu (96) Draw distance: 128 Bandwidth: 500 LOD factor: 2 Render quality: High (5/7) Built with MSVC version 1600 Okay, tough love time: That info tells us you're trying to make an old, bargain basement laptop video card run at settings far higher than it's capable of with drivers that don't even correspond to Nvidia's current numbering system. Have you gotten updated video drivers from NVIDIA THEMSELVES? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkAngelofSin Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 I am not a computer wiz and I don't claim to be, but the truth is my computer and viewer were doing just fine at the settings I had up until two days ago. I have downloaded and tried to install the updated drivers from Nvidia. That viewer information is after a clean install of firestorm (Meaning I haven't touched any of the settings) I was lucky enough to get the information since it crashes about 2 seconds after I open the program. I wouldn't be asking for advice if I knew how to fix and obviously everything I have done and mentioned has done squat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Suspiria Finucane Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 Nalates Urriah wrote: If you haven't, create a Second Life game setup in the nVidia control panel. Set it for PERFORMANCE. The NVIDIA GeForce Experience sets this up for you. It optimizes all your games to your computers specifications. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theresa Tennyson Posted June 21, 2013 Share Posted June 21, 2013 The second you load Firestorm you need to go into "Preferences" and turn the graphics settings to "Low." See the line where it says something like "Render quality 5/7?" That means the viewer is trying to run pretty high graphics settings. Your hardware really isn't capable of that. There's a table viewers refer to for setting graphics for various cards and some of the entries are known to be incorrect. The graphics card table was introduced in Firestorm in version 4.4. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alonguy Posted June 23, 2013 Author Share Posted June 23, 2013 Thanks for the help and all, but I've tried just about everything listed here, probably long before I even made this post. It's definitely not overheating, I would know that almost immediately. I know how to manage my graphics settings. I generally only use shadows in high FPS/low density environments and for the sake of machinima/screenshots. I don't care about my framerate, that can be fixed. I just wanna know why shadows are the only graphical effect that's unstable. I'm thinking of taking a look at the viewer's source code to see if there's a problem with LL's OpenGL implementation. If someone more experienced in programming than I were to rewrite that code possibly to use Direct3D instead (as much as I HATE using Microsoft's libraries) or at least found this quirk with my hardware/their code in the shadow-drawing algorithm (I believe it uses a regular shadow mapping technique) that would solve all my problems. Maybe I could try downgrading my Nvidia drivers, but I don't know if that would help, since I've been playing SL for over half a year and have had several driver updates during that time (forgot which version I started SL at though) I've played games with all kinds of different shadow techniques and even coded a few of my own... I think it's LL's code giving me problems, no other thing it could be, really. Yeah, I think I'm gonna go grab some SVN and have a look at it. The basic viewer code IS open source, after all.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube
Flickr
Recommended Posts
Please take a moment to consider if this thread is worth bumping.
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now