Can I run SL on MacBook Pro?

[Holt Roussel]

I have a MacBook Pro I use for school.  Can I run SL on it?  If so, what is the best viewer?  Thanks in advance.

[Holt Roussel]

Edit:  I found a thread that indicates yes I can after I had submitted this question.  So I am modifying to ask what is the best viewer for the MacBook Pro?

[Luc Starsider]

As you've found out, you can run SL on a MacBook Pro. The viewer you use will, for the most part, depend on your personal preference. I' running both the Second Life viewer and Emerald on an iMac and on a MacBook, and both viewers run fine. I've tried SnowGlobe, and found it ran well too. As long as your Mac has a good/newer graphics card and enough memory, you should be ok. Try the different viewers, and see if one of them fits for you.

[Holt Roussel]

Thank you.  I selected the "correct answer 4 pts."  I went with the Snowglobe to be safe since there are some viewer changes down the road.  Works great!  The graphics are amazing!

[sallycinnamon Sandalwood]

Ive never tried another viewer other than the SL one, but when I looked into Emerald Viewer on a mac i read that voice doesn't work .. do you know if it does on snowglobe ?

[Luc Starsider]

Good call. I don't use voice, so I simply forgot that. One disadvantage with Emerald for the time being. Don't know if voice works in SnowGlobe, but it seems it does, based on a quick scan of the forums.

[Luc Starsider]

Sounds good! Don' know how familiar you are with tweaking the graphics settings in the viewer, but on this site: http://blakopal.com/mac/ you will find some tips that might further enhance the performance. These tips are valid for all viewers.

[Soren Elan]

I use a Macbook Pro and I love it for SL. Graphics are awesome, inworld pics look noticeably better than the ones my friends slide me.

As far as viewers go, I used Emerald for a while, until I wanted to voice. Viewer 2.0 is my least favorite, and I really can't tolerate it. But you can still get the older SL Viewer 1.23, and it works great, and voice works great with it on the Mac also.

Phoenix is a good option as well, with voice working fine.

There is one issue you may run into. I had never had any issues with crashing until this past week. I've been crashing a lot, sometimes 5 minutes apart, on both Viewer 1.23 and Phoenix. It probably has to do with a bug in the new OS update (10.6.4), so if you can, avoid updating to that one until they fix the bug. I'm using Imprudence now, and it seems fine, but I haven't tested voice yet.

Good luck.

[filthy Adored]

Soren Elan wrote:

 

I use a Macbook Pro and I love it for SL. Graphics are awesome, inworld pics look noticeably better than the ones my friends slide me.

As far as viewers go, I used Emerald for a while, until I wanted to voice. Viewer 2.0 is my least favorite, and I really can't tolerate it. But you can still get the older SL Viewer 1.23, and it works great, and voice works great with it on the Mac also.

Phoenix is a good option as well, with voice working fine.

There is one issue you may run into. I had never had any issues with crashing until this past week. I've been crashing a lot, sometimes 5 minutes apart, on both Viewer 1.23 and Phoenix. It probably has to do with a bug in the new OS update (10.6.4), so if you can, avoid updating to that one until they fix the bug. I'm using Imprudence now, and it seems fine, but I haven't tested voice yet.

Good luck.

so its better than v2 but crashes every 5 mins interesting

[Paladin Pinion]

filthy Adored wrote:

so its better than v2 but crashes every 5 mins interesting

You misread the post. Apple released a system update a few weeks ago that has a bug in one of the video drivers and in the OpenGL library. This bug is crashing lots of apps -- Photoshop being a major one -- and SL is also one of those affected. I've been rock-solid on all the Mac viewers until the last system update was released. I've crashed hard since then three times, and it is a total lockup of the machine, requiring a hard power reset. Fortunately it doesn't happen to me every five minutes. Some people are backtracking to OS 10.6.2 temporarily until the fix is released.

So this isn't a viewer issue, it is an OS issue, and a fix is in the works. Apple knows about it (believe me, their forums are full of complaints.) I have another app I use daily that is also affected by the same issue.