Using SL On a Mac

[polynesia]

I realize that SL wasnt made for a mac computer but i cant really change that now can i? I have been using the official viewer sicne firestorm wont run shadows for me but the official viewers do. but my one question that i have is why when i turn on shadows, textures dont stay sharp they blur out and then in and they come back and come on . its really annoying when trying to take photography pictures for a blog. I dont understand why textures dont stay loaded.

[Orca Flotta]

I guess it's nothing to do with your Apple but sounds like a connection/gpu problem.

Please do us the favour and copypaste your system specs into this thread. So the experts here can help you better.

--> open the viewer but DON'T log in world. --> choose HELP --> About [your viewer] --> copypaste the whole box into this thread. It'll look somehow like this:

 

Singularity Viewer (64 bit) 1.8.5 (5617) Jan 28 2014 23:30:38 (Singularity)
Release Notes

Grid: Second Life

Built with GCC version 40405

CPU: Intel® Core i5 CPU         650  @ 3.20GHz (1197 MHz)
Memory: 7980 MB
OS Version: Linux 3.14.13-1-MANJARO #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Jul 18 09:02:40 UTC 2014 x86_64
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 260/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 340.24

Viewer SSE Version: SSE2
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.24.0 OpenSSL/1.0.0g zlib/1.2.6 c-ares/1.7.5 libidn/1.28
J2C Decoder Version: OpenJPEG: 1.5.2
Audio Driver Version: (none)
Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded)

From those data the experts can already tell you a lot about possible reasons for your blurry experience.

 

[Dana Dielli]

I'm experiencing the same texture fluctuations as you are, switching back and forth between crisp and blurry. 

I'm also on a mac, late 2011 MacBook Pro.

I have the feeling it's the ATI gpu that's giving me the problem, and have sort of accepted my fate until I replace this laptop.  (My next mac will be an Asus.)

I'll post my system info below, if you want to compare yours to mine:

 

Singularity Viewer 1.8.5 (5824) May  9 2014 18:21:37 (Singularity Alpha)
Release Notes

Grid: Second Life

Built with Clang version 50100

CPU: Intel® Core i7-2860QM CPU @ 2.50GHz (2500 MHz)
Memory: 16384 MB
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.9.4 Darwin 13.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 13.3.0: Tue Jun  3 21:27:35 PDT 2014; root:xnu-2422.110.17~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 6770M OpenGL Engine
OpenGL Version: 2.1 ATI-1.24.35
RLV v2.8.0 / RLVa v1.4.10a

Viewer SSE Version: SSE2
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/1.0.0g zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1
J2C Decoder Version: OpenJPEG: 1.5.2
Audio Driver Version: (none)
Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded)

[Ziki Questi]

Polynesia, which version of OS X are you running?

[Madelaine McMasters]

Hi polynesia,

I'm on a Mac as well. I haven't been in-world much lately, but I've witnessed this problem. This was a far more common occurance last autumn, affecting all operating systems and all viewers, The problem was traced back to a bug in the viewer's new "interest list" functions, which attempt to cache and render closer objects first. Although the problem was announced as fixed, I noticed an improvement, but still experienced the problem. I've not been in-world enough recently to see if the problem continues at a low level.

I've also read reports that WowMeh HUDs cause this texture reloading problem, and that removing them solves it. That may also have been fixed by now.

Here are some potentially related threads...

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/Textures-keep-reloading-over-and-over-again/m-p/2270555

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Viewer/3-4-4-textures-stuck-in-reloading-cycle-on-OSX/td-p/1825115

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Server/Objects-That-Rez-Keep-Going-Blurry-and-Rezzing-All-The-Time/m-p/2749530#M14858

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Viewer/Textures-constantly-going-blurred/td-p/2015235

http://blog.nalates.net/2013/08/17/second-life-texture-thrashing/