second life viewer Can't see prim hover text in SL viewer

[Scott Woollahra]

After several months away from SL, I logged in last night (after updating my SL and Firestorm viewers to the current release versions). The problem appears to be limited to the SL viewer.

• Prim hover (floating) text, i.e. created by llSetText(), is not appearing when I'm using the SL viewer (it wasn't appearing when I initially logged into the Firestorm viewer, but restoring old Firestorm settings fixed it for Firestorm).
• Bizarrely, this type of floating text can be seen on attached HUDs, but the HUD prims can't be seen-yet the HUD seems to function properly.
• The problem is independent of avatar (I saw it on the two avatars I tried).
• I tried uninstalling and doing a totally clean install of the SL viewer; the problem still exists.

Is there some obscure setting I'm missing? I've looked through pretty much everything I could think of (it's annoying enough to find settings that used to be on the main menus now buried in the Debug Settings menu).

SL viewer: Second Life Release 6.0.1.522263 (64bit)
Firestorm viewer: Firestorm 5.1.7 (55786) Jul 13 2018 22:34:51 (64bit) (Firestorm-Releasex64) with OpenSimulator support
Windows 7 64 bit

First image in SL viewer, second in Firestorm

 

Edited February 9, 2019 by Scott Woollahra

[Lindal Kidd]

I didn't find a setting in the SL viewer that would turn this on and off, but while testing, I did notice that the visibility range for hovertext is 10m.  Did you try moving closer?

[Scott Woollahra]

I'm much closer than 10m. Nada...

[Rolig Loon]

1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I did notice that the visibility range for hovertext is 10m. 

The range depends on the size of the prim, so it's not a fixed 10m.  If you put hover text on your house, you'll see it from 50 or 60 m away.

[Scott Woollahra]

I've discovered what the problem is: when the Advanced Lighting Model in Graphics preferences is enabled, the floating text disappears. I've confirmed this for both Firestorm and the SL Viewer. I believe this is a relatively new phenomenon, as in the past I've often had Advanced Lighting active to enable shadows, and never noticed this.

I don't know what a solution might be, and wonder if it is a bug or feature, possibly related to my older computer/graphics card, or some new obscure settings buried somewhere in the byzantine viewer interfaces.

Edited February 18, 2019 by Scott Woollahra

[Whirly Fizzle]

Yeah if this only happens when ALM is enabled, I suspect it's a graphics card/driver issue.

In the top menu bar of the viewer, go to Help -> About Second Life (or About Firestorm).
Click the "Copy to clipboard" button & paste all your system information here.

[Scott Woollahra]

Here, my system info (Firestorm updated this morning to current version). I know my graphics card/driver is old, but it's still able to run ALM. The issue has only manifested in one of the recent viewer updates.

---------------------------------------

Firestorm 6.0.2 (56680) Feb  9 2019 10:23:10 (64bit) (Firestorm-Releasex64) with OpenSimulator support
Release Notes

You are at 232.0, 4.2, 152.3 in Hughes Rise located at sim10481.agni.lindenlab.com (216.82.51.187:13010)
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Hughes Rise/232/4/152
(global coordinates 261,352.0, 231,684.0, 152.3)
Second Life Server 19.01.25.523656
Release Notes

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU       M 450  @ 2.40GHz (2394.03 MHz)
Memory: 7861 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 64-bit (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650             

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.771.1.0
OpenGL Version: 4.0.10188 Compatibility Profile Context

RestrainedLove API: (disabled)
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.54.1 OpenSSL/1.0.2l zlib/1.2.8 nghttp2/1.25.0
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.10.6
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Studio 1.10.10
Dullahan: 1.1.1080 / CEF: 3.3325.1750.gaabe4c4 / Chromium: 65.0.3325.146
LibVLC Version: 2.2.8
Voice Server Version: Vivox 4.9.0002.30313

Settings mode: Firestorm
Viewer Skin: StarLight (Silver Blue)
Window size: 1280x972 px
Font Used: Deja Vu (96 dpi)
Font Size Adjustment: 0 pt
UI Scaling: 1
Draw distance: 128 m
Bandwidth: 1200 kbit/s
LOD factor: 2
Render quality: Medium-High (4/7)
Advanced Lighting Model: Yes
Texture memory: 512 MB (1)
VFS (cache) creation time (UTC): 2019-2-19T10:39:41 
Built with MSVC version 1800
Packets Lost: 52/74,424 (0.1%)
February 19 2019 03:12:43 SLT

[Whirly Fizzle]

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.771.1.0
8.771.1.0 was released on 9/9/2010, so it's very out of date now.

If you update to this graphics driver, does that fix it? https://www.amd.com/en/support/graphics/amd-radeon-hd/ati-mobility-radeon-hd-5000-series/ati-mobility-radeon-hd-5650