27" iMac Retina 5K help ... settings

[Ginger Blackwood]

Running SL on said system. Mid-2017. 24GB of RAM and the Radeon Pro 580 8GB GPU. It's a 4.2GHz i7. Now the first mistake I may be making is running thus sucker at 5120x2880 res ... right? But even so, with a lot of things turn down (draw distance, least water etc) I'm getting only 7 FPS in a place like Muddy's (dance) with maybe 15 other Avis in the room with me. I'm off to try halving the screen resolution down to 2560x1440 to start, but any other settings I should use to get my frame rate at least into the 20s? Anyone post a screen shot of their iMac settings that they are happy with?

Really appreciate some help, here ... this is unbearable. Thanks!

[Alyona Su]

44 minutes ago, JuliaAemilius said:

Running SL on said system. Mid-2017. 24GB of RAM and the Radeon Pro 580 8GB GPU. It's a 4.2GHz i7. Now the first mistake I may be making is running thus sucker at 5120x2880 res ... right? But even so, with a lot of things turn down (draw distance, least water etc) I'm getting only 7 FPS in a place like Muddy's (dance) with maybe 15 other Avis in the room with me. I'm off to try halving the screen resolution down to 2560x1440 to start, but any other settings I should use to get my frame rate at least into the 20s? Anyone post a screen shot of their iMac settings that they are happy with?

Really appreciate some help, here ... this is unbearable. Thanks!

No matter what your system is, when there are other avatars within draw distance (and especially in one place where you are) FPS will likely drop exponentially. As for your macOS version of SL: First, check your graphic settings and turn OFF "Hi-DPI" setting - that causes the viewer to use every pixel of that gorgeous Retina display - which would be okay on a 12" MacBook, but a 27" iMac? I don't think so! LOL

Your mileage may vary, but I get better performance from the LL Viewer on macOS than I do with Firestorm, though I recommend you try them both (and perhaps Kokua also).

The main thing is to keep draw distance down. I go with 128 as my "main" setting and I have presets for "High" at 256 , Photo, with draw at 96 and everything else maxed out, and "Events" which is 96 and most settings turned way down to zero or off, except LOD (so I can see vendors and rez items well).

I also find, sometimes, running the viewer in a window helps a lot also (approximately 1200 pixels wide or so) - but at full-screen, OMG SL is freaking gorgeous! So... I get it!  LOL

[Ginger Blackwood]

Thank you so much ...

[Ginger Blackwood]

Any way to take a screen shot of the advanced settings panel and post those for the three?

[Lyssa Greymoon]

I set the screen resolution to 2048x1152 and these settings most of the time:

Dialing down water reflections or turning off Advanced Lighting Model can help when it gets too sluggish.

HiDPI support will kill performance. Avatar Hardware skinning should never be turned off.

[Ginger Blackwood]

Perfect thanks! Will try these and post back results ...

[Jaauuwn]

Thank you Lyssa and Julia for sharing this and bringing the topic up. Glad I found this as I have a similar issue with my late 2015 27" iMac Retina 5K.

Rather than change the screen resolution for every application I changed the defaults for just the Second Life Viewer application itself (under Get Info) and checked the box 'Open in Low Resolution'. It seems to be about the same as if I otherwise changed the display resolution from their default under the scaled option to 2048x1152 but the change is limited to Second Life and every other application can still display as I would otherwise want to see on a Retina display.

I am still keeping the option for 'Enable support for HiDPI displays' deselected. I am not sure whether or not the 'Open in Low Resolution' option per the MacOS makes that a redundant setting.

So far I definitely think there's some improvement over before. The CPU cooling fans still kick in to a certain amount but not quite as crazy loud as before. When my avatar walks around a lot that's when they really kick in. Standing still the fans are practically silent and the CPU temperature readings drop down as well. I recently installed the iStat Menus app which has been very helpful figuring out the CPU load and operating temperatures.