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Forget phones, I want to run Second Life on a Raspberry Pi! 

 

Please.  At this point I just want it to run on an x86_64 desktop with decent hardware without EAP massively killing performance.

I'd just like to add my 2 cents in.  I have a MBP M1 8GB/512GB.  I bought it for other things, not games or SL and I knew going in it wouldn't be a great machine for either even though I do play some older games and visual novel type games on it.

Some areas like my home, which is a low resource area, I get decent enough performance with advanced lighting enabled, roughly 60 FPS on the built in screen.  Other very high resource areas that tax even my desktop AMD 3600/5500XT 8GB/32GB RAM it does poorly, down to single digits.  It all depends on where you are, and most importantly, how much system and VRAM SL is trying to eat up.  This matters a great deal with 3D applications and high resolution/many unique texture areas because system RAM and VRAM start to demand the same resources.  That's the major drawback of Apple's Unified Memory Architecture. There are many areas on SL that will eat up 6+ GB of VRAM on top of whatever the client is using in system RAM.  That means you end up swapping.  This isn't entirely the engine's fault.  It's people using textures and objects that require extreme amounts of VRAM.  And despite the extreme performance of the M1 being able to access the storage with low latency compared to other systems, it's still not RAM.  Accessing and using swap slows the system down.  It's generally not noticeable with Office, web browsers, and other programs, but it will definitely be obvious with any 3D application.

This is why my desktop will always run games and 3D programs better than the current generation of M1 Macs.  It separates out system RAM and video RAM so there is no resource starvation.  Would a 32 GB M1 Mac outperform a typical gaming desktop once it's no longer resource starved?  Perhaps.  It would naturally depend on the program and what they're compared against.  I know VRAM heavy 3D apps have been benchmarked to run better with the 16 GB version of the M1 Macs compared to 8GB.  My recommendation is do not buy a Mac M1, even the 16 GB models, believing it will be a great machine for 3D games or SL.  Just don't even bother, you will be disappointed.  Buy it if you want an ultrabook or mini desktop for your office work, school work, photo editing, or if you need a lower end Mac to test MacOS apps and develop iOS apps on.  Right now you can't beat the battery life, but if that's not a feature you care about, wait and see what new generations bring.

Am I disappointed in my MBP 8GB performance?  Not at all.  I didn't get it for its SL or gaming prowess.  I bought it because it will beat any Intel ultrabook currently on the market on battery life and performance while running on battery for mobile office work.  I have a gaming class desktop for the rest.

Edited by Stormcrow Echegaray
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I've recently got an M1 Mac Mini, and been comparing it to my old computer, an Intel i5, five years old but with an 8GB graphics card (a 'hackintosh' tower running MacOS Mojave) . I've been getting terrible FPS on the M1 - and logged in with a trusty alt was getting FPS of 42 on the hackintosh and 3.2 FPS on the mac mini. So I compared the Firestorm preferences, and the big difference was that I had 'Enable OpenGL vertex buffer objects' turned off on the M1 but turned on for the hackintosh. When I turned it on for the M1 my FPS immediately shot up into the high 30s.

So, if you have an M1, check that setting under Preferences | Hardware.

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Just 48 hours into my MacBook Pro M1, 8GB RAM. Firestorm and SLViewer both run swell but one notable issue for me. And I don’t like it at all !

The color gamut is odd. Colors are rendered TOO warm. The red is garishly red.. even crimson. Dark skin shades have a red/magenta tinge. Looks awful !

I haven’t noticed any other issues.

Oh yah ! One more. Doesn’t go beyond High on th graphics settings.

 

Edited by Pintowit
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Yes. I calibrated the monitor. No improvement.I tried the CalWL setting. No improvement.I’m waiting for some more concrete suggestions, but I think it’s the graphics driver that is not matching the M1 specs. As I said, all primary colors look garishly bright, glaring almost. But the red one is making me mad. I used a Windows 10 previously, was much more soothing and had perfect color renderings ! And I thought Apple would do it better !

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I've used many different Macs in SL over the years and none of them have given the results you mention, so no idea what is going on there. CalWL can be a bit harsh in itself, though the colors are usually kind of balanced and neutral, but try some of the others.

I have an M1 mac mini and it does go beyond 'high' on the settings - will go all the way to ultra and shows it quite well, though very slowly if you go to a crowded club.

Have you tried enabling support for HiDPI, to see what impact that has? It is specifically for Mac retina screens, which you have on the Macbook.

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Thanks for your suggestion. Yes I've already tried the HiDPI. Didn't do any good. And yes, I too had used Firestorm on my MacMini - and a 2012 version even at that - without any issue whatsoever ! So I'm a little surprised also with the glitch I'm having with the new Pro !!  

An incidental finding - I've noticed that in the Graphics pane on preferences, iunder the hardware tab, the Gamma setting button is greyed out and the Gamma is by default set to 0.00 (which is the brightest). I think setting it to a higher value (lower value = brightest) could help. But I don't know how to !

 

Edited by Pintowit
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On 2/4/2021 at 12:06 PM, Pintowit said:

Just 48 hours into my MacBook Pro M1, 8GB RAM. Firestorm and SLViewer both run swell but one notable issue for me. And I don’t like it at all !

The color gamut is odd. Colors are rendered TOO warm. The red is garishly red.. even crimson. Dark skin shades have a red/magenta tinge. Looks awful !

I haven’t noticed any other issues.

Oh yah ! One more. Doesn’t go beyond High on th graphics settings.

 

Are you running the machine in the evening with nightshift on? That will change the warmth of the colors.

Also remember that this machine has a 10-bit per color dynamic range, and a different color gamut than the viewer is developed for, so it will in most situations look better. Windows will look washed out in comparison. 

It also use True Tone which further change how colors look on the screen. https://www.pocket-lint.com/tablets/news/apple/137264-what-is-apple-true-tone-display

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On 2/4/2021 at 1:16 PM, Anicha Heartsong said:

Pintowit - have you calibrated your monitor yet? If so, that might help. (System Prefs | Display | Colour )

But is this only happening in SL and not elsewhere? If that's the case then you could try changing your windlight settings, or even making your own windlight setting using the new EEP thingy.

There is absolutely no need to calibrate the on screen display at all. It would only make it worse. 

An external display connected to the system can possibly need a calibration unless the system auto-detects a profile for it. Then it is probably better left as is.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/14/2021 at 4:05 PM, KjartanEno said:

Google Stadia streams games to a browser, so it would make perfect sense that similar technology could exist for other applications. The thought had crossed my mind about LL providing this kind of streaming service for premium customers. Would they do it? I think the infrastructure investment would be fairly high, adding another layer of complexity to the system. Would people pay for it?

LL has considered it and spoken about it in various user group meetings. The problem is cost. We have had multiple companies provide SL as a streamed service. All gave it up as the SL community doesn't provide the volume of interest to get the price down to user-accepted levels. As it is now, it is thought there are not enough possible subscribers to carry the cost, make it sustianable. The Lab is on the watch for tech or someone to drive the cost down to user acceptable levels.

SL and the Mac... This is an interesting challenge for the Lab. Many of the Lindens run SL on Macs. So, they have a strong interest in having a Mac version of the viewer. Apple isn't making it easy.

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4 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

As it is now, it is thought there are not enough possible subscribers to carry the cost, make it sustianable.

To be honest that's a bit of a silly position for Linden Lab to entertain. That would be akin to McDonalds saying they aren't going to release a new cheeseburger with better ingredients because cheeseburgers are not popular due to having substandard ingredients.

That said a LL provided streaming service will never happen.

Edited by Drayke Newall
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12 hours ago, Drayke Newall said:

To be honest that's a bit of a silly position for Linden Lab to entertain. That would be akin to McDonalds saying they aren't going to release a new cheeseburger with better ingredients because cheeseburgers are not popular due to having substandard ingredients.

That said a LL provided streaming service will never happen.

So it is silly for them to look at what has happened to others that provided streaming services and make a call based on the economics?

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My new MacBook Air M1 (512 GB HD/8GB memory) arrived this week. My old computer was a 2015 MacBook Pro i5 with 8 gb ram and a 128 GB Hard Drive. 

Right now, I am EXTREMELY happy with the performance of both the SL Viewer and Firestorm on my new MacBook Air.

On my old Mac it was a struggle to run SL. At events I had to take the quality settings down dramatically and still had problems with things rezzing and textures loading. No animation overrides, of course, that messed everything up. Frame rates were so low I had difficulty moving my avatar (in other words, 5fps and lower). And a lot of times I'd get the beach ball when trying to access preferences or paste in a location SLURL.  I had pretty much resigned myself to SL working rather poorly. The only place I got decent performance was my skybox high above Belli. 

Well, I test stuff for work on my personal Mac - using Xcode's Simulator tool, and I got to the point where I had to juggle lots of stuff on that 128 GB hard drive. To do a system upgrade I had to remove all Adobe and Microsoft Office applications and anything else I could from the internal hard drive. Xcode was even more tricky. It got to the point I couldn't take it any more, so I caved and got the M1.

I would estimate a 3X to 5X improvement in SL performance. No matter the frame rate, everything is smoother. I can go to events without taking off my AO or lowering graphics quality settings, and things now rez fairly quickly.  And if I do optimize a bit more for events, like taking off Atmospheric Shaders and reducing draw distance, I can get good frame rates in the 30+ range at many events. While it doesn't compare to a highly optimized PC, it is a massive improvement.

 

 

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I'm not sure what's happened, but now that my MacBook is updated to Big Sur 11.2.1, it's become completely useless for SL. I'm getting bad single digit frame rates where I was getting in the 20s when I first got it. There's nothing else eating up CPU time and no changes I make to settings in Firestorm or the LL viewer improve anything. It went from great to typical SL on a Mac.

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22 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

SL and the Mac... This is an interesting challenge for the Lab. Many of the Lindens run SL on Macs. So, they have a strong interest in having a Mac version of the viewer. Apple isn't making it easy.

It's not just LL. I've been working with sone devs on another project that wants to have a Mac client. I don't know the details, but I know they start muttering and grumbling when they hear the word "Apple".

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7 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

So it is silly for them to look at what has happened to others that provided streaming services and make a call based on the economics?

No not at all and any company doing due diligence should look at what others have done. Proposing the idea to their client base (not just a few members that attend a meeting) however, to see whether such an addition to premium would be worth while would bring better results than outright refusing based on other third party company failures.

The primary reason why SLGo for example failed to obtain more users for SL streaming could be attributed to a person having to not only pay for a SL monthly subscription but on top of that the streaming service fee per month. Additionally due to the fact that hardly anyone knew about it due to it being separated from the Lab offering.

Having it part of the subscription model brings it to users as one fee and also can be advertised by LL as part of SL. Not saying this would bring about better results, but you cannot compare the two without putting feelers out into the userbase to see whether it would work or not.

With benefits to both Mobile as well as to low end PC's and  Macs it should be considered far more than it has.

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Lysa

18 hours ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

I'm not sure what's happened, but now that my MacBook is updated to Big Sur 11.2.1, it's become completely useless for SL. I'm getting bad single digit frame rates where I was getting in the 20s when I first got it. There's nothing else eating up CPU time and no changes I make to settings in Firestorm or the LL viewer improve anything. It went from great to typical SL on a Mac.

Lyssa, what are your specs on the MacBook? And have you tried clearing your caches in the viewers?

 

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