New Apple Silicon

[Lyssa Greymoon]

1 hour ago, Trinity1776 said:

Lysa

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

 

16GB M1. Yes, I've cleared the caches. Also the system and user caches.

[Nalates Urriah]

17 hours ago, Drayke Newall said:

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.

Ah! Now I understand. You have no clue what the Lab's position is or what they have said they are considering.

[Trinity Blakewell]

Lyssa, I'm not sure what's going on with you, but I've only got 8gb ram, and the same system software. My frame rate drops at some events and busy sites, but things are still significantly better than my old intel MacBook. Right now I'm at Velour with the weekend sales, and there's a lot of other folks here, and I'm wearing an AO, and I have on medium graphic settings with local lights, and I'm getting about 12fps, but items are rezzing quickly and I can move around.

[Ardy Lay]

Looking at the reviews I get the impression that an M1 equipped Mac compares in rendering performance with a Windows computer with a GTX 1050Ti or GTX 1650.  This does indeed put it miles ahead of the computers using the Intel CPU's on-chip graphics, and thus, makes the MacBook (and PCs) with Intel graphics only look sad running Second Life Viewer.  The M1 also does this while consuming much less energy and thus needs less space for cooling apparatus.  I am kind of the opposite of an Apple fan but this new development is very interesting.

[Geri Munro]

Frustration for me with the M1 and 16 gigs on my M1 Mini!

Thought htis would be an upgrade over my HP interl5 with 8 gigs but QUITE the opposite! Open GL is on....and I drag myself through SL using Firestorm.

 

I would appreciate any advice here or in-world. Thank you!

 

....Geri...:)

 

 

[KjartanEno]

On 2/20/2021 at 3:07 PM, Ardy Lay said:

Looking at the reviews I get the impression that an M1 equipped Mac compares in rendering performance with a Windows computer with a GTX 1050Ti or GTX 1650.  This does indeed put it miles ahead of the computers using the Intel CPU's on-chip graphics, and thus, makes the MacBook (and PCs) with Intel graphics only look sad running Second Life Viewer.  The M1 also does this while consuming much less energy and thus needs less space for cooling apparatus.  I am kind of the opposite of an Apple fan but this new development is very interesting.

I'm seeing a trend. Apple fans are going to hail it as the best thing since sliced bread, telling people how amazingly fast and humongously better it is than the previous generations of underpowered and overpriced Intel-based Mac (which is all they've known since they never bought a powerful gaming computer), all while ignoring the fact that any 5 year old gaming PC with at least an Intel i3 & Nvidia GTX 960 can still run Second Life better than an M1 Mac. Meanwhile, some will believe the hype and pay an exorbitant price for a product from a 'lifestyle company' (Intel's own words) and come here asking for help.

Now here's the twist: I like the idea of the M1. I think there's potential for a great leap in performance while saving power. The fact is that the Second Life viewer is not yet made to run directly on this new system. I hope LL will port the viewer to the new codebase, but that will take time. We have no idea how much time. Practically all AAA gaming titles are made for AMD/Intel-based processors, whether PCs or consoles. I do not see this changing at all. I would not take claims that the M1 GPU is as good as a GTX 1050 seriously. Apple will always have fans, and there will be software written for this system that is simply amazing. If you use that software, buy the product! If you buy it for Second Life, you've paid way too much for too little return (for the time being).

[Geri Munro]

Frustration for me with the M1 and 16 gigs on my M1 Mini!

Thought htis would be an upgrade over my HP interl5 with 8 gigs but QUITE the opposite! Open GL is on....and I drag myself through SL using Firestorm.

 

I would appreciate any advice here or in-world. Thank you!

 

....Geri...:)

 

 

[Trinity Blakewell]

2 hours ago, KjartanEno said:

Meanwhile, some will believe the hype and pay an exorbitant price for a product from a 'lifestyle company' (Intel's own words) ...

Ironically, the new  MacBook Pros with the Intel chips are much higher priced than the new M1's. 

Their base config includes 16gb ram instead of the base 8gb on the M1's but that doesn't account for the full cost difference. I didn't really go into depth regarding specs and performance reports because the M1 Air with the 512 GB hard drive was so close to the specs of the 13" M1 Pro with the same config, at a couple of hundred dollars less, so that made the most sense for me. I wasn't going to pay $1500 to $1800 for a MacBook Pro model when a $1200 MacBook Air gave me everything I needed and wanted.

And...the potential SL user that I'm really addressing is one like me, someone who owns/owned an intel MacBook Pro or Air that was several years old. Someone who is on a Mac for other reasons and would just like decent performance in SL. Not someone who is comparing the M1 with a computer that has specs optimized for SL. Someone who is comparing a MacBook (or maybe a Mac mini) that is a few years old with the M1 version. I think most of those people will be happy with the performance gains.

[Geri Munro]

On 2/23/2021 at 7:56 AM, KjartanEno said:

I'm seeing a trend. Apple fans are going to hail it as the best thing since sliced bread, telling people how amazingly fast and humongously better it is than the previous generations of underpowered and overpriced Intel-based Mac (which is all they've known since they never bought a powerful gaming computer), all while ignoring the fact that any 5 year old gaming PC with at least an Intel i3 & Nvidia GTX 960 can still run Second Life better than an M1 Mac. Meanwhile, some will believe the hype and pay an exorbitant price for a product from a 'lifestyle company' (Intel's own words) and come here asking for help.

Now here's the twist: I like the idea of the M1. I think there's potential for a great leap in performance while saving power. The fact is that the Second Life viewer is not yet made to run directly on this new system. I hope LL will port the viewer to the new codebase, but that will take time. We have no idea how much time. Practically all AAA gaming titles are made for AMD/Intel-based processors, whether PCs or consoles. I do not see this changing at all. I would not take claims that the M1 GPU is as good as a GTX 1050 seriously. Apple will always have fans, and there will be software written for this system that is simply amazing. If you use that software, buy the product! If you buy it for Second Life, you've paid way too much for too little return (for the time being).

Gee...guess you were wrong about that. Care to make another arrogantly sweeping statement?..:)

[KjartanEno]

2 minutes ago, Geri Munro said:

Gee...guess you were wrong about that. Care to make another arrogantly sweeping statement?..:)

About what, specifically? I do not disagree with anything in Trinity1776's post. The cost of Intel Macs is high because that's what Apple charges for the whole computer. Anyone who builds computers can buy an Intel Core i7-10700K 8 core/16 thread processor with a motherboard for around US$500. Add RAM, a case, a power supply and accessories, and one has a powerful desktop computer for around US$1000. And if graphics cards were actually selling for MSRP, one could build a very powerful gaming computer for under US$1500 which would STOMP on any Mac of equivalent pricing. 

[MarissaOrloff]

On 2/25/2021 at 8:36 AM, KjartanEno said:

And if graphics cards were actually selling for MSRP

Not going to happen until bitcoin crashes and if it doesn't we will all be stuck (unless you have megabucks to burn) with integrated graphics which will ironically make M1 Mac performance superior. 

[KjartanEno]

17 hours ago, MarissaOrloff said:

Not going to happen until bitcoin crashes and if it doesn't we will all be stuck (unless you have megabucks to burn) with integrated graphics which will ironically make M1 Mac performance superior. 

Someone like me who buys components will have to wait. But a quick search of electronics stores shows pre-built computers that pretty much match the specifications I posted above.

For example, https://www.newegg.com/abs-ali490/p/N82E16883360085 is available at the time of this post.

I just took this picture on my computer with a Ryzen 5 3600, 16 GB RAM, and AMD RX 580.

The components cost me well under US$1000. Shadows are on, and the draw distance is 192m. I used Singularity viewer with its PyFX feature. It is straight out of the viewer, and the framerate is in the bottom right corner. Let's see some awesome ground level, shadows on, and long draw distance pictures from the M1. This thread seems like a good place to show off how awesome the M1 is, right?

[MarissaOrloff]

3 hours ago, KjartanEno said:

the framerate is in the bottom right corner. 

I have a RTX-2080 and 17fps would drive me to drink heavily and good luck finding a pre built right now. What I was saying is that what is available now are Intel integrated hd-630, AMD apus (again good luck finding a 3200g or 3400g) mac m1 the mac is superior out of the three. It's a horrible choice to make because any of those three choices are just horrible. 

 

[KjartanEno]

53 minutes ago, MarissaOrloff said:

I have a RTX-2080 and 17fps would drive me to drink heavily and good luck finding a pre built right now. What I was saying is that what is available now are Intel integrated hd-630, AMD apus (again good luck finding a 3200g or 3400g) mac m1 the mac is superior out of the three. It's a horrible choice to make because any of those three choices are just horrible. 

 

The Newegg link in my previous post is to a prebuilt computer with an RTX 3060 priced at US$1400. Looks available to me.

Here's a laptop with a GTX 1660Ti for US$850: https://www.newegg.com/bonfire-black-asus-tuf-gaming-a15-fa506iu-nb53/p/N82E16834235505

There's a lot more options than integrated Intel HD or AMD APUs for the price of a new Mac, M1 or otherwise.

I certainly envy (but in a nice way ) your RTX-2080. My point was that in this very thread I've read how the M1 gets "60 frames per second on high settings" only to see from a screenshot posted later that it was 60 fps with advanced lighting OFF (no shadows) in a skybox with the graphics slider set to medium. What is someone who isn't as tech savvy as you or I supposed to think when they see glowing reviews of this hardware without context?

[MarissaOrloff]

32 minutes ago, KjartanEno said:

I certainly envy (but in a nice way ) your RTX-2080. My point was that in this very thread I've read how the M1 gets "60 frames per second on high settings" only to see from a screenshot posted later that it was 60 fps with advanced lighting OFF (no shadows) in a skybox with the graphics slider set to medium. What is someone who isn't as tech savvy as you or I supposed to think when they see glowing reviews of this hardware without context?

At  high/ultra the M1 Mac is going to choke. Go into a crowded region with full rendering of 16 avatars and the M1 Mac will drop fps into single digits and be unusable. Try to render a long sunset shadow and take a 6k or 8k photo of it... Good lord *poof*

Edited March 3, 2021 by MarissaOrloff

[Geri Munro]

Don't get the Apple M1 if you are planning on having a satisfying SL experience. You will be sadly disappointed....as have i....:(  I am with Marissa. A HUGE disappointment.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

It’s Big Sur 11.2. I got my hands on another MacBook that shipped with 11.1, and SL ran fine on it. Upgraded to 11.2.3 and the frame rate dropped in half. It’s a great laptop,  but crap for SL. Maybe 11.3 will fix that or someone will bring out a universal binary viewer. 

Edited April 2, 2021 by Lyssa Greymoon

[Jenna Huntsman]

1 hour ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

It’s Big Sur 11.2. I got my hands on another MacBook that shipped with 11.1, and SL ran fine on it. Upgraded to 11.2.3 and the frame rate dropped in half. It’s a great laptop,  but crap for SL. Maybe 11.3 will fix that or someone will bring out a universal binary viewer. 

SL on M1 isn't going to run all that well anyway, as OpenGL was depreciated on MacOS years ago. This also rules out the concept of a 'universal binary viewer', as the main bottleneck is likely not the CPU, but the lack of real OpenGL support (Intel Macs still have it, mainly as a leftover from before it was depreciated, but it's likely that not much thought was paid to OGL support on M1)

[Lyssa Greymoon]

On 4/2/2021 at 9:29 PM, Jenna Huntsman said:

SL on M1 isn't going to run all that well anyway, as OpenGL was depreciated on MacOS years ago.

ARM and Intel Macs have the same OpenGL support.

[michaelgrey83]

As has been said a few times here -

The M1 is a great chip. The graphics are the equivalent to a RX560/1050.... but.. Apples OpenGL implementation sucks, so SL runs terribly compared to how it would on windows with equivalent graphics. You will only get equivalent performance on Metal based games, or something not using OpenGL.

Easily proved when using a hackintosh - when booted into windows on the exact same hardware SL runs way faster.

A native M1 port of Second Life might give a few more fps, but will not change the fact apples openGL support is poor. Do not expect a huge jump in performance unless SL moves to Vulkan or something else.

It doesnt matter how good the M1 hardware is, if the software drivers are god awful.

The other thing to note is that on the mac you are probably running at retina/high DPI resolutions - the M1 MBA is 2560*1600, thats a lot for even a decent graphics card. Windows machines tend to run lower resolutions.

All this coming from a huge Apple fan - but i'm under no false illusions about games on macOS.

[michaelgrey83]

On 4/4/2021 at 3:15 PM, Lyssa Greymoon said:

ARM and Intel Macs have the same OpenGL support.

Correct - but its still depreciated - i.e. they havent updated it in years, and have no plans to do so. They will do the minimum amount of work to keep it working, but thats about it.

[Alise Morningstar]

On 3/3/2021 at 3:52 PM, KjartanEno said:

Someone like me who buys components will have to wait. But a quick search of electronics stores shows pre-built computers that pretty much match the specifications I posted above.

For example, https://www.newegg.com/abs-ali490/p/N82E16883360085 is available at the time of this post.

I just took this picture on my computer with a Ryzen 5 3600, 16 GB RAM, and AMD RX 580.

The components cost me well under US$1000. Shadows are on, and the draw distance is 192m. I used Singularity viewer with its PyFX feature. It is straight out of the viewer, and the framerate is in the bottom right corner. Let's see some awesome ground level, shadows on, and long draw distance pictures from the M1. This thread seems like a good place to show off how awesome the M1 is, right?

Hi KjartanEno, totally agree it would be helpful to see back to back comparison of the M1 Mac against Intel/AMD. So, I've tried to do just that with what I have!

To be fair to many of those commenting on the M1 vs Intel MacBook debate, they are comparing the M1 against older MacBooks. I don't have such a machine to hand, but I do have a 3 year old Dell business laptop. No discrete graphics chip, just the Intel UHD630. M1 MacBook (16GB) running the LL Second Life viewer, the Dell running Firestorm under Ubuntu Linux. No fancy PyFX (got look into that...). I went to a nice forest with lots of trees/objects around, and set the graphics settings as close to each other as I could, first shadows on, then shadows off, per your challenge. Draw distance 192 for everything. Note the Dell screen resolution is smaller than the MacBook, which I haven't tried to compensate for here. Both at native resolution.

Long story short, the 2 machines are pretty similar. M1 gets 3.3/17.3 fps with shadows on/off. Dell gets 3.2/11.4 fps.

The bottom line is the M1 MacBook Pro will get you decent enough performance with low graphics settings, and will probably beat an Intel discrete graphics laptop from the last few years, but not by much (screen size may be a big factor though). If you want all the fancy graphical effects, get a machine with a discrete graphics chip. As if anyone is surprised by that!

BTW: I prefer running my gaming rig with NVIDIA RTX2060 SUPER, 4K screen etc. for Second Life, of course I do. But when I'm not at the desk then the M1 MacBook is easily good enough to log on and join in the SL fun. Way better than my 5 year old MacBook Air.

Don't let anyone convince you it will compete with a discrete graphics chip PC/laptop - it won't. However, I hope this is helpful in setting realistic expectations performance of SL on the M1.

One final note - the Dell was running the fan full bore during all of this. The M1? Whisper quiet. Nice!

Alise

 

 

[Lyssa Greymoon]

Big Sur 11.3 is out of beta and available now. Performance seems much improved.

[Ansel Artful]

On 11/27/2020 at 5:07 AM, uk89201 said:

Okay, a slightly odd side question then  What are you using for camera control (just keyboard, trackpad?) - reason I ask is that I see from SecondLife JIRA that MacOS Big Sur has stopped the 3dconnexion space mouse from working with LL Viewer/FireStorm. Holding off upgrading to Big Sur on my iMac until that's - hopefully - sorted. If I could buy this laptop with Catalina it would be perfect!

I have had very poor, intermittent success running the Mac version of FS on my 2019 iPad Pro 27" system and the Space Mouse. I am still running Catalina and FS, and it is running fine save for the occasional system lockup. But when I try to activate the 3D Mouse, my avatar starts flying and bouncing around all over the place. I have had occasional success after a fresh install of drivers and it works flawlessly as in the past. But after a session or two, my avi goes wonky again.

Can anyone provide, or point me to, information on getting this combination to work? I would be indebted, and would be happy to pay for a six pack of your favorite malted beverage. 🙂

  ~ Russ  (a.k.a. Ansel)

 

[uk89201]

13 hours ago, Ansel Artful said:

I have had very poor, intermittent success running the Mac version of FS on my 2019 iPad Pro 27" system and the Space Mouse. I am still running Catalina and FS, and it is running fine save for the occasional system lockup. But when I try to activate the 3D Mouse, my avatar starts flying and bouncing around all over the place. I have had occasional success after a fresh install of drivers and it works flawlessly as in the past. But after a session or two, my avi goes wonky again.

Can anyone provide, or point me to, information on getting this combination to work? I would be indebted, and would be happy to pay for a six pack of your favorite malted beverage. 🙂

  ~ Russ  (a.k.a. Ansel)

 

Hi Russ - guessing you mean iMac not iPad Pro? If you did mean iPad I’d love to hear more

I’d remove the drivers, you don’t need them for FS.  I’m running Catalina and the space mouse works well. Settings I use are below. 

Edited April 28, 2021 by uk89201