Mac Viewer - OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects

[Loki Eliot]

Hello all. Im just starting a thread to try and understand the process that goes on with textures on the Mac viewer. It maybe the same with Windows users but i dont use windows so cant comment.

Now that i have a super iMac machine i can now see clearly some issues occurring and wondered if anyone out there can shed more light.

It is to do with OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects. On the Mac when OpenGL VBO is enabled you get extremely high frames Per Second, but only if your complete surroundings have loaded. If you walk to an area that needs loading into cache the Mac viewer will slow to under 1FPS. Only way to get around this is to switch OFF OpenGL VBO and run with less than average FPS until cache is loaded.

Why technically is this?

1. Is it due to my slow 2MB connection speed? would having the textures download quicker improve the FPS of OpenGL VBO?

2. Is it because MacOSX uses OpenGL 2.1? will OSX Lion with OpenGL 2.3 possibly improve this issue?

3. Why does the downloading of Textures under OpenGL VBO slow the viewer right down compared compared to when VBO is switched off?

 

[robin Meridoc]

I had a similar experience on my Windows systems - and found that turning off HTTPget in the viewer settings, and clearing the cache for a viewer restart, fixed the problem.  You might give it a try.

robin

[Blaze Nielsen]

I've heard from reliable sources that second life throttles bandwidth to 1500 mbps speeds. so having a super duper cable connection really doesnt do that much for you. http download allows superior inventory access, on my mac the 1x versions of sl and even phoenix download inventory crappy, with packet loss. the new sl viewer works great with http download, it can actually overcome the packet loss issue and still download items. Unfortunately, I hate the 2x sl viewers so much I refuse to use them as a builder. I've found phoenix to be a far faster and superior viewer that 2x, except for my inventory problems ( which other mac users havent experienced for the most part). 

[Luc Starsider]

The effect you see is definitely not because of the connection speed. I have the same issue with VBO and I have a reasonab ly fast line. Why VBO works like this, I don't know, though.

Because of the frame rate issue, I leave VBO off at all times. Leaving it disabled makes the Mac run a little bit hotter, but the frame rates are pretty much the same without the slowdowns as textures load.

- Luc -