Ehrman Digfoot

Is it impossible to attach a mesh object as a HUD?

just ran SL in bootcamp win7 on the new entry level imac with the nvidia 640m and it runs very smoothly with full graphics, shadows and depth of field.

Any word on this? I just bought a new iMac and discarded my PC Is there a third-party viewer with a more modern version of OpenGL?

The viewer does indeed appear to rez different LOD's separately as needed depending on the camera's distance from the object. They are not rezzed together with the mesh itself. Therefore, having separate meshes for each LOD does minimally increase rezz time. As Kwakkelde points out, however, some geometry is completely unnecessary at LOD 2 and beyond, and forcing the viewer to rez unneeded gemometry should be avoided when possible. With regard to the second point, if prim cost is your ownly concern, I would recommend including all of the pieces on the same mesh with different faces and upload with fully collapsed LOD's. If the mesh is more than 20-30 meters or so the default camera constraints will not be able to pull back far enough from the object for it to even reach LOD 2, and by collapsing the lower LOD's you will dramatically reduce your PE.

Why does the horizon / atmosphere flicker at high altitudes when shadows are enabled? When deferred rendering is enabled the horizon between the atmosphere and the grid base/ocean flicker. It's been a problem for over a year now and I haven't seen anyone address it. Update: response - I use the standard SL viewer 3.2.8. I've also tried the Exodus viewer. Even if I could find a way around it, though, with a TPV, as a merchant of high altitude structures, I still have a vested interest in seeing the problem fixed in the main viewer. Update2: Thank you Rolig, I followed your advice. The JIRA you pointed me to was different from what I was experiencing so I filed a new bug report with a complete video reproducing the problem: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-28437

I just installed windows 7 on my system after using Ubuntu for the past 6 months. I'm a long time SL user and am used to tweaking my hardware to get SL running, but I'm not having any luck anymore. The current standard SL viewer crashes my entire system within a moment of startup. I've troubleshooted every other piece of software and hardware on my system and I heard rumors that the current SL viewer no longer supports current Nvidia drivers. Is this true? I have a GTX 570 and i7 2600k processor. My memory and all other components have updated firmware and drivers and my SL performance on Ubuntu was stellar (See: http://youtu.be/M8UhXOzTBf0 ). But perhaps that is because I was using an older Linux Nvidia driver? Do I need to install an older Nvidia driver on Windows? I would appreciate any help or advice. Best, Ehrman Update: Thanks for the advice. I've tried all the beta and legacy drivers I could find (manually removing the previous drivers and doing clean installs) and ended up going back to the default. Over time I noticed I'm not crashing as frequently. I seem to remember this was true last time I used windows--it's almost as if the system just needs to adjust itself over time. Anyway, I'm only crashing once every three login attempts (but it's still crashing my entire computer). Thanks again!

See, this is my entire point! It doesn't matter how much money you spend, you're still stuck with that lousy Radeon HD 5870, or better yet two lousy Radeon HD 5870's! I think I'm going to build a hackintosh. tonymac86.com has been able to get the Nvidia GTX 5... series up and running in OSX. All I'll need to buy is a new motherboard and follow the instructions I found on lifehacker. It'll be a challenge, but I'm up for it. Thanks for the comments!

How can I build/buy an OSX system that will render SL as nicely as my Nvidia GTX570 system? I need shadows, ambient occlusion and solid 30-50fps. I've had these things for about a year now running without a hitch on Windows and Ubuntu. I refuse to go back to an underpowered system, but I want OS X. Cost doesn't matter.

Hi Everyone, I just installed Ubuntu 11.04 32bit. This is my first time using any form of Linux and I have figured out most of the standard issues, downloaded the plugins necessary for streaming media and disabled the Unity GUI because there is a bug when SL is maximized and Unity is enabled. But I am still having a problem with one thing. I can not get shadows to turn on at all. Everytime I click the setting either in Preferences or in the Develop menu the program attempts to load them for a second but returns to the previous state. I can not get shadows to work at all. Any suggestions? I have a GTX570 with all of the latest proprietary GPU drivers installed and am using the standard LL Linux viewer 2.7.4. Best, Ehrman

Hi everyone, I'm looking for a good CAD (3D modeling) laptop to use on the train this fall. I have a nice desktop system and I will not likely have a good internet connection, so the ability to use Second Life on the laptop is slightly less important. I do, however, want to purchase a laptop that can at least run Second Life and do so with at least Ultra settings, AO and shadows. The new Quadro mobile GPU's are really nice, they have as many cuda cores as a standard nvidia gpu and run with OpenGL 4.1, shader model 5.0 so even though they are not designed for gaming they seem perfect for SL. I know the driver release schedule is always slower, but does anyone know if I can use these for SL? The only other alternative is a GT540 or GT555 based laptop which I'm sure would do a pretty good job with both gaming and 3d modeling. But for the same price I'd rather go with something specifically designed for 3D modeling and I've always wanted a quadro card. Any suggestions? Best, Ehrman

Hi Dexy, I don't know what your system specs are, but you can usually solve this problem by manually deleting all of your old SL cache files and settings before the install. Also, if you can eventually sign in, but your system is slow with version 2.7 try manually changing renderappleUseMultGL to True in the debug systems. This is solving many problems Mac users are having with this release. Best, Ehrman

Hi Quinn, From what I understand Second Life compatibility with ATI cards is improving (see this nwn post for example http://bit.ly/iX8e2z). But with that being said, ATI cards have historically encountered many problems with Second Life, especially when using shadows, ambient occlusion or projected lighting. From what I understand part of this has to do with how ATI cards run OpenGL (the 3D standard used for second life). Most contemporary games do not use OpenGL so this explains the often striking disparity between running a new game on an ATI card and running Second Life. There are ways around this and many Second Life users with ATI cards have developed innovative tweaks and drivers to advantage of their ATI cards. But you may still find yourself in a position of essentially emulating an openGL environment with an ATI card. This is not an issue with an Nvidia card at all and if you can find even a good midrange nvidia card, I would recommend buying one over the HD6770. Best, Ehrman

Thank you for your responses Void and Cerise. Cerise, you mention removing the cap. How would I find more information about removing the cap on a local build? Is this something I could do in the debug settings or would I need to work with the viewer code?

Hi everyone, I've come across some conflicting information concerning the maximum amount of video ram we can use in Second Life. Is it really possible to use more than 512mb? And, if I want to use a total of 1gb of my video ram and reserve the rest for my operating system will an adjustment to rendertexturememorymultiple in debug systems really accomplish this or not?