Anicha Heartsong

Utterly astonishing.

I agree with Gavin. The M1 /M2s are 'better' than intel, but there's a huge range of capabilities. A Macbook Air is designed mostly for day-to-day computing, browsers, email and the like. The top end Mac Studio is an awesome machine that can sail through video editing. It's for people who edit movies for a living. But it costs $4,000 - entry level. You can pay four times that if you max it out. Personally, I would not at this point even consider buying an Intel Mac. Apple has moved on and the Intel machines may fall behind on OS updates and the like quite soon.

I have an M1 Mac Mini from 2020 with only 8GB of Ram and it is better than my Hackintosh which had 16GB of Ram and a reasonable 8GB graphics card. It really struggles in very crowded environments - where I generally have to derender all the other avis by default and manually render the ones I might wish to see. One of the ways the modern macs control excessive heat is through thermal throttling. What this means is that if the machine is getting too hot, the system will seize all the CPU resources (using the kernel_task process) effectively freezing the offending app until things cool down. This can be very annoying. I use an app called TG Pro to control my fan - which will never turn on even if the machine is getting warm. The app will turn them on for me, and it is very flexible and easy to configure. So my advice would be to get a machine with a fan that you can use when you need to. The Macbook Air options don't have fans.

I agree, but think what the performance could be like with a native app

If SL can run on iOS, does this mean the Lindens might, soonish, be able to deliver a native Apple Silicon viewer for Macs?

I'm probably not going to bother even going to the Skin Fair. For some reason, there's no way to teleport anywhere. They give out SLURLS to all the stores on their map, near the landing point, but they don't actually work. Any attempt to TP takes you back to the landing point. The 'teleport to' function in Area Search also always leads back the landing point. This is just plain annoying. Perhaps it's designed that way - to keep the place uncrowded.

That's a good point. But it's also true that men's bodies have improved significantly over the years (according to my extensive but not scientifically rigorous research), so they should be less shy about showing them off.

When you change your name, I'd recommend a quick note in your profile to say who you were before - so that your friends know. Only needed for a week or so, I'd say.

Tip: when I upload photos, I will often include the aspect ratio I've used as part of the name of the file. That way, if I give it to someone, they will know what aspect ratio to use to view it correctly.

I don't think camping out will work. If Lelutka does have a sale, I'm pretty sure they will restart the sim before it begins. Would be good practice generally, if you're expecting a crowd.

If you want a quick answer, I would say the best female heads available right now are Lelutka Avalon and Ceylon. It's much easier to get great results with these two heads than anything else I've tried. (And I own about a dozen heads, and have demoed hundreds and hundreds over the years. Literally.) However, I would not buy either of those heads right now - as in today. Wait until Friday, when Lelutka is likely to have a sale. It's also worth bearing in mind that Lelutka hasn't released any new heads for a good few months now. There may be new releases coming after the Black Friday sales. Or even more free gifts around Christmas time. But if Ceylon and Avalon are available in the sales, you really can't go wrong. Demo them, of course.

I find it baffling when people put up these 2D walls and barriers. They look terrible from each and every side and angle and make the entire neighborhood look skanky. Why do people want to wall themselves in? Live inside a box? If you're going to do that, why not just go live at 4,000 meters up and leave the ground level alone? It's a 3D world we've made here. Make the most of it.

I change some of the keyboard shortcuts for the FS menus by editing the "menu_viewer.xml" file. I'm on a Mac so can't tell you where to find this file in Windows. On a Mac it's Applications folder - right click on the FS app - choose "show package contents" and then navigate to Firestorm Contents Resources Skins default xui en - and it's in there (the 'en' refers to English. If you use a different language, you'll need a different folder). I use BBEdit to edit the file but there are lots of alternatives. I have to redo it with every update, but I keep a note of the changes I've made, save the older version of the file, compare it to the new one, and do a bit of cut and paste, so that it doesn't take too long every time.

I believe E-GPUs are pretty darned expensive. It seems like a big expenditure on a setup that is already 5 years old, and might not be supported by future OS updates. I can understand why you would want to keep it, as those 5k screens are great and almost impossible to replace except with the Apple Studio display at around $1500 (and possibly $400 more for a stand with an adjustable height!!!) But bear in mind that if you decide to get a new Mac in the next few years, then as Coffee points out you probably won't be able to use any E-GPU you buy with any of the existing or future Mac line-up.

If you're worried about privacy, then the greatest threat of having your data sold on comes from the big vendors in SL who insist you open a Discord account if you want any kind of customer service. Discord is almost certainly selling everyone's data down the river. And they now insist that you sign up with your mobile / cell phone number - and you can't use a burner or a voip number. Why? Because they want to tie your real life identity to all that data they are gathering, making it far more valuable.

Don't forget to delete the old cache - doing so will free up a lot of space.

I rarely go to the extremes of 64m. My max is 32m, and often more like 16m or even 8m (in Firestorm, where such things are possible).

I have a Mac Mini which throttles, even though it has a fan. This typically happens in clubs and stores, and anywhere there are lots of avis - even if I have them all effectively derendered. (I do this by turning the max complexity down to 20,000 which turns everyone to grey). When throttling, the Mac instigates a Kernel_task which grabs all the CPU resources, shutting the SL viewer out, and making it unusable, until the machine has cooled down. This rarely works well, and it's best just to quit the app. The solution for me is to increase the speed (and volume) of the fan while in SL to prevent the kernel task jumping in to take control. I do this using an app called 'TG Pro' (https://www.tunabellysoftware.com/support/tgpro_tutorial/) It costs around $12 if I remember right. There are other options around, such as MacFans. Personally, if I was intending to run SL on a Macbook, I would want one with fans.

The world of tech and IT is full of start-ups with big dreams - a huge percentage of them aiming to build something big enough to get noticed so they can one day sell the entire thing to Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook etc. I'd say it's a good thing that a similar business model can work in SL, even if wasn't what Casper was aiming for. (I doubt he was, by the way, it's just how things turned out). My only gripe is that I've got no business to sell and little to show for all my years in SL but a bulging inventory with far too many clothing items and hairstyles. Thankfully I've made a few friends along the way, though.

I suspect you are a lot more rigorous and scientific about it than me, so I will defer to your better judgement.

I tried that Firestorm beta viewer and it most definitely does not have all the performance improvements of the latest SL viewer, which is must, must faster especially in busy, laggy environments.

I can't find beta releases on the Firestorm site. Didn't know they were an option, even though I have often used Linden betas. At least they have links to them. Perhaps FS likes to keep them to the development team, and people actively providing feedback, which I would understand. EDIT: never mind - asked in the FS support group in-world and received a link.

Thanks. I officially give up. Discussion closed!

Thanks Wulfie. Definitely beyond my pay grade. I've never compiled anything, and while I'm familiar with the phrase, have little idea what it actually means!

I'm a long time Firestorm user. For various reasons (performance!) I'm increasingly using the official Linden viewer instead. It's good, but one thing I cannot get used to is the inability to change the double-click functionality when in Inventory. In FS you can easily change it so that double clicking on a clothing item in inventory will ADD instead of WEAR (Wear replaces anything already attached to that attachment point. Add does not, naturally). I have minimal experience of hacking the viewer to meet my needs - but I can do some basics. For example, I can go into the menu_viewer.xml file and change the menu shortcuts. I use BBEdit to edit the files. It's easy enough, with a bit of trial and error. I'm prepared to reinstall an app if necessary, and I back up the file before editing in any case. So what could possibly go wrong? But to change the Wear to Add I need to know where to look, which file to edit. Should I be changing something in Debug settings instead? Or is it somewhere in all those files located in Contents | Resources | Skins | default | xui | en ??? Any help with this is much appreciated. P.S. Dear Lindens - why can't we change this setting easily, without having to hack the viewer code?