SappaDallagio

That's pretty much what I figured but I thought I'd pass it by the community to see if there was something I might have overlooked in Preferences or Debug settings. Thanks for the response.

Is there a way to globally stop group notices from popping up on the screen? Or, is going into each group's profile and manually disabling group notices the only way to do it?

khoeler, if it were me, I'd wait until I had the money to get a machine with a lot more power to it. But, keep trying as you may hit upon something that might work for you. If you haven't read through this thread yet, you might wish to. It's a question about running SL viewers on previews of Windows 8: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Viewer/Can-Second-Life-run-on-Windows-8/td-p/1414833 Those audio programs you are running don't make heavy duty use of the graphics software and hardware of your machine. Most of that software I can get to run in an emulated Windows environment on my old PowerPC based Mac tower, with the lag inherent in emulated machines, but they don't crash. However, the viewers lean absolutely on the graphics processing of a computer system and expect it to be able to handle intense 3D graphics processing. I'm not sure your netbook has either the hardware or the driver update capability to give the viewers a fighting chance of rendering SL in full visual impact.

You might wish to play with the Flexiprims setting under the Advanced options in Me>Preferences>Graphics and see if it helps. If the slider is all the way to the right, bring it back to the left in stages until you find a setting that will work for you. If it's all the way to the left, move it right in stages.

Lisa, have you tried using the beta Second Life Viewer? You've tried the other v2 and v3 viewers and you don't like the v1-based hybrids; you might as well try the beta. It's got the newest tech that SL is working with and maybe it'll help

Teal, try adding Second Life explicityly to the Lion firewall. You'll need the sytem administrator's credentials to do it, if you already aren't running the viewer as such. Then try a different set of DNS servers in Lion's networking for your adaptor. I use Google DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4). For whatever reason, changing the DNS servers to something other than my ISP's worked in Lion.

Have you looked on the Second Life Jira for solutions or workarounds? I just did a quick "Windows 7 VFS" search in the Issues section of the Jira and received at least one full page of related issues. If there isn't an open issue regarding your VFS trouble, you might want to add one.

Although I'm not using a laptop, the iMac I do use actually uses a mobile graphics card: the AMD HD 6750M with 512MB of video RAM. The SL viewer selects a default graphics setting of High for me and frame rates are usually very good. I have run SL at Ultra and with deferred rendering turned on, complete with all of the bells and whistles enabled and, like you Eric, I've had a basically playable system with framerates decent for walking or sitting and chatting with folks. Even some dance clubs are OK. However, in a fully populated region, framerates drop significantly so reseting back to the default of High helps out. Over all the HD 6750M seems to be a capable enough graphics card for SL, provided you're not getting into machinema or other intense graphics manipulation in world. I'd assume the choice of card for the OP are about equal in abilities so either should work nearly as well. About the i5... my iMac is a quad core i5 and realistically, iTunes makes way more use of the processor than anything I've done in SL. Even Safari, the web browser, has taken fully 100% of a processor core whereas any of the SL viewers rarely go near 50% for even the shortest of times. Even when I ran SL on my 2005 iBook with a G4 processor, the processor was more than sufficient for processing the non-graphical parts of the SL viewer. The bottleneck was, and still is for many people, the graphics card and drivers.

If your usual sim works well but many others don't anymore, it could be a sign of the increasing complexity of inworld builds. It's only going to become more complex as technology moves forward. Another thing to look at are the server channels. Find out what the server channel is for the sim that works for you then visit other sims on that same channel. Then visit sims on the other channels and keep track of those that work and those that don't. It's very possible that each of the server channels are running a different level of server software with different sets of updates and patches. If there's a consistent pattern of sims across one channel or another not working for you, search the Jira for similar complaints and add your case to it or file a new one.

Lucretia, if I may ask, what kind of Mac are you on? What is the OS? It might be helpful to know what the "About Second Life" box says when you open it. I'm really curious to see what your OpenGL version is. I, too, am on a Mac. The latest iMac Apple has and I've been seeing some problems as of late. I'm trying to pin down if they're SL related, Mac OS related, or a combination of both. I've made some tweaks in my debug settings that have helped somewhat but my SL experience still isn't as vibrant or smooth as it was a couple of months ago.

Just logged in at the time of this posting.. Destinations is now showing how many people are in the sim. Guess that's fixed too.

Great! Thank you! If I see you inworld, I'll give you a hug.

I can't answer to a Windows system for I don't use one. However, I can state that on my iMac (mid-2011, the latest model) under Mac OS X Lion, the memory used by the viewer... any of the viewers... keeps taking available RAM until there is no more free RAM, at which point the entire system gets to a state of what I call "stuttering"... where mouse movements outside the viewer are even in a stop motion state. Shutting down the viewer never gives back the memory either. I didn't have this problem with Lion 10.7.2 but it has become an issue since Lion 10.7.3. There's only one other software on my system that has this memory creep and that's Firefox. Otherwise, all other software behaves and releases their take on the RAM when completed. And please... this isn't an invitation to start an OS advocacy discussion. We all use the platform we use for varying personal reasons. I merely point out that while the viewers may respect the memory on one type of computing platform, it isn't the case for them all.

For all those interested, Jessica Lyons had a one-on-one interview with Oz Linden over these policy changes. The link to that interview can be found on the Phoenix Viewer blog; I no longer have the link on my system. It's a good interview and in it Oz spells out what constitutes a violation of the "shared experience." I recommend that others take a look at this interview and draw their own conclusions. BTW, Jessica conducted this interview as a representative of ALL TPVs, not just the Phoenix/Firestorm projects.

From the information you supplied regarding your graphics, it appears AMD/ATI no longer keeps this video card updated. According to their website, the ATI Radeon XPRESS series, including your card, has been moved into legacy support (in other words, it is old and will no longer be actively supported). This is the link to the information from the AMD web site regarding your ATI card (AMD bought out ATI): http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Legacy/Pages/integrated_vista64.aspx?type=2.7&product=2.7.2.3.2〈=English At the very bottom of the page is a link to the latest software drivers for your graphics card. If you haven't installed those drivers, I might suggest that you do and try again with the SL viewer. If you still cannot get it to work, then another option would be for you to try a v1 based third party viewer (TPV) such as Phoenix, Imprudence, Cool VL Viewer, or Singularity.

Lisa, have you tried installing a hybrid version, such as Cool VL Viewer, Phoenix, Imprudence, or Singularity? I call them hybrids because they use a combination of v1 code with v2/v3 features backported to them to stay current. I'm not advocating they are any better than the current crop of v3 viewers (and I don't invite anyone to debate me on that in this particular thread) but perhaps one of those viewers may work better for you. I'm not all that familiar with how the various makes and models of graphics cards work on Windows systems (as I'm on a Mac and have my own set of issues running SL on that platform) but if, as Jennie pointed out earlier, your graphics card is a little bit older it might be a better fit for one of the hybrid viewers. If you decide to try one of these hybrid viewers out, make sure they have the features that are important to you, such as multiple clothing layers, mesh viewing, etc. As they are TPVs some may have features that others do not and vice versa. As the v3 viewer evolves, more code might be being added to it that makes your graphics card fall farther behind. Just a thought.

I'll keep searching too, for I just ended up doing the same thing... again. I was dressed tho... The wiki page I linked to is from LL and it reflects only the settings for their own viewer as defined on that page. The TPVs have added their own entries into the debug settings of each of their viewers, so the LL wiki page won't reflect those. Perhaps the support pages for the TPVs you are using keep their own lists of debug settings?

I just recently had the same issue when my cable ISP dropped support for IPv6 and it threw my router into a tizzy. I ended up removing the IPv6 configs from my router, which I had made the defaults, and tagged the ol' IPv4 settings as the new default. Teaches me for being on the cutting edge. Anyway, I also found that I needed to reactivate some ports on my computer's firewall in order to receive data from a number of different SL servers. It's possible that your new ISP's modem/router has these ports closed by default and if that's the case, you'll need to reopen them. I'll edit this response with the link to the wiki page that contains the ports you need to keep open, in case someone doesn't beat me to posting it. In short, make sure your DNS servers are reachable and make sure the necessary ports are open in your computer's and/or your router's firewall. [edited to add:] Found the LL Knowledge Base article on using Second Life with a firewall ( http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Using-Second-Life-with-a-firewall/ta-p/1304539 ). Hope this helps.

I'm not sure it can be disabled but please don't stop looking. I base my thoughts on the fact that I couldn't easily find a setting buried in the debug settings ( http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Debug_Settings ) that would disable that feature. I found one where you could disable the double-clicking on the mini map to bring up the world map, but that's not what you seem to be looking for. [edited to add:] I understand your frustration. I too have double-clicked on the world map while being... let's just say... in some compromising positions and states of undress while in an adult sim, only to find myself suddenly transported into a moderate, or even general sim. Ooops.

I agree Wolf. Some builds are so dark... nearly absolute... that I resort to carrying around the default library "Torch!" just so I can see where I'm going. Now, if I were to turn off the attached lights viewer feature to avoid the blinding facelights, I'd also be turning off my Torch!. Then again, in a build that is so dark, perhaps befriending someone with a ring of intense facelights might not be so bad...

I have not been able to view media on a prim either and wonder if this has anything to do with OpenGL. I've been doing a bit of research today into the OpenGL performance of Mac OS X Lion. While 'tis true that Lion supports OpenGL 3.2, thats only for the core functions and not at the compatibility level. Some OpenGL stuff that I have to test on my Lion system will correctly report Lion running with OGL 3.2, yet the SL viewers report only OGL 2.1. Apparently, it seems, the viewers are coded for a compatibily context and not with the core context. Again, I don't know if OpenGL has anything to do with media on a prim, but if it does, I fear Mac users won't be beneficiaries of it until something changes in the viewer code to recognize Lion's OGL 3.2 core context.

Maybe the Lab is aware of the issue and is working on a fix? I haven't been inworld during daylight hours today but very early this morning (about 2AM Eastern time, 11PM SL time) I went to use the v3 search and I suddenly got a yellow screen with the words CONNECTION BROKEN on it. Maybe they yanked it to fix it?

Yeah, I've had inventory issues as of late. I had been using the Dolphin 3 viewer on my Mac OS X Lion system but haven't liked how "shoe bases" aren't being rendered at all, so I switched over to Marine's RLV and both the current SL v3 and beta v3.3. Still getting frustrating and seemingly random inventory issues across all those viewers though. Things like... attachments suddenly do not show even though inventory says they are attached... attachments shown as still being worn even though inventory says they aren't... replacing an outfit, when it completes before the viewer crashes, is a hit-or-miss proposition... some things swap out while others don't... Yeah, I've cleared out the caches through the viewer interface and by going through the Mac Finder... still have the inventory issues. Seems a bit odd but maybe they're all related to the impending release of Direct Delivery and whatever backend changes that may include in the asset system?

I haven't seen much difference in the way SL handles IMs vs the way a desktop IM client, such as YIM or AIM works, at least on my Mac. When I close an AIM or YIM messaging window with someone, the IM software assumes that chat session is closed and it writes the log (if the option is selected) then clears the chat from itself. When I open up another window with the same correspondent, it's a new session and the window is blank. To go back to a previous convo, I have to go to the filesystem and open up the logs of that convo. With AIM or YIM, if I want to put away the IM window so I have more screen space for something else, but still maintain that session, I need to minimize (or hide, which is an option for Macs) in order to keep the session open and active. That way, when i go back to the convo, I un-minimize (or un-hide) the IM window and I carry on from there with the same convo. I don't see that being any different with SL viewer 3.2 messaging. Nor Firestorm's, for that matter.

Having an app that deals only with the social networking aspect of SL makes sense. Creating a full-blown graphics viewer for an iOS device, while it may be done, may also possibly run afoul of the Apple App Store policies and thus never make it to fruition. Anything that has adult sexual activity is pretty much verbotten under the Apple policiies which would rule out any fully graphical SL viewer app being made available in that venue. The only way to install apps on an iOS device is via the App store (unless the user of the device jailbreaks it... but then Apple catches that and installs a patch that either bricks the device or makes it nearly impossible for the broken device to reconnect to the App store). I could see a fully graphical app available on the Android platform though.