Gavin Hird

Darrius Gothly wrote: It just strikes me as counter-productive to keep insisting "Sansar is nothing like SL" There are probalby very good leagal reasons for calling it "nothing like SL". They don't want it to be an upgrade with all the implications that has on continuing the user base (that LL really don't like), portability of content, minimum age of entry and what have you.

MacBook Pro's with Intel graphics or AMD graphics cannot install the NVIDIA driver. So you have to stick with it till Linden Lab has fixed it I am afraid.

Do me a favor and try the lastest build of the Kokua viewer It will crash on grapics, but you should be able to get to med - high settings with your card. In the Hardware tab, make sure you set the texture memory to max 75% of your graphcis card memory. This build should be significantly faster than FS (which is not good at all.)

Why so defiant on a Mac version client for Sansar – where you incidentially would be able to reuse most of the code for an iOS version? + Creators often use Macs. If your target audience is going to be (high end) PC users with 3D grear, your initial statement on Sansar being targeted for millions of users falls in a strange light.

A Mac that does not have integrated (Intel) graphics will perform better with SL than one with, but all of the current models will be able to run SL from the Air, minis, iMacs to the Pro models.

MB Robonaught wrote: It boggles my mind that nobody replied to the topic of my post on the very poor marketing techniques by Linden Labs. It is unfortunately not the first time tech companies prematurely announce new products, while totally underestimating the effort to develop, launch and market said product. There is something Microsoftesque over the announcement... I also think the timing of the announcement was due to the hype around Hifidelity and Occulus at the time, + that Ebbe had been touring OpenSim grids and found they to a large extent could house the same content and experience as SecondLife.

DartAgain wrote: Oddly, while LL is stating that PC only is the target OS so far, they have been trying to hire someone with Metal experience, which is for Apple product. How far down the road, or when if ever is anyones guess. Actually there is an immediate need as the SL viewer (and all TPV viewers) crash with a GPU memory violation on OS X 10.11 as Apple now is compositing the desktop with Metal. So the viewer code is stepping all over the place. The only reason why it still compiles is because LL have turned off warnings of discontinued frameworks, but it will get more and more fragile for every new version of OS X unless the code is rewritten for OS X.

Blaze Nielsen wrote: (since we are silly impractical dreamers with our heads -- um, in the clouds -- not unlike Mac users) I think you should speak for yourself regarding the head in the clouds comment Pamela. In the world of content creation Mac has always ruled and still does for quite practical reasons. The preference of Mac among professional content creators is extremely high. I agree it is something Linden Lab should consider very seriously. Spot on!

Gaia Clary wrote: The other alternative was to provide 2 versions of default Avatar, so that legacy content can keep as it is but new content can use "the better avatar". But this would probably make the Avatar animation system even more complicated as it is today. Actually it would't as it would be possible to make an avatar 2 with the new skeleton (mapped to the old sliders) AND with 2 UV maps, of which one would accept legacy UV including the current baked composites for backward compatibility. The other UV would be fully mapped to the new higher resolution mesh in a way that would be more sensible - like having separate UVs for the hands and arms.

There is a sporadic issue with the audio thread burning the CPU. In most cases the duration is short enough for OS X not to kill the application, but in some cases it last long enough that it gets terminated. The fix would be to re-write the viewer to use the built in OS X audio frameworks and not the opensource solution currently in use.

Ynot Zehetbauer wrote: I am seeing reverse issues. SL view works fine on a standard macbook air but won't run for more than 5 mins on a more provisioned imac (16 GB Ram, 3.4 CPU) Not a revere problem. As said before in the thread, machines with only Intel integrated graphcis are not affected. Machines witn NVIDIA graphics processors such as the iMac will crash in high mesh content scenes.

Medhue Simoni wrote: Gavin Hird wrote: I imported the DAE into DAZ studio (free) and then exported it as FBX to get the skeleton safely imported into Cheetah3D. I am sure you can go the same route to get it into other apps. Of course I know Daz, as I have made tutorials using Dazstudio, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it. Cheetah3D is not something I've ever used tho. What I recommend is to use Blender or Maya, as those 2 programs will fully support Bento. Gaia and the Machinimatrix crew already have most of Bento working for Avastar. Cathy Foil, the maker of Mayastar, was in the closed Alpha/Beta, and I would expect Mayastar to be compatible soon, for Maya. For most Maya is at the unreachable scale of their budget. it might be that DAZ would work better for making animations now with more bones, but they will have to update the SL settings for the BVH exporter. I only pulled the skeleton into Cheetah to look at the bone hierarchy and not to animate with it. You could also righ a mesh with the new skeleton in Cheetah. (which is a Mac application.)

I imported the DAE into DAZ studio (free) and then exported it as FBX to get the skeleton safely imported into Cheetah3D. I am sure you can go the same route to get it into other apps.

Qie Niangao wrote: Gavin Hird wrote: Isn't that a bit harsh, eh? Have you talked to new users recently? I mean, they're not easy to find, but if you ever catch one who's stuck it out after wearing both classic and mesh avatars simultaneously, it will be their number one complaint. And who can blame them? In the battle of wearing classic and mesh avatars (and clothes), even the most dedicated can loose their will to live. An avatar 2.0 would largely get this sorted for new users, while still causing us oldtimers some grief.

Qie Niangao wrote: So, I've simply written off the avatar and all its accoutrements. Others can keep playing with it for amusement and the (still profitable) deck-chair-shuffling of oldbie wardrobes, but for new users, it just doesn't matter anymore: the injury is already fatal. Isn't that a bit harsh, eh? I guess the new rigging and avatar will really shine in Sansar, and while that is promiseware the rest of us gets to have a better experience. – The new rigging is going to remove a LOT of convoluted interfaces like slink-hands with HUDs just to mention one…

@Qie – This will release a wave of new creativity in SL, and I will be surprised if the follow up from LL is not a SL Avatar 2.0 that also will be compatible with Sansar. The version 2 avatar would be expcted to have a new UV map in addition to the old one for backward compatibility. The TPV creators may stuggle a bit with this, but we shall see. I am glad they do this. – It is actually great!! (as I have posted for years for this to happen in this and other forums.)

The new skeleton as seen in Cheetah 3D. The face looks busy! 

It could also be that Blender does not generate the correct DAE code for a mesh with more than 8 materials? I use a completely different application (Cheetah 3D) and it works perfectly fine both with LL viewer and the latest Kokua release (Mac verision.)

Arena Jashan wrote: I can be on sl for as long as I like ?!?! We'll see if it gets sorted out in 10.11.2. Apple is working on the graphics drivers in the current 10.11.2 beta, and Linden Lab may also update their code to remove some very old stuff that could cause the crash.

There is a fresh build of the Mac version of Kokua that does not restart the GPU as all other viewers does on my test machines when running on OS X 10.11. This version has been completely rebuilt with Xcode 7.1.1 It would be great of you could download the new build from https://bitbucket.org/dayturn/kokua-mac/downloads and see if you get the same result.

DrJ Darkfold wrote: I'm have the same problem on a fairly new Macbook Pro running I7 processors - haven't tried the LL viewer but Firestrom is definitely a problem It is not the MBP that is the problem, but the viewer code. All viewers – which all use the same render code (Cool, Singularity, FS, Kokua, SL, Alchemy) crash with the same error on OS X 10.11.

Does anyone know if there is a way of reducing the brightness of the moonlight / night illumination in the viewer without making environmental presets? Any debug settings that can be tweaked? Thanks,

There is a general issue running any viewer based on the Linden Lab code on OS X 10.11 which I have reported to and that has been accepted for possible resolution by Apple Engineering. In the meantime, downloading NVIDIA's web driver will resolve the issue for most users, although at some loss of performance over using the Apple driver. Turning off Shadows will possibly resolve the issue even for the Apple driver. More info and link to the driver download here.

Drake1 Nightfire wrote: Especially with FB cracking down on "fake accounts" more and more SLers are having to drop their SL FB accounts. I know mine was hit and i refuse to add my RL info to it. I have a RL FB account already. Perhaps LL should have found out that you cant have two accounts for FB before touting linking your av to an account. When you own what is essentially a social platform, I always found it rather special you encourage your user base to use a competing platform to communicate with each other.

Ebbe Linden wrote: Take the lead? Why are you even asking? :-))