New Retina 13" Macbook Pro cannot enable Lighting & Shadows

[Wastedyuthe]

Getting much better SL performance with my new Retina 13" Macbook Pro compared to my 2 yr old Macbook Air, however I cannot enable Lighting & Shadows, Ambient Occlusion, or Depth Of Field settings.  All three are greyed out on High setting (whereas on the Macbook Air, L&S would be available and when ticked, the next would be etc).

My OS is updated to the latest version.  Is there anything I can do?

[koto Nizna]

did you try to deactivate the automatic video card switching? I'm using a mid 2010 mbp with NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 256 MB graphics and i can enable everything but ofcourse with dramatic drop of fps. i only do this when taking photos.

I was in a apple store yesterday and check the 15in mbp with retina and i was surprised when i tried to zoom in photo file in preview i got lagged. (id checked some forums about this and what i got is this--- https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4210406?start=30&tstart=0 )

I hope you post here if ever you enable the ultra settings. I 'm still holding my self to get the new mbp.

[Wastedyuthe]

On the 13" Macbook Pro there is no option for auto video card switching as it only has a Intel HD 4000 graphics chip.  i think there must be some driver issue maybe, as its weird how my 2yr old less powerful Macbook Air can enable those graphics settings no problem.

[Sephy McCaw]

1500 - 1700 dollars for an apple laptop? You do realise you could of got a gaming laptop(one with a 680 nVidia card) for that price and then spent $15? On getting the apple operating  system... Plus the Intel 4000 is an onboard graphics and onboard graphics don't have enough power to run a program such as SL with shadows... They should handle medium with a bearable FPS....Also.. if you check the specs you will probably see they are pretty much exactly the same in every way.

[Wastedyuthe]

I'm not after your advice on laptop choice. And my Macbook Air handled lighting and shadows, ambient occlusion, and depth of field all activated- yes low fps but still managed it for some great photo's (i only ticked those settings for photography). So there should be no reason why the new Macbook Pro can't especially as it is newer and far more powerful.

[Sephy McCaw]

That is were you are wrong...It is NOT far more powerful... As I said... The specs of your macbook air and your macbook pro are exactly the same... They both have the same onboard graphics chip... They have the same amount of ram, you'd have an SSD instead of a HDD (only faster at loading programs and booting) the CPU is STILL a dual core... With slightly faster clockspeeds.... So no there's no difference at all....

[Orca Flotta]

LOL, too funny how people are always falling for marketing crap. These new kind of Ultra(expensive)books are just not up for a power demanding application like SL. Just look at the form factor, they are much too thin to put in any decent hardware/cooling. Power/Ultrabooks are nice but they are made for completely different applications: office, multimedia, light gaming. SL might not look like much but it needs the best available gaming hardware. Ever seen a hardcore gamer using a silly thing like a power/ultra book?

No.

They have their reasons for using the chunky heavy duty stuff.

2 years ago I ditched my fancy gaming specs Asus lappy and had a desktop system built for half the price. Now I'm having a much better experience on SL, no overheating, no system crashes.

 

[Lyanis Sin]

Your 2 years old Macbook Air had a better video card (Geforce 330M). That is why it could run those effects.

[Wastedyuthe]

Wow you're right.  I should have double checked the Air specs.  It does indeed have a graphics card whereas my New Macbook Pro doesn't even have one.  The new Macbook has got a faster i7 processor though.  And it does run SL just fine with all the first 5 graphics settings ticked.  Very fast and smooth.  However, I do feel cheated that I spent all that money on something that is actually less capable than a laptop i bought a couple of years ago.  So I called Apple and am exchanging it for the 15" Macbook Pro Retina instead for the same price, quad core instead of dual, and with a NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M graphics card (1GB of GDDR5).  Now that should at least be able to tick the other boxes, and be a lot more capable.

Thanks for the help guys.

[Bay Sweetwater]

Sadly, you are one of many with this problem, including myself. Firestorm and Linden have effectively disabled shadows for SL on more than half of the current Mac laptops. Here's why. Please make noise with Firestorm and Linden developers. If enough of us do, they'll fix it. http://baysweetwater.com/2013/03/03/no-shadows-second-life-2012-macbooks/