[BUG-10674] Mac: Extremely poor performance under OS X 10.11.2

[sl-service-account]

I am seeing extremely degraded performance on OS X El Capitan: Crashes and extremely low frame rates (max 8 FPS, regardless of virtual location or graphic settings). This affects all viewers; default and all TPV's.

Linden Lab needs to start using Metal instead of OpenGL as a rendering engine for the Mac Viewer.

For more information see: https://developer.apple.com/metal/

Links

Duplicates

• [ ] https://github.com/secondlife/jira-archive/issues/647

Original Jira Fields

| Field | Value | | ------------- | ------------- | | Issue | BUG-10674 | | Summary | Mac: Extremely poor performance under OS X 10.11.2 | | Type | Bug | | Priority | Unset | | Status | Closed | | Resolution | Unactionable | | Reporter | davidventer (davidventer) | | Created at | 2015-11-11T10:21:04Z | | Updated at | 2017-05-08T23:00:40Z | ``` { 'Business Unit': ['Platform'], 'Date of First Response': '2015-11-11T04:50:38.744-0600', "Is there anything you'd like to add?": "I am seeing extremely poor performance: crashes and extremely low frame rates (max 8 FPS, where I usually had at least 20-30 FPS on high settings) regardless of virtual location or graphic settings. This affects all viewers; default and all TPV's. \r\n\r\nLinden Lab needs to start using Metal instead of OpenGL as a rendering engine for the Mac Viewer.\r\n\r\nFor more information see: https://developer.apple.com/metal/", 'ReOpened Count': 0.0, 'Severity': 'Unset', 'System': 'SL Viewer', 'Target Viewer Version': 'viewer-development', 'What just happened?': '-', 'What were you doing when it happened?': '-', 'What were you expecting to happen instead?': '-', } ```

[sl-service-account]

davidventer commented at 2015-11-11T10:28:34Z

Also see: http://jira.phoenixviewer.com/browse/FIRE-16821

[sl-service-account]

Ansariel Hiller commented at 2015-11-11T10:50:39Z

I would suggest using DirectX - that's another framework like Metal available on all plat... oh wait... ;)

[sl-service-account]

Karlos Zero commented at 2015-11-11T12:13:46Z

I second Davidventer's request. It has been months now and SL Official viewer is not compatible with El Capitan. Not just that. The Overall Performance of the viewer is descending, Mavericks was better than Yosemite was better than El Capitan (unusable)

NVidia offers WebDirvers (which are alternative driver other than the official) My testings ended with the following conclusion: Official Nvidia driver: Fast but evidently crashes on random events (tp, camming, changing settings, sim crossing, avi rezzing) WebDriver: Very stable but performance is degraded. Turning your avi will result in choppy graphics, the whole rendering freezes completely for seconds. The output is less than 10fps though the counter shows more. I have sent several reports to Apple concerning SL Viewer Crashes and hoping there is something they could do.

But, I hope that LL would give some attention to Mac Viewer and utilize Apple's "Metal" graphics capabilities and invest in improving Apple's user experience. Solving the problem from Apple's side only will not help, we need a solution from both Apple and Linden Labs. Still even if Apple reverts to a previous Yosemite driver, the SL experience for most Apple users is not that impressive. I am sure a lot will confirm that we reduce our graphics to get the smoothest performance (specially for gamers, pilots and machinema makers) Personally, a feature like (Transparent Water) needs to be off to spare me a few extra FPS. I don't think after so many years LL can not find a middle ground to improve Transparent Water rendering. If I can't use Transparent water, do you think I am able to turn on Advanced Lighting? Or Shadows? Of course not.

I think it's about time we get some attention from LL about the deteriorated SL experience. We are not the majority of members in SL but we are not less than them. We are content creators, gamers, artists and after all investors in SL and we are not satisfied.

I hope we go somewhere from this point.

[sl-service-account]

Whirly Fizzle commented at 2015-11-12T03:03:04Z

Duplicate of BUG-10302 I guess?

[sl-service-account]

davidventer commented at 2015-11-12T07:46:36Z

This is not only a crash issue; I'm talking about poor performance over-all; Maximum 8-10 FPS in Second Life, even on the lowest graphic settings, in a completely empty region, with all graphic preference options disabled; stuttered visuals when moving or changing camera position; FPS dropping to under 1 when any other objects or avatars come into view - Making Second Life completely unplayable and unenjoyable, unless you're into watching slide-shows. However, Beta 3 of OS X 10.11.2 has just been released and I am currently downloading it. Maybe there will be some improvement. I'll report back here after the update. But as Karlos pointed out; SL performance on the Mac has been seriously descending since Mavericks, and the Lab hasn't been taking advantage of any new Apple API's (i.e. Metal, retina support, support for multiple graphic cards, multithreading, etc.) to bring the Mac viewer up to par with the Windows viewer's performance. Linden Lab needs to put some serious focus on OS X and maybe even hire some knowledgeable OS X developers who have experience working with the latest Apple technologies. Please LL! DO SOMETHING!

[sl-service-account]

MissNomer Gothly commented at 2015-11-13T22:43:53Z

I'm tired of this. Fix the problems with OS X 10.11. Now.

[sl-service-account]

jansk4 commented at 2015-11-16T21:14:06Z

I just signed up and wanted to start playing. However, it´s actually impossible to run any viewer on my 15" macbook for more than 5 minutes. It seems that with every new version of OS X it just gets worse and I am rather surprised(and disappointed)- that LL just doesnt care at all. Will this ever get fixed?

[sl-service-account]

TedJ commented at 2015-11-20T22:54:28Z

Not only does the official viewer crash after a few minutes, but ALL viewers do. This never happened before El Capitan. Get it together, LL.

[sl-service-account]

Whirly Fizzle commented at 2015-11-21T21:49:29Z

@TedJ If your Mac has Nvidia graphics, then the frequent crashes on El Capitan are likely to be in the Nvidia driver - see BUG-10302. Switching over to the Nvidia web driver appears to be fixing the crashes for everyone, however some people are reporting a poorer performance when using the Nvidia web drivers - the poor performance does not affect everyone, some people are reporting an even better performance when using the web drivers. There is an active discussion about this problem on http://jira.phoenixviewer.com/browse/FIRE-16821

[sl-service-account]

davidventer commented at 2015-11-24T05:25:13Z, updated at 2015-11-24T05:32:47Z

I'm currently running OS X 10.11.2 Beta (15C47a), and while performance is still terrible, I have managed to find a way to have a somewhat tolerable experience. I removed everything SL-related from my Mac, including all SL Library/System files of all viewers. (This can easily be done though apps like AppCleaner or CleanMyMac3). Then I did a clean install of only the Default SL viewer. Since then I've had tolerable FPS (around 12-15fps), albeit not ideal, and I haven't had a single crash (was logged in for 2 days straight at one point.) I then wanted to install a TPV again to make use of TPV features. As soon as I installed a TPV again, performance dropped dramatically; laggy UI, choppy FPS, etc. I tried Alchemy, Kokua and Firestorm but couldn't deal with the terrible performance, so I did another clean sweep and went back to the default viewer only. Next, I will try another clean sweep and install one of the TPV's only, perhaps Firestorm, to see how it performs when there's nothing else SL-related on my Mac. It's weird how having multiple viewers installed seem to somehow affect performance... and it makes no sense... But perhaps the latest SL viewer has some performance fixes which the TPV's do not, so they all seem slower than the default, but it's weird how even the default seems slower when a TPV is installed.

[sl-service-account]

Kyle Linden commented at 2015-12-01T18:00:00Z

Hi David,

Thank you for reporting this issue, we are investigating. In the mean time I am marking this issue Needs More Info so that it can be commented on further.

Thanks

[sl-service-account]

davidventer commented at 2015-12-21T09:53:57Z

This issue also affects the public release of El Capitan and the latest SL Default viewer 4.0.0 - I've updated the issue accordingly. SL is pretty much unusable at this point. Slow frame rates, no matter how low the graphic settings are; cam jittering/bouncing when caming or moving around; viewer causing the entire OS to lag, etc. Please fix this!

[sl-service-account]

davidventer commented at 2015-12-25T23:35:43Z

I've updated my system to OS X 10.11.3 Public Beta 1 and Second Life seems to perform MUCH better, however, the default viewer is extremely unstable... Crashing about 5-10secs after logging in or after teleporting to object-rich areas. The only locations where it's not crashing is up in the sky or on land where there are very few objects.

64bit third-party viewers don't seem to have this crashing issue. I've been using Firestorm-Releasex64 and it hasn't crashed me yet. The Firestorm 32bit havoc version, however, is also crashing at the same locations/times as the default viewer.

[sl-service-account]

Kyle Linden commented at 2016-01-07T00:54:33Z

Hi David,

Based on your performance improvement reported in BUG-11028 we're closing this issue. Please let us know if you have any other issues.

Thank you!