Thanks to reader "dkronfeld" for sending this photo which effectively demonstrates a pretty surprising point he made in a recent open forum: With the right settings, Second Life runs pretty damn well on a recent model MacBook Air! Pictured above is his 2020 MacBook Air with an M1 processor, 16GB RAM, and the 8 core GPU. (This one here, with a starting price of $999.)
Emphasis on "right settings", though, as dkronfeld explains:
The MacBook Air runs SL surprisingly well, if you disable Hardware Open GL Vertex Buffer Objects (used to be a graphics setting, is now a debug setting) and set water reflections to "None:Opaque". It's actually a shockingly good SL laptop, if "not too heavy" is a requirement.
The debug setting is called RenderVBOEnabled. It's set to TRUE by default and (at least ARM-based) Mac users should set it (or try it set to) FALSE.
So that's impressive! Compare and contrast with Whiskey Day's recommended PC laptop, which looks great display-wise, but weighs in at 4.4 lbs versus the M1 Air's 2.8 lbs (More than a 1.5 lbs difference!) and costs about $800 more.
As always, caveat emptor et cacas (buyer beware n' shit) but now I'm personally interested in getting a MacBook Air as my next laptop.
The M1 is a great laptop, but I can't wait to get my hands on the M2 beast!
Posted by: Jimmy | Tuesday, September 13, 2022 at 06:04 PM
Just what residents need a laptop that's not upgradable for the owner and can only be repaired by apple.
Great a walled garden PC for a walled garden VW.
Almost any laptop nowadays can run SL very well, most as low as $399.
Posted by: Not an Apple Fan | Tuesday, September 13, 2022 at 09:38 PM
@Jimmy: I'm going to t have the chance to try SL on an M2 Air in a couple of weeks, and I'm really curious about how it stacks up against the M1. My current marching is a 14" MacBook Pro with the M1 Max (32 core GPU) and for single SL sessions it's not much faster than the M1 Air. On the other hand it'll run 3 SL viewers at once without getting the least bit sluggish.
What I really want to see is LL do a native ARM build for the new Macs. I have a feeling that may not happen for a long time though.
Posted by: Da5id Kronfeld (dkronfeld) | Tuesday, September 13, 2022 at 10:34 PM