secondlife / secondlife/viewer

MacBook Air (M1) defaults to Low+ graphics quality

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#4,890 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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bug stale team:viewer
Dominant language
C++
Stars
299
Forks
146
Avg merge
1d 9h
Merged PRs (30d)
88

Description

Environment

Second Life Release 7.2.2.18475198968 (64bit)
Release Notes

You are at 119.4, 93.2, 21.7 in By Design located at simhost-0498f68eca16e9bd7.agni
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/By%20Design/119/93/22
(global coordinates 261495.0, 246877.0, 21.7)
Second Life Preflight 2025-09-26.18046863877
Release Notes

CPU: Apple M1 (2400 MHz)
Memory: 8192 MB
OS Version: macOS 26.0.1 Darwin 25.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 25.0.0: Wed Sep 17 21:41:39 PDT 2025; root:xnu-12377.1.9~141/RELEASE_ARM64_T8103 arm64
Graphics Card Vendor: Apple
Graphics Card: Apple M1

OpenGL Version: 4.1 Metal - 90.5

Description

MacBook Air (M1) defaults to Low+ graphics quality. Low+ has HDR and Emissive disabled. Consider bumping it up to Mid at least.

Reproduction steps
  1. Run SL on a MacBook Air (M1 2020)
  2. Click the "Reset to recommended settings" button in Preferences > Graphics

Observed: The Quality & Speed defaults to Low+ on this hardware.

Expected: Now that native Apple Silicon is supported giving more performance headroom, we should consider bringing the render quality on Apple Silicon above Low+.

Note: This change will reduce framerate.


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Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start at Preferences > Graphics and trace the Reset to recommended settings entry point for Apple M1 hardware. Verify how the current Low+ recommendation is selected, then confirm completion when Apple Silicon recommends at least Mid and the resulting frame-rate tradeoff is assessed.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp, macos
Domain
computer-graphics, desktop, performance
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

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