Mouse Shadow?

Originally posted by tk4two1
I have a G4 450 DP with an AGP Rage 128 Pro 16MB and no QE and no mouse shadow.:( I was uder the impression that all AGP cards would use QE but I must have been mistaken because it is not enabled.
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All NVidia cards work (all NVidia cards are AGP) as well as any AGP-based ATi Radeon cards.

So, in a nutshell, AGP NVidia and AGP Radeon cards are the only ones who can use Quartz Extreme...
 
For sake of clarification, the mouse shadow is not:

- A Quartz Extreme feature,
- A G4 feature,
- A 32 MB VRAM feature.

I have a G4 with two displays, both are QE accelerated (I did the PCI QE hack for the secondary), both have more than 32 MB VRAM and neither monitor displays the mouse cursor shadow.

The shadow transparency is also not calculated through QE, the alpha channeling is built into the cursor bitmap. I'm pretty sure the mouse shadow is only visible on graphics cards that support mouse cursors larger than 16x16.
 
Titanium PowerBook G4/500 (Rev. A). ATI AGP 4x, 8 MB VRAM.

6C35, 6C48: Quartz Extreme software enabled
6C115+: Quartz Extreme off

But whatever it is that turns the cursor shadow on or off in 10.2 and 10.2.1, why do you care about it? How much time do you spend on watching that feature? (Not watching the cursor, just watching the shadow or it not being there.)

Well, does your cursor have a shadow? Go on working or playing.

Doesn't your cursor have a shadow? Go on working or playing.

You won't be able to somehow activate it - and it's really not an important feature at all.
 
Originally posted by fryke
Titanium PowerBook G4/500 (Rev. A). ATI AGP 4x, 8 MB VRAM.

6C35, 6C48: Quartz Extreme software enabled
6C115+: Quartz Extreme off

But whatever it is that turns the cursor shadow on or off in 10.2 and 10.2.1, why do you care about it? How much time do you spend on watching that feature? (Not watching the cursor, just watching the shadow or it not being there.)

Well, does your cursor have a shadow? Go on working or playing.

Doesn't your cursor have a shadow? Go on working or playing.

You won't be able to somehow activate it - and it's really not an important feature at all.
Click to expand...

It's not the fact that it's there or not that bothers me. It's not knowing why it is or isn't there. You can't say that you've never been intregued by the unknown? Why did apple throw this feature in for specific hardware but didn't tell us why or what supports it?

without knowing what controls it how do you know for certian that we couldn't somehow enable/disable it?
 
fryke who cares how useful it is. Somebody just wants it. If you think this is a stupid conversation, don't reply.

I wasn't to conserned about if before but after all this talk i wonder how come some have it and some don't. It's just weird.

Twister
 
Is there some program that will take a screenshot and leave the mouse pointer on the screen shot? Does Snapz Pro X have this functionality? I think we need to take snapshots and post them here with our machine specs. It's too easy to overlook the mouse pointer shadow on certain backgrounds, and I'm concerned that maybe some people are claiming not to have the shadow when in fact they do -- it just may be obscured by a dark background... or something... not calling anyone a liar, I'd just like to see if there's any variation amongst pointer shadows...
 
Ok -- next guess: perhaps it has something to do with whether or not you did a clean install or an upgrade install? I did a clean install -- wiped the hard drive, installed from scratch, reinstall all programs, etc... I have the retail full version of Jaguar, not the upgrade disks.

Here's a screenshot just for the hell of it.
 

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I think the "maybe some people just don't see it" theory is naive and borderline offensive. It's not faint enough to be truly hard to spot on a light background (such as the gray striped Aqua window background).

That my cursor is completely unchanged from 10.1 is a fact. I am certain this is the case with others who are pointing out that their cursors are lacking the shadow.

It could theoretically be related to the type of install. I did an Archive And Install (and chose to move users over from 10.1 to 10.2).

This is on a G4 Digital Audio with 896 megs of RAM, Radeon 8500 AGP on the main monitor and Radeon 32 MB DDR on the secondary. Both are Quartz Extreme accelerated.
 
Alright... here we go

B&W G3 (350 Mhz O/C'd to 400)
256 MB RAM
Rage 128 PCI (16MB VRAM)
Clean install of Jag after wiping HD (now running 10.2.1)

I did a shot of on a white background and the blue background color of the main forum page.

Edit: Changed cursor pic, I enlarged the originals
 

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... the new, Jaguared 'beach ball' cursor _does_.

Again, I wonder why the discrepancy?

PowerMac G4-450 AGP
384mb Ram
Ati Rage 128 16mb
Jaguar upgrade from 10.1.5
 
Originally posted by nichrome

This is on a G4 Digital Audio with 896 megs of RAM, Radeon 8500 AGP on the main monitor and Radeon 32 MB DDR on the secondary. Both are Quartz Extreme accelerated.
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How much VRAM does the primary card have? I'm assuming 32 or over.

That shoots my Vram theory.

Originally posted by Codemonkey

... the new, Jaguared 'beach ball' cursor _does_.
Click to expand...

That's true... I never even noticed it till now. I knew something looked different about it!

I'm now beginning to wonder if it's a bug that apple didn't get worked out with some systems.
 
It's not a clean install or upgrade thing. I upgraded my G4 450 at work and did a clean install on a G4 400 also. Neither have shaddow.

Twister
 
Originally posted by nichrome
I think the "maybe some people just don't see it" theory is naive and borderline offensive. It's not faint enough to be truly hard to spot on a light background (such as the gray striped Aqua window background).
Click to expand...

chill my friend. did you read my post? i said some people may not see it on darker backgrounds. on a dark blue background (like the heading of macosx.community) i can't see mine at all. however, on a light background, it's quite visible.
don't be so sensitive and lash out. i was just offering a theory.
 
So we know it's NOT

QE enabled/ not enabled
Upgrade / Fresh Install
Amount of VRAM
Processor Type
Processor Speed
Amount of System Memory
AGP/PCI graphics


What does that leave?!?!? :confused: :D
 
Originally posted by nichrome

The shadow transparency is also not calculated through QE, the alpha channeling is built into the cursor bitmap. I'm pretty sure the mouse shadow is only visible on graphics cards that support mouse cursors larger than 16x16.
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Somehow I completely missed your post... I think you may be correct on that. I know that I have had larger cursors on my system but I think that the way it was enabled was through software. Is there any way to see what size of cursor our hardware is capable of supporting?

So what about the jag beachball? I just measured a screenshot from Snaps Pro in photoshop and the ball itself is 22 pixels without the shadow. Is it rendered in software before it gets to the hardware?

 
Originally posted by Codemonkey
... the new, Jaguared 'beach ball' cursor _does_.

Again, I wonder why the discrepancy?

PowerMac G4-450 AGP
384mb Ram
Ati Rage 128 16mb
Jaguar upgrade from 10.1.5
Click to expand...

Yes, the "pointer" cursor DOES have a drop shadow. I get it every time I boot into Mac OS X 10.2.x. But, every time I log out the drop shadow is lost until I reboot.
 
I never have it at all, no matter what I do . Strangely enough, I think I may remember seeing it in the installer for X.2
 
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