I am running 2.4 on a MacMini. I have enabled "Enhanced display" in the 24bit 1680x1050 screenmode i am running.

I am trying to run tokais Elephant to see the "3d layers" in all its glory but when I run it I get an error saying "3D layers engine required for transparent look. Falling back to opaque mode". And then a rather boring elephant appear.

Do I have to do anything more than enable "Enhanced display"?!?

You need at least 64MB of GFX memory for that screen resolution. If this amount of memory is not available there is a fallback to non 3d mode.

Geit

Do I have to do anything more than enable "Enhanced display"?!?

Yes, change the screenmode to 16 bits. There is no other way for 1680 x 1050, having 32 MB of video memory.

You can also try to disable double and triple buffering in "Display Engine" preferences. This should save 7 or 14MB.
Then you can try to remove your wallpaper picture to save another 7MB.
You can finally try to run a shell instead of Ambient. Its window eats another 7MB in this resolution and depth :)


[ Edited by Henes on 2009/10/23 0:14 ]

@Henes,

er, what?

In low memory, layers first disable the ability to use triple buffering, then double buffering and then the ability to use the Enhanced Engine. There is no need to disable buffering in settings. The wallpaper isn't cached in graphics memory, so disabling the Ambient wallpaper won't change anything.

Could someone wite dome documentation or fact sheet about L3D? Seems there is some confusion abou it lately... Everone comes up with different calculatons of required VRAM need. In the end it got me that confused that I accidently tried to wear two left foot shoes this morning - as gloves!

@Zylesea

As far as I remember (don't have the sources here ;) the current requirement for a screen to be displayed using the Enhanced Engine is

Code:

If the above requirement is not met, layers silently falls back into the compatible display mode which uses much less memory.

[ Edited by jacadcaps on 2009/10/23 12:19 ]

For those who are easily confused about the 3D Layers/ Enhanced Layers/ Compositing Engine/ <Or how you want to call it> situation on their systems I wrote this afternoon a little toy.

Download it here!

(What could be better to check for 3D layer availability of a screen than this cute fellow, right?)

Thanks to Korni, Czeko and sadddam for ultra fast translations, too! :)

regards,
tokai

Thanks for all the good answers.

Reducing resolution and colour depth did the trick.

Looking forward to try Tokais new elephant toy