Second Life - Mouse cursor black on bright background

[Paulo Dielli]

Hi you all. Oh, I am happy with this forum :) Just starting out with machinima in Second Life using the wonderful program Fraps. On my pc Fraps makes absolutely the smoothest capture.

I only have one question:

I need the mouse cursor to be visible in my video, and it is. The only problem is that, when I playback the movie, the cursor becomes dark (black) in bright backgrounds. On darker backgrounds the cursor is just white, as it's supposed to be.

The cursor is also slightly off.

I hope you can help me. Greets from The Netherlands!

My specs:

Vista 32 Home
Intel Core2 CPU 4300 @ 1.80 Ghz
Nvidia Geforce 8600GT (driver 7.15.11.7519) (newer drivers don't work well with Second Life)
3 Gb RAM
DirectX 10
Second Life version 1.22

[frapsforum.com]

Can you try the following:


Test record in windowed mode or fullscreen, whichever you are not normally playing as and see if the problem is still there
Try unchecking "record cursor" in fraps and see if it still records the cursor
See if the game has a "hardware" or "software" cursor option. If it does, try changing it and see if that helps


Can you post screenshots showing the problem? Or you could post a video, this forum allows for mkv and avi movies under 10 megs.

[Paulo Dielli]

Hi Admin, glad you reply.


Test record in windowed mode or fullscreen, whichever you are not normally playing as and see if the problem is still there
I have tried both fullscreen and windowed. Same result.

Try unchecking "record cursor" in fraps and see if it still records the cursor
I have made a new test with 'record cursor' unchecked. The cursor is invisible now in the movie. I only see the 'mouse over' effect in Second Life (it shows my avatar name or the name of an object, like it's supposed to), but not the cursor.

See if the game has a "hardware" or "software" cursor option. If it does, try changing it and see if that helps
Second Life doesn't have such an option. I have checked and double checked. In the game's hardware settings I see that Enable VBO (OpenGL Vertex Buffer Options) is checked. Could that have something to do with it?

Can you post screenshots showing the problem? Or you could post a video, this forum allows for mkv and avi movies under 10 megs.
I have made a test video with Fraps on YouTube yesterday. It's my first attempt, bad quality and was only to see if I could put it on YouTube, using Fraps > Vegas Studio > Quicktime > YouTube. But you can see the strange cursor behaviour:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DKRjofdr0o

[Paulo Dielli]

A filmer in Second Life just told me this:

Its alpha layering.. when shooting in a window which is kiosked.. the cursor is a phantom alpha, the popup notices that appear in SL, are also alphas, your graphics card may either not be able to handle multiple alpha layers, which can add additional lag and the colour changing, as the cursor tries to compensate. To prove that, before actually filming, press Ctrl+Alt+F1 this will remove the client kiosk, making Fraps only deal with one alpha layer. See if that works. Alternatively, use Fullscreen, and Not window setting for the SL client (Preferences, Graphics Tab).

However, I have tried both ways (hiding UI and running fullscreen as I did before), but still no result. But... I do believe alpha layering has something to do with it.

[frapsforum.com]

You might want to try the newest nvidia drivers just to see if you get a different result, does the game run at all when you use the March 03 2009 release of them?

Also, do you know if second life uses Direct3d or OpenGL? If it supports both you might want to try switching to the other method of rendering to see if that gets you a better result.

Still, that person you spoke to seems to know what is going on, you might see if there is a way to remove the alpha effects in the UI entirely. That might fix the problem.

[Paulo Dielli]

I've tried the newest Nvidia driver 182.08 (released 3-3-2009). The game runs okay, a bit laggier maybe, but it's alright. However: the cursor result is exactly the same. No difference at all.

Second Life only uses OpenGL, so Direct3D is not an option.

I've searched a way to remove alpha effects in the UI entirely, but there is no way to do that. Hiding the UI, as mentionned before, makes Fraps handle only one alpha layer, but also that doesn't change anything. The prob persists.

I've also tried all mouse cursors that Vista offers: classic etcetera, with and without cursor shadow, disabling Aero. Unfortunately also this doesn't work.

Hm, this is getting a very complex problem. Of course this cursor behaviour is not a major drama, and people watching the video might not even notice it. But still, it would be great if this problem could be solved.

[edit:] Just to make sure, I've also disabled VBO (OpenGL Vertex Buffer Options). No change.

[edit2:] This seems to be really a problem, connected with Fraps only (and my pc specs of course). I've tried CamStudio and Hypercam. In both programs the cursor behaviour is as it should be. But both programs are also not an option for me. Fraps gives me by FAR a much much smoother capture. But the fact that both programs record the cursor well, might offer an idea about the solution.

[frapsforum.com]

Yes, you might need to ask fraps support if they have any pending updates that would fix the problem.

Honestly, when I watched your youtube video it was not distracting at all when the cursor changed colors. Second Life looks like an interesting game, I've heard of it but never actually seen footage so this was a first.

[Paulo Dielli]

Oh yes, Second Life is a very interesting virtual world in which I am active for more than two years now. I have already contacted Fraps support yesterday and am awaiting their answer, although I didn't include my latest findings (especially alpha issues). That's why I'm very grateful for your replies, because I now can describe the cursor problem in much more detail. When a solution is found, I'll post it here.