ATI support petition?

I've been enjoying SL for awhile now, and i do have an ati card (9800 pro). I've learned to deal with the major bugs and the intermittent, allbeit nearly daily crashes. But I honestly don't think these ATI issues can be continually neglected by LL as they desire to push more mainstream.

While some of us hardcore users don't mind so much fiddling with advanced graphical settings, new users, especially those who would be attracted by the initial 9.99 plan proabbly won't sign on for a recurring fee plan if the game simply doesn't work smoothly and stably for them.

I personally have 2 friends RL i'd love to bring into SL but they also have ati cards (9800 pro and 9600) and i know neither of them will do anything but gripe about crashes, and neither will sign on with things the way they are now.

I know developer time can be a premium but i really strongly feel that before too many new fancy features are added, some of the deepest and most lingering issues affecting a VERY large number of users who have radeon cards must be given more serious addressing.

1) The *very* frequent crashes need to be eliminated.

It just really doesn't speak well to new gamers when they have the highest of high end cards and the latest of all drivers and they continue to crash weekly (with minimum settings), daily (with lighting and slightly more display features) or HOURLY (with all display features that nvidia people have no problem enjoying, enabled)

The game simply cannot be properly enjoyed with these frequent crashes to desktop and in some cases full on machine locks. And I really can't see anyone new who hits more than one of these locks in their first few days of playing actually buying into the game, no matter how enticing the world may seem.

worse than that, once someone gets that negative of a first impression, it may be difficult, or nigh on impossible to convince them to come back even if/when the problems are actually fixed. It just tarnishes the game experience too severely, especially for any users who aren't willing to work the display settings so exactingly as to try and squeak by.


2) Latent texture corruption issues have to be addressed.

From 1.0 on through the 1.2 preview for months now there have been known problems with the texturing on ati cards. Somwhere deep in there there is some invalid addressing and its calling the wrong address for some mipmaps. Someone needs to dig down in there and find that bad call, probably sometime during the passing of the mipmapped texture set around between the main cache and the video card. Or at least give us the option of totally flushing and reloading the textures from both the card and main memory so that once the corruption happens, we can reset it away from within the game and not need to relog (especially important for those of us who like taking alot of screenshots)


3) Shaders need to be looked at with ati cards

The avatar vertex shader has alot of issues with ati cards. Im assuming it was programmed with a nvidia target in mind as on ati it simply doesn't work as intended alot of the time (if any avatar effects are enabled such as bump and/or cloth mapping, the shader causes avatars to have alternaing triangles completely orange/reddish). And even without that, enabling the shader causes faces more'n about 20m away to simply turn black, or flash repeated black to the real face.

(this is lower priority than the other two, but probably easier to fix)


4) ATI based FSAA really needs to be fixed.

It *can* work.. heck when you first login it *DOES* work... opening the window the first time and everything in the game is beautifully smooth... until you interact with the game in any way that brings up or changes a 2D screen element (such as a mouseover, a menu, or any dialog)... and then everything goes black.. until you open the mouse based interaction wheel, when it will reset and become visible for a split second, before becoming totally black again.

Given the overal cpu bound performance of much of SL, enabling FSAA on an ati card would yield huge visual improvement in the rendering quality at very little to no actual framerate penalty. Nvidia users have enjoyed its benefit for quite some time now and we ati users want it to be fixed so we can enjoy it as well.


5) General performance issues

I've tacked this one on at the end because obviously its much more ambiguous than the other 4 (and will be considerably harder to pin down and improve in any meaningful way, at least initially)... but there is a very real and very disheartneing performance disparity between nvidia and ati cards, that are otherwise more or less identical performers.

I run a 9800 pro and i have a friend that runs a 5900 ultra, in otherwise more or less identical systems (right down to motherboard and processor type), and in *every* single game and *every* single benchmark other than SL we're basically neck and neck. In SL however they consistantly peg between 1.5 and 2x the framerate for any given scene (and this is with having *MORE* features enabled (since on ati i can't use bump mapping or as many lighting features due to stability issues mentioned earlier).

This issue is especially jarring when zooming *in* on something which is particularly jarring in a 3d rendering context since that ought to reduce the amount of 3d work for the rendering system, not slow it to a crawl. Those with nvidia seem to realize that natural performance gain (make a 10x10x10 block and zoom in till it fills the whole screen, keep zooming in till it won't zoom anymore... no hiccup on nvidia... on ati it has several jarring hiccups and ends up slower zoomed all the way in than when it was all the way out... that simply shouldn't be happening


Now i'm fairly understanding that SL isn't like any other game out there but i'm reasonably sure the performance issues in SL with ati have alot more to do with the brand thats in most of LL's developer machines than they do with any actual performance delta between the hardware in the cards themselves. This is particularly disheartening when you consider that we ati users can't even make up for the lower overall framerates by enabling what would be basically free FSAA at that point, and enjoying the game at least with smoother visuals.



The real issue i have with these bugs is that some of them are so severe, and yet have lingered, not bein properly addressed as we suffer through them, update after update going by without so much as an offical LL tweak or workaround .

I was more or less amenable to the minor updates letting this slide by (1.1.4-1.1.5-1.1.6 etc etc) but when 1.2 which was supposed to address the rendering system in a significant way to speed up framerates and the like still has *all* of these issues present, its gotten to the point that I really feel we, the ati users, have to do something to rally some attention to ourselves, and the problems that SL still has.


I don't mean to be particularly critical of LL with this i just really want to bring attention that there is a significant portion of the computer using/gaming population now that is not playing SL 'the way it is meant to be played' aparantly... and we really don't want to be made to feel like second (or third) class citizens anymore

(for one i want to host events, but the current lack of stability in the client is making me nervous because its a very real possibility i could crash out in the middle of it, more than once even, especially if its an event that might entail a lot of movement or re-focusing as these seem particularly crash-inducing)

please LL help the rest of us enjoy the game as much as our nvidia owning friends, and don't let these issues stop new people from signing on, or paying to become a more integral member to the community, especially given the new pricing system where they won't *HAVE* to anymore

I agree with you, I have a ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, on a practicly top of the line system, I've never had ANY troubles with ANY other game because of owning ATI or because of the supposedly "horrid" drivers ATI has (which I never even heard of this untill I came to SL). I'm sure LL is trying to fix the problems but they need to be resolved sooner than later. I was dissapointed that 1.2 didn't fix Avatar Vertex. I don't have all the problems you've stated but I have had (crashing constantly if I turn on AGP Hardware Acceleration, and Avatar Vertex crazyness) some of them.

The AGP problem is the biggest since it actualy crashes the whole system, freezing up the computer.

Avatar Vertex problem is just something that bothers me a little because its one feature I'd like to have but can't. I want to see wind effecting avatars dangit!

Blaming ATI's drivers for everything seems like a lame excuse, it may be true, but its hard for me to believe it when I've never had a problem before with my card/drivers. I don't totaly blame LL for this either though, I feel it is probly 50/50, partly the drivers and partly also it seems that SL is developed most specificly for nVidia cards.

I agree with you, these issues need to be resolved since not everyone in the world uses nVidia and alot of ATI owners will most definitly be turned off by the problems SL has with it.

I sign it!

Look what v1.2 did to my graphics! everything is messed up and has a green glow and it's all WRONG!

ATi needs to be eliminated.

Eggy

You make it sound like we'd be better off with a monopoly (well that has some truth to it, but probably bad overall).

Hehehe, you're forgetting about Intel, VIA, matrox, trident and S3... they may not exactly be aiming for the high end like ATi and nVidia, but you would be surprised if you knew just how much market share they have

The problems that you mention are all ones that we are currently working with ATI to address. If you would like to inform ATI that their drivers are making Second Life less fun for you, their support page is:

http://mirror.ati.com/support/contact.html

Cory

www.davekap.tk

I have an address and letter pre-made for you. Use it

Already sent mine in awhile ago

well i would like to let ati know about it but cory im pretty sure (as an openGL developer) that some of the things that aren't working right can

a) be worked around by LL given sufficient development effort and/or
b) are caused by branches of code that are executing nvidia optimized/nvidia developed functions which can contain non-standard openGL extentions (such as any branches of code containing nv_ extention function calls. Not that those calls are wrong, as every game makes use of them, but they must be properly branched with either standard or ati-centric calls that are functionally equivalent, and they currently aren't (most especially the case with the avatar vertex shader)


I am also fairly certain that the anti ailasing producing black screens has something to do with the draw order of the 2d overlay items on the 3d world within the rendering process and that while it would technically be possible to get ati to support whatever method/order things are currently being drawn, it would also be possible to branch the draw routines seperately for ati and nvidia, leaving the nvidia side alone and redoing things slightly on the ati side to work with the current ati fsaa implementation

(and given the relative small size of the SL user-base compared to the overwhelmengly huge ati total user base any massive overhauls they *could* do to support SL's current rendering would be horribly low priority)

aka i think theres some blame on each side for the actual rendering snafu's that've been happening but pointing fingers isn't going to accomplish anything.

the plain fact of the matter is LL *could* fix these issues by simply changing bits of the rendering process abit to be compatable with the current ati driver sets (as many game developers also do) and given the fact that ati will probably *NEVER* give proper attention to a game of only a few thousand users, i think LL *should* work on fixes for us because quite simply i think you're the only ones who would be able to get these things working..

and i mean finger pointing aside, the pie is on LL's face, especially with the severe crash bugs. And even if ATI is fully responsible for all the current problems... well sometimes ya jus gotta clean yer own room.. even if it was yer little sister who came in and made the mess.

All I have to say is Death to ATI! ATI cards suck, get new Nvidia! OK, the cards don't suck... but the company has ZERO driver support, so ATI cards suck! And I know someone here is gonna start rambling on about how the benchmarks are better on the ATI stuff... All I have to say is LOL, those benchmarks are about the only 4 or 5 games that the ATI cards support! LOL! Plus they are SO hard to tweak, they are so touchy.

Me: "Hey do you want to play game A?"
ATI Person: "Sure let my roll back my drivers!"
Me: "Hey do you want to play game B?"
ATI Person: "Sure let my roll back my drivers!"
Me: "Hey do you want to play game C?"
ATI Person: "Sure let me surf to find the best drivers!"
Me: "Hey do you want to play game D?"
ATI Person: "Sure let me update my drivers!"
...
And so on. This is a true story from a LAN. These guys were waisting SOO much time (10 to 15 mins) changing tweaking dirvers everytime we changed games!

Anyways, so i'll sign your petition... it's titled ... Death to ATI... right??! Just put my name below Eggys.

P.S. I'm smoking some ppl that have 9800 with my GF2! HA!

P.P.S Did I say I hate ATI?

that has more to do with LL nvidia specific coding than any driver issues.. and thats the problem many of us are tryin to confront.

I was a nvidia fan for about 4 years.. but i just couldn't take the noise anymore... at least with a heatpiped 9800 i can crash and reboot in blissfull silence

if nvidia could stop f'ing around and a handle on the fan noise (even the new 'quieter' 5950's are still louder'n my already VERY annoying 4600 was ) i'll happily switch back

(ooh and forcing their distributors to use better quality line filters on the outputs couldn't hurt either ... its fine if yer dorkin round at 1024x768@75hz, but even 1600x1200@100 is unreadable with anythin i've seen on the nvidia cards (even 'high' end evga's ive used)


but this is again more of a LL thing than a rant for/against ati.

Stuffs broke

LL knows its broke


LL could have fixed it months ago but has simply pointed a finger at ati.



Look its okay to get up in arms about someone spillin milk in yer kitchen, but if they're long gone a few months later, and its not cleaned yet... its *YER* place thats gonna be smellin pretty funky.

The 9800 smokings are not in SL!

Nexus if you'd like to buy me the equivalent of my ATI card in nVidia card form I'd be more than happy to switch

I don't have anything against either company, this is my first ATI card (going from a 5 year old SiS card to this) and I like it so far besides the problems with SL it has.

I have an ATI card, I don't really want to buy an nVidia one just cuse SL is the only thing that doesn't co-operate with my ATi, so right now I have an ATi, its having troubles with SL, someone should fix it. I'm not saying its LL's fault, it could very well be fully ATis, but one of them needs to fix it and its not that it *has* to be LL, but if it *was* LL that fixed it, it would make me alot happier that they did.

If its not something LL can fix (I don't work for LL so I dunno) then looks like ATi people are pretty screwed cuse most likely not even the all mighty nVidia would fix an issue just cuse a couple people have a problem with it on one peice of software.

This is clearly not just an issue with ATi drivers, because I've been using an old OEM driver (about Catalyst 3.1, I think), and up to the release of 1.2 this kept me from suffering any of the issues mentioned in eltee's post. Now all of a sudden I am experiencing them cumulatively as I play. Textures weill black out, turn to stripes or multicolored hash, and my av has developed a habit of turning black, fuzzing out, or losing her dress. This is all new for me, and the only thing that changed was the update to 1.2.

To me this pinpoints the problem as coming from the SL client, not from the video drivers themselves. I.E. what broke for me now happened with SL, just as it did for others when 1.1 happened, and before that when 1.0 happened.

eltee - thank you for starting this thread and for going in-depth about the problems (and offering possible directions to solving them to LL). As an ATI user I wholeheartedly agree with what you are saying and I want to chime in with support of this petition. Obviously ATI is not fixing these problems so it is up to LL to find the solutions / workarounds.

And yeah - to those who say "Death to ATI", etc... that is an easy thing to say when you are already on the other side of the fence and haven't shelled out lots of money for a high-end ATI card. Buying a new comparable Nvidia card at this moment is not an option for some people financially. So yes.. please feel free to send me a new Nvidia card and then i'll switch...

This is exactly the way my story goes as well. I'm also using an OEM version of the 3.1 drivers for my Mobility ATI Radeon 9000, and they worked relatively without a hitch pre 1.2.

Nowadays, with 1.2, Im getting texture corruption, something I did not get *at all* in previous versions.

Basicly, in previous versions the only problems I was having were:

A less then average framerate and
An inability to turn on Avatar Vertex Program or AGP Graphics Accell without crashing.

Please fix this. This provides some proof that both parties are to blame.

==Chris

PS: I've already sent an email to ATI's customer support, no responce.

PPS (slightly OT): I occasionally visit the site driverheaven.com, they provide alternative drivers for ATI and Nvidia cards, and a forum for graphics discussion. So far, the ATI forum is popular dealing with topics like 'which should I get for christmas?!' but the Nvidia was more like 'Ugh. Nvidia's suck, Im having too many problems dealing with which drivers to use'

Tinted glasses. I generally see the other way around - ATI user after ATI user complaining about games X,Y,Z not working with drivers A,B,C while nVidia users just wonder if its worth the money to upgrade from a 4600 to 5600 or 5600 to 5700 or 5950. Myself being a happy nvidia user I'm sure the truth lies somewhere down the middle of the two views.

there are positives and negatives when it comes to either of them... Nvidia has historically been stronger with openGL, and ati has traditionally been stronger with d3d. That aside... theres been nothing but minuses for using an ati card in SL.

And thats not exclusively ati's fault. LL has simply been less than cooperative or responsive towards ATI users' problems.. choosing to do more finger pointing than problem workarounds, and its only hurting, not helping, the SL community at large.

I agree with that and feel that even though I have an nvidia and many features I would like to see implemented, getting the game working as it should for ATI users is very, very important.

My point was simply that everyone views the world through glasses tinted by their experiences, and only directed at the comment I quoted from chris. While chris likes his ATI card he sees lots of ATI lovers talking about ATI cards as xmas gifts, and nvidia users complaining about drivers. I on the other hand like my nvidia card and see nvidia people discussing nvidia cards as gifts and ATI people complaining about drivers. As I said the truth is somewhere in the middle. NVidia users have their problems with some games, ATI with others and both sides like to dream or talk about buying new cards.

At this stage I tend to believe one of 2 things:
1) The problems are LL's fault, and some serious time needs to be spent fixing it.
2) The problems are ATI's fault but ATI is not working with LL, or doesn't want to, and they will never fix the problems and thus some serious time needs to be spent fixing it by LL.

It has been broken with LL 'working with ATI to fix it in the next driver' for 8 driver versions now (.2 - .10). Whatever strategy has been used isn't working at this point.

On the contrary actually

I *loathe* my ATI card, but was astoundingly suprised that the people on these (driverheaven.net) forums were actually discouraging Nvidia cards. This really puts me on a harsh playing field. I'm currently attempting to build an SL friendly, yet reliable, and speedy computer... finding parts this close to christmas is a b*tch though

I agree with everything again, hehe.

Either way you look at it, most likely it'll come down to LL having to fix it even if it isn't their problem or not. And yes its time consuming and person consuming and money consuming but its something that if you want it done you have to do it yourself.

A machine built specificly for SL would be interisting to see if someone built one.

Yeah thats what i've really been seeing ama... at this point regardless of who actually introduced the bugs, they've gotten so severe and have remained unchecked for so long that i really don't see any other way to get through them than LL taking the time and effort to equip a few developer machines with radeons and start workin out how these bugs can be worked around or dealt with directly within the SL code, if not fixed directly from ATI.

bah, fix... need SL

I am leaning more towards the ATI drivers for Windows being utterly futzed up, as the Mac alpha ran similary on two different laptops, one with an ATI 9200 and one with a GF4MX, both with 32mb RAM.

And I figure Apple has more stringent driver requirements...