ATI support petition?

Heh.

1. the problems you describe have nothing to do with your hardware or drivers, unless you have a network connection problem of some sorts, but since everyone else has those problems, I doubt it's your fault.
   
2. This thread is over seven months old.

My main PC has an ATI Radeon 9800 XT 256 with the latest drivers. So far, knock on wood, I have experienced no problems with SL (video related) and I have all features turned on. The PC has 1 GB DDR PC3200 memory and a 3.4 GHz processor.

Lets face it, SL hardware requirements are pretty demanding. When I play from my laptop (Alienware) or work PC (HP) I am pretty dissapointed with the overall performance and appearance (both have NVIDIA cards and are over 3 GHz and 1 GB RAM). I can really tell the difference. I always end up telling my co-workers "you should see how it looks from my home PC".

What I am saying is that it is probably not a pure video card issue some people are experiencing. It is probably a combination of video, bandwidth, cpu, memory, etc. That does not mean that LL should not look into it. Like most technical problems, it is usually a shared problem, in this case, a LL/ATI/User problem and each should do its best to get it taken care of.

Just my two cents.

- Tito

The problem for Cory is that LL is small fry for ATI, so they're probably half ignoring him, or at least not giving the issue much priority.

Since Cory knows of at least one important problem with ATI's handling of OpenGL, it does no harm to support him in trying to get the ATI folk motivated to address it. Dev departments don't fix anything unless there is hard pressure from customers --- I've seen it pretty much everywhere in industry in my freelancing travels. It's partly inertia, and partly that they don't get any budget (or little) for bug fixes, only for new developments.

So help Cory out by pestering ATI. That's separate from anything else that LL can do in their own dev team.

since this thread was started by me (a year ago pretty much) alot of things have changed

of the 'big 5' problems, 4 have been solved, three of them by LL, and one by ATI

now theres some new problems, and some of the old ones have come back.

Specifically in regards to stability, i would place more blame on LL than on ATI. LL passing invalid values to the ati drivers within the rendering space and then ati crashing, is not ati's fault even if the crash 'comes from inside the drivers'

As to history, LL was originally part of the nvidia developer program. So yes, the code in SL was originally at the least developed predominantly on nvidia machines. And has overall been run on nvidia machines.

While LL got out of that program around the time they ended beta, its traces can still be found in newview.exe There are definately things LL does that pander to nvidia's particular rendering strong points, and hit a few of ati's weaknesses. There are also some instances where things were writtin to nvidia's spec (such as the selection, aka figuring out where the mouse cursor points when it clicks) that caused any number of problems with ATI cards. Some of which have been fixed, some of which haven't.


The basic fundamental assertion i made for this petition, still holds however:

LL is the one with an application that crashes regularly, can hard lock machines, has all number of graphical glitches. So whoever's 'fault' that is. LL is the one that in the end gets hurt by it. My old 'furball' analogy, whoevers cat spit it up, if its in *YOUR* bed, you better clean it before ya try an go to sleep. And LL *DOES* have the ability to work around problems even should they exist within the ati drivers. They have certainly done so with nvidia.

Hard-locking a machine is entirely a systems or card/driver problem, so complain at Microsoft or ATI --- an application can in principle only start actions which trigger the fault, and not cause it directly. Even Windoze eventually figured out that apps need to run in protected VMs, after years of resisting it. Bad app coding that hangs the app (while everything else on the box still runs) is quite different to a hard machine lock.

That said, one should be a realist about the likelihood of ATI response, so I completely support that LL should definitely try to avoid or bypass the problem on ATI cards even if it clearly stems from an ATI bug or limitation. Waiting for ATI to fix a problem (or nVidia, I'm even-handed) could take forever.

By the same token though, you should continue banging at the door of ATI, or else they have no incentive to handle OpenGL better.

in the case of both video and sound, it is more than possible to lock entire systems simply by passing some bad data to their drivers.

In part you're right. Drivers can only do peephole and not global validation --- it's very similar to the problems in optimization. They can reject nonsense handed to them at the API, but they aren't going to traverse a complex graph of references nor detect overlaps between areas which should be disjoint, etc. One can't blame them for that, seing as full validation involves CompSci's unsolvable Halting Problem, lol.

Still, there are well engineered and poorly engineered drivers, and anyone who uses the Halting Problem as an excuse will suffer the ire of every engineer on the planet. It's always good to ask for better quality.

Signed...Love SL, support for my card will make the bond complete.

Hi, I just joined Second Life, but have not been able to get in because my graphics card will not let me. I have an nVidia Riva TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro. I can get into other 3D web sites with this. I tried the download update from the site, but get the same results. So, I ordered a new card. Hopefully it iwill be in soon, so I can get into 3D here.

SL generally needs to have cards of one generation after the tnt2, the geforce. Pre geforce cards are an older technology that didn't accelerate as much of the 3d scene as cards afterwards do. They generally won't be able to play any of the newer games now that do take advantage of, and require, the abilities of the cards made in the last 4 years or so. This is also why alot of the very cheapest builtin chipset vga cards up till about the middle of this year, really couldn't play SL either

Yes, your video card isn't quite advanced enough to handle SL. According to the system requirements in the FAQ, you'll need at least an Nvidia Geforce 2 (32MB RAM) or higher.

Good luck with the new graphics card, and welcome to Second Life!

Cory, then please tell me, why do you continue to recommend ATI RADEON on your list of hardware requirements then? That seems irresponsible. I'm a new player who just got 3 premium accounts. I suspect some of my game play problems are related now to my ATI RADEON 9200 even though I went out and bought it specifically to play *your* game because you *you put it on list of requirements* (go see your support page).

You should at least put a footnote that "some players are experiencing problems" or something. I hate it when game companies are too afraid to dis hardware companies and too timid to recommend what REALLY DOES work. If you are "working with" ATI on this it still isn't *fixed* so you need a footnote on your support page that says "We are working with ATI to fix the problems some players experience." Then people will spend the extra money on Nvidia if they really want a game that works well.

Tell me the computer, speed, graphic cards, generation, etc. that REALLY WORKS with your game, and believe me, I will wrap my computer purchase around your game (as I just thought I did!) and not visa versa!!!!

I think it really depends on your PC, and if updating was done.

I used an ATI 8500, an ATI9200, and now a ATI9600 and all worked fine with SL. Yes I crashed, but could never point at video and did not happen often.

So ATI for me works fine with SL. But I also defrag, Update Computer Bios, update system driver (PCI, MB stuff, etc), do windows update, scan for virus/spyware, clean caches, temp files, etc. In general I treat my PC like I do my car, car needs oil, gas, etc, so a PC its get that same care.

I feel the time it take to make it run nice and clean, makes up for having very very few problems running things.

Just to mark a stable point on the somewhat uncertain SL hardware map, I run the following medium-spec system (the CPU and the card sort of average out):

1. Dell Dimension 2400, P4/2.8GHz, 512k cache, 533MHz FSB
   
2. 512Mbytes DDR RAM, 7200 RPM crummy IDE drive
   
3. BFG GeForce FX 5200, 256Mbytes video memory, PCI
   
4. WinXP Personal, *without* that nasty SP2 thingie
   
5. No other apps, since this is just my PC games console
   

The above system has not crashed nor locked up even once since I installed SL on it in August, so I can confidently call it very stable.

It's not terribly fast of course, but it's adequate and this thread is only about stability anyway. To be fully satisfactory the machine would need another 512 meg of RAM, because otherwise it goes into system VM thrashing if I try to run up a browser or two during SL.

Given the extra RAM, I wouldn't really need to upgrade for several months I think. I will anyway before Xmas, but that's driven by toy addiction rather than need.

Really, REALLY sucks to be all of you, I have an X800 and I get 0 crashes a day

Re"

I do all those things already, and constantly -- cache files, spybot, defrag, blah blah are exactly what I think of first when I have game problem. It doesn't make any difference. And I don't see how updating a system driver would be relevant, really.

Given the pattern of complaints people have about ATI RADEON, I can't believe that the problem is merely because they haven't cleaned up their computers.

Why do I have to do *all that housekeeping* JUST TO PLAY A GAME, anyway.

It's terrible when people who *don't* have a specific problem become smug about what they're doing, as if other people are slackers. I think other players who have described the problems as a cluster -- Internet connection, computers, graphic cards -- are probably more accurate. I don't believe individuals making complaints should be blamed in this manner when *there are so many of them*. And we already have Cory Linden himself on the record as saying "there is a problem" they are "working on". So why think it's about computer clean-ups at this point?

Sometimes problems are experienced by a minority of customers because they fell in the wrong cluster.

wise words

more people need to go back through and actually *READ* all of the posts in this thread... starting from my very first one. There are specific problems in SL in regards to ATI. Depending on your specific computer and settings you may see alot of them, or very few of them. They are there though, and in the code. Not just mysterious transitory artifacts. Things like the old texture corruption were very much actual physical code artifacts.

And believe me they aren't *all* fixed. Many of them were and i do give the LL guys alot of credit for solving some of the nastiest ones that i had presented. But in the last 6-9 months they've gotten.. i don't want to say lazy.. perhaps 'lax' is the word. LL went thruogh a serious bug smashing streak through the latter half of the 1.2's and into the 1.3's. many MANY nasty problems, with ati, and with other things, were solved at that point.

Since 1.4, bugs simply haven't gotten that kind of attention again, they've been building back up to the point we're at now. And its time, quite frankly, to give some of these things some attention again.

To Quote :

"Why do I have to do *all that housekeeping* JUST TO PLAY A GAME, anyway."

because it is a computer, not a game box. Game push a PC harder then anything you got, so if you play games, you must do housekeeping.

Things change, something installed might change something, things update around you if you don't update, you will get problems.

So not being smug, just makes no sense to me that people think that can buy a PC and just leave it alone forever, and then have no issues. It is like a car, a car needs gas, a car needs oil. You can't just plug in think there will be no problem that arise.

Also system drivers are important, it is how it talks to your cards, so as game change, they need more, so the updated driver assist with that and help keep things stable, why else does SL warn you about outdated systems drivers on install?

So not to be smug at all, just general housekeeping, and updating are important in the life of a PC, just like your car, can't just leave the car and do nothing, so a PC is the same, have to be nice to it once in a while for it to be nice to you. lol

And SL is supported by Nvidia, so of course they will write to 100% nvidia ready, but only a little toward ATI. But also many different PC, with different configs, MB, etc,etc, so PC will always be problems, but updating/housekeeping is needed to help make sure as little problems as possible.

First of all, I already said I did all that housekeeping routinely, and trust me, that is not at issue. You don't sink into the ground, freeze up, fall out of the sky, and not be able to line up at buildings because you haven't cleaned out your temp cache file or defragged your computer. Puleeze. Read all the posts about ATI problems and you'll get the idea.

"because it is a computer, not a game box"

Well, why not think outside the box? Why do we have to be stuck in this box? Computers are for...computation, duh, I know that, and I don't need a lecture about it. People adapt to them for word-processing and games *because they can*. Why don't game makes think about this problem more, and make computers that ARE like game boxes? After all, X-box does this, and other systems. Let them! Think! About how to eliminate all these silly problems that are a byproduct of just what you say, that "computers are not game boxes". If my computer is a game box 5-10 hours a day, shouldn't it work better? Shouldn't game makers get together with computer makers and customize game computers? They've already done that with some models, but shouldn't they spread it downward for more cheaply?

"So not being smug, just makes no sense to me that people think that can buy a PC and just leave it alone forever, and then have no issues. It is like a car, a car needs gas, a car needs oil."

Er, duh, I didn't "leave alone" a brand-new computer and brand-new graphics card that I cache-cleared, defragged, spy-botted, blah blah numerous times just to see if those were the routine issues.

But I'm SO glad you raised the car metaphor! Because you don't have to learn electrical engineering or the theory of internal combustion or how gear shifts are connected just to drive your car! You get it and drive after you learn the basics of driving! To be sure, you have to change the oil and wipe the windows. But those routine tasks ARE NOT the analogy to what we are being asked to do when we have to get down in the weeds of the computer/game interface. You don't have to learn how to change brake shoes yourself every day just to drive ordinarly. Yet tekkies like you ask of us non-tekkies that we learn the theory of internal combustion and practice electrical engineering just to play a damn game. That's what at issue. Yes, we changed our oil and put in the gas. So how come it still doesn't work?

It comes down to this, as I said. Either SL devs and the elitist programmers who have this programmers sandbox called SL want to go on playing in your little sandbox, and keep the dummies out, or you want to make money -- both devs and players who create in-game. If you keep the mass of dummies out, you also keep out that 10 percent of players Will Wright talked about who can entertain the rest of the passive players, and you keep out your future customers who pay you money. You keep out new life. But if you want new players you have to make the game more user-friendly, less complicated, without having to go in and adjust gamma rays and God knows what just to have a playable game. You're assuming it's OK to make everything so technical, and that people who won't engage in these technical steps are dummies. I'm here to tell you that we're not dummies, it's just that we apply our brain power to other endeavors of life besides sitting around staring at the inner files of our computers.

"And SL is supported by Nvidia, so of course they will write to 100% nvidia ready, but only a little toward ATI"

What the heck does that mean, "a little toward ATI"? Once again, let me cut and paste from this game company's support page FAQs:

"What computer hardware do I need to live a Second Life?
Current minimum computer specifications are:
Graphics Card: Nvidia Geforce 2 (32MB RAM) or higher, or ATI Radeon 8500 (32MB RAM) or higher (laptop users: see #8 below for more information)"

It doesn't say "a little". It doesn't say "actually, it doesn't work so hot". It just recommends it! Which is why I bought it, duh!

I don't believe that I should have to immerse myself in packet exchange rates and all kinds of other arcane computeriana just to play a game.

A response of "you should have been housekeeping/upgrading" entirely misses the point that a quality program checks its execution environment and does not crash or go flakey at arbitrary times.

In addition to being uncharitable, it's also inaccurate to assume that if one doesn't experience a problem personally, then those who do report such troubles must have misconfigured their clients or have local problems or are incompetent or whatever, but that never never never never never can the reason be poor design or coding at LL.

That's patently false, as indeed is the opposite conclusion.

One person's selected options or hardware can result in the program taking one route and encountering a coding error or design flaw, while another person's different setup avoids that trouble spot entirely. In a 20-meg program with hundreds of thousands of conditionals, you really cannot assume that the same instructions have run in your machine as in someone else's.

In the absence of a reason not to, give people who report problems the benefit of the doubt. The onus should always be on the client (which we as customers pay for) working effectively and reliably, and reporting to us directly if and why it may be experiencing trouble. That's simply good program design.

as far as system stability goes... had a 9800 pro... was ROCK SOLID playing ut for hours, doom3 for hours etc... wouldn't last *TEN MINUTES* in second life.. average night i would crash to desktop 5-6 times.

well i jumped ship.. i have a 6800 gt as of monday... and damn if SL hasn't been rock solid ever since.. at least 16 hours running since then and nary a trace of any instability what so ever.

Its not the chipset drivers, its not the voltages, its not the heat.. in second lifes case there are some very specific times that the client tanks and its *NOT* anything at all under ther person's control.. its simply SL passing bad data to the ATI driver stack and the ati drivers simply failing under it.

ATI Radeon 9600 XT, and daily crashes... It crashes 1-3 times / day, it's really getting annoying...
I also think it's the ATI drivers

I had an NVIDIA back a while ago, and a different computer, slower, but it worked almost flawlessly, maybe just crashing very very very rare...

The really sad part is, this thread is almost a YEAR old and these issues still happen on a daily basis.

-Ghoti

I have a 9600 Pro Celestica Gold Edition and I haven't crashed at all that I know of. Might want to make sure you have enough Ram and Processor speed. If I have crashed..it has been from the Server going down.

Can try to turn off fastwrite and turn off VPU recovery.

VPU recovery causes nothing but problem, so I always turn off after a new driver install, and fastwrite does not seem to make much difference, but can leave on if no problems come up.

Once I turned them off I have not crashed in SL at all, before happened about once a week.