Security Update to Second Life viewers: 2008-10-06

Too many people have laptops they already bought for other purposes, or they didn't KNOW that an intel GMA666 wasn't up to handling SL, or when they bought it a year and a half ago it worked fine.

Most potential customers of Linden Labs who have laptops did not buy them with SL in mind. Most laptops do not have supported chipsets. Hell, most desktops don't have supported chipsets on the motherboard... the only reason that's not a killer is you CAN get a video card for most of them.

Except even there... now they can't even get far enough into SL to decide "hey, this is worth upgrading my computer".

So it's not just a matter of "you didn't think ahead". It's turning off potential customers.

You don't have to run the SL client to download an update.
1. Delete the current installer, the one you downloaded.
2. Go to: http://secondlife.com/support/downloads.php and download the latest viewer with the big yellow Download Now button.
3. Browse to the downloaded file and run it.

And if that is the mindest, that you need a top shelf gaming machine, then it will never be anything more than just that, a niche product. It will never be widely used and "relevant".

You don't need a top end gaming machine to run sl. Not even close. Sure SL will run terrible on an intel graphics card, but do you seriously expect LL to develop the next 3d world/internet for cards that were never ment to handle 3d applications?

I don't seriously expect LL to develop the next internet period.

You don't need a top of the line gaming desktop, no. But you DO need the equivalent of a "gaming laptop". Before Windlight, that wasn't true.

How much is it worth to avoid turning away most laptops?

Worked like a charm, Lindal. Thanks so much for your help!

I too have a problem with the new viewer. I run a Radeon 4850 videocard (certainly NOT old) on a 2.4 Athlon X2 and since the new forced viewer I keep getting VPU crashes, sometimes every 5 minutes which freezes everything for 3 or 5 seconds a time, then goes through a reload and *sometimes* carries on, but can cause problems in other things.

Im using the latest 8.9 drivers, I am aware of the crash problems with the 8.8 drivers and reverting to 8.7 means I have to reboot the whole PC every time the VPU crashes, instead of it mostly coming back with 8.9. However after the VPU starts crashing with 8.9 then I get big lags and freezes with other applications I might be using when I bring them to the foreground (like photo editing software, even firefox). I am not CPU bound during these lags.

The only thing I can do to stop all this is revert to an older version that ran almost fine till the update. I cant see any patching or problems being sorted out in catalysts or SL updates anytime soon. The only problem I had with 1.19 was that occasionally it would crash when resizing a window, maybe once a fortnight. Now it crashes upto several times an hour.

And this is progress?

There's still a 1.19.0.5 version around, with all the latest patches *smile*...check out my blog.

City Of Heroes and other graphics intensive games have the same problems, some laptops can't even run World Of Warcraft. They turn away potential customers too.
There's good reasons why laptops come sell for different prices.
You don't need a top notch games machine but it does need to have decent 3D graphics chip capability. Otherwise we should convert SL to 2D perhaps or reduce the graphics content inworld dramatically to get all laptops to run SL.

I suspect that the list of laptops that can run Warcrack is closer to the list of laptops that can run SL 1.18 than the list that can run SL 1.20... and probably larger. SL was *already* one of the most demanding 3d games on the market, even before Windlight was brought in. But SL isn't something that appeals to the heavy duty gamer who's likely to have bought a heavy duty system, it's more of a "casual gamer" type of environment... so the people who slip through the cracks are potential customers...

You mean, like maybe leaving in the option to use the pre-Windlight rendering engine? Why, you've been reading my mind!

You got me curious, so I installed 1.21 on my HP nc6320.

Here are its system specs: 1.8ghz processor, 1gb ram, intel 945GM graphics and xp, sp3. wireless connection.

At the sim summersville, with 4 avatars in view (none impostered), 9 avatars within drawdistance, and a lot of animated textures etc, I get 17fps.

Bare in mind that I know that this computer is not ment for 3d apps, so I turned settings down to "very ugly" and changed screenrez from 1024x768 to 800x600.

I'm not sure if people expect to run WL in ultra mode on a computer with similar specs, but I was surprised at the framerate, and for a computer that is sertainly not build for 3d apps, I think it handled SL with an A+.

No, I mean reducing texture quality dramatically and anything else they can do to make SL run on any laptop, some laptops can't even run the pre windlight viewer. And they are potential customers too.
I guess one question LL probably consider is are people who can't afford a good gaming computer likely to be putting cash into SL via purchase/rent/tier?

Yes, I know what you mean. And I suspect you actually do know what I mean, and you know that's not what I'm suggesting, but let me be explicit.

Right now, SL does not run or is barely usable on the *majority* of laptops, since the majority of laptops have the Intel Extremely Bad GPU. Even a lot of low end nVidia and ATI chipsets are dodgy at best. The 1.18 viewer was usable, at least, on a MUCH larger subset... more like a mass-market video game than one that targets only the hard core gamers.

It's not black and white, it's a big grey area. I think LL is excluding a much larger portion of the grey area than they need to.
Given that a friend of mine in SL bought a sim long before he upgraded his computer to the level it could run Windlight, and another was half owner of a sim and she's legally blind, I would say the answer is "just because someone doesn't want to spend a lot of money on a computer just to see if they want to get into SL, that doesn't mean they won't be spending money in SL once they get there".

I tried it using a 6510b with a 2 GHz Core 2 duo, 2GB. Not a lot different from yours. These are both pretty decent for "non gamer" systems.

I had previously tried 1.20 with Vista, and it wouldn't run. I later "upgraded" to XP, and that let me at least run, but I had to drop it down to minimum graphics to get a usable frame rate running in a window on the Lusk platform. And that wasn't any 17 FPS, either.

This is a brand new laptop, much better than the average laptop in actual use. Apart from the GPU, it's got better specs than my Macbook Pro.

In all fairness I turned up my res to 1024x768 (the max this laptop will go) to do a test that will be more like the experience the normal low end laptop user will get, and I get a framerate on the Lusk platform (11 avatars in view) at 9fps

More detailed specs:
Second Life 1.21.5 (98701) Oct 6 2008 10:27:21 (Second Life Release Candidate)
Release Notes

You are at 255714.0, 256664.8, 60.0 in Lusk located at sim4797.agni.lindenlab.com (63.210.159.193:13002)
Second Life Server 1.24.9.98659
Release Notes

CPU: Intel Core 2 Series Processor (1828 MHz)
Memory: 1016 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: Intel
Graphics Card: Intel 945GM
OpenGL Version: 1.4.0 - Build 4.14.10.4631

http://img91.imageshack.us/my.php?image=2930074316a794b8c831ojh9.jpg

In a croud like that on a low end laptop, that is still pretty good imo? If people expect more, I don't see how it can be done without turning everything into habbo hotel?

Since I use the latest Update, Ive a lot of crashes?!
Much more then ever before...*shrugs*

What to do? It should be more stable, they said...? I can not say so, Im sorry...

This is the limitation:
Graphics Card Vendor: Intel
Graphics Card: Intel 945GM
OpenGL Version: 1.4.0 - Build 4.14.10.4631

Intel Graphics Chip, OpenGL driver version 1.4 (currently at 2.1). Doesn't matter about the rest of the system, this will always be the max you can expect.

I upgraded to 1.20.17.98669 on my Mac. Why do I still get a notice to download the security upgrade every time I login.

I upgraded to 1.20.17.98669 on my Mac. Why do I still get a notice to download the security upgrade every time I login.

I don't see any higher performance happening either. I'll try the pre windlight viewer in a few days, on the same laptop to check if there really is such a big difference as people claim.

I'm not sure I'd say that was a reasonable simulation, given that what a typical laptop user (not a 'low end laptop', but a typical laptop bought over the past 3 years) get includes 'it doesn't run at all'. On my old Thinkpad I also got 'the ground is all rainbow colors', and after I fixed that 'random giant triangles all over the place'.
I rarely get a consistent 9FPS on the Lusk platform, long term, even on my regular PC. On this laptop I had to drop to minimal rendering to avoid going into stop-motion.

I don't know what my window size was, but it was less than 1/3 of the screen area.

I used to be all "just get a decent graphics card", too, before I ran into people who literally couldn't do that without buying a new computer. Then Linden Labs really did manage to get pretty good results from Intel Disintegrated chipsets, and a lot of people got into SL as a result. I just think it's a shame that they don't care about throwing that effort away for a rendering engine that's been as controversial as Windlight.

Make SL plug-in capable.
SL standalone would include the original renderer
make Windlight and voice separate optional plugins

An SL update would not overwrite the plugins, thus creating smaller
download packages, and a update installation would scan for plugins and use them if they still exist in their installation locations. If any update to the Windlight renderer or the voice software is needed, it would not need to update the base client.

you really would have to support as many laptops as you can, after all, most business-peoples tote around laptops, not desktops, with wifi on the commute, in the cafe, at the meeting, etc.

Wasn't LL trying to appeal to the business-types? I don't think the professional trying to score a multi-bazillion dollar contract at 4pm is really thinking that he needs higher end *graphics* capability to run one finicky program..

maybe i's just me..

I'd really like to see SL have plugin support.