Will SL live with Vista?

Vista comes out this week and I was wondering if its a "for sure thing" that SL will work with Vista?

Thanks!

Vista has basically an XP compatibility mode so it's pretty reasonable to assume it will work, the big problem is drivers for video cards under Vista. Last I heard ATI has yet to get OpenGL support into its Vista drivers but that was a while ago. LL hasn't really said much about Vista so who knows?

Microsoft has made it as difficult as possible for vendors (like ATI or NVidia) to support OpenGL on Vista. As of right now, there is no OpenGL support at all for any ATI video cards on Vista, and NVidia only has beta support and the OpenGL rendering is excruciatingly slow.

"XP Compatibility" means nothing when you are doing this kind of hardware dependant rendering.

Once OpenGL is supported, THEN SecondLife will run on Vista. Right now, especially if you have an ATI card, you will not be able to run SL at all.

SL does run under Vista.

OpenGL and Vista are an odd couple. But it s not a lost cause. See this article here: Vista vs XP Gaming

Quake, an OpenGL game actually posts higher numbers in Vista. The big problem with OpenGL applications (like SL) is in trying to run them in windowed mode under Vista. Vista's new GUI uses Direct3D for all of its cool features. So if you want to run an OpenGL game in a window, Vista actually has to run one API (OpenGL) inside another API (D3D), which will cut the OpenGL Application's FPS in *half.*

There are two ways around this:

1. Run in Full Screen Mode. Because the OpenGL has full command of the display, Vista can shell out of its use of Direct3D and allow the OpenGL App to run at full speed.

2. Disable Desktop Composition. In the compatibiility mode tab of the shortcut to start your windowed OpenGL application, you can check a box to diable desktop composition. This shuts down Vista's use of Direct3D for the desktop and let your windowed OpenGL application run at full speed.

ATI's lack of OpenGL support in Vista is disappointing, but ATI has always treated OpenGL as a kind of second-choice, which is why I always reccomend Nvidia's cards for SL users.

ATI released new drivers today with supposed OpenGL support, however, I installed them and now instead of SL telling me that my "video card is not supported" as it did before when I tried to run it with the last drivers.. it now just crashes at the login screen... Hmmmm.. seems they are getting closer maybe.. Perhaps now SL needs a fix to work with modern ATI cards/Catalyst Drivers and Vista...

If you can get into the preferences, try unchecking the AGP mode checkbox if it's still there. ALso, be sure to do what I mentioned above and disable desktop composition. I don't know if this will fix the problem, but it may.

No good.. Disable desktop composition doesnt help, and it bombs prior to me being able to get into preferences... There is another thread here with a bunch of people with the same problem.

I've had Vista installed for about 2 days now and I have to say I'm liking it a lot.
The Nvidia drivers work like a charm for my 7600GS and SL.


It's going to take quite a bit of getting used to for this OS... but as far as SL is concerned.. it works just fine.

notice to all ATI users running vista, if your having this kind of problem,

go to

http://support.ati.com, say your having a raedon/pc problem, pres next if your forced into lookin for a problem, enter SL, nothing will be found, press next, open a NEW ticket,


fill in the stuff, and make sure the "department" you send it to, is the ATI catalyst crew (those are the one's make-ing the drivers, i did this kind of request previous year around the same time, with a other game, EverQuest2, there were some crashed with the shaders, afther posting on SOE's online forum, and letting every one make a ticket the issue was diminished, ver quicky, (within 1-2 months the issue was gone, only existed on a few PC's were the owners OR didn't uninstalled the old drivers, OR the windows installation was so FUBAR, it just had to go wrong at some places...)

p.s. registration for making the ticket is required, though its only a 1 time thingy, plus if there is any other game you can make support tickets for it too

oh and its wise to say that the game did work on XP, and that you did NOT overclock your pc (even if you did/are..), cuz at my ticket stating that i had troubles the first respond, question was if i overclocked my pc, and if i had the minimum requirements for Secondlife (morons , its like i install vista, yet its to low for SL (no way in life ))

vista is basically a low blow from microsoft for killing opengl .

AMD/ATi has released the Catalyst 7.1 drivers which do have OpenGL support under Vista. However don't expect SL to run on them without some fiddling.

How many of you have the Vista drivers but when you load SL it crashes? I'm one...

Dang, that sucks about ATI. I must be one of the few with very few video problems on Vista. I got a Geforce 7600GT running on the 100.59 Forceware, and the only thing I notice about SL's graphics is that they're somewhat more pixelated than on XP. Other than that, it runs fine for me.

If you have nvidia you wont get much issues with Vista-openGL , been using SL on vista since i got hold of it (but im not really interested in vista since it has nothing new im interested in)

Ati need to improve alot they just barly put out a driver with opengl,
Nvidia had opengl beta drivers since vista appeared,

Wont be more then a few months im sure and they will have one that dont trip out with SL.

Yeah, that's true with Nvidia. I was just simply reading the nvidia forums recently and people were having major problems with the latest forceware and Vista in general.