Improving hardware support?

I imagine this has been discussed before, but a search yeilds nothing, so I'll ask anyway: Does Linden Lab have any plans to improve hardware support for Second Life? If so, when do they expect to release a client which supports a wider range of hardware?

I realize that the unique nature of this game means that a lot of time has to be spent on working out gameplay features and direction, but I think that right now LL's top priority should be to improve hardware support. I've got two PCs which should be capable of playing this game, but only one of them actually is because SL's range of supported graphics cards is frankly not very good. I can still play the game on my other PC, but another family member uses that PC on a regular basis, which makes it very inconvenient all involved. The computer I use is on a regular basis is a laptop - by no means a powerhouse, but quite capable of running other current-gen games (ie Half-Life 2.) Admittedly, I don't always get great framerates, but I can at least play them.

To get more users interested in Second Life, it seems logical that you first have to increase your potential user base, which is to say enable more people to play the game. I for one am going to have to cancel my subscription - I'm quite intrigued by the possibilites presented by SL, but the hardware incompatability presents a pretty big problem.

Agreed. SL takes a ridiculously high spec PC and kicks the shit out of it, quite literally. I can play anything - and I mean anything on my PC. I get framerates most people can only dream about in HL2 at 1600x1200 with everything on max. I have a great, high speed net connection too.

But SL manages to make my pc feel like something from 10 years ago running on a 56k modem. Not to mention it burns up my cpu, constantly churns my harddrive and manages to make my computer ridiculously unstable. There are certain things I can do in SL that will crash it every time. Not just the client - the pc itself. And it's because of this and the fact I'm not getting any help with it that I'm selling my island and tiering down to non payment. If I can't use it, not much point paying for it!

Oh, as well as hardware support, it'd also help if they didnt go round screwing over people in point releases by suddenly stopping the client working on various operating systems. Sure, 98 and ME werent officially supported, but the fact is that it worked on them fine up until 1.6, and plenty of people use 98 and ME machines to play. Now suddenly it's 'so sorry. it wont work'. Well fine, LL, but I know of a number of people who have left as of 1.6 because they don't much feel like paying for something that was just rendered useless to them without warning.

SL does not work like a normal game.
Your average computer game runs in a closed, controlled, unmodifiable environment.
This means they can just upload stuff to RAM and video memory once and the game runs from there.
SL can't do that because it is not a controlled environment. The amount of stuff you have to render on any given day is insane. You have to continuously add and remove textures in the RAM cache, disk cache, and video memory, since there's no way on earth that all things in SL would ever FIT. If SL came as a neatly prepackaged game it would take up... 3000 gigs?
Every time a new object or avatar appears, new data has to be added to your graphics card and the old one removed.
This is so unusual and so unlike other games/applications, that the features required to do it aren't even present in some graphics cards, or they are poorly implemented and tested (which is the cause of ATi-related crashiness).
Oh, and if you have anything like an "Intel" you don't have a real graphics card.
You most likely have a tiny chip embedded into your motherboard that cost a penny to make, and is geared precisely towards being a cheap piece of junk instead of a graphics card.
They dont even come with video memory, they just use your main system RAM.

I noticed.

Being a programmer myself, I realize that Second Life is somewhat different from the average PC game. I think the most important difference from a hardware standpoint isn't the constant loading and unloading, though, as that's more an issue regarding bandwidth than hardware. The biggest problem I can imagine with Second Life is the lack of optimization done on user-created objects because, well, they're user-created.

However, I can see no reason that a game that supposedly works on some old hardware (Radeon 8500) should not work on what I believe to be comparable hardware (At the moment I don't have time to compare the specs. It is an IGP, but it's not an one of those Intel chips put on the board just so that the box can say it's got a graphics processor - it's an ATI.)

You may not be confident in my hardware, and I'll admit (again) that it isn't top of the line. But I honestly can't imagine any reason - besides less-than-excellent code - why I shouldn't be able to run SL on this computer. And as Kris Ritter said, the problems don't only come with medium to low-end hardware.

If you have a Radeon 8500, you should be able to run just fine. Can you post your computer specs?

I don't have a Radeon 8500...



Anyway, I'm going to cancel my subscription before I forget. I'm not sure whether or not I'll still be able to post here afterwards, so "bye" in advance.

Awwww, bye Xiuying!

One thing really cool about SL tho, is that the Basic account is only ten bucks, ONE-TIME, so you can keep that if you want and stay around and see what's ahead in the future. As for your question, you know, you should go ahead and submit that in the Town Hall thread 'cuz Robin Linden is hosting one with Residents tomorrow:

/20/c8/45664/1.html

SL is very progressive and from oldbie Residents, I get the general impression that performance has scaled noticeably as computer hardware gets faster and cheaper. It's not lockstep and quite amorphous in some ways, so you can expect as the prices for parts go down, the speed and smoothness will go up. But the climb has to be made somewhere, and SL is experiencing some very healthy growth from the stats the Lindens have shared.

History keeps churning on. I'm inspired because as long as there's growth going on, there's more to look forward to. LL finds feedback with the userbase to be invaluable, and that's a big part of SL: community. SURE MY FRAME RATES DO SUCK AT TIMES, but through all of that are the beaming brights of future promises and the warm memories I have from experiences here... *sigh*

My own take on it is that I'm going to write down how I feel now, but keep on going in my journeys, and take a look back 6 months, a year, even five years from now.

It's a battle, yeah, but it can be an enjoyable one.

Looks like I can still post.

Anyway, I wouldn't mind bad framerates, but as it is I can't play at all... which is kind of my point. The hardware on this computer isn't great, but I'd like to at least be able to play. Right now it just crashes as soon as it starts.

Perhaps once I fix my other computer (it's got a Radeon 9800, mmm) I'll give SL another try. Like I said, though, I'm not the primary user of that computer so even then it's very inconvenient for me to not be able to play on my laptop.

Oh, sorry. I thought that's what you were implying. I take it you're actually below the system requirements, though?

The graphics card in my laptop (which is the computer I'd like to play it on - and as I mentioned, my other is broken right now, so I need to deal with that) is one of the unsupported cards. In terms of raw capability though, I think it should be able to handle SL if the Radeon 8500 can.

I should mention that I also tried the game on my other computer and it did run, albeit very slowly. That computer is a work computer; I don't even know what kind of graphics processor it has but I'd imagine it's some kind of integrated Intel thing. So I don't think the big problem with Second Life is that it's so high-end that only a few graphics cards can handle it. The problem is simply that LL has yet to add support for certain cards. I'll be sure to give it another try if/when my laptop's card becomes supported. (I might try again once I get around to fixing my desktop anyway.)

What model of laptop is it?

Sometimes, Torley. Maybe I've been battling too long with instability, but I no longer find it enjoyable, frankly.

I'm sorry that you are having problems to the point of canceling your account. Like Torley said, it's only ten bucks and well worth it.
Common causes of SL hardware and performance problems include not having your motherboard's AGP chipset drivers installed, or having the wrong driver version installed.
ATi's issues are not Linden Lab's fault. Unless you have reason to disbelieve them, the problem is with ATi's drivers who do not support some features or implement them poorly. We have had people from ATi come in here to test stuff and they have been known to introduce specific bugfixes in new driver releases for the bugs that SL exposed.
Having known Linden Lab for two years, I can say they are the nicest, most honest company I've ever dealt with, people who are extremely accessible and treat us on a personal, rather than corporate basis. That alone is reason enough to be here.

I agree that ATI's driver's aren't perfect, but a complete lack of support for some of their cards is not due to driver bugs - it's because Linden Lab has not yet taken the time to add support for those drivers. I'm not trying to vilify them; as I said, I'm a programmer so I am well aware that one does not simply snap his fingers to add support for more hardware. It's a difficult, time consuming process, but I think that in the long run it would benefit LL to improve hardware support.

As for Kris' problems with instability, that may well be because of driver bugs, but other developers seem to have found ways around them, so why not LL? Like I said, I've got nothing against them, but it seems like there's a lot of time being spent discussing features and politics, which seems strange when there are clearly some technical issues which still need to be worked out.

Xiuying, what model of laptop do you have?

Sorry, forgot to mention that earlier. It's a Compaq Presario 2135CA. The chip is an ATI Radeon IGP 320M.

Hardware issues aside...

LL has itself admitted that "some coding" in Second Life was not optimized at its inception.

Hey, I can understand this to an extent. This is an incredibly amazing bit of programming that probably caught the Lindens themselves off guard in popularity. I am aware of the concept of "catchup" when it comes to re-structuring a program that started small-- then went gonzas.

HOWEVER, that said, we're being charged through the nose for using this system. So time to get the code up to shape. I know this isn't going to happen overnight... but stop worrying about the "add this add that" nonsense and get the basic foundation up to snuff. Stop worrying about movie drivers and concentrate on LOGIN PROCEDURES. Forget the "port this obscure thing to that" additions and grant Landowners the tools they need to manage their properties.

We do realize the extreme complexity in the concept of this game. But we also realize there are other games out there that are working peachy fine no-problems. There is UNREAL, which allows users to design and edit their own worlds, with virtually no errors. There ARE other online, 3-d, realtime games that don't bog down to a standstill when 20 avatars enter the area. So bottom line: this is a business folks. Stop making excuses and get the job done.

I believe the 320 IGP is roughly analogous to a Radeon 7000. It doesn't support hardware texture and lighting, and it's only got a single rendering pipeline.

The best-case scenario with 7000-based systems seems to be that SL will run, but without any textures. (Apparently, as a result of the lack of hardware T+L.) Needless to say, I'm not sure that's acceptable.

I've heard this tool recommended on some enthusiast messageboards. It's designed to allow you to convert ATI's Catalyst drivers to work with Mobility chipsets. (http://www.driverheaven.net/patje/) It may not help you get into SL any better, but the performance will be quite a bit better than that of the reference drivers.

Thanks; I'll check out that tool. I can't get to ATI's site for some reason at the moment, so I still haven't been able to check out the specs on the 320M myself, but it definitely isn't a super-powerful chip. However, as I said before, other developers seem to have found workarounds, and that's basically what consumers have come to expect. I don't mean to tell LL how to run their business, but consumers don't care how you add support for their hardware, only that you do. Incidentally, if you don't support our hardware, we don't care why - we only care that you don't.

At this point, I don't really care if SL is pretty or what the framerate is - once I get my other computer fixed, I won't have to worry about it. I'd just like to be able to play the game for a bit. I've got three mid to high range computers in my house and only one is (would be, were it not broken) capable of running the game at all. (I got it working on my work computer, but it crashed every 5 minutes or so.)