vista rc2 and sl - i'm p****d off...

running rc2 on an amd 3200, radeon 9200 128mb card and still getting the error - ive searched all the forums but keep going round in circles

vista says im up to date driver wise, ati say that rc2 drivers are ok

is this going to be one of those situations where sl refers you to ati - ati refers you msoft - msoft refers you to sl etc etc etc until we all give up ?

Ati drivers for Vista dont have OpenGL, so no you wont be able to run it till they bother putting it in.

Clarification: They = ATi, not the Lindens.

I run Ati 9600. I dont know what error your refering to but my card does well maybe you need to upgrade? Not sure as I said I dont know what error message you are referring too.

you might try the latest xp driver. It should work but there's a possibility that it will make your machine unstable.

i had 2 choices, buy a new card & buy vista or forget about vista and go linux.....

no brainer really - i'm really hoping that i get a better experience with suse than i did with ubunto

Look for Catalyst 6.8 and install it (first set your Graphic card to "VGA Standard", you will run SL but you will lose aero.

G.

Well, you're asking for it yourself...

Solution 1: stop using visa...

/shrug

...or wait until Vista's released to the public and card vendors start publishing final drivers for it?

Note how ATi now have drivers ONLY for Vista RTM? They probably have OpenGL built in now, but since they won't work with RC2 there's no point in them. These drivers will only work with the final release version. Grrr

I've been waiting for Vista OpenGL support in ATi drivers since Beta2 and I'm still waiting. I'm never buying ATi again, despite always being an AMD fan, it's not enough anymore

All the vista problems will probably be assessed by the lindens with the Final version comes out.

It's a pity Second Life's graphics engine doesn't have an abstraction layer. DirectX or OpenGL would be a choice, and because so many PC/Windows drivers are primarily written with DirectX in mind, this situation with crappy companies like ATI wouldn't happen with every new Windows release. I've used ATI cards on and off since I was eighteen in 1996 and their OpenGL support has always been lacking; certainly never on par with NVidia for many, many years.

I can even recall driver hell when going from Win95 to 98, from 98 to ME (yeah crucify me now), and the non-existent support for some 3D acceleration features on Win2K back when that was first released. Edit: All because ATI hadn't released decent drivers in time (or at all).

Well Vista isn't out yet, so don't start bitching out ATi just yet.

No, just bitch about ATi's poor OpenGL support for XP instead. nVidia have much better support than ATi, or at least that's the case for Radeon/GeForce. ATi prefer to push their OpenGL cards for any OpenGL application. Finegrs crossed AMD will sort them out

With the final, release version of Vista and the drivers currently available on ATI's website, I am unable to run Second Life.

ATI still has some time to get it done before Vista is widely available.

You have the RTM version of Vista? How'd you do that?

There *are* people at Microsoft who play SL

ha ha, is that why Vista is delayed? months of time lost in SL?

You think games and Vista are havin probs now,wait....wait till you see games comin out that use Vista to such a point that to truly enjoy the game,not only will your vid card need an upgrade,but you'll new the new style of monitors that'll be coming out.....wait...wait....ol Bill and his billions aren't done with you yet.

Oh no, heaven forbid that we may ever need to upgrade our computers!

OK, I've now got the Vista RTM installed (legitimately I might add).

New problems:ATI have included a recent driver version with Vista, and it STILL doesn't have OpenGL support. Also, Vista seems to make it really hard (maybe impossible) to install an older driver if it already knows of a signed one that it trusts more. On RC2 I was able to install the old ATI driver and it would run SL pretty nicely, even though I got a Bluescreen every time I shut the PC down. That option seems to be closed off now.

According to the Vista documents, the OpenGL APIs are all there and working. But based on current experience it may be a long time (if ever) before the OpenGL support gets put in by the driver writers. Very few applications seem to need OpenGL any more, so I imagine the incentive to update the drivers is not so strong.

Both of my main SL-running machines are laptops, so changing video cards is not an option. The bigger one is still dual-boot so I can access SL from XP, but SL is rapidly becoming the ONLY application I have to use the dual for.

If SL remains tied to OpenGL, I fear the situation will only get worse, and all those potential customers who buy new PCs next year are going to be lost. Noone is going to choose a video card (if they have a choice) based on what SL requires.

So come on Lindens, get an abstraction layer in there and let us play on DirectX without being held to ransom by ATI &co. That would also allow for better hardware-based visual enhancement.

Nvidia's drivers for Vista already have OpenGL support. Considering id's engines are OpenGL based, and that it is still a valid API, I think you'll see ATI including it rather quickly. Though it isn't likely that a lot of people will choose a video card based on SL. Many will based on the games they want to play. And if it means that Ati cards won't work and Nvidia will, poeple will buy Nvidia.

Think about the backlash when gaming sites start testing in Vista and they note that ATi won't play *any* OpenGL game. There will be glaring holes in benchmarking results, and if it's one thing that games *HATE* is being told 'No you can't do that.'

I think we'll see ATi including OpenGL sooner than you think. Otherwise, vote with your wallet. Nvidia has OpenGL in their Vista drivers *now*.