Vista was released Nov 8, so what is LL's answer now?

Vista was relesed to the corporate world on Nov 8, is LL working on getting SL compatable with Vista? Not that it really matters because from what I hear games are gonna suck hard on Vista unless you strip every tthing down so it runs like XP... there is a shining reason to upgrade.

Really? That's quite interesting to me, because I hear quite the opposite from many friends and colleagues in the graphics and gaming industries.... Wonder why the disparity?

In any case, it's pretty certain that *SL* will suck on Vista J/K

Well, I am not intimate with the industry and I said they were rumors. I read about it while drifting through some MS boards. Their reason for saying this is overhead. From what has been said on this forum about SL and Vista, it seems to bare this out. I'm sure new games designed for DirectX 10 will be awsome but SL and just about every other game out there now isn't made for DX10 and any that have been in the developmental pipeline for the last couple of years aren't going to be either. Just as multiple processors offer the potential to allow for awsome games that take advantage of duel processor power, sadly there are very few that exist that can even run on duel CPU machines properly let alone blow people's sox off. That's after nearly 2 years after the duel CPU chips hit the street.

Kathmandu, Second Life already runs on Vista *if* your video card has Vista drivers that include OpenGL support. Second Life, like a few other games such as Doom 3, requires OpenGL in order to work.

NVidia's beta drivers for Vista *do* include OpenGL support. ATI's beta drivers *do not* include OpenGL support. You can see this if you look at the ATI beta driver release notes, where you will find this:


I personally have an ATI video card, so I'm not able to use Vista and run Second Life. I expect that ATI will release drivers for OpenGL shortly, but likely not until close to the general or public release date of Vista. I think that is still on track for January 30th, 2007, which would make me think that ATI would want to have their ICD (Installable Client Driver) for OpenGL on Vista sometime in late December.

Thank you, yes I know SL will run on Vista if you just happen to have the right combination of components and drivers, my point is LL has been giving the standard line that since Vista hasn't been released LL isn't working on making SL Vista compatable. Well, Vista isn't quite ready for wide distribution yet but it is no longer in beta since a version has been released to the corporate world now.

Are you sure you have a good grasp of the topic at hand? Let me try to explain what someone already explained.

LL doesn't need to do ANYTHING to make SL Windows Vista compatible. Because OpenGL is cross-platform 3D graphics, whereas DirectX is Windows only 3D graphics, it will work on ANY operating system that has drivers written for that graphics car.

Thus, yes I'm going to say it again, SL doesn't need any work done to it to be able to run on Windows Vista. If there had been windows application specific issues that needed to be addressed under Vista, then that's a different story...

NVidia does not provide vista beta drivers for their GO chipsets yet, so in my case I actually installed an XP version of the video driver on my laptop, and SL works fine, though now Aero doesn't work, nor do a few other graphics related vista things.... BUT, it works FINE, and actually has identical performance.

Both my desktop machines have ATI cards in them, and I have not tried to get it to work on either of these machines yet. Can't wait til they release the opengl supported drivers.

Also, the version of Vista that was released to the corp world is the same build that will be released to the retail public. So, VIsta IS QUITE READY for wide distribution, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's thousands of CDs and DVDs already printed and nearly boxed and ready to go to store shelves. There's a reason why MS has to get an OS out the door 2 months before public release...

I have a pretty good grasp of the topic I wrote I think. News flash: Second Life runs on Linux!!! With a Windows emulator you can enjoy a perfect SL experience on any Linux distro evah at blazing framerates! With the new SL Linux alpha you can get even better performance!

The point I was making was not that SL will or will not run on Vista.. I get the concept that some can run it. My point was that LL has repeatedly stated that since Vista was in beta, they had no reason to do anything to support it. That means their official stance has been they weren't going to even investigate whether SL would gain or lose performance or would even run at all until Vista was released. And just for your information, SL uses both OpenGL and DirectX. Yes, that's right, it uses DirectX too or did you think "requires latest DirectX driver" was there just to make life interesting? It has to be updated to 9.0c before SL will run and since Vista is DirectX 10 it begs to wonder if SL might have problems with it... LL doesn't know because according to their official line they aren't working on it. Will SL crash with Aeroglass? LL doesn't know either.

Here is a clue: if you have to use XP video drivers, major video card manufactures don't have OpenGL drivers yet and Vista has to run without all the things that make it.. well... Vista then SL isn't running on Vista, its running on Vista in XP compatibility mode which is not the same thing.

SL will not crash with Aeroglass, because Vista will disable Aeroglass when SL tries to initiate an OpenGL interface. SL requires an OpenGL version greater then that of what DirectX allows without disabling Aeroglass.

How do you expect LL to develop software for a driver that hasn't been released?

The fact that THIRD party software which LL has nothing to do with has not yet provided support has nothing to do with LL and is a silly argument.

The directX extensions deal mostly with input controls and since they work they work.

You would be better off at this point going and whining on nvidia's site for go drivers and ATI for any drivers with opengl included for vista.

why peoples bother working with a beta OS is beyon me, a beta software okay, but a beta system...?

So that we can find all the problems in it that YOU refuse to find. Plus, now I know the ins and outs of an OS you've never even seen before. When an employer looks for someone who is going to do development, they don't look for the guy that is afraid to try new software.... I've been developing software IN Vista for well over 2 months now. It's a great OS with lots of problems, just like XP was. Even in the released version there's a few bugs that I have already found. Without people like me who test the OS and actually report problems directly to Microsoft. This makes a better OS for everyone.

Where'd you get that info? The SL downloads page? Pretty common knowledge if you ask me.


Once again, it doesn't need to be tested with vista because it already runs in vista. The fact that the graphics drivers don't work, is not something MS and LL need to worry about. ATI and Nvidia have that task.

Also, Where did you get your information that SL requires DirectX? If it did, that would mean that the mac and linux clients would not work at all becuase directx is only available on one platform. Thus, they use Open GL. There's not a game in the world I've ever heard of that uses BOTH Open GL and DirectX. That's absurd. As a developer, you choose ONE or the other. And just a reminder, here's the SL Windows system requirements:

Internet Connection*: Cable or DSL
Operating System: Windows XP (Service Pack 2)
OR Windows 2000 (Service Pack 4)
Computer Processor: 800MHz Pentium III or Athlon, or better
Computer Memory: 256MB or better
Video/Graphics Card**:
nVidia GeForce 2, GeForce 4mx, or better
OR ATI Radeon 8500, 9250, or better
Internet Connection*: Cable or DSL
Computer Processor: 1.6GHz Pentium 4 or Athlon 2000+ or better
Computer Memory: 512MB or better
Video/Graphics Card**:
nVidia GeForce FX 5600, GeForce 6600, or better
OR ATI Radeon 9600, X600, or better

The whole requirements page doesn't even contain the word DirectX. Doesn't matter though... the graphics in the game are written using OpenGL.

DirectX versions are also backwards compatible, so games that require "directx 8 or higher" means, that it will run on directx 10. New versions of directx contain expanded capability over previos versions, not crippling capability



I suggest you do your research on "compatibility mode" in windows. SL with XP video drivers does not mean that the application itself is running in compatibility mode. It's running in native windows vista mode, utilizing a set of XP drivers which work fine except for the fact that the drivers do not support directx10, so anything in the OS that tries to use features available only in directx 10, causes a crash.

I thought the 'everyone tests for free and reports bugs' was the Open Source development model

And I don't think you can REALLY know the ins and outs of an OS without the source code. At least not the 'ins'.

No need for a Windows emulator, and the Linux SL client is remarkably well usable today!



Well, LL has said so so many things... LL said we will have Havok 2 real soon. This was 2 years ago

Anyone actually try it on RTM yet? I got it to run on rc1 with my nvidia card and xp drivers, but it ran too slow to actually play. I ended up getting rid of rc1 cause it was so buggy, but now I'm thinking about doing RTM.. Shrugs.

Jes

Using a nvidia card < 8800 it works pretty well. Same FPS as XP. I manually told the application icon to run with desktop compositing off and aero effects off otherwise I had some random crashes of SL :/ But when those compatibility options were turned on it worked fine.

And JUST running an OGL app did NOT rurn of the aero effects! This IS different from the betas I remember.

Thanks Farallon, I have been trying to get SL to run right on Vista all day. It would run fine for about five minutes then crash. Having turned off desktop compositing and aero effects, it now runs as good if not better than on xp. No probs whatsoever. I'm using a 7900GXT for what it's worth. This fix also helped keep EVE online from randomly crashing, which is odd cause I though that game was done on the DX API.

well i am a fierce partisan of openGL , wich , opposed to directX is cross platform and will not tie the developper's socks to windows. Wich Microsoft want to do by trying to push openGL out of the windows (literally)