So when can we expect THIS for SL??

Alpha sorting issues aren't the fault of OpenGL, DirectX based games don't have them because all current DirectX games have limited content, or have levels pre-compiled (which solves most sorting issues).

Are there any DirectX based games like SL which allow users to create their content with alpha-mapped images? If so I'm pretty sure they will have the same issues if you recreate problematic SL scenes in them.

I don't understand the large amount of DirectX content compared with OpenGL, but I'd bet it's mostly political factors, ie - Microsoft wants to keep gaming on Windows, because if you can start getting games on other platforms more easily then Windows would take a huge blow.

Hmmm... not sure if the Rotating Head demo is DX10 or OpenGL yet. I saw it a few months ago when Nvidia was showing demos of their new 8800 Ultra's abilities.

I'll have to dig around abit to find out. Still... if some of those heads in the still shots were OpenGL, they were pretty damn good.

OMG... you want SL to exploit your Expensive hi-End Video Card ?
OK, i cant blame you, its like 'I payed tons of Money for that, now give me the Games'.
You know, SL's 3D Engine is very poor if we talk about Shaders and Stuff.
I would be perfectly happy if SL looked somehow like Oblivion - yes, its not the latest in
realtime 3D, but still looking damm good.
But what about Compatibility ? Many SL Citzens still want to run it on a shitty Geforce MX
or even worse, Intel integrated Graphics Notebooks... or old Mac's.
You cant have 11 million Customers if SL really needs a 500$ Video Card. Or two.
If LL manages to make SL client scale that much, it would be a Miracle.
Oh, and dont forget, SL content is created by the Citizens - most of them have no Clue about 3D Modeling, Textures, Shaders and how to make it run fine on slow Machines.
So SL has be 'smarter' than other 3D Engines.

There is more to do than just Graphics for a perfect VR Feeling.
The biggest pain for me is the long response time.
It feels like this (just guessing):
I hit cursor up.
PC sends packet to Server. (ping 200-300ms).
Server has to think about it (takes ages).
Server sends packet to my PC.
Avatar starts walking forward.
...this is bad. You can play Chess like this, but no realtime stuff.

I'm still waiting for SL to take advantage of my 8800. Other than view distance, I can turn the graphics settings all the way up, or all the way down and not see any difference in frame rate. For me, SL seems much more limited by the CPU than the GPU.

And that is the problem. People forget the basic rule of Technology- Keep Up or be left behind!!

While it would be nice to include 2-5 yr old technology, it doesnt work. Its a quick death to anything. As much as I loved my old GeForce4 TI card, I had to give it up in order to "stay in the game" so to speak- not just SL, but anything.

If people think they should still get support for old hardware, try asking Sony or Nintendo why they dont release games for the PS1 or NES. Even the PS2 had alot of life left in it, but Sony decided to move on to new technology (I'd rather have a Wii, tho)

Its just how the industry works.

Funny thing is, I updated just the Video Card & saw a massive improvement in SL. That alone makes it worth it. Next March or April (Income Tax Returns) I'll replace my aging Socket 939 Motherboard & DDR RAM with an all new Motherboard, DDR2 RAM, and 3 Ghz Athlon AM2 CPU for $380 (now), maybe toss in a 1 TB hard drive just for back ups.

Its all about knowing where to shop, what to look for, etc. Heh- maybe sometime I'll make an "PC Upgrade Guide For Dummies" tutorials? The one I have is a bit out dated. Helped alot of folks learn stuff that way. If there's one thing I hate it's people thinking they gotta spend a fortune on their computer. Its easy, Its cheap. OR- its easy, its expensive. Just depends how far you wanna take it.

I think thats why I never got hired by GeekSquad- I liked to help people save $$$ as much as possible & make it easy on them. That, and I'm not a big fan of Vista yet.

Given that SL is the only 3D software I use, what other possible reason would I have to buy a new video card? I wouldn't need it for anything but SL, and I happen to like SL just the way it is, different cartoon style clouds don't make me want to spend 100€ just to get what I already have now, I'd rather spend it on tier and L$ instead where I would at least get something out of it.

If Sony or Nintendo ever knocked on the doors of "old hardware" owners telling them they need to buy their latest gadget just to continue playing the games they already had, please do provide a reference.

If I wanted the new SL eye candy I'd have to get a new card (buy a new game console in your analogy) sure, but if I'm happy with what I currently have there's no need for that.

Please resume your testosterone induced "mine's bigger" boasting among each other now .

Grandma??? (my parents once said the same thing about computers- Who would need one?)



Uh.... gee, I thought a PS1, PS2, & PS3, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo 64, etc, etc, was enough of a reference for you? Ever hear any kids excited about the latest Playstation1 game?? I sure dont see them advertising the original Nintendo system anymore. I dont see Microsoft boasting the greatness of Windows 3.1, I don't see Apple boasting about v1 of their OS. I dont see PC Hardware/software requiring a PCI video card.

*just in case you're too old too know- PS1 thru PS3 would be those thingys called Playstations all the kids are playing

Had to add: When griefers & their wacky antics start up, the Sims crash. I dont. Just wait till Havok4 is implemented!!! Over 1000+ Physics enabled objects in 1 Sim and no Sim Physics Crashes!!

Sorry, late twenties, a bit too young to be a grandma .

You said that shiny new video cards are needed for "not just SL, but anything" so I asked to clarify the "anything" considering that the only 3D proggie I use is SL

You missed my point .

If you buy game A that runs on console X, that same game will still run exactly the same 5 years later. Noone is going to make you buy shiny new console Y just to keep playing same old game A, looking exactly the same it did the first day you played it.

Yes, you do need shiny new console Y if you're intent on playing dazzling new game B, but if you're content with A you don't need anything new (until it breaks) so your analogy doesn't really work for SL.

To clarify my point: do add eye candy for anyone that wants it (and can use it, or doesn't mind upgrading for it), but don't do it at the cost of people who are perfectly happy with the way SL looks today and so far WindLight (with shaders turned *off*) seems to do that for some puters, but it severely degrades on others.

dunno man, all this has been done in realtime since the mid 90's, given lindenlabs track record, 2034?

oh and yea, nintendo sega and sony are all selling old games that only work on the shiny new systems, wii sells NES games that only work on the wii, playstation has the playstation store that only works on psp or ps3, ect ect ect

is that the same thing as you all were discussing, no, but its getting close

yea and thats why you only see them for winblows and xbox, directX is no option for anyone that wants to multiplatform, and its EXPENSIVE, which is why any and all programs that started off as homebrew projects (like SL) use ogl

Yes, but what people here are saying is they expect to make money forever selling and camping on a Playstation1 grade system. No new features = no new products and no new people. Plenty of room for more bots thought to make the Playstation run like a Atari eventually.

I think the main problem with people refusing to upgrade is that SL is moving forward faster than most people want to upgrade. You should never need to replace your entire hardware set more often than every 5 years, unless you want something fancy to run, so we'll drop that back to ever 2 to 3 years (how often do new consoles come out, huh? Ever 5 to 7?).

SL is forcing upgrades in user hardware every 6 to 12 months.

Hmm 6months, damn my 12 month old system can't run SL as good as it does then?
I don't know why my 3 yo games machine still runs it ok too?
Well if you brought a poverty pack office machine and expect it to run intensive graphics for the next 5 years then sorry, wrong boat mate.
Similar if you brought a cheap laptop, theres good reasons why a desktop isn't laptop sized.

How well did it run SL a year ago?



Does it run it as well as it did a year or 3 ago? Which machine do you prefer to use SL on?



No one here is complaining about using a 5 year old poverty pack office box. I sure as hell aint making THAT argument. I'm talking about using a 5 year old GAMING RIG.



What about my 3 year old laptop? It ran SL fine up until 9 months ago when an update that was supposed to improve performance dropped my FPS below 10 (from a bearable 15). Three years ago, or the point at which I actually joined SL, forget which came when, and don't really care, I never noticed lag of any kind (client, or any server) never had crash-to-desktop problems, rarely got ping-timeouts, had the occational crash-when-exiting-that-I-didn't-care-about. A couple odd problems here and there, nothing major.

Nowadays I check the forums before downloading the new versions to see what to expect, and if it's worse than what I have, I don't get the new version.

Hell, I haven't logged in in about 2 to 4 months (with the exception of having to update my SLex Magic Box). It's been too laggy, too crash, too buggy to deal with. It simply isn't worth my time and effort.
For God's sake I play a game (Dwarf Fortress--thing The Sims with only you're building a fortress with anywhere from 7 to 200 dwarves) still in ALPHA (version 0.29.169.33c) that has fewer bugs than SL. Has more features too, I'm sure (heck, Toady even implemented realistic water, magma, and temperature flows). OK, so there are slight physics problem in that you can use a water pump to pump enough water to turn a water wheel that powers the pump and still have power left over to do other things, but....you know....hell, it might even have been intentional (Toady never gives out details, he just supports the wiki devoted to figuring things out--no one is sure how combat works yet either).
BTY, Tarn "Toady One" Adams used to be a Math professor at MIT, but quit his job because donations on his FREE GAME were making him enough money that he could make it his full time job.
You don't see normal users donating money to LL do you?
No, in fact, it seems like the quality of the product is going down, not up, and users are CANCELING paid memberships to go back to free and not waste the money.

Pretty much better since SL has been improved a lot since then.


The3 old machine still runs it but being only a 2.6 with 1Gb and 7600 it sux compared to the dual core 2.2 with 4Gb and 8800GTS, still runs WoW and CoH, but not very well on CoH.


My 3yo gaming machine has been retired to backup for good reason, my still working AFAIK 5yo gaming machine is in mothballs in the cupboard 950 512Mb, not game to try run SL on it. I threw out the previous gaming machine when I moved.


It's only a laptop, it's time to retire it to typing letters, my 2yo work laptop won't run SL. my 5yo work laptop, well barely boots up.


Yes well when they do fix the bugs you will never know,because someone will always be complaining about the new viewers, so you'll never risk downloading it, and seeing the 2004-2005 "glory days" viewers aren't likely to make a comeback, might as well give up now. If you haven't been inworld in 4 months, you aren't really a resident in my view, so you're obviously not interested in admiring/buying other peoples products and builds. I suspect there are a few people who only come inworld if their campers stop making money. I suspect it's not the viewer but perhaps the fact we have 50,000 people and bots and 15,000 sims online now instead of 500 people and 500 sims.

Well more people expect to make money that spend money...............
One day the product might reach 21st century graphics /physics standards too.

I used to get 20 to 30 fps a year or maybe more ago. Now on the current main viewer I'm lucky to top 10fps. Thankfully the firstlook viewer is putting that to rights, but in order to do so they've had to add/change performance enhancing features, which makes me wonder where in the heck the performance went in the first place.

And I've ADDED to my 3 year old comp a good 2gb RAM in the past year.


But would you expect a game that ran on the 3 year old gaming machine 3 years ago to still work and play correctly? Same with the 5 year old one?


Laptops are not exactly crippled machines, the graphics cards you can get in them are fairly competitive. You should still be able to play games quite happily, well, with the power plugged in. Laptop battery life is god awful now.


The most stupid thing is that in my first year/year and half the only graphical update that was added were flexi-prims, and yet client performance was significantly worse than when I joined. Heck, when I joined the old "Local Lighting" (not to be confused with the current one) worked great, I had no performance issues at all. And yet for some reason performance from them got worse and worse with several updates until LL eventually decided they had to be removed and replaced with hardware lighting (what we have today).
There was nothing wrong with local lighting, some change(s) made it worse and worse to the point of becoming unusable. But they never got fixed, instead they get replaced.

I don't expect new graphical features to come without a price, but what I don't expect is for new graphical features to be forced upon me. There are loads of people who want shadows, and I'm sure there are plenty with hardware that can enjoy it, but many people don't mind the lack of shadows, or would rather stay on their current machine without shadows.
There is also a wealth of untapped performance on machines running SL; multiple cores and processors barely make a difference due to SL's inefficient use of threads. Proper threading would be a fantastic update, it would give us all greater performance, without any cost. Well, the odd bug that would need squashed perhaps. Higher end machines could then run the full graphical options with much less cost, while lower end machines could just plain run better, or even start turning on some of the nicer effects.

Latest generation laptops are better but still yet to see one that beats a similar price bracket desktop. Their primary design is business on the move still, not gaming. They are glorified typewriters, cramped keyboards, limited expansions, sound and graphics only average, if they weren't portable we would shoot them.
Would I expect a 3yo machine to keep playing a 3yo game fine? They do but I don't plan on playing Doom1 & Warcraft 2 forever. I'm sorry but I'm not interested in playing SL version 1.0.0 either.

Oh, they're out there. And as expensive, if not more than the cost of a desktop system. They're also heavy, bulky, hot running beasts.

But there are many people who are interested in playing SL without many graphics options because it works well enough. They'd be happier with fixed bugs and more performance, no shaders or fancy lighting are needed.

The thing you need to understand is that SL is NOT a game, it is a platform. It makes it incredibly hard to classify, but the key criteria should be (mostly in order); stability, platform independence and performance.
Graphics are nice, and for most people they seem to be a requirement for them to even try a "game"*. But graphics for SL should never be an overbearing priority, we have sufficient tools for builders to be inventive and produce stunning graphics already with a little ingenuity. Graphics are only really any good as a hook for getting new players in.

*You know the type; "OMG Crysis looks so kewl! The watar ripplez and everyfing!", and yet games like Duke Nukem 3D I can keep going back to and still enjoy. The graphics may not be the greatest anymore, yet the gameplay still kicks ass, and the design is fantastic. Myth: The Fallen Lords is still my favourite strategy game of all time. It may not have the graphics that Age of Empires 3 has, but it has fantastic gameplay. Meanwhile AOE3 is nothing but pretty graphics, I got bored just playing the demo!

It is a game within a platform so therefore can be played and called a game.
Perhaps we could remove all but the most basic script functions to to improve performance, get rid of flexi's, light emiting prims, all day lighting options, music steaming. etc, where do we stop in the name of performance? We could remove everything but cube shapes and only have colors instead of textures and have the least laggiest 3D lego world around to play in or if you want to look at it from a business point of view sell 3D lego for people not to play with.
Tried logging into active worlds, theres something that sacrifice3s performance for graphics, enticing isn't it? SL could be just like that, 20th century graphics...............
Would you really enjoy using version 1.0?
You could always run the LibSL viewer if you really want performance without the fancy stuff.

No it's not. Sure, the platform can be used to produce games if content creators so wish it, but SL itself is not a game, nor is it specifically a game creation platform.


I'm not suggesting anywhere that we remove features. The point is that new features can be made optional, they don't need to be enabled by default. In this way people who don't care about them should still be able to play with a reasonable frame-rate, as the only performance hit they take is an if statement checking if a feature is enabled. But new features likewise aren't necessary to what the platform does.

But if we start forcing in new features that cause requirements to ramp up then you take away people's ability to play SL without purchasing a new computer. For what? For fancy new graphics that don't necessarily improve the experience for some people?
We're talking here about people who would need to pay maybe $900 for a half-ways decent computer, or $100+ for new graphics card, extra RAM etc. etc. For a game they could play just fine before? It soon puts people off, because a free game that works fine one day shouldn't suddenly become a game that requires to pay hundreds of dollars to continue playing.

There are a whole load of ways to improve performance without sacrificing what we have now.

But if this is true, then why do you have:

"Computer: Dual 2.5ghz PowerMac G5, 4gb DDR RAM, 2 x 160gb Hard Drive (Striped), NVidia 6800 Ultra 256mb, 2mbps broadband modem"

SHouldn't an Apple IIC suffice? Why broadband? Shouldn't Dial-Up be good enough for you?

The point is, technology is about moving forward, not back nor staying still. That is the nature of the beast. It does get expensive, but you gotta pay if you wanna play. Just how it goes. I replace parts every year if possible, not 'bleeding edge' but as close as I can afford to.

what, no realtime raytracing?

It works with opengl, but sadly it needs a 16 ghz GPU.

Good feature of internet is that every computer can access it. If SL wants to be 3D-internet, then it should not require latest graphics cards etc..

That's a valid point I think I can still plug in my last machine, with WinMe and it's on board graphics card and 64MB of RAM and at least get online and do a lot of the things I do now, albeit slower and maybe able to use some fearures of certain sites. Stands to reason that SL should of course advance, but should keep the range of functionality as wide as possible. Or is it intended to be soley for the Technical Elite?