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.
"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.
It shouldn't have to move prohibitively forward. My machine used to run SL wonderfully, it was great. But it has been performing worse and worse with each update until recently when we got the firstlook viewer that I got close to being able to play SL like I used to. Thing is; the only graphical feature I have enabled that I did not have when I joined is flexible prims. Alone they cannot account for the huge loss of performance I suffered. In fact, when 1.10 came out (which introduced flexi-prims) I could get 20-50 fps, even with the current first-look I get maybe 20-30fps.
Dial-up was never any good for SL.
Obviously there has to be some minimum, but there is absolutely zero reason we need to increase that, not at the same rate that technology is progressing. A machine that runs SL playably now should still run SL playably in a few years. I mean, going back to the case with my machine, when I started playing SL my machine was only a year old and still a pretty heavy-weight piece of equipment for the time, as the graphics card was only just becoming about standard for mid to high end gaming rigs. Two years later and on the current main-viewer doing anything is a pain, and I'm a builder/scripter! Things take twice as long to do if not longer due to poor packet-loss performance and just general viewer performance issues.
Greater performance is a good thing for everyone, better graphics are only a good thing for people who don't fully understand what SL is about.
