Why?

Why do you keep changing and changing? It seems to me that with every update there are more and more problems. I dread every time I read that there is a new version of Second Life for me to download. The issues seem to get more and more annoying. But I guess what is the most annoying is the message that I get that now my video card is not compatible and Second Life does not support my video card. Do you mean to tell me that you expect me to go out and buy a new fancy expensive computer just to play your game? Why not make it compatible with more video cards so that more people can be a part of your game rather than excluding so many??

For the same reason Microsoft & Apple and all these other companies expects you to upgrade to the latest & greatest.... Progress.

Whether good or bad, anything, and I mean "anything" related to computers & technology means "expect to be out-dated eventually".

Just like anything else, things change. I miss my old gas guzzling cars of the 70s, I miss not having ATMs, I miss Ma Bell, I miss pay phones, I miss black & white TV, I miss running a 486DX-2 with a whopping 4 MB of RAM (cost me a whole $500 at the the time to go to 16 MB), I miss FILM cameras!!! I miss the "internet" being nothing but still images of badly coded web pages. I miss BBS's. I miss the days of owning a computer meaning something.

But time & technology moves on. It's all a game of "keep up".

I really really REALLY for real miss film cameras.

I learned what all the dials and do-dads on a fully manual camera do and oh god *drool* I fell in love with my dad's Olympus OM-1 single-lense reflex camera (single lense, as in when you look in the viewfinder you're looking out through the same lense that the film gets exposed to). Then, due to battery incompatibilities for the light meter, I burned it out and was unable to get it repaired.

I can't stand the limitations on "digital" cameras, even ones that have digital controls, but use 35mm film. The aperature doesn't open up wide enough. I simply CAN NOT set the shutter speed fast enough to hand-take a photo (i.e. a shutter speed 1/n where n is greater than your heart rate, or roughly 60) and have the picture come out in any semblance of vieability.

Because the god damned camera goes "aperature? Yeah, I got one of those, it opens up to f/2.4, maybe f/2.2"

"2.4?!? WTF? Why can't I get an aperature of less than that? Where are my 2.0, 1.8, 1.6, 1.4, 1, 0.8?"

Image showing the difference:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Aperture_diagram.svg/350px-Aperture_diagram.svg.png
A whole number has twice the area of the next larger whole number. Larger the hole, the more light you can let in and the faster a shutter speed you can use (but the shorter the focal distance--who cares if you're taking photos of someone rock climbing, which incidentally is the last thing I used a digital camera to take pictures of).

/Fixed

Heh! I still have my trusty ol' Pentax 35mm.

The funny thing about Digital- people are being led to believe that their inkjet prints will last as long as regular photos.

I'll believe Digital is just as good when I see an Inkjet print thats over 100 yrs old with no special care taken.

* Got my grandfathers old 1950s 8mm Video Camera too! 3 lenses that you rotate. Hand Wound too, I think?

Actually most prints from the newer inkjet printers are supposed to last beyond a century.

http://www.wilhelm-research.com/index.html

I still have my dad's old FTb with a 1.8f lens. (^_^)

And, digital pictures can last forever, it's just the prints that fade. That's why I keep all my raws burned on to DVD ROMs and locked away. (^_^)y

For the rest of the eAmish. Really... You're using modern technology. There is no line that says "stop here, it's perfect". If we're not advancing in technology, what are we doing with what we've learned so far? (o.o)

That’s another issue. The medium’s technology keeps changing too. From floppy disks and VHS, to CDs, DVDs and now Blu-ray and HD-DVD. In another few years it might be difficult to find the hardware to copy or view those DVDs you now have locked away.
/giggles at the stack of QIC tapes stacked in the corner of my office file cabinet

... Which is why I early adopted my PS3 and am constantly checking Newegg for BD-R burners to go under $250. (^_^)

BTW, 2001 A Space Odyssey is amazing in its fully restored BluRay edition. (^_^)y

Hello Belle, welcome to the forums. To address your question about the video card:

You MIGHT be having a driver or video card version problem as the error says, it is not impossible. However, I think it is more likely that you don't. We see a lot of folks complaining about getting this error when their drivers are up to date.

In fact, I wish LL would remove this error message. It can be triggered by two things that have nothing to do with whether your card will work with SL:

1. If you update your graphics driver but do not first uninstall the old one, you may get this message due to a mismatch in some registry item that was not cleaned out by the new install. Uninstall the driver, clean your registry, and re-upgrade your drivers.

2. If an OpenGL configuration parameter has been set to a value that SL does not support (bit buffer depth, etc.), you will sometimes get this message. WIth most cards, the default values should work OK.

Good luck!

Edit: p.s. if you want more help, try posting your video card model number and the driver version you are using.
.
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I hope so!

There's something SO facinating about finding a picture of your relatives taken using the Tin Type method.

I can answer your query 'Do you mean to tell me that you expect me..."

YES. THIS IS A GAME NOT WORD PROCESSING.

Games have always needed better computer than 'office stuff'. Always. Even in the days of pong it would be true. Why? Because they do a lot more. So if you're trying to play SL with a computer from years ago, let me tell you this. These days, computers of any age 3 years and over that was not VERY expensive at the time is now considered a low-grade PC. Which means not meant for current gaming standards.

It's how technology advances, very quickly compared to other things (Like cars where a 1979 will still run fine sometimes).

Alright. Let me rephrase. They don't expect you to upgrade JUST for SL. It's a game, it's your choice. But they do expect you to upgrade if you see the benefits. Because this is a game, which is constantly becoming more resource intensive, because everyone wants it to look awesome. That's right even you would love it to look awesome if it didn't cost you more to do it. You can admit it it's OK.

Now then. A 'new fancy expensive computer' is not needed. You could play SL on a computer that costs roughly $600 at the store I work at. The cheapest we have is $375, but that won't run SL.

$600 is cheap for a PC. I built mine myself which means it was about 75% or less of the total price for retail, and it cost me $1100. That's still not expensive for computers. Computers these days range from around $400 for 'office stuff' only to about $8000 (Talking about available to buy) for those super-media centers that will be able to play games for the next 8 years or so.

Yes. $8000. For a computer.


I'm sorry to kind of rant a bit here, but I'm tired of this. No, LL does not expect you to buy a new computer to be able to play SL. But you know what? You're not going to play SL without a certain level of computer. They really don't care if you play. So it's all up to you.

I recently finished converting a dos program over to windows. As with any legacy
program, I could not simply write a new program, I had to write things a little at a time with some hacks to make it work. For example my windows program is still using a driver to open the I/O permission map so that the program can access the hardware directly.

SL is like this in some ways.

Here are some of the things LL is dealing with.

1. TCP over UDP without complete implementation. This was done since windows did not support QOS(quality of service) packets at the time.

2. A Cache mindset that said that everyone has big pipes.
The size of the objects and textures has grown to the point where the entire cache system has to be redone using "update counters" or "last changed times"

3. MicySoft wanting to make the OS use Direct3D in Vista. This will work itself out eventually, but will lead to driver problems in the short term.

4. A single MySql Database holding the entire collection of assets!
With users continuing to add to it.
Separating assets by type would require that Guids(keys) be grouped I.E. The first byte would indicate the type. or it would require that the sim and the client know what they are looking for when they ask for a item by key.

I wish I'd owned a decent film camera of my own. I never learned how to use one until I was the last class to take Photography with real film. Now if I want one, I have to go professional and pay hundreds (though, in compairison, an OM-1 wasn't cheap either, but it was more general use than professional).

But then, I never really took that many pictures, I just wish I still had that amount of flexibility every single time I do snap a pic with a digital camera.

Thanks to all the replys. Nice to know that someone listens. My computer is less than 3 years old. I am not about to buy a new one yet. My graphics card is Intel. Not the best I know but the point is that when I joined SL a year ago I really enjoyed creating my avatar and fixing her up and going places in SL. Now everything looks washed out. I dont buy clothes or skin etc because everything looks so much worse. Has my computer gotten worse? All I know is that I dont enjoy even the simple things about SL that brought me to it and for what it is worth I feel like SL is catering to a select few who can afford or rather wish to afford more computer than I can. And all I know is that it keeps getting worse instead of better. If anybody has any suggestions I would appreciate them. SL is fun but not so much that I want to buy a new computer every time they upgrade. I just feel a bit discriminated against thats all. Make SL compatible with my grapics card again.

That might be your problem. Intel graphics cards are integrated and made of suck.

This product is not aimed at, nor is it attracting, the gaming market. One big sector of growth for Second Life is the education market and the education market does not and will not keep their computers up to speed with the gaming market, indeed they will operate more along the word processing market.

This product is aimed at, believe it or not, those who can play games. Hence the better graphics. Yes, it's also aimed at educational uses, but obviously only ones that can probably handle SL. You're more likely to find a college with at least up-to-date computers having an SL campus than a high school with 5 year old computers (Thass my high school...icch)

If it wasn't aimed at those who cold play games, they would not spend so much time making it better, and it wouldn't look nearly as good as it does.

I made a mistake in my earlier post, in stating SL is a game. SL is a game-like client for person to person communication on as many levels as it allows. It just happens to be aimed at those at least CAPABLE of playing games.

And any educational use that uses SL is not going to be pure word processing kind of stuff. Think about it. Why the hell would they spend money on something they can't even use properly, period?

The people behind Worlds.com and Cybertown agree! This is why neither of those virtual worlds has evolved in 5 years:
http://worlds.com
http://cybertown.com

Plenty could use it just fine until the recent client updates. Companies are using Second Life for conferencing and training, virtual world scenarios to replicate RL situations, roleplaying, companies generally don't buy state of the art gaming machines for such purposes.

I know damn well that education doesn't buy machines with gaming capabilities in mind, education institutions will not upgrade their machines year on year to be able to use Second Life, they'll find a different solution. Two to three year old machines make up most of the education sector machines and they generally don't go for fancy graphics cards.

/me sighs

The point of the matter is that Second Life is not word processing, and is not meant to be handled by a machine dedicated to such things. Second Life is a game. I don't care who it's marketed to. I don't care how you personally see it, at the base of it all, SL is a game. Uses game engine(s), interacts like a game, looks like a game. It IS a game. Whether or not it is marketed as such doesn't change what it is. Labelling it differently doesn't change it either.

Virtual world, 3d chat, virtual conferencing, 3d Interface For Emotional Connection, 3d Business Interface, whatever you want to call it, it all boils down to being a game, really.

And people like games to evolve. This game is evolving, and believe it or not it's actually still behind the times technology-wise. Just because you can't play this game doesn't mean they're doing something wrong.

Though I do find it slightly odd they don't keep the old non-WL viewer around, it's understandable. Who wants to develop and release two separate lines of viewers to keep things stable?

Digital photos won't loose quality over thousands of years, just hit print button every 5 years if you like, it depends more on the printer & paper than the camera, just as a normal photo's life has nothing to do with the camera and negative
As a crappy average joe camra user, 35mm gave me the sh*ts, never had film when I wanted it, I would have to wait till a film finished to get photo's then pay for them to take a day to be devoloped to see how bad my photo's were. If my photo is a little bad photoshop can save it from the bin.
It's like not needing a watch anymore because I carry a pocket computer/phone
Yes technology advances, if SL stayed as it was in 2004 we would be dead in the water, if anything we are still miles behind, and more problems I think are caused by the management of user content I suspect in the servers, as there's just so many red brick wall textures in there.
As someone said there are virtual worlds elsewhere stuck in the past that won't upgrade, if you want to stay in the 20th century.
SL is moving 3D graphics rendering, not a task that 50% of the computer market are designed to do, a on board graphics card isn't going to cut it, a seperate graphics card can at least be upgraded seperately.

1. Develop your own film.
You also forget- in 100 years who's gonna read that digital data? Will DVD's exist? I remember floppy discs the size of a Record Album but I dont know anyone who has a drive to read them.

2. Must be nice to have a job where you can carry a cell phone. I know some where you arent allowed to have one for "security" reasons, etc. I've been wearing the same watch for....5 yrs+. Still going. Never leaves my wrist. Never needs recharged.

Hmm, everyone have their own darkroom? More money spent .....
Doesn't matter if photos are on DVD or USB or a server, easy to transfer them about, the paper photo, isn't gonig to last forever, many photo's made in the last 20 years may be on crap paper anyway, plenty in my old album that are only 30yo are deteriorating.
90% of the population can carry a cellphone to work, if you can't so what, it stays in the car or locker till the end of the shift. How many people survived previously without 24/7 availability to the beck & call of spouses, kids, etc is beyond me
Some people need to be cut off from support at times, my brother has a spouse who rings him evey hour about something trivial or to say "I need a lift", "come home now the baby is throwing up again", it's damn irritating to others.

I have and have seen photos from the Civil War that are still in pretty good shape. Only time will tell what becomes of "digital". I'll bet money our grandkids grandkids will never see a pic of people from today.

I keep my cell phone off. I got along without one before. Only comes in handy for emergencies. Friends calling at all hours of the day/night doesnt constitute an emergency. One of them said "But what if I was in a wreck and I was calling you for help?" My answer: You'd be dead for being too stupid to call 911 first.

Nothing more annoying than being in church (when I went) or a theater or meeting when someones phone goes off nice & LOUD with an annoying ringtone. Which is why I'm looking into either buying or building a cell phone jammer if I can.