Old Viewer

I've been reading that the "old viewer" is less buggy than the one from the download last week. I know I've been having annoying visual problems this past week, but I'm not attentive enough to compare what has changed since that download.

Is going back to the old viewer simply a matter of re-installing the software I downloaded a month ago when I joined SL?

I have read that things take longer to rez under the new viewer- is the new viewer also responsible for all the animation jitter I have been getting? Animations seem to run smooth for the first hour I'm in, then suddenly they get jittery. (I've been assuming a memory management problem somewhere.)

Uninstall the new one and reinstall the old one. Thats's a bout it.

The only problem with returning to the old viewer is that you are on borrowed time and are only postponing having to deal with the new viewer issues. According to the Linden blog, some upcoming server updates are going to make the new viewer use mandatory because (insert unintelligible technical description here).

So, you can roll back and enjoy your window of grace, or research ways to make the new viewer work. Not much of a choice, but that's the reality.

First line of attack: update your graphics drivers.

I'll stick with the old one until the last moment. Then I'll probably get a new video card..updating the drivers threw my system into choas last time I did it.

So when our little grace period is over and we must all download and install the new viewer (with all it's known issues.......or, at least, should be known issues) we must all go out to our local computer shop and get a new graphics card?

That sounds like upping the minimum system requirements to me.......maybe LL should tell us about that a few weeks or so ahead of time? I'm working on my second graphics card since joining just a little more than a year ago.........and I might be looking at my third within 6 months.

I wonder if LL has stock in nVidia? LOL

Honestly, I think they may be pushing the envelope a little too hard on this point. My Inspiron 9400, which I just bought last year, has an Intel graphics chipset. It's a perfectly decent machine, and it would be a shame if I couldn't use SL on it at all. The display adapters they've noted as being supported are relatively high end. As of the release of 1.14, SL is virtually unusable on the laptop.. this may be partly due to Dell's sluggishness in certifying Intel's drivers for Intel's own hardware, so I'm still on an older version of OpenGL.. which I think has aLOT to do with my problems there. Aside from terrible rendering of textures (ground textures never fully render) I can count on the OS throwing stop errors after about 20 minutes of online time. The stop errors are related directly to video drivers, so I'm pretty sure SL is throwing calls down that way that the drivers are incapable of handling.. Guess I just wait it out for an update to OpenGL...

End Ramble. As you were.

the GUI will be "frozen" while the rendering function is busy. u can wait until the final stable driver release.

Hmmmm..... I'm running 1.14 on my laptop, with a (something ATI) X1400 graphics card in it.

well there is a list of hardware/software requirement, if you used to be able to run sl on unsupported hardware/software, lucky for you but there was no guaranty that it would last.

I am using 1.13.3(2), no any problem find at the moment..

No one is saying that...

It has to be said that a continously evolving programme like the SL platform cannot stagnate its minimum system requirements, which were posted some 2-3 years ago. I always use the 'recommended' standards as being the real minimum for any programme I want to invest in for the foreseeable future. I would like some lawyer to take up the challange of these PC companies that use the word 'Futureproof' in there advertising, there is not such thing in life, never mind computing technology.

A "perfectly decent" computer for normal business and daily use is NOT the equivalent of a decent gaming computer. The demands are different for games, and SL is among the most demanding for certain aspects of the graphic display.

I have a much better understanding of those distinctions after having built my own computer. The learning curve was painful, but it did make clear that there are any number of differences between a computer that runs Excel and even Photoshop, versus one that can handle the SL graphics display. In order to run SL well, I made different choices for the processor, motherboard and grahics card than I would have for even a very powerful data crunching system.

Totally agree, thats why the PC has been so successful as you can decide yourself which components are important to you for its intended usage, but not limited. The very open architecture nature of the PC has been singluarily responsible for its success.

My drivers were up to date last week. I wonder if I have to search for driver updates on a weekly basis?

My problems with SL are not related to lack of hardware to run it. I successfully run far more intensive, graphics-heavy, programs than SL on my computer. SL is just glitchy.

They've experienced a lot of growth over the past few months, so I'm giving them a chance to catch up with their technology. In the meantime, if the old viewer runs smoother, I'll use it for as long as I'm allowed.

Though I'll wait until after today's scheduled downtime. Maybe whatever they are doing will include fixes to problems.

I agree. It doesn't take long before people notice this either.

I recommend everyone who does not agree, to at least try some other virtual worlds and games. Then come back to SL and compare them on their stability. SL might have better content then any other metaverse, but there are games out there with far better graphics and no bugs at all. Don't anyone blame it on the fact that SL streams everything, because so do many other virtual worlds. Even some games stream content to you.

Regarding minimum spec, the spec hasn't actually changed. Over the last 12 months LL have been constantly improving the graphics engine and in doing so are using the graphics hardware more than the CPU. The first patch to see this was the flexi-prim patch and this latest one is more of the same.

It's the way SL has to go and should go because relying on CPU too much means slow frame rates and other issues which we are only too familiar with.

SL requires gaming hardware, pretty obvious really and intel and other integrated chipsets are VERY low spec. The minimum specs are certainly not high end though.

For example a £40 7300 Nvidia, second hand X800 ATI card or second a 6600 Nvidia card to name a few low end cards will run SL very well.

None of those games deal with the sheer volume of new, user-created content. They provide all the graphic references either through download or disk, and you carry the burden of that load on your own computer.

That's simply not possible with SL because the landscape of objects is constantly changing. The exchange of graphic information is of another maginitude from even the most visually stunning traditional game.

SL is breaking new ground in ways that many people simply don't comprehend. It's why the grid is so unstable. Finding ways to handle this data load efficiently and with the ability to scale is a problem that hasn't been solved by anyone.

The other difference is that Second Life uses OpenGL. Most games for Windows use Microsoft's DirectX API not OpenGL, and the drivers for some video cards (notable example: Intel's integrated graphics) support DirectX much better than OpenGL. NVidia has always offered excellent OpenGL drivers. OpenGL support from ATI was problematic at one time but has improved considerably in the recent past, probably in part because their FireGL workstation graphics cards (which always had good OpenGL drivers) and Radeon mainstream cards use the same GPUs now. ATI was slow to release OpenGL-capable drivers for Vista, so they're still not perfect.

Alas, some laptop manufacturers make things more difficult than they should be; they are slow to release system-specific versions of their drivers, or sometimes stop updating the drivers for older laptops altogether. Sometimes it's possible to run a generic driver from the graphics chip manufacturer instead of one from the system manufacturer. ATI users can also try the Omega drivers, which (among other changes) disable most of the system compatibility checks and thus allow you to run (modified) generic drivers on systems that otherwise would not support them.

The 1.14.0 update also makes much more extensive use of OpenGL 2.0 features than previous versions of Second Life. (It's not the first time that SL was upgraded to make more use of video card features; the addition of local lighting in 1.10 was another, and it also broke some people's systems.) It really doesn't work well with drivers that only support earlier versions of OpenGL.

You CAN turn off the use of OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects; there is a checkbox in Edit/Preferences/Advanced Graphics. That helps on some systems. It may also make the client faster on some low-end graphics hardware, even if the software is stable with VBO enabled. VBO is a BIG winner on modern non-integrated graphics hardware, however; it's probably the single biggest contributor to the improved frame rate in 1.14.

I recognize that Second Life is doing something more ambitious than other online games.

It's still glitchy.

It may be glitchy because it's just hard to get right. But it's still glitchy.

And I will evaluate from time to time how long I want to continue paying to be part of an ongoing beta test.