Comments on: diary of a 2nd life newbie. part 1

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 22:19:24 +0000

Yeah, I agree that it sucks some computers – like for that instance mine, apparently with Radeon Mobility 7000 – won’t work with Second Life.

I only have a bit of hope that now that they went open source with SL, things might go better. I’m a uni student and at the moment can’t really afford a new computer, so I’d be happy with any basic support, even if I’d have to switch off 99% of special effects.

By: humdog

humdog — Sun, 27 Jun 2004 22:14:05 +0000

dear mr miller:

i would like to clarify for you that i am
not running an “old crappy” card or system. my
system is under a year old. just so you know.

if “just about every card is supported by SL”
why then is the list of supported cards on the SL
site so very brief? if “just about every card”
were supported by SL, wouldn’t it be easier just
to list the cards that are not supported?

as it is now i am going to have to print out
that list and take it with me to the hardware
store just to make sure that i don’t flush
several hundred dollars (for a card) or several
thousand dollars (for a system) down the toilet.
again.

this material is from the 2nd life site:

“Laptop graphics cards are often different from non-mobile graphics cards with similar names.

“Second Life supports the following laptop graphics cards:
Nvidia: GeForce 2 Go, Quadro 2 Go, GeForce 4 Go, Quadro 4 Go, GeForce FX Go, and Quadro FX Go
ATI: Mobility Radeon 9000, 9200, and 9600; Mobility FireGL 9000

“Unsupported laptop graphics cards:
ATI: Mobility Radeon 7000 and 7500

“The following is a partial list of popular laptops containing supported mobile graphics cards:
Dell: Inspiron 8600,8500,5150,600M; Latitude D800,D600; Precision M50, M60
IBM: ThinkPad T40 with ATI Mobility Radeon 9000
Toshiba: Satellite Pro with GeForce 4 Go chip
Gateway: 450XL
HP/Compaq: Pavilion zd7001us, Presario X1000
Fujitsu: Celsius Mobile H
Alienware: Area-51M
Winbook: J4 with ATI Mobile Radeon 9000

By: Urizenus

Urizenus — Sun, 27 Jun 2004 19:53:25 +0000

I have to say that I feel Ms Llewelyn’s pain here. It’s hard to run out and upgrade all your computers, so I have a supported graphics card on one, an unsupported card on this one, and a supported card with apparently the wrong driver on the third (and updating the driver hasn’t put an end to complaints about my driver). But the real pain comes when trying to get friends online. As Phil notes, people with up to snuff boxes are still a minority, and I feel bad about badgering people to upgrade.

Now of course in just a short bit of time we will all have boxes that meet the specs required for *today’s* game, but will that be enough for tomorrow’s game? Will we need yet another graphics card a year from now? You say that cutting edge games require good equip, but if this is a cutting edge game and wants to stay that way will it have to sit on the front end of the technology curve forever? That’s my concern.

By: JamesMiller

JamesMiller — Sun, 27 Jun 2004 19:17:59 +0000

Well, quite frankly, get used to it. Many new games can’t use integrated graphics card, or whatever card your system has. Just about every graphics card under the sun is supported by SL, save for a few really old, crappy ones. I predict, that within the next two years, no new games will be able to run on integrated graphics (like most PCs have), nor the older graphics cards that some PCs have today.

As for the lastname thing…most names don’t mean anything. Users of “There” may want to pick Thereian or Therian. Employees of Linden Lab, makers of Second Life, must use the lastname Linden. The lastname Tester is saved for employees of Linden Lab that are doing tests on the software. Other than that, they have no meaning. Pick whichever you want, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t put you in a family, it doesn’t put you in a tribe, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a name. They have names because they don’t want to see names like “Billyboy23204″ — they’d rather see “Billy Miller”.

Again, it does suck that your PC isn’t able to play SL. Unfortuntely, that’s just the way the world works. As new things come out, old things can’t be supported by the new things. If Second Life were able to work on your graphics card, Second Life would probably not be as ground breaking as it is.

Spring for the new graphics card. Not only will it make SL run, it’ll make SL look beatiful, as well as any other game you might decide to play.

(P.S. — I recommend nVidia. ATI hasn’t been very helpful when it comes to fixing ATI related problems w/SL.)