[extropy-chat] SECOND LIFE not working

[Randall Randall]

On Dec 10, 2006, at 1:51 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 09, 2006 at 05:38:38PM -0500, Robert Bradbury wrote:
>
>>    I must concur with David's points.  Because there are a group of
>>    people pushing SecondLife to the ExICh community without perhaps
>>    providing sufficient "due diligence".  I thought I would relate my
>
> Pushing is putting it way too strongly. My only point with SL is
> that's it's an *arrived* (Total Residents: 1916105, logged in last
> 60 days: 690800, Online Now: 14941) and *rapidly growing* (the one
> million mark was just 18th October 2006) medium, which is
> frequented by mostly young people, some of which are even aware of
> transhumanism and have been actively looking for transhumanist
> communities. Bugger technology, it's a communication and outreach
> thing.
>
>>    experiences.
>>    When Second Life was first mentioned here I believe it was only
>>    available for Windows.  So I waited (having finally  
>> transitioned from
>
> Nothing wrong with supporting Windows, it's what most people use.
> However, SL supports Windows, OS X and Linux (alpha):
> https://secondlife.com/corporate/sysreqs.php
>
>>    Windows to Linux on my desktop I'm not about to go back).  It  
>> became
>
> Technically, I've never been a major Windows user, but since Ubuntu  
> 6.06 LTS
> there's arguably a desktop distribution most people can live with  
> (there's
> still some minor I-need-32bit-Firefox-because-of-Java-and-Flash  
> beef, and printing
> support sucks as ever, but these warts I personally can live with).
>
>>    available in an "alpha" state sometime late this summer.  I  
>> downloaded
>>    it and it did not work (complained about not being able to open a
>
> The missing libuuid.so.1 and libuuid.so.1.2 have been well- 
> documented, and
> since the last build a couple of days ago (there seems to be a new  
> SL Linux
> build every second day, or so) not even that is necessary.
>
>>    window).  Hours of googling, reconfiguring X windows,  
>> rebuilding and
>
> If you're running accelerated drivers (the only option for Linux is  
> nVidia)
> there should be no reconfiguration required. SL runs fine in dual- 
> head mode,
> which is about the only way to run it (triple-head is arguably even  
> better,
> though I'm still lusting after that 30" Dell).
>
>>    rebooting Linux (several days spent over several months) later  
>> I did
>>    finally get it to bring up the main SL window.
>>    Conclusion:
>>    1) SL as distributed can only work under Linux for people who are
>>    either (a) lucky or (b) really know what they are doing and  
>> want to
>>    spend the time to make it work.
>
> If you run a mainstream distribution (Fedora, Ubuntu) you should be  
> reasonably
> safe.
>
>>    2) Linden Labs has little or no interest in active support for  
>> Linux
>>    users. [1].
>
> I disagree. De facto, SL is a proprietary platform, but if you look  
> at the
> walk and talk, Linden Labs seems to be rather open
> http://www.secretlair.com/index.php?/clickableculture/entry/ 
> second_life_to_go_open_source_eventually/
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000133
> etc.
>
> More importantly, nobody will give a damn whether in another decade SL
> still exists, or become an open standard, or something even better  
> has come
> along. Clearly VR has landed, at least in gamer circles, and given  
> presence
> of nongaming platforms in SL, perhaps a bit beyond that. Whatever the
> next platform might be, it will have core features which will be a lot
> like current SL, only better. So there's no point in not getting  
> used to
> such an environment, and build communities (which might or might not
> move elsewhere), particularly since membership is free (I decided to
> go with a year's worth of commercial membership, and 512 m^2 of  
> land, which
> is still tax-free).
>
>>    If you look at the documentation [2] you will see that it  
>> requires a
>>    Cable or DSL internet connection is only supposed to run on  
>> high end
>
> Of course you can't do this with modem, you no longer can do anything
> online much below 1 MBit/s downstream, and some 128 kBit/s upstream.
> Is that much of a handicap? Not really. When I look outside the  
> window,
> I see a gray box on the street corner, wherein optical GBit Ethernet
> terminates. Should I really want it, I could have 5/25 MBit or  
> 10/50 MBit
> connection, and similiar or better bandwidth is available to people  
> in Korea,
> Japan, Sweden, Iceland, parts of the U.S., etc.
>
>>    nVidia GeForce or ATI Radeon graphics cards.  So that excludes  
>> dialup
>
> That's just not true. I run 2560x1024 SL on dual-head setup on a  
> passively
> cooled AGP nVidia 7600 GS and a distinctly anaemic Athlon64, which  
> still runs
> great. According to https://secondlife.com/corporate/sysreqs.php  
> your gfx
> hardware requirements are nVidia GeForce 2, GeForce 4mx, or better
> ATI Radeon 8500, 9250, or better (Windows), nVidia GeForce 2,  
> GeForce 4mx, or better
> OR ATI Radeon 8500, 9250, or better (Mac) which is a joke in gamer
> circles. This is high-end, only of 3-4 years ago.
>
>>    users and users with any older hardware or "common" systems  
>> (from HP,
>>    DELL, IBM, etc. which do not have "fancy" 3D graphics  
>> capabilities).
>
> I would consider a current $600 card fancy. I would consider a  
> $1200 current
> card very fancy. Luckily, you can do great with a current $100 card  
> -- passively
> cooled current card, to be precise.
>
>>    This gives rise to people's comments that Second Life is an  
>> adventure
>>    only for "Uber Geeks from Mars" [3].
>>    However, if one understands graphics processing and CPU processing
>>    tradeoffs it is fairly clear that Second Life should be able to  
>> run
>>    reasonably well on Intel 810 and greater graphics chips without  
>> the
>>    need for a separate 3D tailored graphics card.  It runs on my HP
>
> Come on, Computer Processor: 800MHz Pentium III or Athlon, or better,
> Computer Memory: 256MB or better and nVidia GeForce 2, GeForce 4mx,  
> or better
> OR ATI Radeon 8500, 9250, or better is something you buy on the  
> flea market.
> "need for a separate 3D tailored graphics card" is not quite  
> correct, because
> you a) you can't buy a 2D-only graphics accelerator today b) any  
> onboard
> graphic of a modern system is already a massive overkill for SL,  
> and ditto
> the CPU (single-core 64 bit is some 350 EUR, and dual-core is entry  
> level with
> Dell & Co).
>
>>    machine under Linux with an I915 chip (under Linux) and on my  
>> cousin's
>>    Dell machine under windows with an I845 chip (both of these having
>>    mid-range Pentium 4 processors).  (So the Linden Labs system
>>    requirements documentation is completely misleading.)  However,  
>> for
>>    machines older than circa 2003 and most laptops one is probably  
>> going
>>    to have a difficult time using it.  [So the undercurrent behind  
>> the SL
>
> I very much doubt it. If you happen to have a doornail of a machine, a
> $100 AGP card will still make SL run like a fox.

I'll chime in here that SL runs slowly enough that movement was an  
exercise
in waiting for things to appear last I tried it, several months ago.   
Maybe
all that's changed now.  For reference, I have a 1.9Ghz G5 with 1.5GB  
Mac,
and a 3MB cable network connection.

After being quite unimpressed with SL's blink-blink-blink virtual  
world, I
was convinced to buy World of Warcraft and *totally* blown away by the
difference in smoothness and apparent solidity of the world.  This  
suggests
that it's entirely possible to do a virtual world right, but at least  
through
May or so of this year, they hadn't managed it (on Mac, at least).

Since I had already seen stuff about meetings in SL here by then, I,  
too,
assumed that those using it must have top-end gaming machines to get  
anything
more than 3 frames per second out of it.

--
Randall Randall <randall at randallsquared.com>
"You don't help someone by looking at their list of options and
  eliminating the one they chose!" -- David Henderson