No 'Second Life' for Microsoft's Vista

Although Microsoft recently threw a splashy launch party for Windows Vista in Second Life, those running the operating system may have had trouble enjoying the festivities.

According to a recent post on Second Life's official blog, some people running Vista can't reliably connect to the virtual world, where millions of people hang out as avatars, or 3D versions of themselves. Vista launched for consumers January 30 with fanfare that included a virtual concert in Second Life.

Second Life engineers are working to hammer out the technical problems, said publisher Linden Lab. Ensuring that Vista users can access Second Life could prove important to Linden Lab, which makes money selling virtual clothing, real estate and other goods.

"The changes that are currently in the First Look Viewer (a test version of the Second Life viewer) are an important precursor to any reasonable attempt for us to debug problems with running Second Life under Windows Vista," according to the Second Life blog posted February 9.

"These changes are just about ready for an official release, at which point we will start the process of ensuring that Second Life runs under Vista."

A spokesman for Linden Lab said the fixes will likely be ready in a couple of weeks.

In a test of Second Life-Vista compatibility on a Dell XPS m1210, the operating system didn't work properly with the virtual world because of an unsupported graphics driver.

The problems come only weeks after Microsoft put on its glitzy launch event for Vista inside Second Life. The company hosted a streaming concert of rave musician Praga Khan on January 30, and it was promoted in 10 Second Life locations, including within islands known as Strawberry Estate, Sanctuary Rock and Isle of Lesbos, according to the blog of Miel Van Opstal, an employee in Microsoft's Belgium office and a self-described "enthusiast evangelist."

Microsoft representatives didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

[cristianodiaz]

SL runs as badly on Vista as on other oses

I have been using Second Life for over four years, and have been running it on Windows Vista for several months (starting with RC1). The main problem is with the substandard quality of the client and server software, not Vista.The current client actually crashes less and runs faster for me on Vista than it does on Windows XP. Nvidia has released several updated drivers for Vista. I'm not sure about ATI - their driver support has always been horrible. There is an updated client for Second Life called the First Look client that has a new rendering engine in it that runs fine on Vista - it is going to become the main client soon, and in the meantime can be easily downloaded. I'm not sure why there is so much anti-Vista coverage on c|net, with ridiculous things like ZOMG my Black Eyed Peas MP3s have Chinese tags now as being a major install problem, but the flaws with Second Life have nothing to do with Vista.

[DeusExMachina]

Of course they have to do with Vista

"I'm not sure why there is so much anti-Vista coverage on c|
net?"

Um, maybe because Vista sucks for most people, and in NO way
lives up to the hype Microsoft is trying to foist on people?

"? with ridiculous things like ZOMG my Black Eyed Peas MP3s
have Chinese tags now as being a major install problem"

And which C|Net coverage was that from, exactly? Perhaps you
are confusing Talkbacks with actual news?


And regardless of other SL flaws, the Vista specific ones most
certainly DO have to do with Vista, per se.

[Sea of Cortez]

Yes, couldnt agree more

You are right on target with this report.
What is amazing to me is that we had 3D chat worlds like 10 years ago, such a BlackSun & OZ, and they were better 3D experiences than SL is!
How can that be that almost 10 years has gone by and they did not produce a better 3D chat client/server!

[Turlingdrome]

ATI drivers crash

Previous ATI driver versions for Vista were refused by Second Life due to lack of OpenGL support. The current version is accepted but crashes the client when you try to enter. My two NVidia-based machines run SL on Vista with no problem; it's ATI that's making a mess of this. I've left my Acer (ATI-based) laptop as dual boot to XP, just so that I can run Second Life with it.

[steverez]

Complete BS SL on Vista Works Great!

I have been using SL on my Mac Pro for 4 months now with constant drops and OSX freezing up, I installed Windows Vista after it was released and it runs SL like SL on OSX should. Don't get me wrong I love OSX but Microsoft did a great job with Vista. (Yes even comming from a Mac Fan c/net is very biased against MS I only wish they would research information more before releasing garbage) CNET you are the tech FOX NEWS!!!

[ethernet76]

Second Life

Your OS X drops are caused by bad programming by the SL
people. No Vista problems with SL can be attributed to SL, not
Microsoft.

While Microsoft makes a fairly nice OS 95% of the crashes are
related to bad programming. OS X is the same way.

The only differences are how easily bad programming can take
down an application. OS X is a little more robust, while Windows
DLL nightmare make good programming harder, but not
impossible.

[Seaspray0]

Perhaps not everyone else had your success

According to the article, in one case it was traced to an unsupported graphics driver. Given that Vista will run on a variety of hardware, perhaps your drivers are compatable and you had no problems. I would be interested in the percentage of computers running vista that had problems but the article gives no mention. Atleast you have made it clear that not all vista users have problems with it, which contradicts what the article implies.

[extinctone]

WHO CARES!!!!!

What is with the constant coverage of this stupid social networking site for no-life losers?

[Dachi]

I strongly agree.

Second Life is like Scientology for Internet geeks.

Does pumping the service here win your virtual you bonus points with the church?

Maybe Second Religion would be more appropriate?

[bschmidt25]

Agree

Seriously... what is the deal with all the coverage on this stupid site? I don't think Cnet can go more than 2 or 3 days without a story on it. I'm sure there are many other sites that don't work with IE7/Vista as well. This is not news...

[ogman]

The Standard for News?

It seems the standard for the quality of news read by some people around here is how much it agrees with their world view. Microsoft fans are particularly sensitive to this phenomena lately, although Mac and Linux folks are guilty, too. If they agree with the news, it's terrific reporting. If not, then CNET is the National Enquirer or FOX News, and the reporters are malicious, useless hacks.

Here's a quick guide to translating internet comments:

"This site is %$#@ing biased!!!" = I strongly disagree with the author's point of view. I feel threatened by the fact that they don't see things my way.

"This site provides concise, accurate, and totally unbiased reporting" = Man, they hit my point of view dead on. This author and I have so much in common, we should marry and start a family together.

[jabbotts]

hehehe..

ah.. damn.. that was good squishy.. rather accurate.

[Jschneeky]

Liked what you said (pretty funny and accurate) but...

"If they agree with the news, it's terrific reporting. If not, then
CNET is the National Enquirer or FOX News, and the reporters
are malicious, useless hacks."

The assumptions you make of the people you are speaking
about are the same ones you made in regards to your views on
the National Enquirer or FOX News (not that I like either). Do you
see that while making the point, you kind of lumped yourself in
there with them (not by agreeing or disagreeing with an article/
reporter per se, but the generalizing of a news site/paper)

[CortalUX]

SL

WHO CARES?
IT'S ONE GAME OUT OF GOD KNOWS HOW MANY, IT'S GOT HARDLY ANY RESIDENTS, ITS KLUDGY, AND JUST BECAUSE AN EDITOR PLAYS IT, DOESN'T MAKE IT NEWSWORTHY/

[Sea of Cortez]

What is this daily BS Hype of 2nd life!!

1st, 2nd life sucks. Because:
1- Who wants to download a 40MB software package which changes every few weeks requiring another download of the darn thing
2- It is slow, slow & slow
3- Why put up with this download & slowness when all 99% of people want to do is chat in a place like 2nd life. There are plenty of great chat software which offer Avatar chats and movement and are instant to access, as the best example check
out SiteSticky: www.sitesticky.com
which offers Avatar chat with Voice over IP, something that 2nd life still does not offer.

2nd, if one wants a 3d world to enter then one wants to play, one wants action games, and to
see how this is done right check out World of Warcraft:
www.worldofwarcraft.com

3rd, There were many 3D chat worlds before 2nd life, such as BlackSun, OZ, etc. they all
failed because of the reasons listed above. That is after 1 hour of chatting in a 3D world,
it becomes BOARING and certainly not worth the bother of ever downloading the software
again and waiting for it to load and being slow, so if people want to chat they will go to sites
that are powered by instant chat products such as Sitesticky, if they want to play they will
go to World of Warcraft places.

The question then becomes why this continuos non ending Hype of 2nd life by Cnet and the rest of its BigMedia machinery! Answer: They have stock in 2nd life and are hyping it for an IPO so they can dump their stock on the public or have a Google like company to buy 2nd life. Whatever it is, please stop it with this non-ending almost daily Hype of 2nd life :(

[SpeedracerXtreme]

Have you ever tried it?

For me the draw for SL is that it gets away from all the typical hack & slash online fare that is out there now. I can be a totally different person than I am in real life. There are so many things to do and see, I can't even begin to list them. Yes, a lot of it is clunky, the interface is unusual and finicky, Linden Labs has issues (a lot!) and yes, there's always updates on Wednesdays.
But on the other hand, I've had some of the best online fun I've ever had, I've met a LOT of really nice, really good people online in SL (lol, and of course lots of bozos and griefers and kids pretending they are adults) that makes the whole social community part of it really fun and exciting.
I agree that SL isn't for everyone, and there are plenty of MMORPG players that wouldn't dare touch this sim.
Also, I really think that 3-D Virtual Worlds is going to be the future, whether you like it or not. If you think about it, SL and other sims like Entropia are today what the Internet was shortly after DARPA dropped it on the civilian population.
But I like it
~speed

[ScareYourParadox]

Second Life is newsworthy.

Despite the points that you put forth, you cant deny that Second Life is amazingly popular. Any video game that actually can earn people a steady income, is newsworthy.

I dont get the appeal to Second Life, because I dont play it. However, it has such a huge effect that you cant just write it off as something unimportant.

Just as an afterthought, your theory of Cnet's stock was baseless, but amusing.

[Jschneeky]

Free sex line...

SL is like a free sex line for people who don't want to pay for real
phone sex. This is not all it is good for (there are lots of interesting
things about SL) but LOTS of people are typing with one hand if you
know what I mean...LOTS.