Second Life, ATI, and Vista: fix coming

I’ve posted before before about the fact that I can’t play Second Life since I upgraded to Vista. I was pretty certain that the problem related to the ATI video drivers. ATI added OpenGL support in the 7.1 release of the drivers and updated that support in the 7.2 release, but Second Life still doesn’t work.  I haven’t been logging into SL recently: I decided to cut back and focus more on other things, but I would like to be able to log in once in a while…and the lack of support for Vista and ATI has been a major inhibitor.

Linden Lab has announced that the problem has been isolated, and that ATI will be correcting the defect in the next (7.3) release of their drivers. Apparently this update is expected by the end of March/beginning of April.  I’ll believe it when I see it, but I’m optimistic: I’ll post here on my blog once the drivers are released and I’ve tested them.

2 thoughts on “Second Life, ATI, and Vista: fix coming”

  1. It sucks so much. I have a ATI 9600 GS I think.. Second Life only works in XP. It’s a real pain. I have to dual boot every time I want to get into second life. So thats 2 mins I have to wait around till I’m able to login.

    When is this going to get fixed? ATI are nowhere….

    Cheers, Nath.

  2. Howdy, Nath: thanks for the comment!

    I’ve been able to run Second Life on Vista since I installed the ATI Catalyst version 7.3 drivers. That was when the added proper OpenGL support, which is what Second Life required. ATI is up to version 7.7 now, and the performance continues to improve.

    My configuration: AMD Athlon 64×2, 4 GB RAM, ATI X1950, and Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit. Supposedly the 32 bit version of Vista has fewer problems with games, but regardless: Second Life has been working with Vista for some time now.

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