[opensource-dev] Dynamic shadows and ATI

[Dave Booth]

On 11/22/2010 15:48, Laurent Bechir wrote:
>
> Perhaps Linden should put something like "You will have a better
> experience with Second Life if you choose NVidia graphic card". I know
> it's quite stupid, but from what I've read there is not a chance that we
> get good support for ATI cards and dynamic shadows which is quite
> disapointing.
> _

I think what would be even more appropriate would be "LL recommends 
NVidia graphics cards, because of bugs in ATIs implementation of OpenGL. 
ATI cards are supported but tickets related to known issues specific to 
ATI OpenGL will be closed, since these cannot be fixed by LL and must be 
addressed by ATI" - and pop it up every "first login" of a new or 
updated viewer install when the viewer detects an ATI card.  The more 
folks that do something like that, the more ATI will feel the pressure 
to make their OpenGL implementation conform to the standard. I actually 
LIKE ATI hardware designs and the performance of their cards, I switched 
from being an ATI fanboy over to using NVidia exclusively because with 
NVidia everything just works and their drivers are rock solid, When I 
formed my preference for ATI then both had issues with their high-end 
cards and drivers playing nicely with every 3d protocol. However NVidia 
fixed those bugs while ATI did not and so that preference was 
reluctantly discarded.

Dave