[opensource-dev] Dynamic shadows and ATI

[Altair Sythos Memo]

On Mon, 22 Nov 2010 22:48:21 +0100
Laurent Bechir <laurent.bechir at madonie.org> 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.

not at all, last MAC Lion beta have fixed a lot for ATI/AMD cards of
R6xx and R7xx family, linux have a module to support all missing
GLX extensions (fglrx-glx  as alternative to radeon module full
opensource, emulatign via software all missed by hardware
acceleration), windows ATI/AMD driver emulate OpenGL via DirectX (not
in a smart way, imho, as on MSDN DD374297 the emulation is a
translation 1:1 from GLX extension to windows DX functions, skipping
where DX have a missing implementation)

i've no windows, but installing MESA drivers drom www.mesa3d.org should
extend GL functions (never tested, but on support page say "Direct3D"
and on oct/04 release show a initial support for R6xx and R7xx ATI/AMD
chipsets), extending DX with a full OpenGL2.1 set. (there is too a
confortablem word like "very experimental"... but if somebody is so
brave to test it...)

all above should be readen under a giant "imho" umbrella, as said i've
no windows machine, cannot test if work...


PS: next hardware upgrade take a look on nvidia ;)