There is debate in the SL Forum as to which video card is a better choice for Second Life™. I’ll try to provide the information needed to make a decision. But, I don’t see a deal maker or breaker that would pull the choice to any one card.

Also there are no good benchmarks, yet, of which new cards work best with Second Life. The following benchmark tests show the cards’ performance are very dependent on how the game is designed.

In the above video he is testing DirectX12 verses Vulkan. Vulkan is the next generation OpenGL. While development on OpenGL has not stopped, it appears to be similar to SL and Sansar. Except I have no doubt Vulkan will be the render engine of choice for most game makers moving on from OpenGL. 

While Oz has said there are no plans to change SL over to Vulkan, he said the same thing about a 64-bit Linden made viewer. There is now a 64-bit Linden viewer in development. Remember. Oz speaks publically about ‘NOW’ and seems to keep their ideas and much of the Labs forward looking thinking private until he is certain of the which-way and when. So, will we get SL on Vulkan? Who knows… I suspect so, but not this year and may be never.

There is going to be pressure to make the SL content available for VR. Those of us that have been around SL for a time remember how users once pushed the Lab around. The Lab was pretty much playing catch-up in a number of areas. Third party developers (TPD) have been nerfed since Oz’s arrival, which I see as a good thing and realize is highly debatable. I think the Lab and TPD’s are more balanced forces now. Whatever…

So, as VR is accepted and more SL users have the gear for VR the pressure for the Lab to support VR for SL will increase. TPD’s will likely start building viewers that support VR, anaglyphic 3D, and shutter glasses 3D. My thinking is if you can support VR then anaglyphic and shutters are nothing.

Once that starts happening and code is available to improve on, I think the Lab will get in the game. Of course as I pointed out in an earlier article, just because the Lab took the Oculus Viewer out of Project status doesn’t mean they got out of the game. They may have, but I doubt it. I think they’ll lick their wounds, regroup, and study what is possible to eventually make another pass at VR. I can hope…

Links to following page below…