Will Win 10 Creators Update Kill Second Life?

There is some consternation about a Windows 10 update: Creators Update. It is a free Win 10 update. My headline is hype. Nobody seems to know how it will work with Second LifeTM. However, the new features are a combination of interesting and OMG more advertising built into Windows.

Whatever, the new features are:

  • 3D in Windows 10
  • Built-in game broadcasting
  • New tab management in the sucky MS Edge and more…
    • Microsoft Edge is faster
    • Tab preview bar
    • Set tabs aside
    • Jump List
    • More extensions
  • Enhanced security features – MS Privacy Dashboard
  • Paint 3D
  • Remix3D.com access
  • Game streaming with Beam
  • Gaming settings: Game bar, GameDVR, broadcasting, and Game Mode
  • Improved Windows Store – They added e-books, whoop whoop
  • Dolby Atmos – Adds Dolby audio via an app
  • Cortana can do more… like control music by mood.
    • Language compatibility for iHeartRadio and TuneIn
    • Music recognition support for the Chinese
    • Full screen Cortana when computer idle
    • Carry sessions across devices
  • Mixed Reality in Photo, Maps, Music, Movies, & TV
  • Mini View Feature
  • …and more.

So, how is it going to work with SL? No one in the forums is writing about their experience. May be everyone is waiting for someone else to go first. In general we are currently clueless.

I plan to install it on my laptop first. It runs SL at medium settings and produces 10 to 20 FPS. I want to see if adding Win 10 Creators Update with a “Gaming Mode” improves its performance. For now I will avoid the update on my main machine.

I’ll get back to you.

19 thoughts on “Will Win 10 Creators Update Kill Second Life?

  1. There’s already a game bar in Windows 10, and it can already do video recording and a few other things. You simply press Win+G, and it asks you “Is this a game?”. Press Yes and you get the game bar. The enhanced features of Game Mode are being added to that game bar. It doesn’t do anything differently by default, unless you activate it.

  2. I have the creator update with 95% of the useless new things the seems to think are important. The whole gamebar thing is one i really not (can) use as far i know it want to link you to microsoft with account before you can use it. The cloud part is whst you never use.

    And so far i have not seen problems with firestorm and secondlife.

  3. Despite going through the SL hell of KB3176938 and it’s friends after last years Anniversary Update, I gave the Creators Update (sic.) a go…

    So far no obvious pluses or minuses, but then Anniversary Update didn’t manifest its evil until the forced patches that came after it, requiring the whole 3GB+ to be reverted, so beware!

    As regards the Game Mode, it does give a mild speed-up of about 10% with SL (from 27fps to about 30fps in 2D in a busy sim when I tested), consistent with the other somewhat “meh” results reported in other games. There’s a huge BUT in the way however: – multitasking was utterly destroyed – I couldn’t even type in a notepad windows, not even if SL was minimised.

    I’m running a 3rd generation i5 with AMD Radeon R9 270 graphics and dual screens- not a powerhouse by any means or even ideal for SL but generally reliable and I can normally multitask in a second screen while running 3D stereo SL on the other. Based on this (admittedly) single example I’d be inclined to suggest don’t bother unless you are incredibly single-minded and need every last frame-per-second. YMMV of course, especially with Nvidia.

    • I never upgraded my Win 7, the computer still has it.

      The new computer I built started with Win 10. Also, I rebuilt a broken laptop and put Win 10 on it. I just upgraded the laptop to Win 10 Creators. I get the same 10% boost from Game Mode, 15 FPS to 17+/- FPS. I haven’t tried multi-tasking.

      I have a 6th gen i5-6600 in the main computer and a 4th gen i3, I think – memory, in the laptop.

      I’ll probably upgrade to Creators. But, I am a heavy multi tasker so, I’ll skip the Game Mode.

      Thanks for posting your experience.

  4. I did the update windows creator with firestorm 64 b, it increased my fps rate, but things are not going well , I’m suffering big delay, delay loading images, delay in lands with avatars, I’m annoyed.

    • The Game Mode does seem to lock you down to just the game’s primary threads. Turn off the Game Mode.

  5. I have the Creator Update installed and have not experienced any bad side effects with Firestorm 5.0.1, yet. Windows mostly seems as usual. They changed up the Windows Start right-click context menu a bit. Like they they now default to PowerShell rather than Command Prompt. That can be changed, though. Just minor annoyances.

      • It seems that Game Mode was turned on by default – I think. Because it shows it’s on in Windows Settings and I didn’t toggle that option on specifically.

        While running Firestorm, I press Win+G shortcut to open the game bar and then went into the gear icon and toggled “Use Game Mode for this game” off and on to see if there was a difference and didn’t notice much.

        I found this article that discusses with Microsoft about this Game Mode thing. It seems that budget gaming systems are more likely to notice a difference with this mode than someone with a high-end system. But it explains a bit how Game Mode works to improve game performance.

        http://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-explains-how-windows-10-game-mode-will-improve-performance-in-uwp-and-win32-games/

        • Thanks for the link.

          The advantage on a couple of mid range game machines who’s owners I’ve talked with find about a 10% boost. Which is what I found on both my older laptop and new GTX 1060 and i5-6600. Not enough to be worth giving up multitasking.

      • Woops. Sorry for the extra post. I thought I had posted the previous day but didn’t see my message or the “awaiting moderation” notice. I thought maybe the post got lost. You can pick whichever message like and delete the other.

  6. Hello,
    I updated my laptop and tested it yesterday evening…. around 10 minutes with Firestorm (last version) and around 5 crashes. In fact as soon as I move or send a message, I get the black and white screen with the crash message. I uninstalled it and went back to my usual “no crash” connection.
    My laptop is Acer Aspire V 15 Nitro, video card is GeForce GTX 950 M

    • If you are running the 32-bit version that is likely. Try the 64-bit version.

      We just chased that problem in a forum thread. The 64-bit version was the fix. The 32-bit version can only use 4GB of memory, max. So, it easily runs out of memory.

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