Latest (571939) LL 32-bit viewer now dead / dropped Intel integrated graphics support?

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

I went to update this today on my Laptop with Intel graphics and what seems to be happening is, the update checker saw there was a newer version and downloaded it, which was a 64-bit install. I manually downloaded and installed the 32-bit viewer, which ran the update checker at startup, saw there was a newer version and downloaded it, which seemed to be a 64-bit version....

The actual error  message is of a failure to initialise the graphics driver. This has always been fixed by downloading and installing the 32-bit version previously...

I will be honest, I am not expecting this to be attended to, because all the TPV devs have been screaming for months now that 32-bit is dying, dying, dead...  and for all I know they're just champing at the bit for LL to drop support for 32-bit integrated graphics so they can follow suit.

But who knows?

 

ETA

Just checking with Firestorm on the same laptop, the latest Firestorm-32bit for SL blows up shortly after trying to load the world, but the FirestormOS 32-bit quite happily connects to my local standalone and renders it passably well for integrated graphics.

So it's back to Radegast for the time being to check in on SL with the laptop.

Edited June 25, 2022 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[Jenna Huntsman]

I wouldn't be surprised if 32-bit was being killed off, after all, 32-bit now only accounts for 0.5% of the market; and is supposedly a bit of a nightmare to maintain the viewer for.

(See here for stats: https://www.pcbenchmarks.net/os-marketshare.html )

EDIT:

Also, FWIW if your CPU is old enough to be 32-bit, and is using Intel integrated graphics, well, it's amazing it manages to render anything at all. The Intel drivers have historically been a joke, and although they have improved in recent years they still aren't great by any measure. Also, Intel probably EOL'd it years ago, so no driver updates for you!

Edited June 25, 2022 by Jenna Huntsman

[Coffee Pancake]

This isn't some new thing.

32bit support has been on notice for years and years at this point, there are major issues relating to running a 32bit client that can't and wont be solved. 

All the TPV's that produce 32bit binaries (catznip included) do so as a last ditch courtesy to keep people on vintage hardware in the game and buy them time to upgrade. It's not a sustainable long term solution and your experience will only get worse.

The only reason there are any 32it clients at all is simple practicality, we can still get a 32bit client from the build environment with zero additional effort. .. The moment the build environment makes it impossible (or even difficult), 3rd party support for 32bit will cease.

32bit on the desktop is dead. Just like support for vintage EOL intel products is dead. If it "works", great .. if it doesn't .. it's dead. Game over. No one will be going back to try and keep it alive.

 

I don't like to be blunt, especially when that comes with a cost .. but, if playing SL is important to you - go buy a new computer.

[Henri Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

All the TPV's that produce 32bit binaries (catznip included) do so as a last ditch courtesy to keep people on vintage hardware in the game and buy them time to upgrade. It's not a sustainable long term solution and your experience will only get worse.

I myself stopped providing (and allowing to compile) 32 bits builds of the Cool VL Viewer, because:

1. After a poll, it turned out no Cool VL Viewer user was using the 32 bits builds any more.
2. With the migration from the LL-patched boost::coroutine code to the newer boost::fiber code, 32 bits Linux builds always crashed on startup (I suspect a bug in the boost context library, but since no one uses it any more in 32 bits Linux, it never got fixed).

Frankly, it is time to say goodbye to 32 bits hardware (that would be based off a CPU as old or older than an Athlon XP or an old mono-core Pentium 4), and to 32 bits OSes (that cannot provide more than 3GB of memory to any running application, at best: way too little for today's SLing).

Edited June 25, 2022 by Henri Beauchamp

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

1 hour ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

Also, FWIW if your CPU is old enough to be 32-bit, and is using Intel integrated graphics, well, it's amazing it manages to render anything at all.

It's a 64-bit CPU with 6G Ram, it just happens to have on-board Intel graphics that will only work with the 32-bit versions of the viewers.

Managed to get Firestorm 32-bits to connect happily to SL by choosing a quieter place to log in.

 

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

don't like to be blunt, especially when that comes with a cost .. but, if playing SL is important to you - go buy a new computer.

That might be on the cards for next year with the rumour of a pension increase.

However, it is looking more and more likely to me that hardware manufacturers (and software providers such is Mike O'Saught) are looking for a much shorter period of active life before their products need to be replaced. How would you feel if that gaming rig you bought last year is "Too old to play SL" in less than two years time?

Edited June 25, 2022 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[Jenna Huntsman]

8 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

How would you feel if that gaming rig you bought last year is "Too old to play SL" in less than two years time?

Unless you make some *really* bad purchasing decisions, that's not going to happen.

Hardware manufacturers get a negative press for reducing (or producing) products which become e-waste. AMD and Nvidia have quite a good track record of supporting their old hardware (AMD only recently stopped driver support for cards which were approaching 10 years old!).

Intel, well, it's pretty much never been recommended to use outside of office use, and even there it's not brilliant. For reference, to get an Intel iGPU that supports OpenGL 4.6, your CPU would have to have been made in 2016 (HD Graphics 500) or younger (Assuming you're on Windows, Linux users get 4.6 with the 2015 HD Graphics )

Nvidia users get OpenGL 4.6 on the GT420 (2010), AMD users get it on the Southern Islands GPUs (2012) - not to say you'd have a good experience on a GPU that old, but it goes to show how behind Intel historically have been.

(Also - you might want to post some info about your setup, as you say you have a 64-bit CPU, so chances are someone might be able to help you troubleshoot if they have a little info!)

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

13 minutes ago, Jenna Huntsman said:

(Also - you might want to post some info about your setup, as you say you have a 64-bit CPU, so chances are someone might be able to help you troubleshoot if they have a little info!)

It's a known issue, the basic Intel on-board graphics chips only work with the 32-bit software.

[Jenna Huntsman]

13 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

It's a known issue, the basic Intel on-board graphics chips only work with the 32-bit software.

As an owner of hardware that features an Intel iGPU, I can assure you that isn't the case.

Also - I did some searching and I can't seem to find any information which points to that being a "known" issue on any generation of Intel graphics (The closest I found was a patch for Intel iGPUs reporting the wrong supported OpenGL version to Windows 10 programs)

The patch mentioned above covers the following Intel iGPUs:

• 3rd generation Graphics Media Accelerators except GMA 910 and 915 series; [1]
• 4th generation Graphics Media Accelerators;
• PowerVR edition Graphics Media Accelerators;
• 1st and 2nd generations Intel HD Graphics.

If you have one of the above, then it's a driver issue, not a Second Life one.

[Sammy Huntsman]

3 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

This isn't some new thing.

32bit support has been on notice for years and years at this point, there are major issues relating to running a 32bit client that can't and wont be solved. 

All the TPV's that produce 32bit binaries (catznip included) do so as a last ditch courtesy to keep people on vintage hardware in the game and buy them time to upgrade. It's not a sustainable long term solution and your experience will only get worse.

The only reason there are any 32it clients at all is simple practicality, we can still get a 32bit client from the build environment with zero additional effort. .. The moment the build environment makes it impossible (or even difficult), 3rd party support for 32bit will cease.

32bit on the desktop is dead. Just like support for vintage EOL intel products is dead. If it "works", great .. if it doesn't .. it's dead. Game over. No one will be going back to try and keep it alive.

 

I don't like to be blunt, especially when that comes with a cost .. but, if playing SL is important to you - go buy a new computer.

I mean a lot of computers use 64 bit systems nowadays, the last time I used 32 bit was like in 2013. And it was my old faithful laptop. 

[bigmoe Whitfield]

I believe very soon microsoft and others are dropping full support for 32bit processors. 

[Kathrine Jansma]

2 hours ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

I believe very soon microsoft and others are dropping full support for 32bit processors. 

Technically MS already dropped support for 32-Bit versions with Windows 11, the servers already dropped it with 2008. But thanks to the WoW64 subsystem you can still run 32 Bit processes on nearly all Windows machines (Server Core being the exception, its optional there).

[bigmoe Whitfield]

1 hour ago, Kathrine Jansma said:

Technically MS already dropped support for 32-Bit versions with Windows 11, the servers already dropped it with 2008. But thanks to the WoW64 subsystem you can still run 32 Bit processes on nearly all Windows machines (Server Core being the exception, its optional there).

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/rip-microsoft-to-drop-support-for-windows-10-on-32-bit-systems/
yep and windows 10.  next hardware layers,  Intel/amd/nvidia and a few others are dropping 32bit support in the near future,  Linux is dropping 32bit too.    it's time to make upgrades and purchases.   at some point these will be gone and it's going to be sooner than later.

[Love Zhaoying]

2 minutes ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/rip-microsoft-to-drop-support-for-windows-10-on-32-bit-systems/
yep and windows 10.  next hardware layers,  Intel/amd/nvidia and a few others are dropping 32bit support in the near future,  Linux is dropping 32bit too.    it's time to make upgrades and purchases.   at some point these will be gone and it's going to be sooner than later.

This is scary for me, because I support some really, really old software in my RL job. 1997-ish. It already won't run on Win10.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

2 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

This is scary for me, because I support some really, really old software in my RL job. 1997-ish. It already won't run on Win10.

it's the same way at work, we already have issues with maintaining out aging stock of production equipment,  mostly because siemens EOL'D half of the controllers and PLL systems 6 months ago on us without notice,  so we are hunting heavily and I mean HEAVILY for stock,  basically if it's a dell core2duo desktop and we can get them on pallets we are,  siemens controllers,  PLL units, drive units,  you name it,  they are spending money,  there is no upgrade path because of the age of the equipment neither,  it runs on what it runs on and it will not talk to newer.  I know I've done tried.

[Beq Janus]

As suggested above, true 32-bit hardware is super rare now. I ran some stats in March based on Firestorm logins to SL and the number of machines that were actual 32-bit hardware was vanishingly small. However, there is a small but noticeable proportion of the SL user base that are running the 32-bit Firestorm viewer on their 64-bit hardware, and 64-bit OS.... Why would you do this? As @Profaitchikenz Haikunoted, there are some who have limited RAM (and limited scope to upgrade) and it is undoubtedly true that the 32-bit viewer has a smaller memory footprint. 

I am surprised that the LL viewer has just dropped the 32 bit viewer without an explicit statement of this perhaps @Vir Linden or @Alexa Linden can confirm that this is so and not just a mistake in the updater.

It is also worth noting that it is not just super ancient machines that fall into this camp. Just last week I answered someone who was asking for help getting FS/SL to run on their new intel-based chrome book. This is a machine that is fundamentally ill-equipped for SL but it is a modern machine and even has guides on how to install SL, if you google for it. In this case, the person was well aware of the problems they were buying in to. They were after a cheap backup machine, for general purposes (I am told some people have lives outside of SL!!) and only expected to use it rarely, for example when travelling on business or vacation and just needing to pop in and pay rent or catch up with friends late at night in a hotel.

There are also people that get advised that such machines are suited to their needs, and the fault for this lies as much with Linden Lab, I am sad to say, as with the retailers and boils down to the woefully outdated minimum specifications that many of us have been asking that the lab either update or simply remove for many years. It is not unheard of for a non-tech savvy SL user to go into an electronics store and ask advice on buying a new machine. What do you need it for?" the helpful sales assistant asks. "Oh, a bit of web browsing, email and I like to play Second Life". The assistant cheerfully googles "Second Life minimum specs" and finds an entirely misleading set of details (that under UK law is probably a breach of advertising standards in itself!) The assistant unwittingly sells the customer the cheapest  low-end windows laptop without knowing that the information is woefully inadequate.

https://secondlife.com/system-requirements

 

In reality, the future of 32-bit and of weaker machines in general is looking rather grim. It has been stated by LL in recent developer meetings - which is probably the single worst place to make such announcements as no TPV developer can function on a machine this restricted, it is the end users that need to be forewarned, yet you don't see this kind of news discussed at SLB -  that they intend to remove the ability to turn off advanced lighting (ALM), I have no doubt that @Inara Pey will have reported on this however. Removing the ability to disable ALM will force everyone to use the deferred rendering features.

The argument being made is that other increases in performance make "the need" to turn off ALM history, this is true in many cases but I don't think that this is a true reflection of why some people turn ALM off, memory is one reason that is not directly to do with performance, network bandwidth (slow satellite feeds and metered connections for example) is another. However, it is almost certainly true that SL loses (or fails to retain) in a few months more "new" users for being out of date and ugly than it would lose in "old" users by forcing the bar higher and cutting off those on truly low end hardware. It makes life easier for all of us who have to try to maintain things too. That doesn't make it pleasant for those affected who are often the more vulnerable of the SL user base, and in the current economic climate saying "suck it up and go buy  new machine" doesn't sit comfortably with any of us I doubt😞 .

The stark reality is, that coming down the pipeline, we have performance improvements (which frequently occur through making harder use of the computer resources - more threads for example) improved graphical capabilities (higher quality graphics that eat more RAM and make more demands on you GPU) and dragging a long and ever lengthening tail of underpowered hardware behind us is a significant constraint. 

So, what if you are on a limited RAM machine and your access to 32-bit builds dies, what can you do?

1. See if there is any option to uplift your machine at all. The minimum viable RAM is probably 8GB, so if there is any  chance of getting a litle extra RAM it might go a long way. With older machines, second hand electronics stores (like CEX in the UK) may be able to help you for a very modest fee. 
2.  Batten down the hatches. Reduce your memory footprint as much as possible:-

• Don't run any other software at the same time, modern operating systems will quite happily let you use more than the available RAM but they do so by swapping your programs in and out of memory on demand and this makes things rather slow. 
• In Firestorm we allow you to force the texture size to be no more than 512x512. this of course reduces the graphics quality a bit, but eery 1024x1024 that is reduced to 512x512 is 25% of its original size. and every little counts. You'll find this setting in preferences->graphics->rendering. 
   
• Keep all your graphics settings low, make sure features like shadows are disabled. (honestly I am struggling to believe anyone needing these nots can have advanced lighting enabled)

There is an amazing amount of energy being invested in SL at the moment, it is really a very exciting time for the platform. This progress will come at a cost.

 

[Nicky Dasmijn]

As much as 32 bit is on it's asthmatic last breats and should goaway, it does not help the OP uless they get a new PC or a new GPU

 

LL is still listing 32 Bit viewers for current release, maint and project viewers here https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/viewer.html

So I think calling them stopping x86 support is a bit too early.

After installing the 32 bit viewer --skipupdatecheck can be used as a command line argument if the update gets in your way wanting to put an x64 bit viewer on your system

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

7 hours ago, Nicky Dasmijn said:

After installing the 32 bit viewer --skipupdatecheck can be used as a command line argument if the update gets in your way wanting to put an x64 bit viewer on your system

I wasn't aware of this, and so gave it a go. Unfortunately...

The very last thing the installer does is run the update check and try to download a newer version. Killing this process and adding the command line argument to a shortcut resulted in the Application getting as far as the "initialising texture cache" popup but then silently failing.

Running the 32-bit installer with that command line argument didn't stop the final update check either, it ran it, downloaded a version, and then gave me the "failed to initialise graphics driver" error box again.

 

7 hours ago, Nicky Dasmijn said:

As much as 32 bit is on it's asthmatic last breats and should goaway, it does not help the OP uless they get a new PC or a new GPU

I ought to be honest here and say I mostly use a tower PC which runs the 64-bit viewers, the laptop in question is the machine I take with me if we go off for a day or so and I like to keep it up to date, the tower is obviously out of the question for remote work. As I said earlier, I can get Firestorm 32-bits to run happily providing I'm not in a region with much mesh, and there's always Radegast.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[Henri Beauchamp]

35 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

The very last thing the installer does is run the update check and try to download a newer version. Killing this process and adding the command line argument to a shortcut resulted in the Application getting as far as the ”initialising texture cache” popup but then silently failing.

Running the 32-bit installer with that command line argument didn't stop the final update check either, it ran it, down;loaded a version, and then gave me the ”failed to initialise graphics driver” error box again.

Yes, LL's viewer is extremely annoying, with that auto-updater...

Proceed as follow:

• Download the 32 bits viewer installer.
• Shutdown your network.
• Install the viewer. It will launch the updater but without the network, it will just abort it.
• Close the viewer.
• Delete the updater from the installation directory (SLVersionChecker.exe).
• Re-enable the network.
• You can now relaunch the viewer: it will complain that it fails running the version checker (just acknowledge the alert box), but will run just fine nonetheless...

Edited June 28, 2022 by Henri Beauchamp

[Nicky Dasmijn]

1 hour ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

I wasn't aware of this, and so gave it a go. Unfortunately...

The very last thing the installer does is run the update check and try to download a newer version. Killing this process and adding the command line argument to a shortcut resulted in the Application getting as far as the "initialising texture cache" popup but then silently failing.

Running the 32-bit installer with that command line argument didn't stop the final update check either, it ran it, down;loaded a version, and then gave me the "failed to initialise graphics driver" error box again.

--skipupdatecheck is only works as an argument for the viewer indeed. It will stop the viewer from using the autoupdater.

 

I wasn't aware that the installer does an update check without asking ... That sounds quite silly.

 

[animats]

LL's supported hardware list is a decade out of date. None of the hardware on LL's recommended list is still manufactured or supported. The NVidia 9000 and 200 series were released in 2008, 14 years ago, and NVidia ended support in 2016, 6 years ago. The Radeon line listed is also from 2008 and is now on "legacy support".

What's needed today is a list of onboard laptop GPUs suitable for SL. Most people are buying laptops, not standalone GPUs now.

 

[animats]

1 hour ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

fails running the version checker

The version checker also fails under Wine, the Linux emulator for Windows. The viewer itself will run fine under Wine 7.

[Henri Beauchamp]

18 minutes ago, animats said:

The viewer itself will run fine under Wine 7.

Not quite...

There is a bug in Wine causing issues on file writes (after a write, the file pointer is not properly updated, so when the code tries to read the current position, it gets the one before the write happened); for this reason you will find a ”Flush on asset write (for Wine)” entry in the Advanced -> Caches menu of  the Cool VL Viewer Windows builds; of course, I won't recommend *at all* to run a viewer via Wine under Linux (the slow down is tremendous), especially one that got native Linux builds, but I do it sometimes, to quickly test for code changes that risk breaking Windows builds...

Edited June 28, 2022 by Henri Beauchamp