Colin Pichot
Not having played a game since Prince of Persia (and we’re talking the original game, with block-like graphics, on some ancient hardware, back in 1990), I decided to try out Second Life today. Surprisingly, the getdeb folk have this for Ubuntu, even in its 64-bit variety. Installation was simple:
- sudo dpkg -i secondlife-install_1.18.1.2-1~getdeb1_amd64.deb
- Realise that I’m missing a dependency, so install lib32asound2
- Attempt to start secondlife
And fail, of course. I got a Window Creation Error. Not content with this, I started it up from a terminal, and looked at the error messages pass by. Finally found the rather telling line: WARNING: createContext: window creation failure. SDL: Couldn’t find matching GLX visual. It seems that its all got to do with the bit-depth of colour, so a quick replace of the DefaultDepth in xorg.conf was in lieu (it originally was DefaultDepth 16 but its now DefaultDepth 24).
Restart X, and I launched Second Life with success! Now signing up was a bit of a chore as I had to find a new name and so on. A lot of ideal names are taken up, so I settled with Colin Pichot. One of the things I quickly changed was how much bandwidth SL was allowed to use – quick reduction to 50kbps from its usual default (of like 700kbps+). I joined the Linux Australia group, I’ve not developed anything in SL, and I haven’t given them my credit card details (yet). It seems to create a group, you need to fork out $100 Linden Dollars.
I’ll play with this after midnight I guess, when we’ve got more “off-peak” quota to utilise, but initial impressions are its a pretty impressive environment in 800×600. I’ve not met anyone, I’ve added a friend (I think), can’t for the life of me figure out how to put a photo in my profile, and here’s hoping that eventually, I understand what all the fuss about SL is.
Technorati Tags: second life, secondlife, sl, ubuntu, window creation error, glx visual, colin pichot, alter ego
I have a similar problem with window creation. More specifically, I get the following warnings and then the process of shutdown GL begins.
WARNING: createContext: window creation failure. SDL: Couldn’t find matchin
g GLX visual
WARNING: createWindow: LLWindowManager::create() : Error creating window.
WARNING: LLViewerWindow: Unable to create window, be sure screen is set at
32-bit color and your graphics driver is configured correctly. See README-linux.txt or README-solaris.txt for further information.
However, I already have the DefaultDepth set to 24, so it doesn’t seem to be the reason of why the SL client fails. Any idea what else I could do? Thanks!
Chloe: you can buy a new video card, apparently. I discovered this gem hidden in the SL client faq:
“You need the accelerated drivers for your card. AMD/ATI has the fglrx drivers, NVidia has the nvidia-driver series, and Intel has open-sourced their drivers.
The Mesa OpenGL driver for non-accelerated cards will fail.”
I’m using a Matrox Parhelia card, with the ‘unofficial’ Matrox X drivers (ie., the ones that actually work) under Fedora 7. Apparently, it sucks to be us.
Thanks Nostrum! I appreciate your help.
However, I think I have a video card similar to what you indicate (NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS). Actually, my problem was that at the time I bought the computer, there was no driver for linux for this card yet.
I solved the problem in the meantime, though, and I can run the sl client now. Somebody on sl advised me to use the envy application http://albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html ), which detected the model of the card, downloaded the proprietary driver, installed it, and configured xorg.conf.