[jr2]

  I really just need to get my hands on one of those cards to test with.  Without it, there would be a near endless amount of trial and error to go through to get the problem(s) resolved.  It would basically just be a serious waste of my time. 

What exactly is the card you need?  I understand it would be one of a certain series of ATI cards, right?  And, what interface do you have available?  PCI-e or AGP?

[Turey]

Your normals aren't being rendered correctly.

You mean the darkness?

[Cobra]

no, the lines.

[chief1983]

I just find this weird, I mean the 9800 Pro is an incredibly common type of Radeon I thought.  Seems like the same error Tura is getting now, and he's using a X-series card, which is a generation or two newer than mine.  Would a driver fallback possibly be in order as a temporary solution?  Anyone know for sure what Catalysts _are_ working right now?  For that matter, anyone have a 9800 that's working?

[Water]

no, the lines.

Its the normal map thats at fault - inverted and probably too strong.

[fener]

I see it too.  I also get jerkyness the first time weapons are fired or a ship warps out.

Same problem here too FYI

Also normal maps are looking pretty good 
is the extra shinyness on ships due to the normal mapping? or was it also present before normal mapping..

ingame 1st mission

from FRED

[karajorma]

I have noticed a lot of reports during testing of some ATI drivers crashing when linking shaders, so I'm going to assume that this is the same thing.  Bobboau had some similar issue (can't remember if he worked it out or not), but none of the other testers did.  But during research into other ATI related issues I had to work out I remember seeing this problem crop up quite a bit.  Typically the reports that I saw indicated that it was fixed with a driver upgrade, but I never did determine if there was a specific driver release/series which demonstrated the problem.

A driver upgrade fixed it so we know that at least the 06/07 Drivers are a likely culprit.

[taylor]

What exactly is the card you need?  I understand it would be one of a certain series of ATI cards, right?  And, what interface do you have available?  PCI-e or AGP?

9800 AGP.  That is about the bottom line of what would be supported, so if it works on that then it should work on most everything else that supports GLSL as well.  We would still need to come up with some driver versions which are known-bad, but some things could simply be worked around in the shaders.

[Talon 1024]

Aww dammit.  Do I have to have ATI or AGP or something to make this work? Apparently, this isn't working for me.  I haven't seen it in game yet.

Anyway, I believe my video card is an NVidia, but I don't know what model it is.

Edit: I'm having a weird problem with the subspace jumps.  Here's a fraps video.  I'm using the normals VP along with the latest Media VPs.  I also have the FOW Chapter 1 campaign activated as a mod.

[Cobra]

no, the lines.

Its the normal map thats at fault - inverted and probably too strong.

I never got that problem, though.

[Water]

I never got that problem, though.

My one does.
In the lab the perseus (with  NO Diffuse Map set  in Render Options) looks way too strong and the lines poke out instead of in.

[chief1983]

9800 is as low as you want to go?  I would have figured the 9500-9700 should be able to do just about everything the 9800 can do.  They were all roughly the same generation (excluding the 9550, that thing is a POS bastardized chipset as far as I can tell).

[taylor]

9800 is as low as you want to go?  I would have figured the 9500-9700 should be able to do just about everything the 9800 can do.  They were all roughly the same generation (excluding the 9550, that thing is a POS bastardized chipset as far as I can tell).

They have about the same limitations, so if it works on a 9800 then it would almost certainly work on a 9500 too.  Given the choice though, it's always better to go with the best of the group since that also means that you will likely have some extra features/speed available to do even more testing with.  You have to remember than when you are developing with something any speed issues have a far greater impact, since you are generally doing some performance testing too, which takes away from your available resources.

[DaBrain]

Ok, cleaned out all my old drivers, updated to Catalyst 7.10s for my Ati Radeon 9800 Pro, tried running the game, and get this:

< -- snip -- >

The game runs, but I get terrible framerates in the tech room while viewing the ships.  Like less than one frame a second or so.

The speed issue is obvious when you consider the problem, it's falling back on a software rendering path.  That will make it really slow.  I know what the basic problem is, since someone else had it during testing as well.  In that case it was a simple driver upgrade that fixed it, but in your case I think that it's a combination of software and hardware.

I think that it can be fixed, but I can't honesty say that I will actually fix it.  I really just need to get my hands on one of those cards to test with.  Without it, there would be a near endless amount of trial and error to go through to get the problem(s) resolved.  It would basically just be a serious waste of my time. 

But, all is not lost, since there is the strong possibility that someone on the forums will have the required hardware, the knowledge, and the desire to fix it themselves.  That's the good thing about the shaders, you don't need any code experience with the engine to work on them, and you don't need to mess with the game code at all to make changes.

Also ATI announced to work on a better OpenGL driver for their cards. (Actually I think it's the compliler that isn't as 'forgiving', as the Nvidia one.)
However, only a few people know when this will happen.


Edit: It's not really a bug, but in the XT builds you can't fly around the ship with the camera anymore (alt+pause) when the camera was locked to 3rd person before.

[taylor]

Edit: It's not really a bug, but in the XT builds you can't fly around the ship with the camera anymore (alt+pause) when the camera was locked to 3rd person before.

Works fine for me. 

[Herra Tohtori]

External view + Alt+Pause "flying around" works for me as well, but I've noticed that sometimes (haven't noticed any clear relation to specific situations) the view keys stop working altogether; I can not move my view to target's viewpoint, I can't get to 3rd person view and same applies to the external view. The view keys just make the game play a similar voice as the comm menu when you try to do something you can't (like selecting dimmed-out commands). Or at least I think it's that sound, might be wrong though.

I've encountered this a couple of times now, but like said, I have no idea what triggers this behaviour.

[jr2]

What exactly is the card you need?  I understand it would be one of a certain series of ATI cards, right?  And, what interface do you have available?  PCI-e or AGP?

9800 AGP.  That is about the bottom line of what would be supported, so if it works on that then it should work on most everything else that supports GLSL as well.  We would still need to come up with some driver versions which are known-bad, but some things could simply be worked around in the shaders.

Does it have to be a true ATi, or can it be an "ATi - based other brand"?

[Herra Tohtori]

AFAIK the brand doesn't change the actual GPU in the card at all. Clocks might be different, circuit board design might be different, but it'll look exactly the same device for the computer whether it's Club3D Radeon or a Sapphire Radeon of same number, or whatever brands there are. Clocks might be set differently but what the GPU does, should by all logic be the same regardless of brand... but as we all know, logic and common sense don't necessarily apply with computers.

The only thing I can think that might make a difference is if different brands use customized BIOSes in their cards, but I dunno how much, if at all, they change the actual workings of the card. But since the drivers are the same for different brands, I would think that isn't an issue.

But again, common sense and computers rarely share a common ground...

[jr2]

Hmm, IIRC, the vid card BIOS only has control until the windows drivers take over... same with mobo BIOS... however, the BIOS settings may carry over into the drivers, so prolly does make a difference.

[DaBrain]

Edit: It's not really a bug, but in the XT builds you can't fly around the ship with the camera anymore (alt+pause) when the camera was locked to 3rd person before.

Works fine for me. 

Try to lock the  perspective in FRED (or try mission 0 in SoL).

However... I would not even really consider this a bug...