Author Topic: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness  (Read 3626 times)

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Offline Trivial Psychic

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Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
This is an attempt to get some broader feedback and hopefully solve a lighting issue I've been having with recent Nightly builds.  I've had frequent assistance from m!m in trying to resolve this, but we appear to be at a loss now.

Builds newer than October 31st have no ambient lighting for me.  The glowmaps work, but all ambient lighting is gone.  I've tried increasing the ambient factor in the launcher but there was no change.  Oddly enough, Debug builds don't have this problem for me.  m!m was unable to reproduce this, but he isn't using an ATI card like I am, and I was hoping that other ATI users might be able to confirm my findings.  I've also found that jumpnodes render as black under these builds.

You see an example of my lighting issue in the Dec. 6th Nightly Build Thread.

My card is an ATI HD 5770 with 1GB RAM.  I'm using Windows 7 Pro 64-bit.  Because of this, I can't used the very latest drivers.  In fact, the last driver set released for my configuration was in 2015.

Has anyone had this problem, or can shed some... light, on what might be causing this?
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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
I've inconsistently had this problem as well. Usually never in game, but I've seen it in FRED and also in the little ship previews in the briefings.

 

Offline Novachen

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
I had this issue only in FRED2. the first visit in the technical database as well in the weapon loadout screen. But never in mission.

But i had this problem in Pre-3.8.0 Nightlies only that use the new lightning model. But after that, i did not have any issues. But also it made no difference if i used Debug or normal builds.

But during this time also some new graphic drivers were released... maybe they were responsible for my solution in the first place.

Well, i can not help you in this matter unfortunately, because the difference between debug and normal builds stumple me, too. Did you try to check some lightning flags? I am talking about Emissive Light or Deferred Lightning?
Female FreeSpace 2 pilot since 1999.
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Developer of NTP - A Multi-Language Translation Library Interface, which allows to play FreeSpace in YOUR Language.

Is one of my releases broken or not working? Please send a PM here, on Discord at @novachen or on Twitter @NovachenFS2, a public tweet or write a reply in my own release threads here on HLP, because these are the only threads i am still participating in.

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
Emissive light and deferred lighting are both enabled.
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Offline Novachen

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
Emissive light and deferred lighting are both enabled.

And the problem is the same if you play without it?
Female FreeSpace 2 pilot since 1999.
Former Global moderator in the German FreeSpace Galaxy Forum.
Developer of NTP - A Multi-Language Translation Library Interface, which allows to play FreeSpace in YOUR Language.

Is one of my releases broken or not working? Please send a PM here, on Discord at @novachen or on Twitter @NovachenFS2, a public tweet or write a reply in my own release threads here on HLP, because these are the only threads i am still participating in.

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
Disabling Emissive Lighting results in no change, but disabling Deferred Lighting brings things back to near normal.  I say near normal because when comparing it on and off on the October 31st build, the last build before this problem began, having Deferred Lighting disabled makes it just a bit brighter than with it on.  I don't have time right now to compare whether having DL turned off also restores my jumpnodes or not, but I'll likely try it tomorrow.  I'll let you know what I find.
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Offline m!m

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
Please post your fs2_open.log file.  Instructions on how to do this can be found in this post.

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
Log file using Dec. 12th fast Debug on Port3.5+MV2014 & FS2+MV2014 with Deferred Lighting disabled.


[attachment stolen by Russian hackers]
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Offline m!m

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
Does lighting work in that configuration? You said above that it works if you disable deferred lighting. If it works then a log of a run where it doesn't work would also be helpful.

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
Copy that.  Same configuration.  Just remember what I said earlier, that it renders with proper lighting under debug, even with deferred lighting enabled.

[attachment stolen by Russian hackers]
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Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
More data.  Although lighting appears normal with deferred lighting disabled when viewing in the lab, but in mission lighting is often dark again.  I say "often", because it sometimes flickers to proper lighting.  I haven't tested it with a jumpnode yet.
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Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
Good news!  Dec 17th build has proper lighting restored with no flickering.  I even have my jumpnodes back!  YAY!

Thanks to whoever figured it out!
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Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
This is really getting irritating.  I don't have time to do some proper testing, and probably won't for at least another week.  The Dec. 17th build working for me, appears to have been a one-off thing.  Now it won't do lighting again.  I loaded up the new Dec. 21st build and found no lighting.  Then I switched back to the Dec. 17th build, no lighting.  So I thought that perhaps one of the .dll files from the new build was responsible, so I re-extracted those with the Dec. 17th build and loaded it up, and still, no lighting.  Back to the beginning... Oct. 31st build works, debug builds work.  All release builds since Oct. 31st have no lighting.
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Offline m!m

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
Could you try disabling shader caching (should be in the Troubleshooting section in the launcher)?

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
Disabling shader caching leaves ships completely black, including glowmaps.  Glowpoints are visible however.  Unlike my previous and recurring issue however, this affects the techroom rendering.  In fact, the techroom rendering in this build displays the same as the lab and in-game with shader caching on... model with glowmaps.  With shader caching on, the dark texture problem I've been having is not manifest in the techroom.  I forgot to mention that.

I should also mention that I tried the Dec. 21st build with deferred lighting disabling and didn't encounter the flickering issue... this time.
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Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
I'm gonna continue to use this thread because I'm convinced that the bugs I'm experiencing are the same as those I reported before.  I'm gonna try to sort through these piece by piece.  First, I'm gonna start with FRED builds.

I'm using the 2014 MVPs with the additions of the new Leviathan, Anket, Hippocrates, Ptah, Bes and its associated cargo.

I tested all models to make sure they rendered properly and found all models work properly up to and including the March 7th build.  With the 10th however, I get render issues with the Hecate, Edjo, and Skyboxes.

As you can see, engine textures on the Hecate render as transparent on the newer build, and the Edjo doesn't render at all.  It'll still show the wireframe if I select it, but no maps.

Be advised, the issue with that bit of damage texture by the engines doesn't show up in FSO builds unless I disable environment mapping or spec mapping in the lab.

BTW, you can't see it, but in the builds 2018-03-10 and newer, skyboxes won't render for me in FRED or FSO.

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Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
Here's the FRED debug file from having loaded these two models and a skybox (starfield.pof).  I'd have included it in the above-post, but I can only include 4 attachments per post.

My next set that I'll readying involve a new build, the June 30th build.  Most of the models won't render.  That said, just the other night that same build was loading most models properly.  Its the intermittent nature of most of my bugs in both FRED and FSO since 2017-10-31 that are the most irritating part.  I might load up a build 6 or 7 times without issues, but on the 8th and successive runs it'll be buggy... but I digress.  I've loaded the 30th build 3 times today, even after a reboot, and so far I'm getting the same result (although loading the Sath on my first load did lead to a crash).  I'm putting together screenshots of some of the models with hopes that someone can spot a pattern.

Before going to posting screenshots, the following models have partial rendering, usually in the form of turrets or other detail submodels:

Ulysses (some front parts)
Hercules MK1 (piping on the engines)
Ares (some small bits on the back)
Artemis D.H. (the glass with the skull on it)
Medusa (Turret and engine paddles)
Ursa (Turret)
Fenris (Turrets & dishes)
Faustus (Sensor paddles)
Hecate (Turret & other details)
Hades (main hull renders but some bits around the head and pylons are transparent)
Deimos (Turrets & some details)
Aeolus (some turrets)
Iceni (Turrets)
Seth (paddles)
Horus (paddles)
Osiris (turrets & other details)
Nephthys (just the pilot)
Isis (Arms & Turrets)
Ankh (turret arms)
Anukhet (only two small pink circles)
Setekh (sensor panels, turrets, & a few other details)

Shivan Comm Node = Perfectly rendered
Waypoint = Perfect
Jumpnode = Perfect

BTW, I've downsized all of my screenshots to 1/2 original size, which seems to result in some disjointed grid-lines.

Screenshots for the above-renders will be loaded on a later post.

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Offline m!m

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
I can reproduce the damage texture bug so I'll take a look at that. I cannot reproduce your issue with the transparent engine textures though. Hopefully that is related to the damage texture bug...

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
Was the log file of any use?
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Offline AV8R

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Re: Help Me Bring Light Into a Universe of Darkness
Not to crash the party here, but by transparent engine textures, did you mean being able to see the engine glows thru the body of the model (like being able to see the glows from the front or sides thru the hull)? I began to notice this when 3.80 was released.

Just curious.