[Phillmathis]

Hey Guys,

Well i've installed fs2_open using the FSO .jar installer on my system - running Ubuntu 8.04 hardy heron. I used to have FS2 Open working on this system (Acer Travelmate 4000 WLMi) under XP but i made the conversion to full linux last week and was over the moon when i found out that i could still play this game.

Anyways the problems are:
                     
1. When fs2  starts up the desktop mouse icon freezes in the main screen and i have to navigate around it using the "FS2 cursor".

2. In the game menus a small square flashes continually in the top right corner or over the "confirm" logo
               
3. In "flight" when a pilot speaks to me i get a "semi-transparent polygon" linking the speech at the top of the screen to the ship in my     targeting reticule and the nebulas emit similar polygons/shards.

I tried the BSG mod and this problem doesn't occur....any help would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Phill

[Phillmathis]

Well I've reinstalled the lot and its fixed a few of the problems -

Now the polygons are my only problem - however only happens when i enable backgrounds and planets! Something that I think you all agree makes Freespace such a good game!

Anyways once again - any help would be great!

 

[colecampbell666]

The polygon problem is an error with older ATi graphics cards not being able to handle new models. I assume that you get it with the GTF Loki?

[myownlittlworld]

Running FS2:SCP 3.6.9 with 3.6.8 Zeta MediaVPs with 710 Patches on an ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 (128MB RAM) using Debian Testing's Free Drivers (Xserver-Xorg-Video-ATI 6.8.0-1):

Is there any potential solution to the polygon problem other than turning off "Backgrounds and Planets"?  The basic problem is that considering how the polygon problem isn't limited to backgrounds but also non-background (active) objects.  It was strange to collide with parts of the Asteroid Iceni (mission 2?) that was invisible.

At some point, I found a post that claimed to fix the "polygon problem" for ship models by clearing the ~/.fs2_open/data/cache directory, but that didn't do anything...  Can't find the link anymore unfortunately.

Interestingly, the problem didn't occur with the GTF Loki, but did occur with:
GTFR Triton
GTC Fenris
GTM Hippocrates
GTC Leviathan
GTCv Deimos
NTF Iceni
Knossos
GVS Nephthys
GVFr Bes
VAC 5
GVC Aten
GVC Mentu
GVCv Sobek
GVD Typhon
GVD Hatshepsut
SFr Asmodeus
SC Rakshasa
SC Cain

This becomes an even bigger problem in other projects (at least, I assume it's the same problem), such as Beyond the Red Line (mission 2 of the demo) where the entire asteroid field suffers from the problem and the entire screen looks like shattered glass with only the HUD visible...

Is there any solution to this problem other than upgrading my video card?

[castor]

Maybe the fglrx driver - at least I never had polygon tearing issues when I still used it.
It may have other problems though..

[colecampbell666]

Try clearing \data\cache and \mediavps\data\cache.

Also, if parts of asteroids are invisible, it's an ATi driver bug. The fix is to place the 7.11 .DLLs in the FSO directory, but that's obviously not possible on Linux.

[myownlittlworld]

Debian's non-free fglrx module works wonderfully with FS2:SCP!  No tearing at all in the first level of the official campaign.

To use (run as root):
# init 1
# modprobe -r radeon
# modprobe fglrx
# init 2


Unfortunately, when run with BtRL, the game simply hangs and consumes my entire CPU till killed when hitting "Commit" to start a mission.  Looks like I'll be reporting that bug to them.  Thanks for helping me solve my generic graphics bug!  Now to look into game-specific bugs...

EDIT: This seems to work only when run with the latest (08-06-20) version of 3.6.10-beta.  It seems that 3.6.9 always hangs: I forgot I was playing BtRL on 3.6.9 and FS2:Open on 3.6.10...  When I tried running FS2:Open on 3.6.9, it hung just like the BtRL demo I have installed, making me think it's an interaction of the video driver and a 3.6.9 bug that's fixed in 3.6.10.  Now to figure out if BtRL can be upgraded to 3.6.10, or if I have to wait for the third patch release...

EDIT 2: Copying the 3.6.10 binaries into the BtRL directory and modifying the startup script to use those binaries seems to have done the trick, as far as I can tell, I can now run all FSO:SCP projects without problem!  I just needed the fglrx module and the 3.6.10 beta.

I attempted to clear the data/cache folder, but that didn't do anything to solve either problem.

[castor]

Just out of interest, how smoothly does it play with the fglrx driver?
Specifically when FPS is maxed out (looking at empty space, FPS display hits 120) -- I used to get sort of "stuttering" problems in that situation.

Taylor did some fixing for it, but I had switched hardware so couldn't really test whether the issue got sorted out.

[myownlittlworld]

While staring off into empty space (basically flipping upside down on the fist training mission):

At maximum graphics quality, I had 60-80 FPS with no stuttering, and at minimum graphics quality, 90-100 FPS with no stuttering.

Seems that the stuttering's been fixed.  Anyway, it plays REALLY smoothly from what I've tested so far.  I'll post more if further tests show otherwise.

Interestingly, although BtRL mission 2 is playable, it has strange asteroid errors (asteroids all the colors of the rainbow - very strange to see), and occasional slowdowns during dogfights - though those slowdowns are probably due to the visual bugs more than anything - they happen even on minimum graphics settings.