Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: gevatter Lars on June 03, 2004, 03:08:25 pm

Title: Weird white things
Post by: gevatter Lars on June 03, 2004, 03:08:25 pm
I got a little problem...

I got these strange white things during the missions and they slow down the system when they come into sight.
Here are some pics
(http://www.scifi-3d.de/wcsaga/Lars/w1.jpg)
(http://www.scifi-3d.de/wcsaga/Lars/W2.jpg)

I was told that these error have nothing to do with missing graphics...beside that fakt that all graphics are there.

Does anyone knows something like this happend befor?
Title: Weird white things
Post by: kasperl on June 03, 2004, 03:15:21 pm
Looks almost like a clipping plane is getting rendered or something. I have no idea.

What are your computer's specs? What build are you using, what commandlines?
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Lightspeed on June 03, 2004, 03:30:04 pm
Looks like you run out of memory.
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Tolwyn on June 03, 2004, 03:59:01 pm
hmm... the stations lacks shine maps...

back to the topic: I assume that lars is using 3.6 EXE with following command line options:

spec -glow -pcx32 -jpgtga -d3dmipmap -ship_choice_3d -fps -stats -show_mem_usage -dnoshowvid  -ambient_factor 90
Title: Weird white things
Post by: gevatter Lars on June 03, 2004, 04:04:07 pm
@Tolwyn
How did you know that ^_^
I think you have just looked at my batchfile right?

Commandlines see Tolwyns posting
PC:
3Ghz
1024MB Ram
GF FX5700 256MB

Beside that I forgot to mention that the FPS drops extremly when I see the white stuff and gets up again when I can't see it.
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Tolwyn on June 03, 2004, 04:07:10 pm
Quote
Originally posted by gevatter Lars
@Tolwyn
How did you know that ^_^
I think you have just looked at my batchfile right?

Commandlines see Tolwyns posting
PC:
3Ghz
1024MB Ram
GF FX5700 256MB

Beside that I forgot to mention that the FPS drops extremly when I see the white stuff and gets up again when I can't see it.


nope, but this is my command line as I use it ;)

only thing is that you do not use statistic, which is quite useful
Title: Weird white things
Post by: gevatter Lars on June 03, 2004, 04:09:51 pm
ok looked into my batchfile...here are my specs

-spec -glow -pcx32 -jpgtga -d3dmipmap -ship_choice_3d -d3d_no_vsync -dnoshowvid -startgame -ambient_factor 90
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Psychonaut on June 03, 2004, 05:34:08 pm
What´s that Mod/Campaign? INFERNO?? Do you have the same problem with the FS2 campaign or any other Mod? Not every Build runs with every Mod (not for me), so maybe try another Build. The latest Bobbeau (I think 06_03 ??) for example runs absolutly smooth on my system (athlon64, ati9700) and you get env-mapping, too. That´s really a big eyecandy, especially in combination with LIGHTSPEED´s excellent fighter/bomber maps. (I really don´t know how i ever could lived without it   :p )
Title: Weird white things
Post by: WMCoolmon on June 03, 2004, 06:05:21 pm
I see "Kilrathi", so I'm guessing it's the WC mod.
Title: Weird white things
Post by: gevatter Lars on June 03, 2004, 06:37:55 pm
Yes it is the Wing Commander Mod.
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Bobboau on June 03, 2004, 07:32:10 pm
are you useing any of the newer image formats (dds in particular)?
are you the only member of your mod that is haveing these issues?
those are suposed to be explosions or background nebuli or engine glows or something like that right?

looks to me more like an isse with lighting getting turned on/off when it's not suposed to, I remember someone doing something with the model buffer rendering that caused an issue like this, and I remember seeing very short flashes of it on ocasion recently
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Tolwyn on June 04, 2004, 02:56:55 am
I have just run a quick test. From what I can tell only Lars is experiencing this weird problem.

And no, we are not using dds, backgrounds are Lightspeed's TGA eyecandies.

In order to answer your question: this are supposed to be background images (I assume that in this case this are nebulas)
Title: Weird white things
Post by: gevatter Lars on June 04, 2004, 04:20:31 am
Mh strange..why is it allways me who has problems...maybe I should do a complete reinstallation of FS2 and the mod and hope that the problems aren't there after that.
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Tolwyn on June 04, 2004, 04:59:42 am
or perhaps it is 3.6 EXE...

could you run the same mission with older build?
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Lightspeed on June 04, 2004, 05:25:19 am
Quote
Originally posted by Psychonaut
What´s that Mod/Campaign? INFERNO?? Do you have the same problem with the FS2 campaign or any other Mod? Not every Build runs with every Mod (not for me), so maybe try another Build. The latest Bobbeau (I think 06_03 ??) for example runs absolutly smooth on my system (athlon64, ati9700) and you get env-mapping, too. That´s really a big eyecandy, especially in combination with LIGHTSPEED´s excellent fighter/bomber maps. (I really don´t know how i ever could lived without it   :p )


Pwease. Not writey my name is caps :p

I hate capital letters. Ban them :lol:

I still think it fails to load somehow. I've seen people which ran out of memory and as the texture load failed it whitened out everything. We even had that on Mantis at one point. I'll search if I can dig up the bug report...
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Tolwyn on June 04, 2004, 05:44:03 am
hmm... perhaps lars failed to download a background file from our internal database, but I doubt it.

And it hardly can be memory issue. He has 1024 mb of ram. It could be swap file however... :rolleyes:
Title: Weird white things
Post by: KARMA on June 04, 2004, 06:34:21 am
as the others said the white thing usually happens when the polys are rendered by the game without a texture
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Bobboau on June 04, 2004, 08:23:32 am
that's a directx thing, if FS doesn't load a texture it's invisable. so something has to happen that disrupts the texture after it's loaded.

or actualy, how big are these textures (resolution) ?
try scaleing them down, that might be what's wrong, though FS is suposed to take care of this contingency.
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Tolwyn on June 04, 2004, 08:37:09 am
to answer your quetio: this are Lightspeed's nebula... so it is highlya unlikely that they are the source of this visual error
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Starman01 on June 04, 2004, 08:39:17 am
Well, the big white one behind the blackmane-base is the planet-file.

@Lars : I really suggest make a reinstall (I did that too, sometimes it
really resolves a lot of failures (due to a messed up registry perhaps).

I'm not sure, if you are using the tga-backgrounds, the mission works
well for me with tga. Maybe you should download the stars.tbl and the
effect-folder again.
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Bobboau on June 04, 2004, 08:59:14 am
if you're useing the 3.6 exe, try this (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,23983.0.html) my newer builds have been useing a totaly diferent method for drawing backgrounds. so maybe this will be fixed (though I doubt it)
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Tolwyn on June 04, 2004, 09:02:26 am
hmm... the plaet is in non standard reolution of 1200*1200
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Bobboau on June 04, 2004, 09:08:47 am
that could quite posably be causeing problems try resizeing it to 1024^2, though the game should be resizeing it already, but it could be resizeing it to 2048^2, wich might be too big for your card.
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Tolwyn on June 04, 2004, 09:48:03 am
I will give it a try... I wanted to resize them anyway, in order to save some cpu time
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Flipside on June 04, 2004, 11:55:14 am
Hmmmmmmmm... I got this on some of my skyboxes for a while, I think I sent an Email through the tester list. I just checked and yes, it is still happening, at first I thought it was an odd polygon and was my doing, but I've checked the skybox on a much earlier build and it seems fine.
I'll post screenshots and try to identify the first build that did this tonight :)
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Tolwyn on June 04, 2004, 11:59:43 am
hmm... and there is no easy way to resize planets and keep alpha chanel. I will have to rerender them :(
Title: Weird white things
Post by: ShadowDrakken on June 04, 2004, 12:15:51 pm
just curious, but why do you need a 1200x1200 planet when the game only runs at 1024x768 anyway? isn't it just a waste to have a texture that large?
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Tolwyn on June 04, 2004, 12:29:06 pm
because.... maybe I want a large scaled planet?
Title: Weird white things
Post by: gevatter Lars on June 04, 2004, 02:04:51 pm
I haven't read everything above...only thats about planets and other stuff.
Well I got the bug out with activating something called "-d3d_bad_tsys"

With this activ I can see the planets..looking nice and it runs without problems.
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Lightspeed on June 04, 2004, 08:39:50 pm
Quote
Originally posted by ShadowDrakken
just curious, but why do you need a 1200x1200 planet when the game only runs at 1024x768 anyway? isn't it just a waste to have a texture that large?


1200x1200 is stupid anyway. Either make it 1024x1024 and save 12 (TWELVE!) megabytes of texture space, or go ahead and add enough detail so it's worth the 2048x2048 pixels.
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Flaser on June 05, 2004, 10:15:28 pm
Futhermore to actually answer you question ShadowDrakken - it's because the maps are projected onto the models - so when you're flying next to a destroyer only a portion of the map is visible.

For background elements, the same issue is present when the mission designer tries to simulate a planet very close.
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Tolwyn on June 06, 2004, 04:01:28 am
Quote
Originally posted by Flaser
For background elements, the same issue is present when the mission designer tries to simulate a planet very close.


exactly... but still... even a latge texture map still looks like crap if you need to simulate a very close planet. A use of a model is a waste of ressourcesand therefore I am in a bind :(
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Bobboau on June 06, 2004, 04:04:02 am
useing a model would be even worse, from a quality stand point
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Tolwyn on June 06, 2004, 05:30:16 am
Quote
Originally posted by Bobboau
useing a model would be even worse, from a quality stand point


exactly... but, use of a 2048 map is also a waste of ressources. I also fear that the game will run only on high end systems in this case
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Lightspeed on June 06, 2004, 07:15:22 am
Holy ***, i'm experiencing a similar problem now, too.

This seems to be down to some code problems :wtf:

However, it doesnt happen with any backgrounds, but explosion / beam images. Sometimes, when an explosion ANI starts, or a beam graphic (beam as well as beamglow) are started they are white rectangles - but switch back to the intended graphic about 1 second later.

There seems to be something wrong with the way textures are loaded mid-mission.

Also, I had another worrying bug. You might remember the vanishing textures thingy.... Well, I played some missions in a row again - and suddenly it crashed me out during mission loading saying 'Error parsing briefing_icons.tbl - Missing Briefing icon', and crashed my whole system (so I had to do a hardware reset).

After that, I restarted the game, and it loaded up fine.

So - there seems to be something screwing up so FS2 doesn't find the files anymore (this could also lead to the invisible texture thingy), and there also seems to be something wrong with loading textures in a mission (see white squares problem).
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Tolwyn on June 06, 2004, 08:54:19 am
same goes for FRED... at least on my system: stars are in the effects folder, but FREd reports them as missing :(
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Starman01 on June 06, 2004, 03:54:54 pm
There seems to be really a problem with loading background-files.
But I had this even before 3.6. I think I have this since the march-builds.

Sometimes after loading a mission, your FPS will drop dramatically
(from normal 90 FPS to about 20 when facing some backgrounds).

Exiting the game, and restarting it (reload of mission does not work)
solves the problem, than I will have the 90 FPS again, by the same
backgrounds).

Those new sun-files will drop down the Framerate from 100 to 50,
even in an empty mission :( . Not fully sure who made, either
Lightspeed or Tolwyn).

However, I haven't encountered the problem with these white squares
yet.(I'm using a GF4 TI 4200)
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Bobboau on June 06, 2004, 09:55:49 pm
RT just found a bug in his textur management system, this might be the cause of it.
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Tolwyn on June 07, 2004, 04:41:10 am
I made 'em... they are TGAs in 512*512 resolution.
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Bobboau on June 07, 2004, 10:04:35 am
use the comand line -d3d_bad_tsys and see if this has any effect
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Tolwyn on June 07, 2004, 10:31:37 am
Quote
Originally posted by Starman01
There seems to be really a problem with loading background-files.
But I had this even before 3.6. I think I have this since the march-builds.

Sometimes after loading a mission, your FPS will drop dramatically
(from normal 90 FPS to about 20 when facing some backgrounds).

Exiting the game, and restarting it (reload of mission does not work)
solves the problem, than I will have the 90 FPS again, by the same
backgrounds).

Those new sun-files will drop down the Framerate from 100 to 50,
even in an empty mission :( . Not fully sure who made, either
Lightspeed or Tolwyn).

However, I haven't encountered the problem with these white squares
yet.(I'm using a GF4 TI 4200)


I have a similar effect when a large ship with a lot of glow maps comes into view... the frame rate drops to 30 (standard 60) and that on a Radeon 9700 PRO :(

Bobboau: I will give it a try
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Starman01 on June 07, 2004, 01:04:28 pm
Bad news. With the use of this flag, my game-performance is
only 20% of the normal one. And unlike the other error, every time :(

Typical ingame, facing backgrouds around 90 FPS
Facing suns, around 50 fps

With the use of this code : backgrounds 25 fps,
facing suns     : 12 fps.

Currently flags used :

fs2_open_3_6.exe -glow -jpgtga -ship_choice_3d -fps -d3d_bad_tsys  -ambient_factor 100

1024x768x 32, 2x AA, Direct 3D8, Use large-textures and fix GF-Problem = Yes

GF4 TI 4200 and Force-Feedback activated.
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Tolwyn on June 07, 2004, 01:12:56 pm
not to mention glow maps clipping problems... it is as if they would phase in and out while you are moving around a ship. Glow maps were created for every lod :wtf:
Title: Weird white things
Post by: DaBrain on June 10, 2004, 07:18:54 am
I'm using the same build. But I get a slightly different bug:

(http://www.ystart.net/upload/20040610/1086869637.jpg)


It appears sometimes when I look into a sun.

Should I try the flag, or is it fixed already ?
Title: Weird white things
Post by: Lightspeed on June 10, 2004, 09:45:23 am
This is the white square problem I described in the other thread. The situation shown there is when it happens with laser glows.