[taylor]

Mayhaps the transparency problems only surface at specific hardware/driver combination or something

I considered the same thing while I was writing my previous response but discarded the idea since it really wouldn't matter for the reference shaders one way or the other.  The 1112 and 1119 shader sets are part of the same "family" of sorts, the shader rewrite that was in part specifically done to fix the transparency problems.  The difference could be hardware/driver related, but I really doubt it.  Most likely is is simply due to the difference in test data, where what you have works but if I was to go through my test suite again it would still have the problem.

But I'll have a look at the spec map issue next week and see if I can't work out a shader fix that solves it.

Also, if the shaders are to be considered media rather than parts of engine, should this conversation be in SCP forum in the first place?

Going strictly by the original topic, no.  But technically it's a 50-50 thing, where it is part data and part code/engine.  I'd say it's just as valid to have this discussion here as it would be in the modding or upgrade forums.

[chief1983]

There really isn't a lot I can do about that though, it will take someone with a Mac that has the problem to go through the code and try and work out where the problem is hiding.

Or a hardware donation to Taylor   

[blowfish]

Unfortunately, I don't think that I've heard a single person on a Mac report any success in getting shaders to work.  There always seems to be rendering issues at the least.  My Mac is too old and doesn't have the hardware needed for shader support, so I was never able to test properly and figure out what was going on.  The problem is either in the code itself or the shaders, but I'm pretty confident that it's the code that's at fault.  The same code works on Windows and Linux, so it means we have yet another Mac-only rendering problem on our hands.  There really isn't a lot I can do about that though, it will take someone with a Mac that has the problem to go through the code and try and work out where the problem is hiding.

Actually, shaders seem to work fine in window mode on OSX, although environmental mapping is decidedly borked...

EDIT: see here

[chief1983]

Strange, I just reported a bug the other day about environment mapping, it's actually a crash bug.  Somewhat complicated to reproduce though.

[ARSPR]

[OFFTOPIC]
Speaking about shaders.

Heigh maps (ie Uly) look worse in this new shader version (1119 or 003) than in the very first version Taylor made. There are more displacement artifacts arround the edges.

Maybe, now that shaders are fully public, some bored coder can improve the parallax shader / map   

(Although, I myself consider heigh maps a complete luxury. Normal mapping is really shown in-game, but parallax mapping... I doubt anyone will REALLY notice it while playing)
[/OFFTOPIC]

[taylor]

Heigh maps (ie Uly) look worse in this new shader version (1119 or 003) than in the very first version Taylor made. There are more displacement artifacts arround the edges.

It was changed by request.  The art folks liked it better the current way.

It's easy enough to change to the old way though.  Just open up one of the respective "h" shaders in a text editor and look for the "h_offset" line, this is where it determines how much to offset.  You can change it by modifying the last value, the "0.02".  Lower values have less offset, higher values have more offset.  It was "0.01" previously, so you can just change it to that if you liked the old way better.

[chief1983]

I'm going to have to make note of that, it could easily be something we want to tweak for FotG since we'll be making heavy use of those maps.  Also, that env map bug I was talking about is fixed now.  Not sure if it could be responsible for other env-related bugs or not.

[Galemp]

pics or it didn't happen.

/sorry