[Cobra]

ah well, 3.6.7 beta works perfectly for me.

[Psychonaut]

Hopefully finding out, that the light-sources or the suns have something to do with this bug may help fixing it.

Switching to OGL is a solution, too, but it breaks env-mapping (which is IMHO one of the major improvements of FSO). Let´s hope, that Taylor will succeed in implementing this to OGL soon. That would solve a lot D3D Problems.

EDIT: Sorry folks. Starfox described the sun-effect in another thread. So i think, my post wasn´t that helpful. And it seems, that the problem is much bigger and really hard to fix. This, or every coder already switched to OGL.

[taylor]

Most of the bug fixers are using OGL now.  I use Linux so D3D isn't an option (I wouldn't use it anyway) and is pretty difficult for me to ever test since I require another computer to do it.  Unfortunately that other computer got fubar'd in a recent storm and though I have the parts to fix it, I don't have the time or the desire to do so.  I can do builds and basic OGL testing in VMWare running on my Linux box but D3D doesn't work there.

Env mapping in OGL is just waiting on the time to clean up and commit the code.  I had it working a few months ago but didn't like how it had to be done.  Another solution came along and that works much better but needed driver support.  Now that ATI supports it I don't have the time to commit it.  It's all interwoven into code that is nowhere near ready to commit so cleaning everything up is going to take a while.  Vicious little cycle I'm on but it will go in soon, just not for 3.6.7.

[Fury]

Lately my only major gripes with OGL has been those green flashes that occasionally happen when you switch to another interface screen, such as tech room. I do not know whether this is a feature or a bug. The other thing is that with OGL things don't look quite as good as with D3D, albeit shinemaps etc works. Using Radeon 9800XT with latest Win x64 drivers.

[taylor]

The green flashing seems to be an ATI thing.  I've never really found a real way around it but I have tried several possible fixes that have been in the past few builds.  Since I don't have an ATI card though it's pretty much impossible to properly test and fix the problem.

As far as quality goes, can you post screenshots for a comparison?  My Windows computer had an old video card anyway but a lot of visual improvements were made to OGL, until I couldn't tell the difference anymore with my hardware.

It's never going to be the same but video drivers do have a lot to do with OGL quality, especially ATI's drivers.  Sometimes they go more for speed than for looks but often there is some quality setting to let you adjust that balance.  OGL looks a lot better with -rlm enabled (will be made default and not changeable after 3.6.7) and when env mapping finally hits CVS it will look even better (effectively gives you per-pixel lighting in OGL).  And that strange model geometry rendering problem that only affected OGL has been fixed now too so 3.6.7 won't have that against it.

[Col. Fishguts]

I'm curious, what does the -rlm flag exactly do ?

[Fury]

Good question, and here's another. Env-mapping in 3.6.7 or after it?

[taylor]

-rlm ("Realistic Lighting Model" in the launcher) makes lighting calculations based on a local viewpoint.  It's a little slower since the calculations have to be made on each vertex.  By default it's an infinite viewpoint so the light direction never changes.  This will cause some moving of light on a model when you view it from different angles.  A local viewpoint on the other hand will continually recalculate the lighting direction so that it maintains a more realistic cast of light.

I made it a cmdline option since I wasn't sure about the speed of it.  No one has reported and problem though and this stuff is nothing for modern video cards so I'm just going to make it the default and remove any option to do otherwise.  I don't want to remove the cmdline option just before 3.6.7 though since most OGL users are already used to having it there.  After 3.6.7 there will likely be a flood of new code added and there's no telling what all will break.  Waiting to remove the option until then should spare some trouble for users, for this one thing at least.

Env mapping will be after 3.6.7.  Don't know how long after since it really depends on what all of Bobboau's new code does.  The priority will be to get all of that new material code working well and after that happens env mapping will go in.  I've got way too much new code to plow through and near zero time to do it so this will have to wait until more important things get done (Real Life (TM) type things mostly).

[Cobra]

oh yeah, speaking of flags, what exactly does the analog ballistic ammo gauge flag do?

[Goober5000]

It displays an analog ballistic ammo gauge.

[Cobra]

but i never see any difference in the ammo gauges.

[karajorma]

Are you using Ballistic weapons?

[Cobra]

if you mean like machine guns, no.

[karajorma]

Then what the F**k did you expect to see?

[Axem]

Actually I found they work without machine guns too. It's harder to see, but they do display the weapons energy.

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by Axem
Actually I found they work without machine guns too. It's harder to see, but they do display the weapons energy.

It's not supposed to.  It's supposed to display a curved triangle on the right side of the HUD that corresponds to the amount of ammo remaining on all banks.

Can you post a screenshot?

[Axem]

Is this it? It's not triangled shaped or anything, but it does appear when I tick the analoge gauge.

The Slayer PDC is an energy weapon, and the 100mm is a ballistic weapon.



Top pic is the PDC nearly drained, and it has recharged a bit in the lower ones.

[Goober5000]

Yeah, that's it.  Not a curved triangle - my mistake.

I guess the gauge appears even if one weapon is ballistic.  What if none are ballistic?

You might have to ask WMC about this.

[Axem]

I first tried it with a ship with no ballistic weapons and didn't see it. I thought you guys fixed it until I tried it with nukemod's ships, which have both energy and ballistic weapons.

I just thought it was to replace the energy bar it takes away.

[Cobra]

personally, i rather like original energy bar, although that's what i thought at first, too.