[J3Vr6]

I've seen this happen for the last few builds pre 3.6 and 3.6 itself) and I haven't seen anyone else post on it, so I figured I'd bring it up.  Excuse me as I explain this since I have no idea what the technical names are for this.

It seems that the thrusters or really bright lights (but mostly thrusters as its what u see the most of) are sometimes appearing ahead of other stuff when I look at it.  If I'm flying towards a ship that's flying towards me, the thrusters will show up infront of the ship if I'm at a far distance.  As I get closer, the thrusters seem to be pushed behind the ship but every second (or something like that) they show up infront of the ship again; then fade to the back again.  

This can also be seen when you're looking at a ship from the side.  Sometimes the glow or blast of the thruster completly covers the back side of the ship.

I got 3.6 and it still shows up there, any ideas?  I haven't tried any of the environmental mapping builds yet.  I have a feeling it's the video card, but everything else in the game seems perfect ad I haven't seen other geforce 2 people complain about this....

AMD 2400xp
512 memory
Geforce 2 MX 32 megger

[Taristin]

Aren't you the one using the disabled Vsync?  If so, try enabling vsync again?

Just a thought...

[J3Vr6]

I am no such thing.  I don't know what disabling vsync does or doesn't do.

[Viper1000]

vsync eliminates tearing.  It slows your fps.

[WMCoolmon]

*Might* slow your FPS. I haven't really noticed a difference when I switch it on/off.

[Lightspeed]

except when you turn V_synch off the game gets all scrwey because the FPS drop and rise all the time.

[J3Vr6]

Um, this still doesn't explain what I'm talking about.  Am I to have vsynch on or off?  And having it on or off is going to cure this irish jig?  Whats the smart person way of saying what's going on?

[J3Vr6]

I also forgot to mention that with 3.6 (starting with the may build), I get funny things happening in the techroom.  After I play for a while (prob more than an hour) and decide to go into the tech room, some of the ships either don't show up (the part of the screen where the ship should be is completely empty) or a portion of the ship will.  Like on the vasudan destoyer hephestit or whatever it's venereal disease name is, you'll see the purple wings but not the actual spine or body of the ship...  Um, does that even make sense?

[SadisticSid]

That's undoubtedly a memory problem, I've had exactly the same thing before - perhaps textures that have already been loaded into memory aren't getting unloaded. However this behaviour didn't start in 3.6 for me, it was with an April INF build.

[J3Vr6]

Yeah, it started for me a while back.  I remember more closely the May builds.  So what does this mean?

[J3Vr6]

Update:  I tried the Vsynch disabled and I don't think my computer liked it.  It was showing 120 fps (which is higher than my normal 75 fps) and some of the thruster problems went away, but it still happens (read the first post).  Also, sometimes when I fire my primaries, the whole screen will kinda flash the color of the laser and then split into 3 frames.

And I think what lightspeed said happens too, that it's too erratic.

[StratComm]

I think I know what your problem is:

Originally posted by J3Vr6
Geforce 2 MX 32 megger

What I think you are seeing is occlusion miscalculation, and I believe it is related to the z-buffer depth.  The reason it worked ok a while back is that a far-clipping plane was established at 100km IIRC, but that was found to be unacceptable for backwards compatability so was moved way out.  It's a problem specific to old graphics cards, specifically yours (I have the same one, so I've seen the problem).  Not much can be done about it though.

[J3Vr6]

So what you're saying is that I have to prostitute myself and get a better graphics card?

[StratComm]

Yeah, basically