[stofer]

Many years ago I played the Freespace 2 demo and absolutely loved it. I could never find the game in stores so I was pretty happy to discover that I could now play an updated and modded Freespace 2...for free.

However I was pretty suprised when I read the installation guide in the wiki when I saw this line: "with Catalyst drivers above 4.3, shinemaps will not work in Direct3D. However, environment mapping will not work in OpenGL."

So in order to get the best performance I should downgrade my Catalyst drivers to version 4.3?

I'm sorry if this is a stupid person, or if I posted this in the wrong forum, but downgarding to drivers this old sounds like it will cause all sorts of problems for other applications. Of course I'm prepared to do it for the optimum performance. After all, I'd like the game to look as good as possible.

[karajorma]

Env mapping is broken on D3D at the moment anyway. Just play on OpenGL instead and leave your drivers as they are.

[stofer]

Thank you for the quick reply    I'll just stick with my current drivers then.

[Taristin]

Can we just officially drop D3D support already?

[karajorma]

Bobboau.

[Taristin]

Hasn't coded in months.

Should learn OGL anyway.

Isn't above anyone else, despite the godly praise he receives.

[WMCoolmon]

render-to-texture
environment mapping

[Taristin]

cross platform compatability.

is already ported to OGL.

[taylor]

render-to-texture

Not a valid reason to keep the broken D3D code.  It's working in OGL anyway, just not in CVS since it really needs other changes to prevent link problems.

environment mapping

Also not valid, it's broken in D3D anyway.  Plus it is also in experimental OGL code.  It's just waiting for the gl function upgrade for RTT before work continues on it.


Not that I really care one way or the other about the fate of D3D support.  But as far as excuses go, those two things aren't very good arguments for keeping broken D3D code around.  If no one is going to work on D3D code then it's basically not supported anyway so the discussion is moot.

[Goober5000]

I motion to drop D3D support.  Can I have a second?

[Taristin]

I motion to drop D3D support.  Can I have a second?

here! (or do you want a coder?)

[MatthewPapa]

here

but how exactly would it benefit us?

[CP5670]

I don't really care either way. D3D is only useful in pre-3.6.7 builds anyway, where the environmental mapping works. That being said, it works just fine if the environmental mapping is turned off, so I don't see any harm in leaving it there even if it's not going to be updated. I seem to remember someone here saying a while ago that he was using D3D because OGL was not rendering correctly for him or something; there may be some obscure hardware configuration out there that works better with D3D.

[taylor]

I seem to remember someone here saying a while ago that he was using D3D because OGL was not rendering correctly for him or something; there may be some obscure hardware configuration out there that works better with D3D.

Which is about the only real reason to keep it at this point.  The problem of course is that D3D *does* have to be updated when new graphics capabilities are added, otherwise it will either not work at all, or just not compile.  When it gets to the point that D3D is actually slowing down the use of new features is when I'll second the motion.  Until then I'm just hopeful that someone will come along and help us out in that area.  With D3D gone there is no longer a reason to keep the multi-API rendering engine, which would make things a lot easier on us, but could come back to beat the crap out of us later if we did want to support an additional API again.

I'm more of the notion to completely drop non-HTL support rather than D3D at this particular point in time.  Right now non-HTL doesn't work properly (ie. it crashes, period), isn't easily fixed, makes it more difficult to fix some graphics issues, and just generally gets in the way.  D3D still has a ways to go before it's that much of a bother.

[StratComm]

The only reason I'd favor dropping D3D at this point is threads like this (and those "OGL looks different than D3D"/"funny colors in OGL" bugs that keep appearing in Mantis).  The only reason that I'd say leave it is if OGL support in Vista is going to be as absolute crap as everyone seems to think it is.  So it's a toss-up for me.

[karajorma]

How about we keep it in and just drop it from the launcher instead? That way we can still suggest it to people who have a problem but most people will go straight to OGL.

[IPAndrews]

I'm more of the notion to completely drop non-HTL support rather than D3D at this particular point in time.  Right now non-HTL doesn't work properly (ie. it crashes, period), isn't easily fixed

I'm surprised this hasn't been done already. It's commendable that you guys are trying to keep it in, but really what's the point? If people require non HTL support point them at an earlier stable release in which it does work.

[Fineus]

I'm inclined to agree.

While it's up to you - I'd go with this as the course of action:

Create a stable D3D build at this point and freeze it. Do nothing more to it. Make it the last time that D3D be supported. That way if people really want D3D then they'll have a stable build to play with.

Cut D3D entirely out of future builds and focus on OGL entirely. If people ask about D3D then point them to the frozen final D3D build and point out that although it works, it doesn't include any features newer than the date on which it was created.

The result being a stable option for those who want D3D, and the evolution of the OGL build that is so badly needed yet held back by forcing yourselves to keep D3D in.

[CP5670]

That would work but I think it's better to wait at least until the next major official release for this (3.6.8 or whatever). The current builds have a number of other problems at the moment and this final D3D build may be used by some people for a long time in the future, so it's better to make sure everything else works properly.

As for non-HTL, I agree that it should go at this point. It would have been nice to keep it so anyone who could run FS2 could also play FSO, but it's been broken for quite a while now.

[Shade]

Just how old a video card do you need to have anyway to not support HTL? My old comp with a Geforce 3 works just fine with HTL, so it would have to be older than that. Honestly, I can't see people with that old a system being able to properly run FSO anyway, so why bother? No matter what you do, there's always going to be retail to fall back upon for people with truely ancient systems.