[Trivial Psychic]

OK, I'll open up a Mantis Bugreport for this, but I wanted to post it here first.  Hopefully, someone can diagnose the problem for me so a BurReport isn't necessary.

For the longest time, I've played FS2 (and now almost exclucively TBP) under a WinME or Win98SE platform.  Since my upgrade 2 years ago, I've kept a dual-boot system with Win98SE and WinXP.  My upgrade included an ATI 9600XT-based video card.  Since the last ATI drivers fully supported for Win9x were 4.3, I was able to play under D3D with shinemaps and get all the cool visuals.  It also meant I could run the latest drivers for WinXP.  I've also installed TBP under my WinXP partition, just so I could test certain aspects without having to reboot, although I've never attempted to play a mission.  During this past summer however, Taylor made the first attempt to fix a bug in OGL, where the background would go green when a popup menu was activated.  Ever since then, any selection of a screen menu option (continue, techroom, campaign room, exit, etc.) results in the program being minimized.  After restoring from this, the screen becomes distorted and completey useless.  It appears as though someone's cut the screen down the center, then slashed each half laterally at different intervals, then set up some jumping effect, with certain portions of the cut patterns shifing back and forth realy fast.  I've tried to capture a screen image, but they always come back black.  There are only 2 instances when I don't get this effect under WinXP OGL.  The first, is when using a debug build.  With a debug, I can switch through any menu I want, although selecting "exit" skips the popup menu and proceeds to CTD the program.  The other time I don't get this problem, is in windowed mode.  In such an instance, I get no jumping or unrequested minimization.

This particular problem has been with me since the summer (though I only recently discovered the "windowed mode" thing) and ordinarily I wouldn't care, but with this talk of abandonning D3D for primary support, I'm looking to make sure I'm not left high-and-dry.  Can this be fixed, or is my PC simply incompatible with OGL?

[gevatter Lars]

I run XP and FS with OGL and it runs very smooth and looks better then the D3D version IMO of the WCS mod.
Differance is that I got an older GF-card...they mostly run better with OGL then ATI cards as far as I heard.

[ShivanSpS]

yes, well, is true... ATI dont have a good hardware supported OpenGL... that causes that all OpenGL games a big slowdown, and great problems to who uses Linux... but I got an ATI card a 9600XT... but which FS_open the OpenGL runs better than D3D... that a big surprise, for me lol I still remember that bad experience which the Doom3... but anyway, remember someting... the great a big problem here is the AA filter... FS_open which OpenGL cant use AA, even if you try to force them from the Driver, the game will have problems... Personally Icant use the AA, but I using a 8x AF xD And still runing faster than D3D... at 60 FPS both OGL and D3D.

[Taristin]

I don't know what your problem is TP.
I, too, have a Sapphire 9600XT 256 MB video card at home. It runs fs2_open at 80fps at 1280x960 (or whatever the appropriate dimension is) in OGL mode just fine. Of course using the latest drivers on Win XP.

[phreak]

TP, try running in a window.  Otherwise it just sounds like a hardware problem.

[Cobra]

Um. OK. ShivanSpS, I have a lower-class ATI card, a 9250 128 mb. It plays SCP 5 times better than a GeForce in OpenGL. I still get slowdowns, but that's because of a ****ty computer.

I don't know what your problem is TP.
I, too, have a Sapphire 9600XT 256 MB video card at home. It runs fs2_open at 80fps at 1280x960 (or whatever the appropriate dimension is) in OGL mode just fine. Of course using the latest drivers on Win XP.

1240x768.

[WMCoolmon]

1280x960 is a valid resolution, 1240x768 isn't.

[ShivanSpS]

Um. OK. ShivanSpS, I have a lower-class ATI card, a 9250 128 mb. It plays SCP 5 times better than a GeForce in OpenGL. I still get slowdowns, but that's because of a ****ty computer.

That cant be posible, ATI dont have full OpenGL Hardware support, so its also use CPU when you are playing something that uses OpenGL... because ATI uses Software OpenGL.... Its not a FULL SOFTWARE, but... just search in google "Stupid ATI and his OpenGL" and you well see  . anyway, if the low-end 9250 play better FS2 in OpenGL cold be any other thing, like drivers... or maybe the Geforce cold be a 5XXX series who have serius troubles in some models, or have a 64-bit memory, cold be anything.

[CP5670]

I think the "Geforce" he is referring to is the original one or some crap like a MX420 or 5200LE.

However, ATI's OpenGL implementation may be inferior to Nvidia's but it certainly is not software based (or they would get like 0.1fps in modern OGL games). Don't know where you heard that. In FSO, I think the OGL mode is much better optimized than D3D at this point, enough to offset ATI's usual OGL weakness.

[Trivial Psychic]

Well, OGL seems to be working well enough in windowed mode, though there is a little loss of visibility and imersion.  I hope someone like Taylor (hint, hint ) can make an educated guess as to what my issue might be.

[ShivanSpS]

I think the "Geforce" he is referring to is the original one or some crap like a MX420 or 5200LE.

However, ATI's OpenGL implementation may be inferior to Nvidia's but it certainly is not software based (or they would get like 0.1fps in modern OGL games). Don't know where you heard that. In FSO, I think the OGL mode is much better optimized than D3D at this point, enough to offset ATI's usual OGL weakness.

As already say its not a full software, is something hard to say, is like a hybrid... some part is in hardware and some other in software... ask to ATi, they say that not going to waste time in given support for something that uses only the 3% of the game maket...

Ask to Linux users that have ATIs lol.... Its not full software, but you can be sure that the OpenGL in ATI consumes an extra CPU usage...

[castor]

It sounds strange that ATI would have full D3D support in HW, but lacks something notable on OGL side?
I've always thougt it to be a driver problem only.
 

[Zantor]

OK, I'll open up a Mantis Bugreport for this, but I wanted to post it here first.  Hopefully, someone can diagnose the problem for me so a BurReport isn't necessary.

For the longest time, I've played FS2 (and now almost exclucively TBP) under a WinME or Win98SE platform.  Since my upgrade 2 years ago, I've kept a dual-boot system with Win98SE and WinXP.  My upgrade included an ATI 9600XT-based video card.  Since the last ATI drivers fully supported for Win9x were 4.3, I was able to play under D3D with shinemaps and get all the cool visuals.  It also meant I could run the latest drivers for WinXP.  I've also installed TBP under my WinXP partition, just so I could test certain aspects without having to reboot, although I've never attempted to play a mission.  During this past summer however, Taylor made the first attempt to fix a bug in OGL, where the background would go green when a popup menu was activated.  Ever since then, any selection of a screen menu option (continue, techroom, campaign room, exit, etc.) results in the program being minimized.  After restoring from this, the screen becomes distorted and completey useless.  It appears as though someone's cut the screen down the center, then slashed each half laterally at different intervals, then set up some jumping effect, with certain portions of the cut patterns shifing back and forth realy fast.  I've tried to capture a screen image, but they always come back black.  There are only 2 instances when I don't get this effect under WinXP OGL.  The first, is when using a debug build.  With a debug, I can switch through any menu I want, although selecting "exit" skips the popup menu and proceeds to CTD the program.  The other time I don't get this problem, is in windowed mode.  In such an instance, I get no jumping or unrequested minimization.

This particular problem has been with me since the summer (though I only recently discovered the "windowed mode" thing) and ordinarily I wouldn't care, but with this talk of abandonning D3D for primary support, I'm looking to make sure I'm not left high-and-dry.  Can this be fixed, or is my PC simply incompatible with OGL?

Windows XP has issues with some ATi Radeons. I don't know if that would apply to you, but I suggest you look it up.

[Cobra]

Um. OK. ShivanSpS, I have a lower-class ATI card, a 9250 128 mb. It plays SCP 5 times better than a GeForce in OpenGL. I still get slowdowns, but that's because of a ****ty computer.

That cant be posible, ATI dont have full OpenGL Hardware support, so its also use CPU when you are playing something that uses OpenGL... because ATI uses Software OpenGL.... Its not a FULL SOFTWARE, but... just search in google "Stupid ATI and his OpenGL" and you well see . anyway, if the low-end 9250 play better FS2 in OpenGL cold be any other thing, like drivers... or maybe the Geforce cold be a 5XXX series who have serius troubles in some models, or have a 64-bit memory, cold be anything.

Will you stop acting like you know everything? I have an ATI card, and it plays on OpenGL extremely well. Get over it.

and FYI, on my 2.0 drivers, i could play OGL.

(In a bad mood right now.)

[EDIT] Oh, and it was a GeForce MX4000.

[Taristin]

ATi would never survive if it didn't have hardware OGL support. Stop spreading misinformation, please.

[taylor]

ATi would never survive if it didn't have hardware OGL support.

True.  In fact, I'm not aware of any consumer level card with full hardware GL support.  The problem with ATI isn't the hardware, they make really good hardware, but the drivers tend to suck.  Bad drivers can make really good hardware perform like crap and that is the main problem.  Bugs, strange optimizations, visual quality issues, etc. all contribute negatively to an otherwise great product.  Make changes with the driver control panel yourself to achieve a different quality/performance ratio and you may get better results than you do by default.  Going the performance route is going to run faster for sure but at the expense of exposing bugs and other strange issues.  Going the quality route will be slower but it may just plain work better.

And it is possible to have really good and full featured software GL drivers.  They may not be the fastest thing in the world (rather slow actually) but they do work great.  Assuming that ATI's problem is coming from software GL isn't a valid excuse.  Bad drivers are bad drivers, it doesn't matter whether it's 100% hardware GL or not.

[FireCrack]

^couldnt'a put it better meself

[CaptJosh]

Last I heard, SiS vid cards don't have full hardware GL support. I could be wrong, though.

[Cobra]

Every video card I have owned (which is 3, GeForce MX4000, ATi Radeon 9250, which died, and then the ATi 9250 I have now) has supported OpenGL. I love it.

I just saw Shivan's post about memory usage in OpenGL. Wrong again. Direct3D uses more memory then OGL. and, OGL is not software. It's hardware acceleration from a different source.

[WMCoolmon]

It's the same source (the video card), it's just a different way of telling the video card what to do.