[m!m]

I have been experimenting with a few ways of optimizing the graphics performance of FSO in the past few weeks and one of those optimizations uses a rather new way of addressing textures in our shaders. This should improve the CPU overhead while rendering the scene so these changes should be especially useful for people with less powerful CPUs.

Here are the builds for all platforms: http://swc.fs2downloads.com/builds/test/bindlessTextures/

I would like to know if these changes work at all (it should be enabled on recent AMD and Nvidia GPUs) and if you see any performance improvements. As far as I know, Intel does not support this extension but a few tests with those GPUs certainly wouldn't hurt to make sure that FSO still works even if the extension is not available.

[tomimaki]

Works ok in game on Nvidia and Intel. But it crash (on both GPUs) in F3 Lab when I choose debris for any ship.

[m!m]

Thank you for the report. I found the issue and fixed it. The builds above should be fixed relatively soon.

[Trivial Psychic]

Is this something that would be enabled on an AMD 5770 GPU?

[The E]

Is this something that would be enabled on an AMD 5770 GPU?

The 5770 should support the necessary extensions, but you should definitely test it!

[m!m]

The current builds do not indicate in an obvious way if bindless texturing is used so I updated the branch so that it prints that information on launch. The test builds above should be updated soon.

[tomimaki]

Code: [Select]

Checking graphics capabilities:
  Bindless texturing: Disabled
Well, atleast I tested it on usupported hardware

edit:
I found some issues.
Cutscenes doesn't scale up.
And other is visible on screenshot. First is from normal build, second is from bindless.

[attachment stolen by Russian hackers]

[m!m]

That's weird since the changes do not change how the briefing window is drawn but some of the other changes may have broken that. Just to confirm, are you using the newest nightly build as the "normal" build?

[tomimaki]

Yes, it was 17 september build.

[m!m]

I cannot reproduce your issue with retail FS2 data. Were you using any mods or special command line options? A log file would probably also help.

[tomimaki]

No mods and I tried without commandline flags but still the same.

[attachment stolen by Russian hackers]

[tomimaki]

So I got bindless-enabled hardware and could test this build.
But it crash on both gpus (intel and nvidia) when I load some model in Tech Room or F3 Lab.

[attachment stolen by Russian hackers]

[m!m]

Looks like I committed some debug code to the test build by accident. I'll update the changes to the latest master revision and will let you know when that is done. Unfortunately, driver support for bindless texturing is still a bit buggy so these changes may not be ready for the real world yet.

[m!m]

These builds should fix the shader compilation issue: http://swc.fs2downloads.com/builds/test/bindlessTextures/

[Phantom Hoover]

Bindless texturing? So you'll be removing binds from the engine? When do you think you'll be able to release this bind culling?

[m!m]

This just affect model textures since that is the most CPU intensive part of the rendering pipeline. Since I can't even test this code on my current machine since the drivers crash if I try to use bindless textures it will probably be some time until I can open a pull request for this.

[tomimaki]

No more crash on nvidia.

[m!m]

That's great! Thanks for testing.

[tomimaki]

That's weird since the changes do not change how the briefing window is drawn but some of the other changes may have broken that. Just to confirm, are you using the newest nightly build as the "normal" build?

Interesting thing. New build fixed issue with briefing window on unsupported hardware.

[m!m]

Maybe it was something unrelated to the bindless texturing then. I updated the changes to the newest source version so there may have been a fix for that issue.