Graphical Nightmares

[Glaciusor]

Well, I figure it wouldn't hurt to put in my own two cents... I'll be blunt about it, the graphics engine could use a bit of work before more features are added to it. I have an Nvidia Ion card with 895 MB graphics RAM (yes, I know that's a strange number, I didn't design it), but I get *tons* of graphical problems. I do have updated drivers, and the card isn't that old. I know other people that have solid black grounds, and many others that get a "hall of mirror" effect on things that it shouldn't appear on, myself included. To me, this shows that the graphics engine can really use some work.

Now coming at it as a programmer: It's obvious that there are bugs, and I really do not think adding more features that work on this buggy system is a good idea right now. If something breaks, everything dependent on it has a high chance of not only breaking as well, but making the real problem(s) harder to find and making it much harder to fix. I think, before more features are added to the graphics engine, some of the bugs should be ironed out. It will make gameplay smoother (or in some cases, possible or practical) and will be a nice, solid base to work on top of.

I know the devs are busy, especially since moving to Zeroping caused quite a few problems. This is just my two cents though; I wanted to point out something that has really been bothering not only me, but quite a few other people I know. If a bunch of the more critical bugs are ironed out, I know a lot of PSers that will be very happy.

[RlyDontKnow]

black ground will supposedly be fixed with the next release for all somewhat recent cards. as for HoM: if you're reffering to that on the roads atm, it's a very temporary issue caused by a shader issue which isn't exactly an engine issue after all.

anyway, the graphic engine itself isn't part of planeshift, it's another open source project: crysal space
therefore we cannot fix all bugs that may occur related to graphics, though we're working together with those to fix issues as they occur.

if you have a specific issue that isn't already on the bugtracker, feel free to post it, but aside from those 2 already mentioned, there shouldn't be major graphic glitches afaik.

[Glaciusor]

I just mean bugs in general... I know that there are a lot floating around. Usually most of the symptoms are caused by a handful of bugs.

I know about Crystal Space... but I also know these bugs weren't so prevalent in Steel Blue . I'm just saying that since there are some bugs, at least the major ones should be eliminated before adding more features.

It's good that the black ground bug is being worked on. I personally don't experience it, but I know someone who does. It's also good that that hall of mirrors problem is being taken care of.

I believe I may have used the term "graphics engine" improperly. I am referring to the way PS interfaces with Crystal Space, not with Crystal Space itself.

[novacadian]

My computer gave me the same problem with black backgrounds in the wilderness when first coming here a month or so ago. By my understanding none of the dev team had my card type to work with. rlydontknow was wonderfully accommodating and had me post him my card details. The new version installed during the server move had the blackness a thing of the past, for me, and my character's allergies abated. 

It appears it was not a bug so much as it just did not know how to deal with my crappy card.

- Nova

[RlyDontKnow]

the big difference between 0.4 and 0.5 was that we moved to a new version of crystal space (1.9 vs 1.4 iirc) which has a lot more features like shaders, etc.
also there were a lot of new features added in 0.5 on PS' side, so there have been many cleanups during the last months and I personally hope they're experiencable by players, too (e.g. many fixes for memleaks, the loader, some stability issues in the server, several crashes, ...).
for myself 0.5 is even more stable than 0.4 used to be after all

[Geoni]

It is either one of two things: Your graphics card is really old and ancient like mine, or there is a graphics bug.

To Glaciusor and novacadian can I ask: Which roads are you getting the solid black grounds on? Since it might be your card I was wondering if all of the roads are solid black for you except outer bronze doors and the forest. Those are the only roads that I can see texture other than black on with my card and I was wondering if it was the same with other "crap" cards. (no offence to your cards)

[weltall]

I just mean bugs in general... I know that there are a lot floating around. Usually most of the symptoms are caused by a handful of bugs.

I know about Crystal Space... but I also know these bugs weren't so prevalent in Steel Blue . I'm just saying that since there are some bugs, at least the major ones should be eliminated before adding more features.

It's good that the black ground bug is being worked on. I personally don't experience it, but I know someone who does. It's also good that that hall of mirrors problem is being taken care of.

I believe I may have used the term "graphics engine" improperly. I am referring to the way PS interfaces with Crystal Space, not with Crystal Space itself.

note that crystal space deprecated the previous renderer rlcompat (still available and somewhat working with ps if self built) and moved to two other renderers unshadowed (what we use and was the only usable one till recently) and shadow_pssm so the entire rendering system is new and crystal space has still a lot of bugs to be ironed out also on their side (we had server crashing 10 times before booting up till recently). unfortunately both projects don't have an huge heap of developers and this slows things down.

[Glaciusor]

I personally don't have the black problem, but I know some who do.

.5 is more stable for some, and until recently it has been really stable for me... but that's just it, until recently. I know for some people it's become unbearable... I do think some of the problem is the current RP server, but I know a lot of problems popped up recently.

Memory leaks are also still pretty bad, and have been giving people I know big issues, and now those people haven't been online for a long time.

I do realize a lot has been done though, and I like a lot of the improvements. I just want to stress that the current system needs to be polished up before more is added.

[LigH]

The new renderers (unshadowed / shadow_pssm) have some minimum requirements (Pixel Shader and Vertex Shader support with a certain version) which not all graphic chipsets match. Even if the PlaneShift developers do not even use all the features of CrystalSpace 1.9 yet, the minimum requirements of CrystalSpace 1.9 are set.

It is roughly comparable to CS 1.9 allowing us to implement graphical effects like e.g. DOOM 3 or Riddick if we would just want to implement that. Giving us this ability is an investment in a future, but is already paid today. I doubt you would be able to run DOOM 3 or Riddick on an intel GMA 950 -- if you wanted to play that, you would know that you really need a GeForce beyond the FX generation.

Okay, PlaneShift is still far from looking comparable to DOOM 3 or Riddick. But that would possibly require to exchange most of the existing maps. Or at least to enhance them. But if we had it all done already, we could already have e.g. cobblestone roads and bricklayered walls in Hydlaa. Technically it would be possible. The plate armor already gives a hint of the possible features.

[Glaciusor]

I didn't know CS required so much more than it did a while ago. I understand that there's nothing that the PS devs can do about the requirements set by CS. I'm just saying, whatever *can* be dealt with should be... but I think that's already on the to-do. I just want to stress that it is really becoming a problem for many players in hopes that it will raise the priority of polishing up what is already there before adding more.

[LigH]

Well ... uhm ... CS would be able to support more "legacy" hardware. It is in general well able to scale down, using fallback render paths.

But those were not completely developed, due to either a lack of hardware among the CS developers, or a lack of interest in supporting non-gaming hardware for games.

See also: GPUs / Graphic Chipsets: Which to avoid and why

[novacadian]

To Glaciusor and novacadian can I ask: Which roads are you getting the solid black grounds on? Since it might be your card I was wondering if all of the roads are solid black for you except outer bronze doors and the forest. Those are the only roads that I can see texture other than black on with my card and I was wondering if it was the same with other "crap" cards. (no offence to your cards)

Before the server move that was exactly my situation. When stumbling upon the outer bronze doors the first time my heart skipped a bit. Zooming way back in camera angle my character went running, skipping and hopping across the vast and beautiful landscape; jumped over a fence and started what must have been a 5000 foot decent. 

Since the fix all the landscapes are now like the outer bronze doors to me. Perhaps not all with such stunning vistas; yet all wonderful in their own way.

- Nova

[-stf-]

Before last update ( from 0.5.4 to 0.5.8 ) i had no problem with graphics but now I am getting following issue. This happens when I have portal within the angle of the view (screen). Here is the look of it:


I hope it will be fixed soon because it's very hard to travel in wilderness while you can't see where you are walking. I think it is more related to transparent terrain, which I had before too, but only about 10%, now it's 100%. Also I see hall of mirrors around objects, i.e. rocks, when looking in other directions (with terrain visible), which didn't happened before the last update.

[RlyDontKnow]

stf: would be nice if you could contact me on irc, so we can work this one out.