Meta: GSdx HW mipmap support

[gregory38]

Let's collect games that suffer from lack of mipmap. It would allow to avoid multiple bugs reports and easily see which games are impacted (and how many too).

Active issues:

• [x] Ape Escape 2 #869 - major issue, requires Full mipmapping(still glitchy) and Trilinear for ground
• [ ] FIFA 2003 & 2005 - "Trilinear" Texture Filtering further improves field textures
• [ ] FIFA 2004 - textures flickering remains in midfield with the goal to goal cam
• [x] ICO - minor issue, god rays are still missing
• [x] No One Lives Forever #2124 - LODs are glitchy/has alignment issues.

Active issues, but not broken without mipmapping:

• [x] Gran Turismo 4 comment - Ground textures
• [ ] 2002 FIFA World Cup - Mipmapping does not work for any hardware renderer
• [ ] SOCOM II - Enabling mipmapping on hardware will cause graphical issues

Fixed with automatic mipmapping option, but missing CRCs:

• [x] Legacy of Kain Defiance - minor issue, wrong textures on 3D objects
• [x] Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 2 - minor issue, wrong textures on 3D objects

Fixed with automatic mipmapping option:

• [x] Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies / Distant Thunder - major terrain flickering (resolved)
• [x] Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War / Squadron Leader - major terrain flickering (resolved)
• [x] Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War - major terrain flickering (resolved)
• [x] Brian Lara International Cricket 2007 - major issue (resolved)
• [x] Dark Cloud - minor issue, needed for some background scenery (resolved)
• [x] Destroy All Humans
• [x] Destroy All Humans 2
• [x] Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy - tri linear for sea
• [x] Jak 2
• [x] Jak 3
• [x] Jurassic Park : Operation Genesis - major issue
• [x] Ratchet and Clank
• [x] Ratchet and Clank Going Commando / Locked and Loaded
• [x] Ratchet and Clank Up your Arsenal / 3
• [x] Ricky Ponting International Cricket 2005 - major issue (resolved)
• [x] Tomb Raider: Anniversary
• [x] Tribes: Aerial Assault - minor issue, very noticable on vehicle landingpads
• [x] Whiplash

[Sarania]

@gregory38 Here is a vid Nobbs made of R&C 1 that shows more of the total effect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNuhWBs8RiA

at around 35 seconds you can see that they do remain if you stop the camera on that angle.

[FlatOutPS2]

Yes Need some tuning. Does the glitches remain if you stop moving on the bad angle ? I need to capture it in a gs dump to understand what going on.

They did when I tried Legacy Of Kain Soul Reaver 2.

[gregory38]

Looking at the video, the rendering is quite good. Geezzz people are never happy :p it is likely a rounding issue of the lod factor. I'm pretty sure it can be improved. I'm surprised it isn't better with latest git

[jcdenton2k]

@gregory38 don't feel sad; people are likely playing above native resolution so these kinds of glitches are far more noticeable

If they were playing in Native Resolution on a CRT then they probably wouldn't even notice :)

I'm loving the work being done to improve this. I'll poke around my PS2 disc collection and do some testing as well.

[Dokman]

@gregory38 i am really happy with this changes 😄 i am waiting for more fixes like this

[FlatOutPS2]

Just tried Tribes: Aerial Assault. The objects look good, but terrain textures change at the wrong distances.

[Dokman]

Set to OpenGL, set mipmapping and frameskp to 5 and then profit for your own Destroy All Humans 2 it has the same problem in the camera, sometimes if you have a bad camera the textures are bad

[FlatOutPS2]

ICO godrays are visible in HW, but missing at certain angles. Added a GS Dump. Godrays constantly visible in SW, missing a certain angles in HW:

ICO godrays missing at certain angles with HW mipmapping.zip

[Dokman]

missing letters in Destroy All Humans https://mega.nz/#!ch0G2QDK!QWoK5tlD7ERClPKIRLcyWMcQKEnmbIJEuc77vpQ79ns

Second option where are you? XD

[Namcot]

@gregory38 Will this finally fix the car textures in Ridge Racer 5 in hardware mode?

They work fine in software mode.

Hardware Mode:

Software Mode:

[Nobbs66]

IIRC, the cars has issues with the texture cache not mip mapping.

[Sarania]

Just FYI:

Fezzer, Nobbs and I all get random crashes in R&C(them in 2, me in 3) with the latest build and HW mipmapping. We haven't yet isolated if it's related to having HW mipmap enabled(need more tests) or something else. Nothing useful appears in the log and the crashes are random complete exits of the PCSX2 process. Sometimes it happens very quickly, other times it can go an hour without happening. It's super random :/

I'll try to get some additional tests to this end done tomorrow.

[FlatOutPS2]

IIRC, the cars has issues with the texture cache not mip mapping.

Yes, it's a TC issue. RRV doesn't have any mipmapping issues.

[FlatOutPS2]

With the latest build Ace Combat 4 still has the same texture issues close to ground I posted a GS Dump for earlier in this issue.

Legacy Of Kain is much improved.

[gregory38]

Let's look first at the easy case.

Legacy Of Kain is much improved.

You still have some bad texture in some angles ? If you can capture it on a dump it will be nice, it could be a slight rounding issue.

[FlatOutPS2]

It could also be a seperate not mipmapping related issue. I'll look into it later.

[gregory38]

Yes it could be a YATCI (yet another cache issue). Hopefully moving around can help to see if it is likely mipmap related or not.

[FlatOutPS2]

The ICO godrays missing at certain angles GS Dump I posted earlier has gotten worse with the latest mipmapping builds. Now it doesn't shine properly at any angle.

EDIT: It got worse with https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/commit/04d82d81278c564080cc116655e7ad415f90f637

[Dreadmoth]

Found a couple of remaining bad textures / camera positions: Ratchet & Clank Ratchet & Clank 3

Jak 3 has patterns and shimmering noise on some terrain textures at a particular distance from the camera, which only occurs with mipmapping enabled: Jak 3 - mipmapping enabled Jak 3 - mipmapping disabled Jak X has similar shimmering around the vehicle turntable on the main menu: Jak X - mipmapping enabled I guess texture cache issues might be affecting certain mip levels?

[gregory38]

@FlatOutPS2 I suspect that ICO will require a full mipmap implementation. And even with it, it might not work well with upscaling.

[FlatOutPS2]

Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy isn't correct yet either: The sea still has squares in it. Jak & Daxter sea mipmapping.zip

[FlatOutPS2]

I checked up on Soul Reaver 2 and couldn't find the issue with the latest build. I assume it was a fluke. I did see a rare flicker but it too was a one off that couldn't be reproduced.

[gregory38]

@Dreadmoth I'm looking at your R&C dump. So for the R&C 3, I update a bit the rounding to take care of the issue. I'm still looking at the first one. I try to debug the left "tower" but I think there is a bug in the SW renderer. Here the SW renderer texure Sw rendering is kind of flat... HW is much nicer. I will look the right tower now.

@FlatOutPS2 Ok. Anyway, it would never be perfect. Due to cache issue and various rounding upscaling. Another tester told me a similar report. Basically he notices a rare flicker of a couple of pixels.

[gregory38]

@Dreadmoth actually what is the issue of the first dump ? HW renderer:

SW renderer:

Zoom the 2, you can see that HW properly map the texture. You have nice windows, bricks, tiles. Whereas you have a lego look on the SW renderer.

[Dreadmoth]

In the screen I included in the zip with the GS dump (captured at the same time with shift-F8), the dirt path texture near the centre of the screen is offset: It only occurs in that camera position (with a small range in any direction). If I disable mipmapping it looks the same. In software it looks correct, as in the images you posted.

[gregory38]

Ok. My lastest update fix it. I will test it a bit on my side, if it is good, I will push it.

[FlatOutPS2]

Latest changes seem to have fixed the bad textures at certain angles in Ace Combat as well. Still has the gaps between textures when close to the ground at certain locations/angles.

[Sarania]

❤Gregory is amazing❤

Thanks so much for your hard work!

[gregory38]

I did a quick look at the J&D sea testcase. As APE2, it is clearly a limitation of my implementation. A texture mipmap is composed of several layers. In some situation, you want to interpolate between layers (it is called tri-linear filtering). It allow to have a smooth shading when you apply a texture on a "long distance" (often ground or sea).

However my implementation only picks a single layer for mipmap which solves 90% of mipmap issues. Unfortunately it doesn't allow proper tri-linear filtering.

[gregory38]

@FlatOutPS2 I fail to see the gap issue on your ace dump. But by gap, you mean that you kinds of saw 2 layers side by side instead of a smooth pattern. In this case, it is likely the same issue as my previous post. It would require more work.

[FlatOutPS2]

Oh, I see, it's a mipmap scaling issue. I didn't see it either with native resolution.

BTW: You could've seen what I meant in the image that came with the dump. ;)

[gregory38]

I will look at it. I didn't test upscaling. I don't know why but there is a hack that split differently the number of draw call when it is upscaled https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/blob/master/plugins/GSdx/GSState.cpp#L2596

[FlatOutPS2]

I tried the FIFA games with mipmapping and they look great too, but they seem to suffer from the same interpolation issue that Ape Escape 2 and J&D have.

[gregory38]

Hum, all games that really uses mipmap for filtering instead of a memory optimization (like R&C) will suffer of this issue. Potentially instead to always select the top level, I could do a mean of min_lod/max_lod, it could be less bad (or could be worst).

The real solution will be to really handle mipmap. But this part won't be free. I'm afraid it will generate a lots of texture cache miss.

[Dokman]

@gregory38 and how you can handle the texture cache? it's from the graphics driver or it's from the gpu?

[gregory38]

I mean GSdx texure cache. In short, it is complicated. I always said that current implementation is limited. Honestly it is far better than expected.

[Dokman]

i am studying ++ but i don't know how it works 3D, i want to learn dx and opengl but if i don't know the basis i cannot help sorry :( i don't have any book for it :(

[refractionpcsx2]

You should google tutorials, there are many on the web :)

[Dokman]

okay i will see in google i will try to work a little bit with dx and ogl before to start here

[Sarania]

Can definitely confirm that Hardware mode with mipmapping is faster than hardware mode without mipmapping by a good 30%.

[FlatOutPS2]

Can definitely confirm that Hardware mode with mipmapping is faster than hardware mode without mipmapping by a good 30%.

Was someone doubting that? :p This only goes for R&C obviously, as other games are not/hardly any faster.

[Sarania]

Interesting. How many have you tested that way? Why would R&C in particular get such a phat speed boost?

[FlatOutPS2]

Because it affects way more textures in that game that flicker/switch around a lot. In other games there are usually just a few wrong textures, and most show one wrong layer instead of flickering between several.

[Sarania]

Ahh, makes sense. Thanks.

So where are we on this? Are there still improvements to be made? Just trying to get things back on topic :P

[gregory38]

R&C is faster because of Vulkan. Oh wait, no ;)

Actually I think I understand why. When the layer isn't used the texture pointer is random and often 0. However 0 is also the address of a frame buffer. So before you could use the texture, you need to convert it from the frame buffer. It is slow whatever the number after Dx.

[gregory38]

On the implementation I think we are pretty good (i.e. I can't really do better in a short term).

• we need to discuss the option topic. Dedicated option or same option as SW renderer
• @ramapcsx2 could you test tomb raider again
• the biggest bug that remain is the interpolation between layers (aka mipmap => go back to square 1 :stuck_out_tongue: )

[Sarania]

@gregory38 Vulkan is so powerful that even without an implementation of it we are seeing speed boosts! XD

I personally think it should be tied to the SW renderer option. My reasoning is that no one will really be using both HW and SW renderers at the same time(they might sometimes switch back and forth but obviously you can't use both simultaneously) and that less GUI clutter and sneaky options to remember is always a good thing.

The trick is where to put it in the UI if we do that. Currently it's divided into HW and SW sections. Having it specifically in either kind of doesn't make sense if it does both. There is also the problem that it's sort of a "hack" as gregory has said. But putting it in HW hacks makes no sense if it's for both modes. Hmm. But having separate options seems unnecessarily over complicated IMO. I still think combining it is best. Just the how of the UI I'm not sure. Maybe at the very bottom outside of either section?

There is still also the question of whether to enable it by default or not. Unless it badly breaks more than one or two games I think we should. Well I mean if it breaks them like crashes then that's different but I mean like graphically.

[refractionpcsx2]

The trick is where to put it in the UI if we do that.

Default full mipmap implementation enabled, hw hacks - > Fast Mipmap

[gregory38]

Wait, what do you call full and fast mipmap ?

[refractionpcsx2]

full = slow implementation with interpolation of layers etc fast = what we got now :P