screen artifacts

[gernot66]

needs not many words i guess

and yes i thought about broken geometry, similar happens in "argh you know..."

Modellname: MacBook Pro Modell-Identifizierung: MacBookPro1,1 Prozessortyp: Intel Core Duo Prozessorgeschwindigkeit: 2 GHz Anzahl der Prozessoren: 1 Gesamtzahl der Kerne: 2 L2-Cache: 2 MB Speicher: 2 GB Busgeschwindigkeit: 667 MHz Boot-ROM-Version: MBP11.0055.B08 SMC-Version (System): 1.2f10 Seriennummer (System): SystemSerialNumb Hardware-UUID: 00000000-0000-1000-8000-0016CB971E6F Sensor für plötzliche Bewegung: Status: Aktiviert

http://pioneer-universum.web.officelive.com/Documents/opengl.txt

comment: i just started the game (no savegame loaded).

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also zordey

Intel(R) Celeron(R) M CPU 440 @ 1.86GHz 1GB RAM Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)

Fedora 15 (Linux version 2.6.42.3-2.fc15.i686 )

http://www.spacesimcentral.com/forum/download/file.php?id=2078

[robn]

Colours suggest terrain? @gernot66, if you take off can you see the glitches from above?

[robn]

Oh also, which version of Pioneer is this?

[Luomu]

Which version of Pioneer is this? When did the problem start? Also, you seem to be using many nonstandard buildings there, does any of them being in view trigger the bug?

[Philbywhizz]

@gernot66, The 'Apple/About pioneer...' menu should tell you the SHA build number of your current version of pioneer.

[Zordey]

I captured some video last night of it happening on my machine, trimed it down to about 10 seconds: http://youtu.be/ZdN-vtJyglQ (Updated with YouTube linky to save my bandwidth) Steps: pull latest version from git (29/02/2012 at around 8pm GMT) configure / run start at default Earth start goto outside view (Shift + 3)

There are other smaller glitches but they are not really visible in the video so I didn't bother including them. Most glitches are similar to the first screenshot above, I trimmed the video to show only a particularly large glitch.

Same issue does not seem to happen in my version of Alpha 19 (pre-built download from website version)

I could not find any reliable way of replicating this, it seems random but appears to happen more frequently near the ground but still happens in deep space.

[robn]

Thanks @Zordey. Uploaded here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKRMM4IWbQc

[gernot66]

just for completeness

"alpha 19" (faef25a)

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erm, when i hear "non standart buildings" i could get angry.... sounds like vlastan would have a exclusive right to do buildings for Pioneer :( while, except for tomms i would say mine are "standart", i never would have just thought such ;)

at least the factory and the chappel was the first not simply grey buildings in pioneer

don't mind to much, but "non standart" that's somehow degrading.

(sorry it reminds me a bit of FFED3D where my models are reasonably "non standart")

[robn]

Thanks for the info - it helps to know the version number when testing, as there's been a massive amount of work done on the internals of the rendering engine since then.

Buildings are in a state of flux. Vlastan's models were simply the ones in place at the time we stopped working on it. For the moment whatever you have in your local build is not what we release and is thus "non-standard". Its important to identify any variations that may affect our ability to reproduce (and thus fix) the problem.

[Luomu]

You use models that are not in the releases. You need to eliminate the possibility of them triggering this problem (some rarely-used LMR function for example - I can't possibly know at this point). If you isolate the problem to one of the models, you send it as a test case. I can not fix this unless I can reproduce this or without more data to narrow it down.

[Zordey]

My system is 100% unmodified and up to date from Git as of 29/02/2012 at around 8pm GMT.

I do not remember the issue in Alpha 19 but I will check again later.

[Zordey]

I spent about 45 minutes last night spinning the camera / ship trying to reliably reproduce this fault (then felt really ill and went to bed..), but it seems quite random when it happens.

The only observation that I can really make is that it only happens when the full screen is moving (rotating ship on inside view, or rotating camera in outside view) and I am 99% sure that it only happens when the dense star belt is somewhere on screen.

So my current best guess is that it is something to do with the dense star belt generation...

Ill happily test again if anyone has any other suggestions or if someone produces a version without the star belt??

[gernot66]

yes, of course my models are the reason!

[Zordey]

Captured some more videos over the weekend, not so sure of my assumption that it is something to do with the star belt now... I have seen the glitches on the Start screen and in the F3 screens (inventory etc)

(These videos are captured after update to Alpha 20 freeze version)

Video 2: http://youtu.be/ugjlqyV25Wo Video 3: http://youtu.be/bW0aXecf9bk Video 4: http://youtu.be/ov7Kb8aGFGo

[Philbywhizz]

@Zordey, the videos appear to be marked private

[Zordey]

@Philbywhizz, Oh my bad... Try again now please.

[gernot66]

i never have seen them, but i have also to say that i run only updated models in my alpha20. i have of course a second unaltered but it's kept only for comparison, i didn't use it to play.

it could be that some strange code has produced that error and foremost that will be from my models, but i can't tell exactly because i reviewed all of them and not only mine.

i remember that i have removed some "obscure" looking things from the scripts, especially still used dynamic textures or dynamic used .obj.

personally i was guessing it's the "blank" submodel (because i usually placed it at v(0,0,0) and most of the artifacts seem to come right of the center of the model), but it's not i guess, because i still use it but can't reproduce the artifacts no more.

i guess i check a maiden alpha20 and add slowly one model - sub-model after the other until the artifacts won't appear no more. then i will have a idea what has changed.

[gernot66]

sombodys got a idea how to provoke them?

actually they only appear as the slight error on the galactical belt, no more heavy disordered geometry. and only in the alpha19 build.

this confuses me a bit, it's like "magic". once the effect was strong and has appeared nearly always, now it's hard to reproduce it ??? same build, same models ???

i wouldn't be surprised if no one is able to reproduce it right now, but perhaps tomorrow or next week.

[gernot66]

it seems i found a way to provoke them, or at least they appear more often now again ;)

i remembered i turned off antialiasing, it's a break and leaves a ugly moiré effect on the planets in far views. it's something i usually disable for all games, simply because the performance hit isn't worth the little better quality. further to me aliasing looks less annoying rather a "bleeding" screen, i always feel like i wear wrong glasses. but choices are different, this should be left up to the user i guess (what about a knob to turn it on/off?).

by reenabling the antialiasing it appears now again.

but it's not the only method to control or provoke it, also fractal detail and planet detail distance do some to that.

it appears to both builds (alpha19&20) in the same manner, with or without my "non standart" ;) models.

of course this would have been convinced by others.

[gernot66]

i hope this is still of interest, i can't say if this still appears in alpha21, but nonetheless some screenshots of it (since you havn't closed the issue i think it's still actual).

let's hope this will help ;)

this was made with my handy camera, i had to because it has halted the machine.

following is "new" (but still alpha 20), it looks like the glitch is starting at the thrusters position. i know it's a "non standart" model, but it hasn't any obviously "wrong" contents and the glitch appeared from the very first test when the model was still a naked hull with no animations or else details.

[Luomu]

since you havn't closed the issue i think it's still actual)

I don't mind keeping this open in case more users experience it. But unless I can reproduce it I personally can't fix it.

I actually went to SSC and downloaded that ship but I still don't get the glitch.

[Zordey]

I have been really busy the last couple of weeks so I haven't got properly testing Alpha 21 but this was still happening on the nightlys from just over a week ago on my system.

I generally only use the eagle, asp and imp courier ships and it happens with all of them.

Having said that, I will hopefully be getting a new laptop in the next couple of weeks so if Gernot gets his issue fixed don't hold it open on my behalf.