Shadow Bug with 1.3
by Josh Moore · in Torque Game Engine · 09/21/2004 (7:27 pm) · 27 replies
Illumina is undergoing big changes. The biggest is the switch to 1.3 rather than our pre-1.2 mess of a source. Torque 1.3 is great, except one huge bug. The player shadows(and the other shadows I'm sure) flicker big black rectangles on the terrain and interiors. I'm sure it has something todo with my video card or the shadow setting, but I have no idea really. Anyone mind sheding some light on this bug. I know other people are getting the same bug.
Screenshot:
BTW: THis bug isn't just with 1.3, I noticed it in Head as of a fortnight ago.
Edit: I'm using a Radeon 9200 on 600 800 32 resolution.
Screenshot:
BTW: THis bug isn't just with 1.3, I noticed it in Head as of a fortnight ago.
Edit: I'm using a Radeon 9200 on 600 800 32 resolution.
#22
03/18/2005 (11:09 am)
Thanks Brandon. I spent most of a day trying verious versions of drivers. This gives me hope.
#23
I'm also having a strange problem with TSStatic shadows. I enabled them in the code (I set them to be static and non-animated, causing nearly no impact on framerate when used on specific shapes), but the TSStatic-generated shadows projected on interiors will flicker once in a while at certain camera angles (the shadows simply disappear at certain angles, seeminly at random). The shadows for ShapeBase-derived stuff looks normal, as well the shadows projected on the terrain. This happens on every videocard.
The odd thing is, it depends on the mission. If I create a new mission, place some interios and TSStatics, no flicker occurs, ever. I still couldn't figure out what exactly is wrong with our main mission. But the bug is a bit similar in symptoms to the ATI bug (some shadow setting goes wrong depending on the camera angle).
12/13/2005 (11:22 am)
Telling our customers to make hybrid drivers is not a nice solution. Did anyone find a way to fix this? I'm seeing this same bug in TGE 1.4.I'm also having a strange problem with TSStatic shadows. I enabled them in the code (I set them to be static and non-animated, causing nearly no impact on framerate when used on specific shapes), but the TSStatic-generated shadows projected on interiors will flicker once in a while at certain camera angles (the shadows simply disappear at certain angles, seeminly at random). The shadows for ShapeBase-derived stuff looks normal, as well the shadows projected on the terrain. This happens on every videocard.
The odd thing is, it depends on the mission. If I create a new mission, place some interios and TSStatics, no flicker occurs, ever. I still couldn't figure out what exactly is wrong with our main mission. But the bug is a bit similar in symptoms to the ATI bug (some shadow setting goes wrong depending on the camera angle).
#24
12/13/2005 (11:45 am)
@Manoel, I've noticed this too but have not looked into it. It seems as if the scenegraph is culling shadows under certain circumstances or camera angles. 
#25
12/13/2005 (12:09 pm)
Just out of curiousity...what is your color depth set to? 16bit or 32bit?
#26
It also happends only in OpenGL and only if footpufs are enabled.
One more thing, I didn't upgrade the drivers, just inserted new card in AGP slot.
I've been digging through code and searching in hope to spot error and fix it but I guess that its beyond my abilities as programmer (or there is no error in code) :)
12/13/2005 (1:07 pm)
I had this problem until few days ago on my ATI Radeon 9200 then I decided to purchase new Graphic card (not becouase the bug but it is time for a little upgrade) so I purchased ATI 9600 PRO 256 and strange bug is gone. So it's related with card, not only with drivers.It also happends only in OpenGL and only if footpufs are enabled.
One more thing, I didn't upgrade the drivers, just inserted new card in AGP slot.
I've been digging through code and searching in hope to spot error and fix it but I guess that its beyond my abilities as programmer (or there is no error in code) :)
#27
I have, I think the same kind of bug on Ati card (9500 on IBM notebook).
It seems to be only with the shadow as I don t have foot puff.
any news on this one, anyone know how I can fix ?
I updated the driver, but to no avail.
02/26/2006 (9:04 am)
Hi all,I have, I think the same kind of bug on Ati card (9500 on IBM notebook).
It seems to be only with the shadow as I don t have foot puff.
any news on this one, anyone know how I can fix ?
I updated the driver, but to no avail.
Torque 3D Owner Brandon Maness
Then I installed the DNA drivers and loaded the example Torque game. The openGL mode gave the shadow problem, but when I installed the Omega drivers then shadow problem was fixed, but windows performance and D3D slowed to a crawl. Since I wanted the shadow fix of Omega, but speed in D3D and windows from DNA, I installed the Omega drivers, and paid attention to the files it prompted me to overwrite from the DNA drivers. I picked the openGL dll from Omega, and installed DNA again. Finally I pasted the openGL dll I set aside from the Omega drivers into the windows\system32 folder and I had the best of both worlds. I wish I had saved the files into a seperate folder, but I just did a ghost of the laptop since it was a fresh format. Hope that helps you out.
B--