TGE 1.5.2 Graphical Bug in Vista

#1 Looks like driver issue to me... The Vista drivers are still pretty unreliable, for both Nvidia and ATI, especially in regards to OpenGL... Unfortunately, I think this is just a wait until the drivers mature, or roll back to XP for a while...

#2 Wow!!
you mean there is a problem with Graphics in Vista?

gee, I better hold off on that upgrade after all huh?

#3 Hi, yes, I have the same problem on my Vista with Radeon 1950. But on my Nvidia 8800 it works ok (8800 makes the Vista unstable ;).
But I'm not sure if it is a problem only with the drivers. I tested to run my old projects made in OpenGL an I have no problem with them.

#4 You need to upgrade your vista drivers as this was an issue for the old catalyst driver set and the first set of NVidia drivers too.

You can check quite easily if this is driver related by playing one of the games like solitair. If you see the same graphical corruption, then your driver set needs to be updated to the latest versions.

@Pavel

The NVidia drivers shouldn't be unstable with an 8800. Make sure that you have downloaded the latest ones.

#5 Peter: I have the latest ATI Radeon drivers installed and have the same problem. But I have no problem with my old OpenGL games

#6 That looks similar to the problem being discussed here >> http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=67774

A solution to the DTS shapes was to add $pref::TS::UseTriangles = "1"; I have tested this and the DTS shapes render fine under OpenGL now on my 2900XT (Vista), the terrain still have holes and stretched verts. Any idea on fixing the terrain, is there a similar pref:: for it?

#7 I tested it. You can fix it when you disabled compiled vertex array:

$pref::OpenGL::disableEXTCompiledVertexArray = "1";

But set the $pref::TS::UseTriangles = "1" too, because it looks like the engine is faster!

#8 Yes, $pref::OpenGL::disableEXTCompiledVertexArray = "1"; working for me.
$pref::TS::UseTriangles = "1" does seem to make it run faster, got almost 10fps more in my scenes.

#9 I was having problems getting the "$pref::OpenGL::disableEXTCompiledVertexArray" preference to stay set, as it was being overwritten by the engine. The "$pref::TS::UseTriangles" I put in my default.cs and that worked fine (after deleting my current prefs).

Looking closer it doesn't seem to me that the engine ever reads the $pref::OpenGL::disableEXTCompiledVertexArray pref. It just sets it.

Therefore it is important to make sure the engine is not looking at the graphics card to determine whether or not it should disableEXTCompiledVertexArray, but instead to make sure it is always set to true.

In the engine $pref::OpenGL::disableEXTCompiledVertexArray, is actually set by an extern variable gOpenGLDisableCVA.

I made the following changes, and now this Vista fix works for me. Before making this change my problems with my dts objects was solved, but I still had errors in the landscape.

I'm not sure if all of these changes are needed, but I changed each occurance to be consistant.

in winGL.cc
bool gOpenGLDisableCVA = true; //false;

in game.cc (probably unnecessary) comment out the following line
//Con::addVariable("$pref::OpenGL::disableEXTCompiledVertexArray", TypeBool, &gOpenGLDisableCVA);

in winOGLVideo.cc comment out the following line:
//Con::setBoolVariable("$pref::OpenGL::disableEXTCompiledVertexArray", !sCardProfiles[i].lockArray);
and:
//Con::setBoolVariable("$pref::OpenGL::disableEXTCompiledVertexArray", false);

I have tested this in Vista and XP and everything seems fine. Does any know if there are any issues in making these changes in XP?

#10 Just setting $pref::OpenGL::disableEXTCompiledVertexArray = "1"; worked for me. Not doing it would have artifacts pop up. It might depend where/when you set it.

I'm testing on both Vista and XP and did not find any problems in XP yet.
The XP machine runs a 6800GT and the Vista machine HD2900XT (my problems came from this one).

#11 I have a similar problem in Torque Constructor, and

$pref::OpenGL::disableEXTCompiledVertexArray = "1";

solves the problem of the funhouse textures, but the lights are still going crazy with polygons

$pref::Video::displayDevice = "D3D"; //"OpenGL";
$pref::Video::allowD3D = 1;

Makes them go bad again, so I disabled those and

$pref::TS::UseTriangles = "1";

has no effect. I can limp along like this, tho I can't see how my level will light until I go into Torque

#12 I had the exact same thing happen under steam games in XP with a Geforce 7900GT was eventually able to rack it down to being caused by bad ram om the video card. Put in an identical card "same brand, same model" and the problems diappeared.

#13 Actual drivers actually solve the problem as well.
For ATI, the new 8.1 Catalyst should make worlds of a difference.
The 7.10+ seems to have had a few serious errors.

similar stuff holds for NVIDIA 160 - 168 ... the 169.21 seems to work again as intend

#14 Yup, just tested my game, some TGE demos, Constructor and Showtool Pro. They are all rendering fine now with latest drivers.

#15 Thanks for posting the update about the drivers, marc!

#16 So... Does Vista support all the GG products like TGE/TGEA/Constructor/Show Tool Pro with no problem?

Thanks.

#17 You can have problem with TGE and TGB under Vista, because they use OpenGL as a primary device and Vista has problem with OpenGL applications in fullscreen- for example when you press alt-tab, the OpenGL application crashes.
You can use DirectX driver too, but it is slower, sometimes there is worse graphic etc.

#18 The ALT-TAB problem is not related to Vista AFAIK... it's an age-old bug in TGE. Search the forums here for discussion of it...

#19 How to solve the problem.

#20

Quote:You can have problem with TGE and TGB under Vista, because they use OpenGL as a primary device and Vista has problem with OpenGL applications in fullscreen- for example when you press alt-tab, the OpenGL application crashes.

Despite good intentions and all, it is unfortunate that this kind of mis-information ends up lying around in the forums. It collects year after year and reduces the signal-to-noise ratio and overall usefulness of the forums (because you have to weed through all of the "cruft" to get find a legitimate answer for a given question). It's not really anyone's fault in particular... it's just the way things work on a "free for all" forum system where there is noone who is responsible (or *paid* to be responsible) for "cleaning up".