Could not find Compatible Display Device
by Andy Schatz · in Torque Game Engine · 12/31/2008 (5:32 pm) · 7 replies
On both of the games I've shipped with Torque, my most frequent support case is when the game doesn't recognize a compatible display device, despite up to date drivers. This seems to happen to something like 0.2% of my users. I've also seen the issue reported in a number of places on the forums, but I've never seen a definitive answer to the problem. This happens to people that have no trouble running other games. Any ideas on how I can fix the issue or respond effectively to customers would be appreciated. My most recently reported case occurred on a NVidia GeForce3 Ti 200 with up-to-date drivers.
#2
01/01/2009 (10:01 am)
Yeah, I suspected that might be the case... problem is, I can't ask my customers to do that kind of experimentation when their computers have no problems running other games. Is the problem that the engine just doesn't do a whole lot to support different configs? 
#3
The error message is generated by function InitOpenGL() in file engine/platformWin32/WinWindow.cc whenever function Video::setDevice() fails (engine/platform/platformVideo.cc) to create a graphics context.
From what I see of that code I could possibly see where if the game reads incorrect or corrupted preferences (/client/prefs.cs ) for graphics settings it would cause the context to fail to initialize due to invalid values being used.
01/01/2009 (9:19 pm)
No, its a problem of the OpenGL context not initializing.The error message is generated by function InitOpenGL() in file engine/platformWin32/WinWindow.cc whenever function Video::setDevice() fails (engine/platform/platformVideo.cc) to create a graphics context.
From what I see of that code I could possibly see where if the game reads incorrect or corrupted preferences (
#4
For example if failing it would recreate the prefs.cs with standard settings supposed to work (for example: 640x480).
01/02/2009 (5:38 am)
Isn't there a way to override the initialization process?For example if failing it would recreate the prefs.cs with standard settings supposed to work (for example: 640x480).
#5
Get video acceleration level(TGB)
DefaultPrefs bug and fix
VEN is always 000 fix
Not sure if those will help at least address the issue.
01/02/2009 (3:22 pm)
Here are a couple of resources that Amaranthia's team posted to better define the problem so that you can get valid feedback. You may have already included these, or they may not address this issue specifically, but it should return more valid information when having users check their consoles for GL errors.Get video acceleration level(TGB)
DefaultPrefs bug and fix
VEN is always 000 fix
Not sure if those will help at least address the issue.
#6
01/02/2009 (5:39 pm)
Thanks David, I'll take a look into this -- is this issue still in GG's bug database? Has there been any thought or progress on the subject?
#7
01/06/2009 (5:56 pm)
It should be since it is still present in TGE and TGB, though that might be because these pieces have been added after the last release.
Torque Owner Nathan Martin
TRON 2001 Network
The one major issue I had with the old GeForce 4 and 3 cards were getting the correct balance of fixes for both OpenGL and DirectX. For example, one revision had the best DirectX support while had broken OpenGL support or the other way around, I finally settled on a driver that worked best, but I don't recall the exact forceware drivers I had used that worked the best.