Problems with TGE + Radeon AIW
by N/A · in Torque Game Engine · 03/09/2003 (5:55 pm) · 8 replies
After a couple weeks of searching the forums, I have yet to come across any solutions to the problems I've been having. I'd have posted this in the bugs forum first, but it's probably Linux-specific, so I figured that I'd get better feedback here.
First off, my system specs:
P4 2.4 Ghz
Radeon AIW (original)
Multiple Distros (see below)
For the most part, I do my dev. work under
Redhat 7.3, but I've also got copies of
Mandrake 9.0, Mdk 9.1(beta), and RH 8.1(beta)
installed.
The stable distros (rh 7.3 / mdk 9.0) use
Mesa 3.4.2, the beta distros use 4.0.4
The problems I'm having:
On rh 7.3 and mdk 9.0, I can run the demos, but the terrain is messed up. On the scorched planet, the ground is black near the player and only renders correctly in the distance. Even then, you have to be turned at random angles to have it render at all. Similarly, the pyramids show up as solid-grey unless you're turned toward the same (seemingly random) angle.
The water is covered by a white semi-transparent film, that has an annoying tendency to flicker in and out of existence. When it does this, the surface breaks into triangles/polygons and you can see the correctly-rendered surface below. If you disable 'useDepthMask' in the editor, the water will look completely fake, but the flickering will stop.
Similar problems show up in RW and the other missions for fps.
All of this was somewhat annoying, but not exactly life-threatening to an AI programmer. However, I did still want to have everything working right, so I built the example on the RH 8.1 beta with the updated drivers.
The build went well, everything compiled without problems on GCC 3.2. I went to run the example, and the GUI looked neater. I tried the Scorched Planet demo again, and everything loaded. The world appeared, my character started to fall, and then my entire system locked up.
On the plus side, the world appeared to have been rendered perfectly. I tried the other missions/RW and the same thing happened. I checked the console log afterwards and didn't see any error messages to give me a hint as to what was causing it to freeze.
And that's pretty much where I'm at now. I'm fine using the older drivers for now, but I don't plan on using this distro release forever. FWIW, I've built the debug version, but I'm new to TGE, so that hasn't helped much yet.
If anyone has any suggestions beyond 'get a new video card', I'd be happy to hear them. Again, I'll probably post this in the bugs forum soon, but I wanted to start here.
Thanks,
-Nate
First off, my system specs:
P4 2.4 Ghz
Radeon AIW (original)
Multiple Distros (see below)
For the most part, I do my dev. work under
Redhat 7.3, but I've also got copies of
Mandrake 9.0, Mdk 9.1(beta), and RH 8.1(beta)
installed.
The stable distros (rh 7.3 / mdk 9.0) use
Mesa 3.4.2, the beta distros use 4.0.4
The problems I'm having:
On rh 7.3 and mdk 9.0, I can run the demos, but the terrain is messed up. On the scorched planet, the ground is black near the player and only renders correctly in the distance. Even then, you have to be turned at random angles to have it render at all. Similarly, the pyramids show up as solid-grey unless you're turned toward the same (seemingly random) angle.
The water is covered by a white semi-transparent film, that has an annoying tendency to flicker in and out of existence. When it does this, the surface breaks into triangles/polygons and you can see the correctly-rendered surface below. If you disable 'useDepthMask' in the editor, the water will look completely fake, but the flickering will stop.
Similar problems show up in RW and the other missions for fps.
All of this was somewhat annoying, but not exactly life-threatening to an AI programmer. However, I did still want to have everything working right, so I built the example on the RH 8.1 beta with the updated drivers.
The build went well, everything compiled without problems on GCC 3.2. I went to run the example, and the GUI looked neater. I tried the Scorched Planet demo again, and everything loaded. The world appeared, my character started to fall, and then my entire system locked up.
On the plus side, the world appeared to have been rendered perfectly. I tried the other missions/RW and the same thing happened. I checked the console log afterwards and didn't see any error messages to give me a hint as to what was causing it to freeze.
And that's pretty much where I'm at now. I'm fine using the older drivers for now, but I don't plan on using this distro release forever. FWIW, I've built the debug version, but I'm new to TGE, so that hasn't helped much yet.
If anyone has any suggestions beyond 'get a new video card', I'd be happy to hear them. Again, I'll probably post this in the bugs forum soon, but I wanted to start here.
Thanks,
-Nate
#2
03/09/2003 (7:40 pm)
It sounds like you are using ATI's DRI drivers, not their proprietary drivers. Is this so?
#3
03/09/2003 (8:01 pm)
Yes, ATI's proprietary drivers are only available for the Radeon 8500 and later. The original Radeon All-in-Wonder (my card) only works with the DRI drivers.
#4
03/09/2003 (8:23 pm)
I know that torque works well with nvidia and ati's proprietary drivers. I've heard reports of problems on various different DRI-based cards. I don't think anyone in the torque community is investigating these DRI issues (I'm not). 
#5
I have a Radeon 64MB DDR (R100), and its problem with RedHat 8.0 was that with terrain, only the detail texture would show up, and only for the closest miplevel. So I installed Source Mage. Now it seems to work better (and looks fantastic!), but locks up after the first frame or two.
Here's my glxinfo:
03/10/2003 (2:58 am)
Didn't we just have this conversation the other night, John? ;-)I have a Radeon 64MB DDR (R100), and its problem with RedHat 8.0 was that with terrain, only the detail texture would show up, and only for the closest miplevel. So I installed Source Mage. Now it seems to work better (and looks fantastic!), but locks up after the first frame or two.
Here's my glxinfo:
name of display: :0.0
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
server glx version string: 1.2
server glx extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context
client glx vendor string: SGI
client glx version string: 1.2
client glx extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context
GLX extensions:
GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_import_context
OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Radeon 20020611 AGP 1x x86/MMX/3DNow!/SSE TCL
OpenGL version string: 1.2 Mesa 4.0.4
OpenGL extensions:
GL_ARB_imaging, GL_ARB_multisample, GL_ARB_multitexture,
GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp, GL_ARB_texture_compression,
GL_ARB_texture_env_add, GL_ARB_texture_env_combine,
GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3, GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat,
GL_ARB_transpose_matrix, GL_EXT_abgr, GL_EXT_bgra, GL_EXT_blend_color,
GL_EXT_blend_logic_op, GL_EXT_blend_minmax, GL_EXT_blend_subtract,
GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint, GL_EXT_convolution, GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array,
GL_EXT_histogram, GL_EXT_packed_pixels, GL_EXT_polygon_offset,
GL_EXT_rescale_normal, GL_EXT_secondary_color, GL_EXT_texture3D,
GL_EXT_texture_env_add, GL_EXT_texture_env_combine,
GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3, GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic,
GL_EXT_texture_object, GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias, GL_EXT_vertex_array,
GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip, GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat, GL_MESA_window_pos,
GL_NV_blend_square, GL_NV_texgen_reflection, GL_SGI_color_matrix,
GL_SGI_color_table, GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap, GL_SGIS_texture_border_clamp
glu version: 1.3
glu extensions:
GLU_EXT_nurbs_tessellator, GLU_EXT_object_space_tess
visual x bf lv rg d st colorbuffer ax dp st accumbuffer ms cav
id dep cl sp sz l ci b ro r g b a bf th cl r g b a ns b eat
----------------------------------------------------------------------
0x23 24 tc 0 24 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x24 24 tc 0 24 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x25 24 tc 0 24 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 Slow
0x26 24 tc 0 24 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 Slow
0x27 24 tc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x28 24 tc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x29 24 tc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 Slow
0x2a 24 tc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 Slow
0x2b 24 dc 0 24 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x2c 24 dc 0 24 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x2d 24 dc 0 24 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 Slow
0x2e 24 dc 0 24 0 r . . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 Slow
0x2f 24 dc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x30 24 dc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 None
0x31 24 dc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 0 16 16 16 16 0 0 Slow
0x32 24 dc 0 24 0 r y . 8 8 8 8 0 24 8 16 16 16 16 0 0 Slow
#6
I suspect it has something to do with the compiler...
03/11/2003 (11:39 am)
I have the same water corruption issues under WindowsXP in OpenGL mode with my 7500 Mobility but only when I do a build with the Intel Compiler v7, using the standard Microsoft Compiler supplied with VS6 it seems to work fine.I suspect it has something to do with the compiler...
#7
I hadn't thought to mention this originally, but I have compiled TGE in vs6 via Win4Lin (VM software). I tested that binary under linux using WineX and it had the same terrain/water problems as the gcc-compiled version. I also tested it out on my roommate's Dell so I could see how it looked natively under win98 and everything looked good.
All of that leads me to believe that my (and James') problems are related to the DRI drivers. Given your video card, I'd think that the same problem in XP would be driver-related, but that's just speculation on my part.
03/12/2003 (4:30 am)
Jarrod:I hadn't thought to mention this originally, but I have compiled TGE in vs6 via Win4Lin (VM software). I tested that binary under linux using WineX and it had the same terrain/water problems as the gcc-compiled version. I also tested it out on my roommate's Dell so I could see how it looked natively under win98 and everything looked good.
All of that leads me to believe that my (and James') problems are related to the DRI drivers. Given your video card, I'd think that the same problem in XP would be driver-related, but that's just speculation on my part.
#8
The other problem is under the Intel compiler D3D is extremely slow, but under the MS compiler it is almost as fast if not as fast as OpenGL?
03/12/2003 (2:28 pm)
I have none of the water problems under Windows XP with my 7500 Mobility if I use the 'stock' Microsoft compiler, only when I use the Intel Compiler 7. So I don't think it is the driver, I think it is compiler issue. It is a shame because the Intel compiler is supossed to be much better.The other problem is under the Intel compiler D3D is extremely slow, but under the MS compiler it is almost as fast if not as fast as OpenGL?
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