[RELEASE] Povray Planets 1.0

[Zireael]

How big are the downloads again?

In total, just over 4GB - so roughly 500MB each.

Cool, thanks. I remember seeing an old version where all the galaxies were bundled up together and being scared off by the prospect of downloading 3 GB. 500 MB x2 for the first two galaxies doesn't sound too bad.

[Cody]

The mysterious planet Ismaan - first it's psychedelic, then it's gone, then it's back in white:



Perhaps the occasional solar activity was playing havoc while I was there.

[submersible]

The mysterious planet Ismaan - first it's psychedelic, then it's gone, then it's back in white:



Perhaps the occasional solar activity was playing havoc while I was there.

Unless you have the Povray Planets script oxp enabled, I'd blame the build. White planets I haven't seen for a while.

[Diogenese Senna]

That shading on the white planet is pretty damn good though

[Zireael]

I think Povray stopped working after the planets separator was changed - I still have it in my OXPs, but I get default planets

[cim]

Works for me here - does it work if Povray is your only OXP? What about at different graphics quality levels?

[Cody]

Unless you have the Povray Planets script oxp enabled, I'd blame the build. White planets I haven't seen for a while.

No, no script enabled. I do see an occasional white planet, but that's the first one to disappear from F7. Blame the build, eh?

[another_commander]

For what is worth, I run a quick test with G7 Povray Planets and latest nightly and they do seem to appear normally - no problems noted while I kept switching through them in F7, hyperspacing, more switching etc. Cody, what is the exact sequence of events between the shots you posted above? Is this problem reproducible?

[Cody]

I'll head back to Ismaan after I've delivered a couple of parcels. Those four pics are in order - selected Ismaan on F6, hit F7, admired it, selected another system on F6, switched back to Ismaan and it was gone from F7, jumped to Ismaan and it was white on-screen and on F7.

[another_commander]

OK, we have a bug confirmed. I start with a save at Aesarge (close to Ismaan). The area there is quite planet-populated and what I do to trigger the bug is go straight to F6 and using cursor keys I make the cursor go over all of the planets in the area a few times. This will trigger textures preloading every time a planet is near. Then I start selecting planets (always using cursor keys - no mouse) at random. Before too long one of the planets I select disappears from the F7 screen.

This happens also without Povray Planets, just having the standard game generated textures.

Edit: Run it with a build with OOCACHE_PERFORM_INTEGRITY_CHECKS defined. Nothing at all appears in the log so at least we can say it's not a cache integrity issue. Possibly pthreads/lock related (if not reproducible under Linux)?

[Cody]

<nods> Yeah, I nearly always use the cursor keys on F6, rather than the mouse.

[kanthoney]

if not reproducible under Linux

I've seen white planets under Linux (for example this post.)

[cim]

I suspect it has to do with some combination of:
- the pregeneration code being called more often than really necessary, especially with cursor movement
- the non-standard way that normal and atmosphere maps are generated
- the generation taking considerably longer than the average texture load

I couldn't see an error in any of the code when I looked, but it might be worth turning off the pregeneration - switch the #if NEW_PLANETS back to an #if 0 in preloadPlanetTexturesForSystem - to see if that makes a difference.

At a guess I'd suspect a threading issue where two generations of the same planet get started close enough together that both are running, and something then goes wrong.

[Cody]

My G8 set only has 255 textures - have I lost one, or is it missing? Either way, is there an easy way to check which planet texture is missing?

[Wildeblood]

I noticed there was one texture missing years ago, but don't recall if it was from G8. I assumed it was the sector that has two planets with the same name - which I also don't recall whether or not is G8 - and didn't worry about it. If that's not the explanation, is it the unconnected Oresrati that is missing?