I've just downloaded Oolite 1.73.4 for Mac, and started playing. No extras installed. Made it from Lave to Zaonce and docked fine, with apparently ok graphics, but having saved the game and played with some options, I'm now suffering from a total lack of any visible detail on ships or stations. I can only find either at all from the drive trails, or on the scanner. As a result I'm finding it totally impossible to dock, or engage in any combat at all, and the game is unplayable. I've tried tweaking the graphics settings, but even in wireframe I don't have any wires on ships or stations. Resetting to install defaults has not fixed it.
Any ideas? Do I need some extras installing? Is this something anyone else has seen? i can send screenshots on request.
This does look to me as if you are missing a driver for your graphics hardware and thus MacOS is using a default OpenGL renderer which is not working well. What you write sounds also very similar to the experience of people who had the same problem on Windows with missing drivers.
Please verify that you have the newest drivers for your graphics card/onboard chip installed!
it's a Mac, they're built in. As regards OS, it's 10.4.10 (Tiger before the Safari 3 abomination).
Here's the supported OpenGL features for 10.4.11, I can't imagine they're too different on a minor version. The Gfx card is integrated GMA950, hence the software renderer.
I've just downloaded Oolite 1.73.4 for Mac, and started playing. No extras installed. Made it from Lave to Zaonce and docked fine, with apparently ok graphics, but having saved the game and played with some options, I'm now suffering from a total lack of any visible detail on ships or stations. I can only find either at all from the drive trails, or on the scanner.
I rarely heard problems from Mac graphic cards. You don't write if you have tried setting shader to simple of off. If it is the shader setting, you probably should also report your graphic card capabilities here
If you set your Shader Effects option to none, you should be able to see everything again. It's probably still going to be ok with Shader Effects: Simple, which is the default setting, IIRC.
In any case, it's worth reporting your card to the thread Eric just pointed at, so that we'll know in the future not to offer the more advanced shader option for systems just like yours!
I've been digging into this a bit, since it struck me as odd that the first time I ran the app it worked fine.
Apple supply a driver monitor for Open GL in Xcode, which I have installed for odds and ends. Bringing that up, and starting OOLite on a clean reboot showed the software driver running. It looks like another application had pushed the driver into the hardware mode, and a reboot was required to get it to shift back into the software mode. Lo and behold, in flight objects have returned.
Intel GMA 950 OpenGL Engine
Vendor Name Intel Inc.
Version 1.2 APPLE-1.4.56
GL Shading Language Version 1.10
Renderer Name Intel GMA 950 OpenGL Engine
OpenGL Extensions
OpenGL Limits
Display Mask 1 (0x00000001)
Renderer ID 147456 (0x00024000)
Off Screen No
Full Screen Yes
Hardware Accelerated Yes
Robust No
Backing Store No
MP Safe Yes
Window Yes
Multi Screen No
Compliant Yes
Buffer Modes 13 (0x0000000d)
Color Buffer Modes 33792 (0x00008400)
Accum Buffer Modes 8421376 (0x00808000)
Depth Buffer Modes 3073 (0x00000c01)
Stencil Buffer Modes 129 (0x00000081)
Max Aux Buffers 2 (0x00000002)
Max Sample Buffers 0 (0x00000000)
Max Samples 0 (0x00000000)
Sample Modes 0 (0x00000000)
Alpha Sampling No
Total Video Memory 67108864 (0x04000000)
Total Texture Memory 67108864 (0x04000000)
Apple Software Renderer
Vendor Name Apple Computer, Inc.
Version 2.0 APPLE
GL Shading Language Version 1.10
Renderer Name Apple Software Renderer
OpenGL Extensions
OpenGL Limits
Display Mask 1 (0x00000001)
Renderer ID 132096 (0x00020400)
Off Screen Yes
Full Screen No
Hardware Accelerated No
Robust Yes
Backing Store Yes
MP Safe Yes
Window Yes
Multi Screen Yes
Compliant Yes
Buffer Modes 13 (0x0000000d)
Color Buffer Modes 201375744 (0x0c00c000)
Accum Buffer Modes 142639104 (0x08808000)
Depth Buffer Modes 4096 (0x00001000)
Stencil Buffer Modes 129 (0x00000081)
Max Aux Buffers 4 (0x00000004)
Max Sample Buffers 1 (0x00000001)
Max Samples 16 (0x00000010)
Sample Modes 3 (0x00000003)
Alpha Sampling Yes
Total Video Memory 0 (0x00000000)
Total Texture Memory 0 (0x00000000)
I have no idea why you’d want the software renderer. Oolite works with OpenGL 1.2, and works fine on a GMA 950. (And the renderer string is correct; please ignore everything Screet said in this thread – nothing personal, Screet.)
Yes it works, however it seems a touch twitchy. I can make the vanishing textures reproducible now by pushing the shading up to full, though it takes a reboot to get them back. I'm running normally under simple but I've found at least one quirk...
For example if I install the DW Cobra OXP, then I am ok in my ship, ok with a combat with 1 other cobra mk 3, but if I get 2 in a combat the frame rate drops from ~130 fps to 13. Since every combat I seem to get into nowadays has at least 2 mk 3s, I've uninstalled that OXP and I'm back to a vanilla install. I assume there is something about the textures in the DW Cobra that is overtaxing the graphics drastically, and therefore something quite suddenly goes wrong. If I kill one of the cobras, the frame rate magically leaps back up.
So, if Screet is wrong, why am I seeing either disappearing shading, or a sudden drop/leap in frame rate? I presume that it is not as simple as the GMA supports OpenGL 1.2 and therefore it works. Nor is it as simple as the machine is not powerful enough or I would expect to see a gradual drop in framerate as there are more objects in a battle, or I would perhaps expect it to slow when I'm doing background tasks which are CPU intensive, depending on the renderer in use. I don't see either, the framerate is staying pretty consistently high except as above.
I'd like to understand more, since I have every intention of sticking with this game for a long time, and I'm interested in the OXPs, and maybe if I understand the variables here I can optimise this system, and maybe look at getting something more tailored to Oolite when I replace it.
