Oolite Bulletins

I think it would have been my last summer holiday (so probably about a year ago) when I was curious about trying to figure out RTT. After nosing around, I was eventually scared away by the amount of legacy GL code in use. Most places don't even use glDrawArrays but still use glBegin/End!

Oolite was upgraded to use shaders, which requires one to manage the shaders themselves, rather than use the old fixed function pipeline's stack and manipulation functions. I remember being some combination of impressed and appalled when discovering that Oolite basically replicated the pipeline itself. It was a very elegant way of not needing to completely rewrite all the logic scattered throughout the codebase while still being able to add shaders! I must admit that after spotting this I somewhat chickened out (not the easiest thing for a squirrel!) of tinkering with the internals - wrestling with pushes and pops was too much like work for a holiday...

tsoj's quoted code does indeed look like the appropriate code to set up a frame buffer. The fun bit is then making use of the result. The simplest thing would be to just display the texture with a full-screen quad. Which one could then use a shader to do some interesting post-processing! I don't know anything about VR - would it involve rendering things twice (once per eye/camera)?

Mauiby de Fug wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 8:44 pm

The fun bit is then making use of the result. The simplest thing would be to just display the texture with a full-screen quad. Which one could then use a shader to do some interesting post-processing! I don't know anything about VR - would it involve rendering things twice (once per eye/camera)?

This is what I am thinking too and one of the reasons for hoping for render to framebuffer to be a thing some day. In such case, we could consider effects like bloom and maybe we could even get some performance benefits, because all the tonemapping post processing that now takes place in three different shaders would be done once on the actual scene render texture, which is the kosher way of doing it anyway. Not to mention other fun effects like IR vision etc. The interesting task here would be to set up the post processing shader and get it to talk to the game for getting the scene texture uniform and using it. The other reason I would like render to framebuffer is for environment mapping, as I have mentioned plenty of times in the past.

As for VR, yes, it renders the scene twice, one for each eye, and with whatever miniscule differences are required between left and right eye renders for the stereoscopic effect to happen. It is not trivial by any means. Wanna have some fun? Read these, directly from Oculus: Oculus Developer Guide and Oculus Best Practices. This is what will be needed for VR to be implemented.

I am amazed by your effectiveness. One moment a mention of technology > tech demo > actual solutions suggested.

robbybach wrote: ↑Thu Aug 20, 2020 8:02 am

Good morning to all from a wild and windy West Wales. I have been silently browsing these boards for several weeks; seeking information and help with this great game. I have always found threads that provided me with the assistance I was looking for. whilst being impressed by the friendly wit and expertise of the principal posters. I thank you all for a wonderful, collaborative creation. I am a dusty traveller with unpolished social skills: as such I would probably have remained hidden within the little known swatchways of galaxy seven had Cholmondely not sent me a kind and welcoming PM. Realising that the paucity of my credentials were preventing me from offering a courteous reply; I heave myself to to the tables top to dance the dance of self introduction.

Robbybach

Hey! What happened to you? Are you all right out there in the far west?

Wow. i already have a login. Sweet!
just quickly... played C64 Elite. never made 'elite' just close.
found Oolite a few years back and quickly overdosed on oxp.. my old pc couldnt handle it so i put it aside.
new pc and remembered Oolite. having a world of fun.. perhapz having worldS of fun.

i just want to say thankyou all! everyone involved with bringing us this game. the depth and scope is amazing. so many people so dedicated. guys.... thanks!

limbo wrote: ↑Wed Nov 30, 2022 11:18 pm

Wow. i already have a login. Sweet!
just quickly... played C64 Elite. never made 'elite' just close.
found Oolite a few years back and quickly overdosed on oxp.. my old pc couldnt handle it so i put it aside.
new pc and remembered Oolite. having a world of fun.. perhapz having worldS of fun.

i just want to say thankyou all! everyone involved with bringing us this game. the depth and scope is amazing. so many people so dedicated. guys.... thanks!

Welcome to our merry throng!

So which oxp's do you like the most?

the immersion ones.
comm pack A!
i am using minimal at the moment so as not to spoil the reliving on Elite. but i know that will change

Heya.

As a brief intro:

I played Elite on a friend's BBC Micro back in the '80s when I was at school, great fun. Then in the mid '90s I introduced my partner's son to Elite on the Amiga and we had great fun with it.

My brother recently bought Elite Dangerous for his X-Box, which reminded me how great Elite was, so I tried getting hold of Dangerous on Steam but my Windows 7, 2011 laptop doesn't have the brains for it. So I idly scanned the internet looking for Elite stuff and came across Oolite! Woohoo!! Looks fantastic! ANd a lot of hard work put in by people who love it.

Unfortunately I'm strugglign to run it, despite the laptop having the spec to cope wiht it. I'll scan the rest of the Forum and post elsewhere. IFngers crossed I can get it sorted.

Darrell.

What's the graphics card, intel? And welcome aboard!

Hi Cody, yes it's an integrated Intel graphics card. It's running on Windows 7 (service pack 1) and ostensibly it's got 4GB RAM, with a 2.5GHz processor (Intel Core i3 CPU).

Darrell.

Things to try: update the intel graphics driver (should be straightforward); take a look at Oolite's Latest.log (might provide a clue).

Darrell wrote: ↑Tue Jan 03, 2023 1:53 pm

Heya...

Darrell.

Welcome to the friendliest Bulletin Board this side of Riedqaut! And all the best for 2023, for you and yours.

Hope you can get your computer sorted out. Is it just the graphics?

Cody wrote: ↑Tue Jan 03, 2023 4:58 pm

Things to try: update the intel graphics driver (should be straightforward); take a look at Oolite's Latest.log (might provide a clue).

OK, will do. Thanks.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Tue Jan 03, 2023 5:39 pm

Darrell wrote: ↑Tue Jan 03, 2023 1:53 pm

Heya...

Darrell.

Welcome to the friendliest Bulletin Board this side of Riedqaut! And all the best for 2023, for you and yours.

Hope you can get your computer sorted out. Is it just the graphics?

Hi Cholmondely, many thanks same to you and yours.

The problem is that it's not starting from the Start Menu icon. I've tried making a desktop shortcut and it won't start form there either. I've tried the recomendations for Vista (despite mine being Windows 7), i.e. installing it somewhere other than the C:/Oolite folder but no luck there.

I'll have a read of your PM and look at Cody's recomendation above.

Many thanks.

Darrell.

Darrell wrote: ↑Tue Jan 03, 2023 5:53 pm

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Tue Jan 03, 2023 5:39 pm

Darrell wrote: ↑Tue Jan 03, 2023 1:53 pm

Heya...

Darrell.

Welcome to the friendliest Bulletin Board this side of Riedqaut! And all the best for 2023, for you and yours.

Hope you can get your computer sorted out. Is it just the graphics?

Hi Cholmondely, many thanks same to you and yours.

The problem is that it's not starting from the Start Menu icon. I've tried making a desktop shortcut and it won't start form there either. I've tried the recommendations for Vista (despite mine being Windows 7), i.e. installing it somewhere other than the C:/Oolite folder but no luck there.

I'll have a read of your PM and look at Cody's recommendation above.

Many thanks.

Darrell.

If you can get Oolite started at all, you might find it worth-while downloading LogEvents (under Miscellaneous OXP's in the in-game Expansions Manager). It adds more information to your latest.log (which even if irrelevant now, may well prove invaluable for sorting out problems in the future).

I don't see how your graphics card could be related to your problems, but I'm just a dumb pilot...