Oolite Bulletins

Chaps,

The dust motes that get longer as I go faster... can they be altered by OXP?

If you have shaders (and are not using an Intel GMA 900/950 integrated GPU), the dust rendering can be modified by replacing oolite-dust.vertex/oolite-dust.fragment.

I don't have shaders... (well, I think the Radeon 9000 does but not in Linux) :'( Thanks for your distillation Ahruman

Greyth wrote:

I don't have shaders... (well, I think the Radeon 9000 does but not in Linux) :'( Thanks for your distillation Ahruman

The Oolite log file will tell you if you have shaders, and whether you have full or simple shaders.

Thanks Gimi, but anything to do with ATI is rarely so simple

From the log...
13:11:23.712 [rendering.opengl.shader.support]: Shaders will not be used (OpenGL extension GL_ARB_shading_language_100 is not available).

From the Wikki...
This design included ATI's first programmable pixel shader architecture and introduced the more advanced pixel shader 1.4

From the heart...
I glean that if I run the proprietary driver then shaders will work, but the drivers from ATI no longer work under recent distro's of Linux, I've forgotten precisely why. In more recent ATI drivers that do work with (L/X)Ubuntu support for this card has been dropped. The only driver working is the open source driver in which shaders are not implemented. Also if I were to run XP again the shaders would work, but I quit that habit and don't really want to start it again :/

Greyth wrote:

This design included ATI's first programmable pixel shader architecture and introduced the more advanced pixel shader 1.4

“Pixel shader 1.4” is a more primitive kind of shader than the GLSL shaders used by Oolite. (It’s a DirectX 8 shader type, while GLSL corresponds to DirectX 9 and later.)

Greyth wrote:

Thanks Gimi, but anything to do with ATI is rarely so simple

From the log...
13:11:23.712 [rendering.opengl.shader.support]: Shaders will not be used (OpenGL extension GL_ARB_shading_language_100 is not available).

From the Wikki...
This design included ATI's first programmable pixel shader architecture and introduced the more advanced pixel shader 1.4

From the heart...
I glean that if I run the proprietary driver then shaders will work, but the drivers from ATI no longer work under recent distro's of Linux, I've forgotten precisely why. In more recent ATI drivers that do work with (L/X)Ubuntu support for this card has been dropped. The only driver working is the open source driver in which shaders are not implemented. Also if I were to run XP again the shaders would work, but I quit that habit and don't really want to start it again :/

Sorry, I misunderstood. I'm acutely aware of ATI/AMD cards shortfalls when it comes to OpenGL compatibility. (Acquisition of new ATI/AMD cards is no longer allowed in my home. So if my children, who are of an age where they save up to buy their own computers, want my help to set things up, they have to buy nVidia.)
I was just pointing out that the log will tell you if shaders are activated in Oolite. I guess you already knew that.

Heh! Wish I'd known that before spending blummin' hours trying to get the begger working! Thanks, it's good to understand why they are not implemented these days.

[edit] I too have made a solemn vow to eschew further sufference of ATI products! [/edit]

Chaps, I've read thru the 'How to' on OXP's but it's not sinking in despite being well written... so... I doubt if I will ever produce an OXP but would like to contribute.

A few years ago I messed around in Blitz Basic and came up with something that did dust motes that looked like 'smears'. I thought they matched the description in the Dark Wheel and I remember being very proud of myself indeed.

I constructing a multi layered shell around the players ship with z scale increasing towards the ship and texturing each with a transparent map with some coloured dots on it (rotating each shell slightly to avoid ubiquity) and then repositioning the texture in increments related to the ship's speed whilst scaling the shells in the z axis again by a factor derived from the speed of the ship. Again the opacity of the shells is a factor derived from ship speed - transparency starting at 'invisible' and working towards complete opacity as the ship approaches top speed.

Because the Z scale on the inner shell was greater than the outer shell the texture appears to slide faster on the inner shells.

Anyone here messed with BlitzBasic? I have some code somewhere that should function still and will happily donate it to 'the cause'.