Oolite Bulletins

Hi there folks,

First, apologies for what must be a fairly common problem - at least I assume so - but I cannot find a thread anywhere here about this and the readme skips over it without mention. I have only this week discovered this wonderful retro remake and would dearly love to try it out. Second, my system specs:

Acer Aspire 8943g Laptop / Intel i7-720qm @~1.66 / ATI mobility radeon HD5850 / 8Gb DDR3 ram / Win 7x64 / All drivers up to date

When I start Oolite either from the startmenu/program files or the .exe in c:\Oolite\Oolite.app\ an icon pops up briefly on the taskbar, a couple of times, then disappears. The various files it is meant to create on first run are not created. I copy paste the log here to see the video error that I am experiencing:

Opening log for Oolite version 1.77 (x86-32) under Windows 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 64-bit at 2013-01-20 13:09:13 +0000.
8 processors detected.
Build options: spoken messages, mass/fuel pricing.

Note that the contents of the log file can be adjusted by editing logcontrol.plist.

13:09:13.729 [dataCache.notFound]: No data cache found, starting from scratch.
13:09:14.015 [display.mode.list.native]: Windows native resolution detected: 1920 x 1080
13:09:14.593 [gamma.set.error]: ----- WARNING: Could not set gamma: No video mode has been set
13:09:14.836 [gamma.set.error]: ----- WARNING: Could not set gamma: No video mode has been set
13:09:15.087 [gamma.set.error]: ----- WARNING: Could not set gamma: No video mode has been set
13:09:15.087 [display.mode.error]: ***** ERROR: Could not create display surface: No video mode has been set

Closing log at 2013-01-20 13:09:15 +0000.

I am suspecting a very simple problem on my end but I do not have the skills/knowledge to work it out. I have tried various compatibility settings, XP2, XP3, Vista, Admin Rights, Disabling Desktop comp etc... and combinations of the above to no avail. All the readmes just say start the program it will run... Can anyone here give me a push in the right direction?

Regards,
Sam.

After re-checking all drivers were up too date, set compatibility mode to (XP sp3) I checked the Oolite shortcut again to find that I had missed the 'l' out of the '-nosplash' switch - correcting solved my problem

Hi Sammi79 and welcome. I have no answer to your problem, but as a long-shot, try adding the nosplash switch to the shortcut oolite.exe -nosplash hope that makes sense. I haven't had any coffee yet today, and my brain is slow.

Hi El Viejo,

Thank you for your reply, I have added the -nosplash command to the shortcut unfortunately I still have the same error. I have just re-checked my ATI drivers and they released a new one 3 days ago. I will try that and report here afterward.

[edit] Report new driver still same problem.

Regards,
Sam.

<sips coffee and nods - waits for a boffin>

Hi Sammi79. Welcome aboard!

Being a laptop, even new driver releases can lag well behind the official ATI/AMD drivers. You might take a look at this thread on laptop drivers and see if it helps.

Some of the things Arch Stanton discovered in this thread may also come in handy.

Something seems funny here:

Opening log for Oolite version 1.77 (x86-32) under Windows 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 64-bit at 2013-01-20 13:09:13 +0000.

Windows 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 is Windows XP, not 7. The Windows 7 Microsoft internal version number is 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1. Are you absolutely sure you are loading the correct drivers?

I'd guess it's a log from one of his tests with compatibility mode.

For example if I try doing that on my Win7 rig the latest.log picks it up as being under the compatibility-selected version (in the example below XP SP3):

It still may well be a driver issue though in-spite of that.[/color]

Ahh... I had wondered about that version number, thinking it might be XP 64-bit (which was terrible for drivers).

Sammi79 wrote:

When I start Oolite either from the startmenu/program files or the .exe in c:\Oolite\Oolite.app\ an icon pops up briefly on the taskbar, a couple of times, then disappears. The various files it is meant to create on first run are not created.

Hi Sam & Welcome aboard!

I experienced something similar after playing Oolite for a while. It wasn't a graphics issue for me. I was installing & uninstalling various things and some program/system file somewhere got corrupted. I completely uninstalled Oolite and manually deleted any remnants that I found. After re-installing, it was working fine again. So give that a try if you haven't already.

The error in the log posted in the first post indicates that the program fails to set a 32-bit depth buffer OpenGL context, followed by a failure to set the fall-back 24-bit and 16-bit depth buffer contexts too. It looks like although the drivers might be current, OpenGL support is incomplete or there is interference from one of the graphics driver related applications. I would recommend downloading GLview and checking to confirm that OpenGL is set up correctly.

OK I have it running!

After reading through the suggestions here, checking and re checking OpenGl drivers etc... and deciding that I do indeed have the most correct and up to date drivers - I went and had another look at the shortcut where this morning i noticed I had written -nospash instead of -nosplash as the switch. With this corrected it now works -

One thing I will add in reply to the thread on modding the driver installs to install newer drivers than are recommended by the driver suppliers (in my case AMD/ATI) - Laptop video cards are invariably compromised relative to their desktop counterparts for obvious reasons - mainly physical space and cooling. In many cases some functions considered non-essential are either simplified, slowed down or removed. There is an inherent risk if I were to force the install of the latest standard Radeon HD5xxx driver instead of the recommended Mobility Radeon HD5xxx driver that certain functions would be able to push the GPU beyond its safe operating temperature.

Now obviously you should still get drivers from the card manufacturer not the laptop manufacturer - for instance ACER are pretty slack when it comes to testing newer drivers from ATI so I might get an update once a year if lucky, and probably never will again since my laptop is now more than 3 years old. Luckily AMD/ATI do provide current and tested drivers on their site even for these custom laptop versions of their cards so for me now this is not a problem.

I only mention this as I have burned a GPU on an older Nvidia card in exactly this way. I had DirectX 11 working on it, all my games had between 30-60% performance increase - but 2 weeks later I needed to replace my laptops main board (as the GPU was hard soldered) so just beware that the reason your current official driver might be a couple of points behind the desktop version may well be that in preliminary tests it causes heat or other operating issues, and will need functionally modifying before it can be officially supported/supplied.

I will mark this thread as solved now, thanks so much for your prompt and friendly replies. I am glad I joined this community.

Regards,
Sam.

Sammi79 wrote:

... had another look at the shortcut where this morning i noticed I had written -nospash instead of -nosplash as the switch. With this corrected it now works -

<grins>

Thanks, Sam. I'll add your warning to the first post of the driver-modding thread.

Sammi79 wrote:

Now obviously you should still get drivers from the card manufacturer not the laptop manufacturer - for instance ACER are pretty slack when it comes to testing newer drivers from ATI so I might get an update once a year if lucky, and probably never will again since my laptop is now more than 3 years old. Luckily AMD/ATI do provide current and tested drivers on their site even for these custom laptop versions of their cards so for me now this is not a problem.

You're very lucky.. most laptop manufacturers refuse to allow AMD/ATI to do this..

(oh, and congratulations on solving the problem! Typos really suck, eh? )