Oolite Bulletins

Hi, I hope someone can help me.

I've been playing 1.65 for a few months with no problems but I recently decided to try the latest version - 1.71.2 - because I wanted to use the System Redux OXP.

Problem 1:
Nebulae/space background no longer displays - instead I get a random spattering of intersecting, multi-coloured, shaded, translucent squares of varying size and intensity. I have removed all OXPs and restarted with shift held down to no effect. The colours do seem to reflect the planet, which brings me to my next problem...

Problem 2:
I don't see any textures on the planets - there are moons appearing now, but the textures do not show up.

Please Help!

Martin.

System Specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.33 GHz running Windows Vista SP1
2 GB Ram
Radeon HD 3800 (DX10)

Hi, Martin, and first of all welcome to the boards and of course to this great game!

Sorry for your problem. A couple of users had similar issues. Usually the drawing of squares instead of stars and nebulae has turned out to be an indication of a problem with the graphics card and/or its drivers.

So the first advice would be: make sure that you are using the latest drivers for your graphics card.

Myself I am no graphics specialist, but there are certainly some people around who can tell you more specifically about the Radeon HD 3800 and its ability to run Oolite, especially its ability to deal with shaders.

Yes, that's another idea: You could try to set shaders to OFF on your options-screen (F2) and see whether you get a better picture.

Do you have Sung's Detailed Textures installed? This is a known problem. This OXP contains some files called star and galaxy in the Texture folder. These can mess up the Nebula effects on 1.70 onwards. Because this pack overwrites the native ones you may need to reinstall. Then add Sung's textures but DONT add any called star or galaxy.

As Commander McLane said, make sure that you have the latest drivers for your graphics card (which, by the way, seems to belong to the high-end group). Latest drivers are critical for Vista.

Also, it looks like you may have not installed the OXP properly. When installing the OXP, make sure you use a program that maintains the directory structure of the zipped files.

If this does not help, then please remove all OXPs and check that Oolite works. If you have to, uninstall and reinstall Oolite and make sure that it works without OXPs. Then you have at least a good starting point.

Thanks for the welcome and the quick response!

I have got the latest drivers, unfortunately, as I downloaded them a couple of days ago. Strange that it should work in 1.65 and not in 1.71 - perhaps there is some antialiasing going on in the newer version that I need to turn off?

I tried turning off the shaders and setting the reduced detail option before I posted - both to no effect.

Do you think these nice graphics specialists might well be able to help me?

Littlebear and Another_commander:
Thanks for your response.

I have no OXPs installed and have removed and then re-installed Oolite from scratch and have the same problem.

Thanks,

Martin

Please run the game, launch from station and press Shift + Esc to exit. Then post the contents of the file stderr.txt, found in the oolite.app folder. There might be some useful information there.

As requested:

2008-06-20 12:04:47.727 oolite.exe[5380] Disallowed time zone name `@tzres.dll,-262'.
2008-06-20 12:04:47.727 oolite.exe[5380] Using time zone with absolute offset 0.
2008-06-20 12:04:47.726 oolite.exe[5380] File NSUserDefaults.m: 562. In [NSUserDefaults +standardUserDefaults] Improper installation: No language locale found
2008-06-20 12:04:47.728 oolite.exe[5380] File NSBundle.m: 1123. In [NSBundle -initWithPath:] NSBundle -initWithPath: requires absolute path names, given 'oolite.app'
2008-06-20 12:04:47.729 oolite.exe[5380] [log.header]: Opening log for Oolite version 1.71.2 (x86-32 test release) under Windows at 2008-06-20 12:04:47 +0000.
2 processors detected.
Note that the contents of the log file can be adjusted by editing logcontrol.plist.

2008-06-20 12:04:47.729 oolite.exe[5380] [unclassified.MyOpenGLView]: initialising SDL
2008-06-20 12:04:48.084 oolite.exe[5380] [unclassified.JoystickHandler]: init: numSticks=1
2008-06-20 12:04:48.086 oolite.exe[5380] [unclassified.MyOpenGLView]: CREATING MODE LIST
2008-06-20 12:04:48.086 oolite.exe[5380] [unclassified.MyOpenGLView]: Unknown architecture, defaulting to 1024x768
2008-06-20 12:04:48.086 oolite.exe[5380] [unclassified.MyOpenGLView]: Added res 1680 x 1050
2008-06-20 12:04:48.086 oolite.exe[5380] [unclassified.MyOpenGLView]: Added res 1440 x 900
2008-06-20 12:04:48.086 oolite.exe[5380] [unclassified.MyOpenGLView]: Added res 1360 x 1024
2008-06-20 12:04:48.086 oolite.exe[5380] [unclassified.MyOpenGLView]: Added res 1280 x 960
2008-06-20 12:04:48.086 oolite.exe[5380] [unclassified.MyOpenGLView]: Added res 1152 x 864
2008-06-20 12:04:48.086 oolite.exe[5380] [unclassified.MyOpenGLView]: Added res 1024 x 768
2008-06-20 12:04:48.086 oolite.exe[5380] [unclassified.MyOpenGLView]: Added res 848 x 480
2008-06-20 12:04:48.086 oolite.exe[5380] [unclassified.MyOpenGLView]: Added res 800 x 600
2008-06-20 12:04:48.086 oolite.exe[5380] [unclassified.MyOpenGLView]: Added res 720 x 480
2008-06-20 12:04:48.242 oolite.exe[5380] [unclassified.MyOpenGLView]: drawRect calling initialiseGLWithSize
2008-06-20 12:04:48.242 oolite.exe[5380] [unclassified.MyOpenGLView]: Creating a new surface of 800 x 600
2008-06-20 12:04:48.324 oolite.exe[5380] [unclassified.MyOpenGLView]: no universe, clearning surface
2008-06-20 12:04:48.325 oolite.exe[5380] [rendering.opengl.version]: OpenGL renderer version: 2.1.7537 ("2.1.7537 Release")
Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Renderer: ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series
2008-06-20 12:04:48.325 oolite.exe[5380] [rendering.opengl.extensions]: OpenGL extensions (92):
GL_AMDX_vertex_shader_tessellator GL_AMD_performance_monitor GL_ARB_depth_texture GL_ARB_draw_buffers GL_ARB_fragment_program GL_ARB_fragment_shader GL_ARB_half_float_pixel GL_ARB_multisample GL_ARB_multitexture GL_ARB_occlusion_query GL_ARB_pixel_buffer_object GL_ARB_point_parameters GL_ARB_point_sprite GL_ARB_shader_objects GL_ARB_shading_language_100 GL_ARB_shadow GL_ARB_shadow_ambient GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp GL_ARB_texture_compression GL_ARB_texture_cube_map GL_ARB_texture_env_add GL_ARB_texture_env_combine GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3 GL_ARB_texture_float GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two GL_ARB_texture_rectangle GL_ARB_transpose_matrix GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object GL_ARB_vertex_program GL_ARB_vertex_shader GL_ARB_window_pos GL_ATI_draw_buffers GL_ATI_envmap_bumpmap GL_ATI_fragment_shader GL_ATI_meminfo GL_ATI_separate_stencil GL_ATI_texture_compression_3dc GL_ATI_texture_env_combine3 GL_ATI_texture_float GL_EXT_abgr GL_EXT_bgra GL_EXT_blend_color GL_EXT_blend_func_separate GL_EXT_blend_minmax GL_EXT_blend_subtract GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array GL_EXT_copy_texture GL_EXT_draw_range_elements GL_EXT_fog_coord GL_EXT_framebuffer_blit GL_EXT_framebuffer_multisample GL_EXT_framebuffer_object GL_EXT_framebuffer_sRGB GL_EXT_gpu_program_parameters GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays GL_EXT_packed_depth_stencil GL_EXT_packed_float GL_EXT_packed_pixels GL_EXT_point_parameters GL_EXT_rescale_normal GL_EXT_secondary_color GL_EXT_separate_specular_color GL_EXT_shadow_funcs GL_EXT_stencil_wrap GL_EXT_subtexture GL_EXT_texgen_reflection GL_EXT_texture3D GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc GL_EXT_texture_cube_map GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp GL_EXT_texture_env_add GL_EXT_texture_env_combine GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3 GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias GL_EXT_texture_mirror_clamp GL_EXT_texture_object GL_EXT_texture_rectangle GL_EXT_texture_sRGB GL_EXT_texture_shared_exponent GL_EXT_vertex_array GL_KTX_buffer_region GL_NV_blend_square GL_NV_texgen_reflection GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp GL_SGIS_texture_lod GL_WIN_swap_hint WGL_EXT_swap_control
2008-06-20 12:04:48.338 oolite.exe[5380] [searchPaths.dumpAll]: ---> OXP search paths:
(oolite.app/Resources, AddOns)
2008-06-20 12:04:48.338 oolite.exe[5380] [dataCache.upToDate]: Data cache is up to date.
2008-06-20 12:04:49.270 oolite.exe[5380] [script.load.world.listAll]: Loaded 5 world scripts: "oolite-cloaking-device" 1.71.2, "oolite-constrictor-hunt" 1.71.2, "oolite-nova" 1.71.2, "oolite-thargoid-plans" 1.71.2, "oolite-trumbles" 1.71.2
2008-06-20 12:04:49.958 oolite.exe[5380] [dataCache.willWrite]: About to write data cache.
2008-06-20 12:04:49.969 oolite.exe[5380] [dataCache.write.success]: Wrote data cache.
2008-06-20 12:05:20.412 oolite.exe[5380] [gameController.exitApp]: .GNUstepDefaults synchronized. Exiting.

Thanks.

Strange. The only unusual thing in the log is the NSBundle -initWithPath: requires absolute path names, given 'oolite.app' line, but GNUstep apparently takes care of this and it should not matter. Just to be sure, add the full path in the last line of RunOolite.bat, to look something like Then try this: Open with an editor the logcontrol.plist file, found in oolite.app\Resources\Config, find the line that reads and change it to Then please repeat the previous exercise and post the log.

Ok, done - here's a sampling of unique OpenGL errors from the file (the first part is exactly the same as above):
...
2008-06-20 12:49:36.099 oolite.exe [3128] [rendering.opengl.error]: OpenGL error: "invalid enumerant" (0x500), context: Universe before doing anything
2008-06-20 12:49:36.110 oolite.exe [3128] [rendering.opengl.error]: OpenGL error: "invalid enumerant" (0x500), context: HeadUpDisplay after drawLegends
2008-06-20 12:49:36.174 oolite.exe [3128] [rendering.opengl.error]: OpenGL error: "invalid enumerant" (0x500), context: OOMesh after drawing <OOMesh 0xd7037f0>{"cobra3_redux.dat", 12 vertices, 20 faces, radius: 72.7341 m smooth: NO}
2008-06-20 12:49:36.180 oolite.exe [3128] [rendering.opengl.error]: OpenGL error: "invalid enumerant" (0x500), context: OOMesh after drawing <OOMesh 0xd7037f0>{"cobra3_redux.dat", 12 vertices, 20 faces, radius: 72.7341 m smooth: NO}
2008-06-20 12:49:36.189 oolite.exe [3128] [rendering.opengl.error]: OpenGL error: "invalid enumerant" (0x500), context: OOMesh after drawing <OOMesh 0xd7037f0>{"cobra3_redux.dat", 12 vertices, 20 faces, radius: 72.7341 m smooth: NO}
... (many similar entries to this follow (I'm assuming it's drawing the cobra III on the load new commander screen) ...
(Then we get)
2008-06-20 12:49:36.507 oolite.exe [3128] [rendering.opengl.error]: OpenGL error: "invalid enumerant" (0x500), context: HeadUpDisplay after drawLegends
2008-06-20 12:49:36.546 oolite.exe [3128] [rendering.opengl.error]: OpenGL error: "invalid enumerant" (0x500), context: OOMesh after drawing <OOMesh 0xdcce970>{"new_coriolis.dat", 16 vertices, 26 faces, radius: 707.107 m smooth: NO}
2008-06-20 12:49:36.590 oolite.exe [3128] [rendering.opengl.error]: OpenGL error: "invalid enumerant" (0x500), context: OOMesh after drawing <OOMesh 0xdcce970>{"new_coriolis.dat", 16 vertices, 26 faces, radius: 707.107 m smooth: NO}
(followed by)
2008-06-20 12:49:37.629 oolite.exe [3128] [rendering.opengl.error]: OpenGL error: "invalid enumerant" (0x500), context: RingEntity after drawing <RingEntity 0xe586990>{ID: 169 position: (-48913.8, 60031.2, 592568) scanClass: CLASS_NO_DRAW status: STATUS_EFFECT}
2008-06-20 12:49:37.640 oolite.exe [3128] [rendering.opengl.error]: OpenGL error: "invalid enumerant" (0x500), context: RingEntity after drawing <RingEntity 0xe586990>{ID: 169 position: (-48917.4, 60035.6, 592566) scanClass: CLASS_NO_DRAW status: STATUS_EFFECT}
2008-06-20 12:49:37.650 oolite.exe [3128] [rendering.opengl.error]: OpenGL error: "invalid enumerant" (0x500), context: RingEntity after drawing <RingEntity 0xe586990>{ID: 169 position: (-48918.6, 60037.1, 592565) scanClass: CLASS_NO_DRAW status: STATUS_EFFECT}
... (Many entries for RingEntity) ...
2008-06-20 12:49:38.869 oolite.exe [3128] [rendering.opengl.error]: OpenGL error: "invalid enumerant" (0x500), context: SkyEntity after drawing <SkyEntity 0x97dce10>{ID: 101 position: (-48964.7, 60093.2, 592546) scanClass: CLASS_NO_DRAW status: STATUS_EFFECT}
2008-06-20 12:49:38.923 oolite.exe [3128] [rendering.opengl.error]: OpenGL error: "invalid enumerant" (0x500), context: SkyEntity after drawing <SkyEntity 0x97dce10>{ID: 101 position: (-48953.5, 60079.5, 592551) scanClass: CLASS_NO_DRAW status: STATUS_EFFECT}
2008-06-20 12:49:38.940 oolite.exe [3128] [rendering.opengl.error]: OpenGL error: "invalid enumerant" (0x500), context: SkyEntity after drawing <SkyEntity 0x97dce10>{ID: 101 position: (-48949.8, 60074.9, 592553) scanClass: CLASS_NO_DRAW status: STATUS_EFFECT}
... (1000s of entries for SkyEntity) ...
2008-06-20 12:50:06.312 oolite.exe [3128] [gameController.exitApp]: .GNUstepDefaults synchronized. Exiting.

I can post the whole thing if you like, but it's looooong... I believe I have provided relevant edited highlights.

Thanks.

I was hoping to see something other than 'invalid enumerant' errors. These are known to happen on ATI cards and generally they are harmless. I am very puzzled.

The only recommendation I have at this moment is to try and see if by changing various settings in the graphics card driver things might be imporved. Another option, although I admit it is quite high-risk, is to install an older driver and see if anything changes. But I would not go that far on my system for any game, really.

In the meantime, I will try to look for any info I can get on the HD3800 and its OpenGL compatibility on Vista and report back if anything interesting shows up.

Thanks for your help.

Which settings would you recommend changing? I was looking for OpenGL settings in the Catalyst Control Center but I can't find them.

It's strange that it works ok in v1.65, wouldn't you say? I suppose the backgrounds are generated by a different method in the new version. I wonder if there's a way to force v1.71 to revert to the older way of doing things?

Martin

s8404755 wrote:

Thanks for your help.

Which settings would you recommend changing? I was looking for OpenGL settings in the Catalyst Control Center but I can't find them.

It's strange that it works ok in v1.65, wouldn't you say? I suppose the backgrounds are generated by a different method in the new version. I wonder if there's a way to force v1.71 to revert to the older way of doing things?

Martin

If no OpenGL settings exist, then it could just be that the Vista drivers are not up to the task yet. There should definitely be an option to set OGL. Sorry, I cannot recommend anything more specific at this time.

As for whether it is strange that it worked on 1.65, well, no, it is not strange at all. The sky code was rewritten for the 1.7x versions, so something that worked on 1.65 might easily not work now. The problem is that your system is the first that seems to have both a good graphics card and display problems with the new sky code after all this time. The old sky code is still available, but you can only use it by rebuilding Oolite from source and even then, you may need to revert to older sky graphics datafiles for it to work correctly.

Hmm ... Yes, that sounds a bit too complicated.

I've got a dual boot on this machine so I've just tried 1.71.2 with XP Pro and got exactly the same issue. So it's not Vista or the latest drivers that are causing the problem as my XP build has got at least 6 month old drivers.

I do hope I won't need to buy a new gfx card - because I will, you know, I'm impulsive like that. Then I have to sneak it past the missus and it all gets terribly complicated...

Would it be worth moving to another topic, do you think?

Martin.

Further update: Just ran 1.71.2 on my laptop with no problems at all - that is I could see stars and nebulae. My laptop is running Vista Home Premium and an ATI Radeon Xpress 1250.

This makes me very cheesed off!!!