Drawing problem with newly installed client.

temporal distraction · Wed Jun 11, 2008 2:22 pm

I asked one of the regulars on Two Tanks to install a new client, and now she has a problem with the way the maps are being drawn. She calls it "exploding textures" - see the attachment.

Here's the version string of the client: [Alice D->] Version: 2.0.10.20071212-MAINT-linux-gnu-SDL

I don't have much experience with linux clients, and she had some help installing this. What advice can I give her to help get i t back to normal?

JeffM · Post by **JeffM** » Wed Jun 11, 2008 3:11 pm

the depth buffer in the video driver is jacked up.
have them get the current video driver for her card.

anomaly · Post by **anomaly** » Thu Jun 12, 2008 12:02 pm

I had this same issue on an intel video card ( my son had same thing on ATI ). I found that it was an issue with the narrowWithDepth function. I commented out the renderNarrowWithDepth function call in TankSceneNode.cxx and that fixed it. Later I added a BZDB variable and a display menu item to turn it on or off. Don't know what it is exactly but it seems to affect both intel and ATI cards. My OS is GNU/Linux and the xorg driver is the open source intel (from Intel) driver. the ATI driver used on my son's linux distro is the proprietary ATI driver. Both the xorg drivers and the vendor drivers do the same thing. Somehow the narrowWithDepth code affects the depth buffer and some OGL implementations don't handle it well.

We both have new computers now and mine has an nvidia card. I don't have this issue with nvidia. The newer ATI 2600 HD card on an iMac does not seem to have tis issue either.

Sometimes "/localset zbuffer 0" and then "/localset zbuffer 1" will temporarily correct this. But not often.

Let us know what kind of video card this is, maybe there will be a pattern.

temporal distraction · Fri Jun 13, 2008 2:04 am

anomaly wrote:Let us know what kind of video card this is, maybe there will be a pattern.

Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)

Looks like resetting the zbuffer worked for now - thx anomaly!

JeffM · Post by **JeffM** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 2:07 am

get the current drivers from intel

anomaly · Post by **anomaly** » Fri Jun 13, 2008 11:48 am

the xorg drivers are the current linux drivers from intel. most distros come with two intel drivers, the older XFree86 (i810) and the newer intel (intel) drivers. Both do the same thing with respect to the zbuffer problem. I have tried both. The intel driver is the default on newer distros like Ubuntu and Fedora.The intel driver, not i810, seems to give better OGL performance. Not much though.

Intel has released the video drivers as opensource. see:
http://support.intel.com/support/graphi ... 010512.htm
or
http://www.intellinuxgraphics.org

Also I can see no real difference between calling renderNarrowWithDepth() and not. At least on the intel cards.

I've had this issue on intel and ATI since version 2.0.0. It does not always happen. If you play on a server without the narrow flag it does not seem to happen at all. I ran my servers without the narrow flag until I figured out what to do about the intel issue. Quite by accident I saw someone pick up a narrow flag and instantly my zbuffer went belly up. More probing lead to renderNarrowWithDepth().