Celestia Forums

The graphics card in my system at work was just upgraded from an ATI RAGE 128 to a Radeon 7000. It's much faster but shadows on rings are drawn wrong



I installed the most recent drivers available for NT (dated May 2002). Only Basic and Multitexture render paths are available. I suspect it's a problem in the ATI drivers and not in Celestia, but I thought I'd report it anyhow.

System: 256MB, 2GHz P4, NT4 SP6a;
32MB ATI Radeon 7000, v4.3.4013, 4.0.0, OpenGL v1.3.3064
Celestia v1.3.0pre5, pre4, v1.2.5, v1.2.4 all show the bug.
========================================
Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.

Renderer: Radeon 7000 DDR x86/SSE2

Version: 1.3.3064 WinNT Release

Max simultaneous textures: 3

Max texture size: 2048



Supported Extensions:

GL_ARB_multitexture

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_transpose_matrix

GL_ARB_vertex_blend

GL_ARB_window_pos

GL_S3_s3tc

GL_ATI_envmap_bumpmap

GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once

GL_ATI_vertex_streams

GL_ATIX_texture_env_combine3

GL_ATIX_texture_env_route

GL_ATIX_vertex_shader_output_point_size

GL_EXT_abgr

GL_EXT_bgra

GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint

GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array

GL_EXT_draw_range_elements

GL_EXT_fog_coord

GL_EXT_packed_pixels

GL_EXT_point_parameters

GL_EXT_rescale_normal

GL_EXT_secondary_color

GL_EXT_separate_specular_color

GL_EXT_stencil_wrap

GL_EXT_texgen_reflection

GL_EXT_texture_env_add

GL_EXT_texture3D

GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc

GL_EXT_texture_cube_map

GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp

GL_EXT_texture_env_combine

GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3

GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias

GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic

GL_EXT_texture_object

GL_EXT_vertex_array

GL_KTX_buffer_region

GL_NV_texgen_reflection

GL_NV_blend_square

GL_SGI_texture_edge_clamp

GL_SGIS_texture_border_clamp

GL_SGIS_texture_lod

GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap

GL_SGIS_multitexture

GL_WIN_swap_hint

WGL_EXT_extensions_string

WGL_EXT_swap_control

It looks like the texture border color is wrong--black instead of white. My guess is that it's a driver bug, especially since it happens in all versions of Celestia from 1.2.4 up. Still, I'll take a look at the code and see if there's something obviously wrong.

Aren't there any more recent drivers for the Radeon 7000 with OpenGL 1.4/ARB_vertex_program support? It's really too bad if there aren't . . .

--Chris

There are more recent drivers, but not for NT.

I just thought I'd let you know that my system at work was upgraded to run XP today. The new Catalyst 3.4 drivers fixed this particular ring shadow bug.

Unfortunately, the Radeon 7000 doesn't support GL_ARB vertex routines, so I don't have the opportunity to see the bugs reported by people with 8500 and 9100 cards.

Even with the latest drivers for Windows XP and Radeon 8500 I see a big problem with Ring Shadows. Everything else I've checked out under OpenGL vertex program mode looks ok so far, and specular reflections are now present (except for M.F.s BlueMarble virtual texture), as well as shadows for mountains on DDS textures. The only thing that doesn't work and slows down rendering speed is Ring Shadows for the outer planets. When I first got to play in OpenGL mode the disappointment came when Jupiter (I have rings added) appeared to have weird splotchy black areas fluctuating slowly as the rendering speed decreases to where it takes a few seconds to do any action. The black stuff has little lines sticking out of the edges. Then I went to Saturn and viewed it from above and the same thing was going on, but this time I got a good look at the shadow on the rings behind it. The shadow covered the entire half of the ring facing away from the sun. Does this lend any clues as to the nature of the problem? I could email shots of it.

Oh well, guess the ATI people just want Radeon 8500 to fade into obsolescence, can't be fixed.
Must get nVidia, someday. And a faster processor. 50x cd burner...