What's the latest on cards...

[Vicware]

Hi Chris - I've been asking for an updated list of cards that support
all the stuff Celstia is doing - .dds files, bump-mapping, etc.

Can you give us that?

Vic

[chris]

nVidia TNT/TNT2: works great

3dfx Voodoo3: mostly works

3dfx Voodoo4/5: works

Rage 128: A few bugs with 1.2.4

Radeon: works great, supports hires DXT textures

nVidia GeForce/GeForce2: works great, support hires DXT textures, pixel shaders, vertex shaders in sw

nVidia GeForce3/GeForce4: best cards for Celestia; support hires DXT textures, pixel shaders, vertex shaders in hw, wicked fast

Intel i810: works, but slow

Kyro/Kyro2: works great

Pixel shaders/bump mapping will eventually work on all cards that support DOT3 texturing, which includes the Kyro, Radeon, and all new hardware.

[Vicware]

nVidia TNT/TNT2: works great

3dfx Voodoo3: mostly works...

Hi Chris -

I'm a little confused. You say TNT/TNT2 works great, but I have the Viper
770 as I think you know, and that's a TNT2 card - but it doesn't do dds/dxt
files or bump-mapping - so I'm not sure what you mean works great?

Thanks - Vic

[Guest]

TNT2 isn't able to use texture compression and bump mapping, so it's work well without these features!
I'd like to add to the list the Savage family, they are quite old, but with support of texture compression
bye

[UncleSpam]

I just updated my laptop from an nVIDIA GeForce2 Go to the nVIDIA GeForece4 440 Go. 64 MB video ram now, with significantly faster processing in 3D.

Bogdan

[Azagoth]

At the moment I am using a TNT2 M64 which works great at 1024 x 768 x 16, however in the "Render" menu I can't select the same resolution at 32bit.

It's not a problem as you can't really tell the difference anyway. Just can't wait until I get my GeForce4 Ti4600 128DDR card

[boertje]

I have a PowerBook with a 32 MB Mobility Radeon 7500 - said to be supporting dds-Files. Still I can't seem to get them working :/
Is this a problem with the gpu, osx or am I just too dumb?

[t00fri]

I have a PowerBook with a 32 MB Mobility Radeon 7500 - said to be supporting dds-Files. Still I can't seem to get them working :/
Is this a problem with the gpu, osx or am I just too dumb?

I had just tried Celestia 1.2.5pre3 under Windows XPpro on one of our Dell Latitude C610 notebooks that have a 16Mb ATI Radeon Mobility (not 7500). The display was largely OK, but, of course no Vertex/Pixel shading.

The Saturn rings were buggy, etc...

Bye Fridger

[chris]

I had just tried Celestia 1.2.5pre3 under Windows XPpro on one of our Dell Latitude C610 notebooks that have a 16Mb ATI Radeon Mobility (not 7500). The display was largely OK, but, of course no Vertex/Pixel shading.

The Saturn rings were buggy, etc...

Ugh . . . I wish driver writers would fix texture coordinate generation in their drivers so that ring shadows would work. The problem should go away if you turn off ring shadows in the View Options dialog.

--Chris

[Rassilon]

Well my laptop doesnt even run the program correctly...I get fonts as blocks etc....I think its the architecture of laptop graphics...Its slightly different than PC's....You know Alex...programmer of Noctis brought up an interesting point about video graphics..He writes the programs entirely in a language that does not rely on the video card to produce its renderings...given also that he has not implemented bumpmapping and specturals even in the upcoming Noctis V...it just seems its almost a losing battle with MS developers who once write software it immediately becomes obsolete or 'full of bugs' due to the fact they pour out new drivers almost as I type this post...I think Alex in writing his own engine has effectively bridged the gap between all graphics cards...Noctis works the same on my laptop as my PC...no ugly graphics errors...nothing...

My point is is well simply I wish there was a way to standardize all of this...Pretty soon people are going to get sick of it and start looking for other means to code...I hope that you, chris dont get too frustrated and just give this up...even though it seems like a losing battle nowadays...I suppose some of us might have to sacrifice some of the luxuries in able to profit on a standard level...In other words chris might have to limit the compatability on PC's to one set per OS...Win32 OS X and Linux...This might cut down on alot of frustrations....and well sadly force some of us to upgrade our equipment...I think Apple users have less problems as I think they only use one type video card [GeForce] but I may be wrong...

Just my 2 and a half cents

[boertje]

Yes you are a little wrong ;)
As I said I am using a mobillity radeon 7500 in my powerbook. Actually all mobile macs use ati-chips. There was some period where desktop-macs mostly used gf-cards but now they have atis 9000/9700 and before they had the rage chips. Same here as everywhere...
I have to remember my question again:
Did anyone get dds-files to work on osx? If so with a gf or a radeon? Cause jpg-textures really suck :(

[Rassilon]

I think there is some ati chipsets that run dds files but then maybe not...Still the fact remains very few laptop owners can get celestia to run at all...so dont be suprised if it takes chris a while to track down the problem...

[chris]

I think there is some ati chipsets that run dds files but then maybe not...Still the fact remains very few laptop owners can get celestia to run at all...so dont be suprised if it takes chris a while to track down the problem...

It should run fine on laptops with mobile Radeon and GeForce chipsets. Not sure about anything else, though.

ATI Radeon owners definitely can use DDS files.

Some more good news today: the OpenGL ARB has approved the new ARB_fragment_program extension! This means that I'll be able to write advanced pixel shaders that work on both the Radeon 9700 and NV30 (though the NV30 has more powerful pixel shaders, so there will probably still be a bit of NV30 only stuff.)

--Chris

[boertje]

unfortunately they don't work for me
I guess it's this osx-port. Let's hope for the next one. Damn why did I sell my pc with this nice gf3... ahh - I remember why

[Troy]

nVidia TNT/TNT2: works great

3dfx Voodoo3: mostly works

3dfx Voodoo4/5: works

Rage 128: A few bugs with 1.2.4

Radeon: works great, supports hires DXT textures

nVidia GeForce/GeForce2: works great, support hires DXT textures, pixel shaders, vertex shaders in sw

nVidia GeForce3/GeForce4: best cards for Celestia; support hires DXT textures, pixel shaders, vertex shaders in hw, wicked fast

Intel i810: works, but slow

Kyro/Kyro2: works great

Pixel shaders/bump mapping will eventually work on all cards that support DOT3 texturing, which includes the Kyro, Radeon, and all new hardware.

It might be a good idea to type this data up into an HTML table to put on the main site, including the largest texture size that will work with a given chipset ( ie. 2048 for TNT2 ). This will help newbies understand what they can expect out of Celestia for thier system. I might be talked into doing it if I can find some time.

[selden]

Troy,

That table might have been accurate back in May, but it's out of date now.
.
Unfortunately v1.2.5 seems to be using features that the OpenGL libraries of some older cards really don't support.

For example, although my Voodoo5 worked OK with v1.2.4, it did not get along with v1.2.5 at all. I found that the OpenGL libraries supplied by 3dfx so long ago have serious bugs that differ from one version of Windows to another. Also, Celestia v1.2.5pre2 crashed immediately under XP using the drivers currently supplied by Microsoft.

I upgraded to a GeForce4 Ti4200 and have no regrets.

Of course, the new addon options for Celestia are going to force me upgrade other parts of my system rather soon. All those stars and high resolution planet textures need a fast CPU and *lots* of memory: 256MB is not enough.

[Troy]

Troy,

That table might have been accurate back in May, but it's out of date now.

Unfortunately v1.2.5 seems to be using features that the OpenGL libraries of some older cards really don't support.

When I wrote that last post, I assumed that we'd be using up to date information relative to the last stable release. Obviously, outdated and inaccurate data won't do anyone any good.