I tried this game. Entered Warp mode but no starships or vessels disappeared.

One thing interesting to note, that running Razer Cortex in background also resolve this bug.

It's really weird.
I saw in the log that you have an AMD Radeon HD 8250. Any chance you could try it on other hw?
Or, could you plz try it with the MS WARP ( 😁 ) software renderer? It'll be slow but it'll make it to check if the bug is in dgVoodoo.

Hi, thanks for your response.
My main pc is windows 7, AMD RX470:
- with dgvoodoo2.61: bug reproducible.
- without dgvoodoo2: no bug.

More tests on AMD HD 8250, windows 10:
- MS WARP(lol) renderer: bug reproducible.

Since all my hw are AMD based, I'll ask on other forum for some feedback:
https://hotandspicyforums.com/sfc-3-invisible … -10-t28114.html
Other players also have this issue.

Then I must have made a mistake in my repro (I just thought I entered warp mode or sg like that).

What's the fastest and easiest way to reproduce the bug?

I'll try to make it brief...

Install the game.
Patch beta 1.01 534b, get it here: https://sites.google.com/site/sfc3rex/Home/downloads-1
Open sfc.ini, add "MakeItSo=1" under [UI] section. This skips CD check.
[For Win8-10] also in sfc.ini, change Windowed=1 under [3D] section.
[Optional, for widescreen resolution support] https://hotandspicyforums.com/starfleet-comma … tch-t18931.html
Extract D3D8.dll, ddraw.dll, D3DCompiler_43.dll, dgVoodoo.conf from dgvoodoo2.61 package to game folder.
Start SFC3.exe
(Click Esc to skip intro video)
==At this stage, main screen should be shown.===
Select "Explore Tutorials" at main screen.
Select any tutorial from 1-6, click "accept" at lower right corner.
In space, press W key to go into warp. Ship will disappear. (In normal game, your ship should be stretched, not disappear.)
Press W again to exit warp, your ship will appear again.
Press Esc to leave game.

Thanks!
Indeed, the ship disappears with 2.6 and 2.61.

It works properly with WIP65, plz try that one.
I must have fixed something meanwhile.

Sorry, but WIP65 doesn't work for me (Both win7 & win10).

Is there any special setup should done with dgvoodoocpl? I'm using default settings.

Oh, yes, I forgot to say that you have to set option 'DirectXExt\PrimarySurfaceBatchedUpdate' to false.
False will be the default value in the next version.

Hello, still didn't work.
Could you share your dgvoodoo.conf for SFC3? Thanks a lot for your work.

In the meantime, I shouldn't ask too much, but if you could make "windowed=0" work in Win8-10 that would be awesome!

Ok. This is the default config with DirectX\PrimarySurfaceBatchedUpdate set to false.

Still no luck. If you can get it work, it could be something on my end. These are my 2 hw:
1. Windows 7 sp1, AMD R5 1400, AMD Radeon RX 470 4G.(Can play without dgvoodoo2)
2. Windows 10 1903, AMD A6 1450, AMD Radeon HD 8250. (needs dgvoodoo2 to play)

I'll try change some settings and see if I can work it out. This is really odd.

What's the problem with it? How does it not work?
BTW, I'd like to release the new version. Does it work for you?

http://dege.fw.hu/temp/dgVoodoo2_62.zip

Tested WIP65 and 2.62, the behavior remains unchanged. So when I going to warp, my ship still disappears. Any suggestions are welcomed:)

Hmm... then I don't understand…
Shouldn't it look like this?

(I'm in Warp mode in Tutorial 5)

I can't try it natively because the crashes for me.

Yes, should be like that.

You can't run it natively? So that's played in a virtual machine or...?
I would like to know the hw & os that you have it crashed and taken this screenshot, thanks.
And does the crash have any error message or exception?

btw, once installed, the game folder can be copied elsewhere and run. This game is completely portable. So if you have more hw could test, just copy game there and play.

No, it's dgVoodoo (2_62). See the logo in the corner, altough it's inconspicuous.

Pure natively I only get a black menu screen and can't go ingame.
I found a custom d3d8.dll as a Win10 patch for the game and that's what the game crashes with, for me.

I think using dgvoodoo still counts native because it utilize real hardware acceleration.(?)

Only Windows 7 can play without any wrappers.
I remembered a custom d3d8.dll from moddb works in early win10 releases. But wined3d for windows and dgvoodoo2 work better.

Almost wish I could give you my laptop so you can debug on it. 😵

Turns out that I can debug it because dgVoodoo 2.61 produces the same issue for me that you get too.

dgVoodoo supports vertex blending (unlike todays drivers) and the game utilizes that. But, when in warp mode, the last column of a blend matrix contains invalid elements (nan floats), that's why the transformed mesh of the starship isn't rendered.
Well, the interesting part is, I don't know where that memory garbage comes from: it works perfectly with dgv 2.62 and even the debug build of 2.61.
The sad fact is you cannot disable vertex blending in dgVoodoo, all of the virtual cards support it. 😖

I'm going to discover what circumstances the problem relies on and fix it somehow, later.

Thank you. That's a big progress.
Hopefully one day this issue will be resolved in future releases.

Hmm... this game is a real mystery. Disabling vertex blending in dgVoodoo doesn't solve the problem. I guess the difference is that vertex blending is calculated in dgVoodoo or is done 'manually' by the game engine, but in both cases a matrix with nans in one of its column are used in the calculations.

I cannot trace down where those nans come from. Even the size of D3D8.DLL matters. 😁
I can catch a lot of 'invalid operation' FPU exceptions when entering the loading screen of a tutorial level, because there are a lot of 0/0 operations in the precalculations but those are also present when the disappearing symptom doesn't come, and seemingly has nothing to do with dgVoodoo but rather the game model data.
😕 😕