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dgVoodoo 2 for DirectX 11

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Reply 1720 of 3949, by De-M-oN

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It fixes all the games which use other Texel value than 3. And you wont offer it, because computer noobs dont understand it? Seriously? That would be a great disappointment o.o

And the already existent options understands my grandma?

Thats the worst reason I ever heard. Then make a expert mode, offer it only in cfg file or whatever, but avoiding be able to have games fixed, because a user could not understand that option is ... ugh.. bullshit...

Sorry if I sounded rude, it wasnt intentional, but that reason is a frustration.

Reply 1722 of 3949, by De-M-oN

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what bad idea you speak of?

Its really a frustration to see NFS still in bad fonts, NFS porsche sure still no shattered windows if car upside down and still evil ugly fonts as well and still eventually even have the headlight problem, just because no option to change texel even if dege would be able to integrate it, just because of that frustrating reason 😒

Reply 1723 of 3949, by VEG

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De-M-oN wrote:

Seriously - settable Texel would finally fix NFS 3, NFS 4, NFS Porsche for having ugly font and that headlight problem.

Can you show a screenshot how "bad" fonts look in the NFS3, and how it have to look. And it would be nice to see how “headlight problem” looks. Just to understand what do you mean. 😊

Best regards, Evgeny

Reply 1724 of 3949, by De-M-oN

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Can you show a screenshot how "bad" fonts look in the NFS3

I would have to install it again and so on. But its similar to the NFS 2 screenshot of lap record time on left bottom. It looks pixelated and bad. NFS Porsche is even worse.

and how it have to look

How? This would require me to run it on a computer at that time where I can set the Texel Value to 0.

Headlight problem is also present on NFS 4. Just watch this video:

Watch the first and/or the fifth video of this raceday:

http://the-running-racers-clan.ath.cx/forum/i … ad&threadID=310

Reply 1726 of 3949, by Dege

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De-M-oN wrote:
It fixes all the games which use other Texel value than 3. And you wont offer it, because computer noobs dont understand it? Ser […]
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It fixes all the games which use other Texel value than 3. And you wont offer it, because computer noobs dont understand it? Seriously? That would be a great disappointment o.o

And the already existent options understands my grandma?

Thats the worst reason I ever heard. Then make a expert mode, offer it only in cfg file or whatever, but avoiding be able to have games fixed, because a user could not understand that option is ... ugh.. bullshit...

Sorry if I sounded rude, it wasnt intentional, but that reason is a frustration.

While I can accept your arguments, I still say "too much options are really confusing in general" after all.
I got bad experiences in dgVoodoo1 times. Back then, during the development, when I couldn't make the wrapper code solve or optimize certain emulation cases, my policy was letting the user choose, so I exposed that as an option, in the setup. For some reason I thought that users could think and see dgVoodoo with a developer brain, from my perspective, if I write some stuff in the readme (read by roughly nobody) about "thisandthat buffer, such coordinates, managed textures", and so on. Later I realized that it's not even close to the reality, to say it gently.

Users, including me, won't mess with complicated install and settings (except some resolute dude).
They want something that can be simply installed (AKA pressing the 'next' button a few times) and works well out of the box.

What is more (it's going to be brainkiller 😁), even the presence of a config program is disturbing.
I still see in many cases, regarding dgVoodoo2, that users, at the moment they notice the config app, feel compelled to begin with 'proper configuring' before using or trying the wrapper. It doesn't even come to their mind that the wrapper can work with the default settings (what are the recommended ones, btw). One of my favorite term is 'playing with options'... what it means in practice is ticking checkboxes randomly, without any knowledge about their usage, and see what happens. 😀
Now, just imagine what a chaos two edit boxes for texel/pixel centers offsets could cause. I bet many users would begin with setting them to any other than default 0.0 and making sure that xy game won't crash if they are set to 0.2.

My problem with expert mode (aside from additional development) is that if an average user obtains knowledge of that, then he will play with that, instead of the simple-settings, because thinks that through expert configuration he will get out more of the wrapper, more performance, more stability or sg like that. He thinks of that as a kind of overclocking or modding. If something won't work for him then he begins to search for some 'modded dgVoodoo2 configuration files' on the net. 😀
Sometimes I have the feeling that dgVoodoo settings are already too expert moded. For example, how knows exactly what 'bilinear blit stretch', phong shading and 'fast video mem access' does?

BTW, what I remember of from the old days, are floating point values for pixel centers on the GPU control panel.
I'm not familiar with 0-1-2-3 classification.

VEG wrote:

Can you reproduce the problem that NFS3 with the DX6 renderer + dgVoodoo wrapper can't be minimized properly?

teleguy wrote:

Any progress with the X-Wing Alliance issue?

No, sorry, I didn't have much time last week, I only did some experiments with quartz video playback (and fixed Drunna for non-AA cases, earlier).

vis wrote:

Yes, only things that go on my mind now, are: T2 game not have real fullscreen on win 8-10, maybe that making confusion. (i did used win 8-10 to, and on win 7 it is fullscreen without anomaly)

Do you mean that Turok2 won't go into fullscreen on Win8/10 with dgVoodoo?

Reply 1727 of 3949, by De-M-oN

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Texel setting is from 0 to 7 if I remember correct.

While Texel of 3 is center and 0 is top left. And NFS needs it top left.

And it is the case for more than the NFS games:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/133383-33 … texel-alignment
or here it is mentioned too:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=740131

And so many games more which needs other texel value than 3:
Re: My new favorite DirectX 7.0 video card

Again NFS Porsche and its bad text with wrong texel origin setting:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=34800

Its a serious problem that Texel alignment isnt settable anymore. You seem to be able to make it happen and dont improve your software because some people are overwhelmed with computers?

Oh come on. Thats pure frustration. Really.

I've found a image showing you the setting:

http://www.ixbt.com/video/images/detonator-tu … r6-d3d-md3d.gif

Also I dont know how Glide handles it, but I see on nGlide and Zeckensack at NFS 4 with Glide the same issues with headlights on NFS 4, which is a pure texel alignment problem. The default value of the old graphic cards (I had nvidia) was 3 and it was ok for many games, but some other needed other value, like NFS. If it was set at 3 you had the same problems with the headlights, like nowadays. Setting this to zero fixed it.

Reply 1728 of 3949, by VEG

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DX5/DX6/DX7/DX8:
2016-03-26-00-34-40-f75ba89c.jpg
Glide2x/Glide3x (dgVoodoo or nGlide):
2016-03-26-00-33-57-6a823283.jpg

On the first screenshot fonts are blurry. On the second one they are sharp. Are you talking about it? I've not investigated why is there this difference, but definitely the sharp version looks much better and I would like to try fix it for DX renderers sometimes.

I think that more options is better (if they are useful for some cases). It can be just a list of settings like this:
2016-03-26-00-40-37-2fa9d84c.png
Or like this:
2016-03-26-00-41-40-b8f6d147.png
Many popular programs have such advanced settings and there is no harm to anyone from them.

Also some advanced settings could be controlled using environment variables, like original Glide3x does. Also dgVoodoo could read some ini files where some advanced settings (which is not available from the GUI) may be present =)

Last edited by VEG on 2016-03-26, 06:22. Edited 1 time in total.

Best regards, Evgeny

Reply 1729 of 3949, by Silanda

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VEG wrote:

Also dgVoodoo could read some ini files where some advanced settings (which is not available from the GUI) may be present =)

IMHO, that's a good idea. Personally, if something doesn't work 100% in all cases, I like having as many options as possible exposed if there's a possibility that they can help. The emulator SSF is an example of this; it might not be terribly intuitive, but those options can be helpful in improving compatibility or performance, and actually need to be tweaked for certain games. Having options which are not exposed in the GUI, but are in the config file, should insulate them from users who have no clue what they're doing. Anyone tweaking the config file made a conscious decision to do so, and is in no position to complain if their tweaks don't work.

Reply 1730 of 3949, by Truth Unknown

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I think what would be important is to be clear about what options do what, and not assume the user knows what they mean by name. Like sure I know what anisotropic filtering does, but some may not. I do agree that having all sorts of options and the abundance of "optimized" or "ultra HD high quality super shiny" configuration files put online certainly confuse things. But if you can keep the options organized, easy to understand and explicit on what they do, there won't be confusion. Most people who need to change something have a need for it in the first place, like "I want to override the resolution", they can change the option in the configuration app and that will be end of it.

Reply 1731 of 3949, by VEG

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De-M-oN wrote:

Headlight problem is also present on NFS 4.

NFS3 also has similar problem sometimes:
2016-03-26-09-42-16-75b11396.jpg
dgVoodoo 2.51, Glide 3x Napalm, 32bpp. 16bpp works nice in this case. DX renderers also have this problem on some systems, but on my PC they work without this graphical glitch (I had tested DX6 and DX6+dgVoodoo).

It will be very nice to have an ability to have clear and sharp fonts in the old NFS games with D3D renderers. It will be ok even when this option will be accessible only using a HEX editor with the current binary format of the dgVoodoo configuration files =)

Best regards, Evgeny

Reply 1732 of 3949, by VEG

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VEG wrote:

DX8 uses a little bit different version of the Thrash API. DX5 is v104, DX6 is v105, DX6 from the NFS4 release is v106, DX7 is v107. DX8 is Thrash API v115. It seems that fog functions was changed a number of times during development of the Thrash API. For example, NFS3 works well with Thrash API v104 and v105, and it uses FOGMODE=4. But NFS4 uses FOGMODE=1, and it works ok with Thrash API v106 and v107 (DX6 from the NFS4 release and DX7).

Updated info. I had investigated DX7 a little bit more. It seems that it have to support FOGMODE=4. FOGMODE=4 in the Thrash API means D3DRENDERSTATE_FOGTABLEMODE=D3DFOG_EXP, and it executes all according D3D setstates, like DX6 does. There is no error like it was in the DX6, so D3DDevice::SetTransform is called during initialization. It seems that there is some other thing which causes invisible fog when FOGMODE=4 😀

UPD. My fail. It doesn't set D3DRENDERSTATE_FOGENABLE=1. It seems that new version of Thrash API needs some additional call to execute it. I'll try to fix it.

BTW, for some reason when I'm using dgVoodoo D3D wrapper, and when I'm using debugger during loading, the result looks like this:
2016-03-26-19-44-07-67e98849.png
It's not a problem, because it doesn't occurs during normal execution. Just for information.

UPD2. I've done it! It works for the DX7. Currently it's a dirty hack, but I know how to do it better. The reason of the problem is that old Thrash API sets a bunch of setstates using single thrash_setstate(0x15, 0x4) call (it includes FOGMODE and FOGENABLE). thrash_setstate(0x15, 0x0) disables fog (FOGENABLE=0). In the new version of the Thrash API thrash_setstate(0x15, 0x4) sets FOGMODE and some states only, but not FOGENABLE=1. To set FOGENABLE=1 it needs to execute thrash_setstate(0x15, 0x1). It seems this change was done for doing less unnecessary D3D settates every frame.

But it doesn't work for the DX8, so it needs additional investigation.

Best regards, Evgeny

Reply 1733 of 3949, by De-M-oN

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dgVoodoo 2.51, Glide 3x Napalm, 32bpp. 16bpp works nice in this case

I'll try out the Glide of dgvoodoo 2 on NFS 4 later. Maybe all the other Glide Wrapper (nGlide and Zeckensack I tried previously for NFS 4) just were worse than dgvoodoo. May be. Most interesting would be NFS Porsche though. There were headlights working, but suffered the most at fonts from texel 3 and at Texel 3 how said the Windows of the cars dont shatter anymore if the car gets upside down.

I was a bit wondered about that a Glide Wrapper cant fix automatically the Texel 3 problem, because of Glide being a whole different renderer API o.o. But nGlide and Zeckensack definitely run into the Texel being at 3 problem as well.

But I'll test out NFS 4 with dgvoodoo.

And I need to find again my NFS Porsche CD. I really need to see what dgvoodoo can do for it.

And: Is there a hope for NFS 1 SE the windows version?

NFS 2 SE is 640x480 and see what dgvoodoo could do out of it with MSAA and 2560x1600 forced. And NFS 1 would need that badly.. No scaler on dosbox can compensate 640x480 -> 2560x1600 on a 30" monitor.
A friend tried to run NFS 1 SE with dgvoodoo, but the game doesnt even start, he said. The only way to run it was for him to use virtualbox with Win95.

Reply 1734 of 3949, by VEG

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De-M-oN wrote:

But nGlide and Zeckensack definitely run into the Texel being at 3 problem as well.

Probably, some old versions of the nGlide. nGlide v1.04.3 and newer doesn't have this problem. Zeus had fixed it. dgVoodoo have this problem only when 32bpp mode is used.

But Glide API has many limitations, so I would like to have a cool DX renderer in the NFS3 patch also.

Best regards, Evgeny

Reply 1735 of 3949, by De-M-oN

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NFS 3 offers worse resolutions and like NFS 2 worse graphic! Especially the skies look much worse on Direct3D.
But if Glide really has no Texel 3 problem anymore I definitely have to try again.
Since NFS Porsche doesnt look worse with D3D maybe it would be nice to be fixed too - or I just use Voodoo there too, but I dont know how good the game runs there.

Reply 1736 of 3949, by VEG

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De-M-oN wrote:

NFS 3 offers worse resolutions and like NFS 2 worse graphic!

Have you tried NFS3 Modern Patch? All resolutions are supported by the Glide (dgVoodoo, nGlide) and DX renderers.

screenshot_008_640x480.jpg

Also DX6 and DX7 renderers (in the latest beta) support Fog effect. Also it supports 32bpp rendering, so sky looks nice now.

Best regards, Evgeny

Reply 1737 of 3949, by De-M-oN

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I will look into it later. It sounds interesting 😀

And even 32bit color. wow. But it is sure still 16bit quality there, isnt it? Or are it real 32 bit?

Was the sky really because of the color depth and fog? I thought it was one of the graphical advantages Glide had back then over D3D.

Reply 1738 of 3949, by dx8gamer

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Red Faction 2 texture missing (but not sure if it is a texture problem or a polygon culling problem).

Tested with dgVoodoo 2.51 on win8.1 x64 (nVidia GTX 760M), just at the very beginning of first level.

screen shot: http://www.mediafire.com/view/47wwc34f8an3hw3 … 02-39-51-40.png

Reply 1739 of 3949, by De-M-oN

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Your NFS 3 modern patch has a lot of features listed not present in NFS 4's Expansion Pack by iplounge.
There is no widescreen patch and so on.

And that you even could fix the high poly cars poly limit is awesome. The NFS 4 Car creators would love you for adding such a support to NFS 4 😮

And if you could fix PLEASE this bullshit in NFS 4. I would LOVE YOU:

http://www.hsscoring.com/HSGuide#_Toc161670448

It scrolls to problem B.2 and this problem is reaaaally annoying. I wasnt able to fix it for some people at all. And it delayed racestarts on our clanraces from up to 1 hour. Very annoying.

Oh and I also remember on my Geforce 2 Tire rubber being unlimited - or if really not unlimited on a very high amount. I remember 8 lap races where at 8th lap the road was now so much tire rubber that you could even see the good line. It was so much rubber that the road got almost black on some parts of the track and it was full of tire rubber. Looked awesome. Really awesome. Even the fps degraded heavily on my GF2. But nowadays this doesnt happen. New tire rubber is removing oldest tire rubber much much earlier. I'm so sure. Can someone investigate it, if its true? It must be true... I never had again so much rubber on dolphin cove for example again :x