Display problems.

[ceesboog]

Also described with screenshots in:
Strange effects in 1.2.4. compared to 1.1.3

As far as I can see the display engine is changed for the worst.

version 1.1.3. worked fine on my 750Mhz, 64 Mb/3D onboard and on
200 Mhz/32 Mb-no 3D.
This version has no "display mode" in the menu.

version 1.2.4. works fine on the 200 Mhz.
This version has a "display mode" in the menu. Used only windowed
mode on both machines, because all other crash.

OpelGl info or both versions on my 750 Mhz is the same:
1.2.4.

Vendor: SiS DMARenderer: 630/730 / MMXVersion: 2.00Max simultaneous textures: 2Max texture size: 1024Supported Extensions:GL_ARB_multitextureGL_EXT_abgrGL_EXT_bgraGL_EXT_compiled_vertex_arrayGL_EXT_packed_pixelsGL_EXT_texture_objectGL_EXT_vertex_arrayGL_SGIS_multitextureGL_WIN_swap_hint
1.1.3.

Vendor: SiS DMARenderer: 630/730 / MMXVersion: 2.00Max simultaneous textures: 2Max texture size: 1024Supported Extensions:GL_ARB_multitextureGL_EXT_abgrGL_EXT_bgraGL_EXT_compiled_vertex_arrayGL_EXT_packed_pixelsGL_EXT_texture_objectGL_EXT_vertex_arrayGL_SGIS_multitextureGL_WIN_swap_hint

Chris, anyone, who has a solution ?

Use now mostly 1.1.3. because of the problems mentioned,
but most addons gravity etc. don't work on it.

[chris]

I'm not certain what's happening here . . . Have you made sure that you have the latest OpenGL drivers for your SiS graphics card? The text in 1.2.4 looks fine with most 3D cards (and with the MS and Mesa software renderers), so I think something is wrong with SiS's OpenGL, not Celestia.

Try http://www.savagenews.com/drivers/drivers.html for drivers for the SiS 630/730.

--Chris

[ceesboo]

Installed the mentioned drivers but still the fonts remain garbeld.
The planets/pictures/stars are O.K.

Now I have celestia 1.1.3. ans 1.2.4. on
75 Mhz 16 Mb/no 3D
166 and 200 Mhz 32 Mb/no3D
350 Mhz 64 MB 8Mb/3D Diamond Speedstar A50
750 Mhz 16-64MB/3D onboard Sis 630

1.1.3 works fine on all.
1.2.4. works fine in windowed mode on all except on 750Mhz which has
garbeld fonts.
1.2.4. in other modes then windowed incl. alt+enter(full screen)
CRASH on all!

Because 1.1.3. compared to 1.2.4. has NO different modes I suspect
a different graphics/3D engine has been used in 1.2.4. ?
Because I don't see much difference between the no3D screens and the
3D screens perhaps the support for the many 3D could be deleted?

In this forum I see a lot of 1.2.4. crashes with specific cards (matrox etc).

Perhaps there are other users with my configuration (sis630)
who (don't) have problems ?

The garbeld fonts spoil my pleasure using celestia

[Pixel]

To delete 3D support... Ohh my..
What fps you get with these setups? (turn on them with '`' key)
Personally i have no problems with any version- i am using cheap nvidia vid card wich is exceptionally new - only 2 years old
And you can't delete 3D, because the hardware support for it resides mainly in the drivers not in Celestia. OpenGL is just interface used.

[Rassilon]

I have to be smart on this one...

To avoid display problems...steer clear of Pine brand INVIDIA cards...They produce undesired results in the graphics display dept.

[ceesboog]

To delete 3D support... Ohh my..
What fps you get with these setups? (turn on them with '`'

I mean turn support for 3D on/off, I don't see much difference
between with or without.

Fps on 75Mhz is slowest (offcourse..)

[dpbohlmann]

I have a 1 GHz machine with SIS 630/730 on-board with the same bad font problems with Celestia 1.2.4. Came here to try and find a solution. Here is what worked for me:
1. Goto http://driver3.sis.com/graphic/integrated/730630/inf and download the file 630_206_winme.zip. I have Win ME running, obviously.
2. Extracted to a seperate directory.
3. In c:\windows\system I copied all the files that were the same as those in the zip to a another seperate directory, in case the update failed miserably (not all of the ones in the zip are here, though).
4. Copied the extracted files to the system directory. It will wanr you tht you can't copy some of them because they are being used.
5. Went to Settings - Control Panel - System - Device Manager - Display adapters - Sis 630/730 and installed the new driver.
6. Restarted.
7. Voila.
Sorry for all the steps here; didn't know how detailed you needed them. Of course, some of these may vary depending on your WinOS.
Anyhoot, since I did this my Celestia 1.2.4 renders fonts (and everything else) just fine. Oh, you should browse the web page I gave you up top for the correct version of OS of what you have, of course.
Hope this helps.

[ceesboog]

It works !! :lol: :wink:

[steve.wray]

For what its worth, I've found that the very latest NVidia Detonator driver for windows XP have somewhat flakey openGL support; Celestia (among other things incl Icewind Dale) just won't work (unless I put it into '98 compatibility mode and then its REAL slow).

I had to go back about 3 driver versions before I found a detonator driver that works with XP & Celestia.

[ANDREA]

Have you made sure that you have the latest OpenGL drivers for your SiS graphics card? The text in 1.2.4 looks fine with most 3D cards (and with the MS and Mesa software renderers), so I think something is wrong with SiS's OpenGL, not Celestia.
Try http://www.savagenews.com/drivers/drivers.html for drivers for the SiS 630/730.

--Chris

Chris, I have just mounted on my PC (Athlon 1.33, 640 MB 133 Mhz RAM, 2 40 Gb HD, 21 inch Philips monitor, WIN98 SE) the new ASUSTeck V8420 ULTRA 128 Mb Video Card, but now I have a noteworth flickering of planets while they rotate, and everything is slower, even if I loaded the last DirectX software.
I have gone to the above address but I haven't found the drivers for my card. Do you know where (and if) I can find them?
This is a very disappointing thing, because my card in Italy is very expensive (about 550.00 US $), and I have made the change from the previous 32 Mb Card to obtain maximum performance from Celestia.
Thank you for your help and your wonderful work.

Andrea

[selden]

Andrea,

The Asus V8420 is a high-performance version of the GeForce4 Ti4200.
(See http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzMx for a review)
It should work just fine with the "reference" drivers that Nvidia provides on their web site at
http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

Although its performance as supplied is about the same as the other 4200s, the massive heatsink and higher performance memory means that it can be overclocked even more if you want.

I hope this helps a little.

Added later: I just thought I should add that I'm using one of the stardard 4200 boards without the Asus enhancements with only a 500MHz P3, and I don't think I see the flicker you mention. Motion is just a little jerky when I drag a planet around against a backdrop of *lots* of stars, but it's very smooth when I turn the stars off.

[ANDREA]

Andrea,
The Asus V8420 is a high-performance version of the GeForce4 Ti4200.
(See http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzMx for a review)
It should work just fine with the "reference" drivers that Nvidia provides on their web site at
http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp
Although its performance as supplied is about the same as the other 4200s, the massive heatsink and higher performance memory means that it can be overclocked even more if you want.
I hope this helps a little.
**********************************
Helden, thank you for your help.
I have unstalled the OpenGL 1.3, the Nvidia drivers from the site you gave me, and this is what says the Celestia help:

Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Renderer: GeForce4 Ti 4600/AGP/3DNOW!
Version: 1.3.1
Max simultaneous textures: 4
Max texture size: 4096
Supported Extensions:
GL_ARB_depth_texture
GL_ARB_imaging
GL_ARB_multisample
GL_ARB_multitexture
GL_ARB_shadow
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_dot3
GL_ARB_transpose_matrix
GL_S3_s3tc
GL_EXT_abgr
GL_EXT_bgra
GL_EXT_blend_color
GL_EXT_blend_minmax
GL_EXT_blend_subtract
GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array
GL_EXT_draw_range_elements
GL_EXT_fog_coord
GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays
GL_EXT_packed_pixels
GL_EXT_paletted_texture
GL_EXT_point_parameters
GL_EXT_rescale_normal
GL_EXT_secondary_color
GL_EXT_separate_specular_color
GL_EXT_shadow_funcs
GL_EXT_shared_texture_palette
GL_EXT_stencil_wrap
GL_EXT_texture3D
GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc
GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp
GL_EXT_texture_env_add
GL_EXT_texture_env_combine
GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3
GL_EXT_texture_cube_map
GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic
GL_EXT_texture_lod
GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias
GL_EXT_texture_object
GL_EXT_vertex_array
GL_EXT_vertex_weighting
GL_HP_occlusion_test
GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat
GL_KTX_buffer_region
GL_NV_blend_square
GL_NV_copy_depth_to_color
GL_NV_evaluators
GL_NV_fence
GL_NV_fog_distance
GL_NV_light_max_exponent
GL_NV_multisample_filter_hint
GL_NV_occlusion_query
GL_NV_packed_depth_stencil
GL_NV_point_sprite
GL_NV_register_combiners
GL_NV_register_combiners2
GL_NV_texgen_reflection
GL_NV_texture_compression_vtc
GL_NV_texture_env_combine4
GL_NV_texture_rectangle
GL_NV_texture_shader
GL_NV_texture_shader2
GL_NV_texture_shader3
GL_NV_vertex_array_range
GL_NV_vertex_array_range2
GL_NV_vertex_program
GL_NV_vertex_program1_1
GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap
GL_SGIS_multitexture
GL_SGIS_texture_lod
GL_SGIX_depth_texture
GL_SGIX_shadow
GL_WIN_swap_hint
WGL_EXT_swap_control


It seems that everything is working fien, but the planets rotation is flickering (I mean it seems to be no more than 5-8 images/second).
I have this results with the beta2 1.2.5 Celestia release, using only the default textures and bumps, nothing else.
I'm disperate!
What am I doing wrong?
Thank for the help.

Andrea







Added later: I just thought I should add that I'm using one of the stardard 4200 boards without the Asus enhancements with only a 500MHz P3, and I don't think I see the flicker you mention. Motion is just a little jerky when I drag a planet around against a backdrop of *lots* of stars, but it's very smooth when I turn the stars off.

[selden]

Andrea,

The only difference between what you report and what I see on my system is the "Renderer" line.
Mine says "GeForce4 Ti 4200/AGP/SSE"
"SSE" is the name of the graphics instruction set in the Pentium CPU.
"3DNOW!" is the name of the graphics instruction set in the AMD CPU.
They are very similar to one another, but not quite identical.

On the opening screen of v1.2.5b2, showing a full screen image of the Earth, when I turn on stars and galaxies with their brightness all the way up, my frame rate goes down to about 10-12 frames/second when I wigglie the mouse scroll wheel. With stars and galaxies off or dimmed all the way down, I get 50-60 frames/sec. Both rates are with antialiasing, pixel shading and vertex shading turned on. (Also, I'm using Pascal's new database of 780,000 stars from the Tycho catalog.)

The frame rate is shown in the lower left corner when you type the "back-apostrophe" (`). On U.S. keyboards, it usually is on the same key with the "tilde" (~).

I don't know if this comparison helps at all. If your frame rate number really is only 5 frames/second with no stars or galaxies visible, I fear there may be something wrong with your graphics card.

On the other hand, people in the AVS Home Theater forum have often complained about problems with motherboards that use early versions of the VIA chipsets to interconnect CPU and memory. Do you know what chipset your motherboard uses? What is the motherboard's manufacturer and model number?

Finally, is there any chance that some other program is using a lot of CPU time on your system while you are running Celestia?

[ANDREA]

Andrea,
The only difference between what you report and what I see on my system is the "Renderer" line.
Mine says "GeForce4 Ti 4200/AGP/SSE"
"SSE" is the name of the graphics instruction set in the Pentium CPU.
"3DNOW!" is the name of the graphics instruction set in the AMD CPU.
They are very similar to one another, but not quite identical.
On the opening screen of v1.2.5b2, showing a full screen image of the Earth, when I turn on stars and galaxies with their brightness all the way up, my frame rate goes down to about 10-12 frames/second when I wigglie the mouse scroll wheel. With stars and galaxies off or dimmed all the way down, I get 50-60 frames/sec. Both rates are with antialiasing, pixel shading and vertex shading turned on. (Also, I'm using Pascal's new database of 780,000 stars from the Tycho catalog.)
The frame rate is shown in the lower left corner when you type the "back-apostrophe" (`). On U.S. keyboards, it usually is on the same key with the "tilde" (~).

Dear Seldom, you are right, my problem is due to "Galaxies" ON, while the stars have no effect.
Now my frame rate is very good, even if I don't know what is it, because I have tried to push the "back apostrophe", with no effect.
I have found strange that the "renderer line" says 4400 instead of 4200, because in the nVidia downloads web page the one I mounted is given for 4200.
Anyhow, for the moment it's enough, and I'm very happy for your help, thank you.

Andrea

[selden]

Andrea,

Italian locale keyboards have a different layout than U.S. English locale. I don't know if Crhis' code makes allowances for this. (Of course, Windows should do the proper mapping, but maybe it is wrong.) You may need to use the key that's in the upper left corner of the keyboard. I think this is the "backslant" key (\) on Italian keyboards.

I hope this helps.