David Megginson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > Jim Wilson writes: > > > Well for the 16bit cards we need to clear the z-buffer even if we > > do not set a different near/far. I tested this pretty rigorously > > last night. And with the patch this morning a myriad of depth > > buffer problems are appearing. They all go away when the buffer is > > cleared. > > If I understand correctly, the problem occurs when looking at the > plane from far away (i.e. control-tower view) magnified. Could you > describe the problems you're seeing in more detail? Also, please > confirm that you're using a new checkout of the base package -- there > is now a lot of LOD information in the 3D model.
Not particularly far away. In fact the tail will occasionally disappear in the standard chase view when low altitude above the runway. The "Truman Show" effect occurs even when at relatively close distances, for example looking perpendicular at runway 28r from the tower at KSFO during takeoff. Everything is up to date and default, except the runway lighting scenery and the 1024x768 window. > If we clear the z-buffer the 3D aircraft model will always be visible, > even if it is behind a building or hill, and even at close range -- > i.e. if you taxi behind the hangar, you'll still see the plane through > the hangar, and if you fly behind a mountain, you'll still see the > plane behind the mountain. > Yes, I realize this. That is why I think we should try plugging externally viewed model branches into the main scene graph. > We could put in a conditional, non-default z-buffer clearing (based on > a property like /sim/view/hacks/z-buffer-workaround) so that people > with older hardware can choose what to give up; it's not reasonable to > penalize all users, though. > Norman noticed an improvement with my temporary fix on his GeForce2 card. So I'd have to say this isn't just an older hardware issue. I've got a GeForce2mx that's been sitting in a box here for a month. Just upgraded my server last week which freed up the old server that will take the Voodoo3...so I'm just about ready to shuffle. Then it will still be possible for me to test things on 3dfx. Keep in mind that this card isn't all that old and there are a lot of folks still using it (esp. on linux). I know of a couple people running 800MHZ machines that had Voodoo3's installed when they were new. IMHO we can always add functionality for newer cards, but we should support at least 2-3 year old technology by default. Best, Jim _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
