Philip, I'm sure Microsoft employs MANY fine people and I for one
greatly appreciate your participation on this forum. I didn't intend
any blame toward you (or Microsoft). I was simply pointing out how very
often our contact with various companies leads us to be less than
enthusiastic about trying to report bugs. I've been reporting bugs for
nearly twenty years now because I care about the quality of our
industry. It takes a lot of time to test and isolate a bug to try and
make an accurate report rather than just blaming the most convenient
company available.
I apologize if I offended you by using Microsoft as an example. Last
year I reported a driver bug to 3dfx and while their response was polite
(yes we know about this bug) it was over six months later before they
had it fixed (and no feedback to us to let us know they finally fixed
it). Not offensive but not terribly encouraging either.
Your advice is excellent Philip and I agree completely that we should
all try and report bugs as much as we can. However I also believe in
doing as much testing as possible so that our reports are as useful as
possible and aren't targeting the wrong product for being faulty. Every
once in a while I send (generic) bug reports to Sun just to let them
know not everything is working perfectly, but if at all possible I try
to create test programs or otherwise isolate the bug as best as possible
given the information we have.
And thank you again for the excellent information about fog, I'm sure
Sun's engineers can use that information. I hope you continue to
provide such valuable information so that we all benefit from a better
Java 3D product.
- John Wright
Starfire Research
P.S. Philip - Thank you again, but the link you provided,
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ , is the same link I originally
started out with before contacting Microsoft and is the same link they
recommended to me several times before I managed to get them to
understand that only downloads "ie5setup.exe" which is only 499K and is
NOT a full install of IE (I need to be able to install it on a machine
that doesn't have Internet access to do some testing on a customer's
intranet). Since IE 5 isn't available they are continuing with Netscape
as a corporate standard.
Philip Taylor wrote:
>
> MS is a large company. I work in DirectX. I try to be helpful wrt
> DirectX. I have a reputation for that, and have been doing that for as
> long as there has been a Direct3D. Thats my thing. I cant be responsible
> for any actions other than my own.
>
> I tried to be helpful here in relation to 3D; specifically fog behavior
> and driver bugs. I repeat that the single biggest thing we can do to
> influence 3D driver bugs is to have a relationship with the 3D chipset
> IHVs and consistently report bugs to them. Since I work regularly with
> the IHV dev-rel folk, I can assure you that in this area folk do believe
> the dictum "we are all in this together" and work to correct issues that
> are brought to their attention.
>
> You can take this information in the spirit it was offered, eg to help
> everyone with what I have learned in 5 years of working with hardware
> rendering, or not. Unfortunately, you took this opportunity to rant. I
> fail to see how anything related to your interaction with IE is topical
> to 3D driver bugs and IHV relations except it relates to your personal
> experience in reporting a bug on an MS product and I happen to be an MS
> person responding on a public forum. Thats a tenuous relation at best.
>
> Sorry about your experience, but please, next time lets stay on topic. I
> respond here with good information on D3D ( check the archives, I have
> been doing this for several years now ) in the spirit of helping to
> ensure that the J3D D3D implementation is the best it can be. Thats all
> I personally can do. Blaming me for the actions of others at MS helps
> J3D how? It helps resolve this issue how? Deciding to not report bugs
> because of any bad experience with any vendor ( be it software or
> hardware ) helps fix the bug, helps your product, or helps the community
> how?
>
> FWIW, searching off http://msdn.microsoft.com, the developer gateway,
> yields many hits on "ie download". One of which is
> http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/. I do believe from there you can
> download IE 5.5. And I dont believe that link just popped up recently.
> MSDN is a goodness.
>
> PS. If its not obvious, I do strenuously object to this rant.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: John Wright [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > Sent: Friday, May 18, 2001 4:51 AM
> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Subject: Re: [JAVA3D] Fog (Linear) Differing Results
> >
> >
> > Philip, you don't mind if I rant for a second do you?
> >
> > As you said "report all driver bugs" or more generically "report all
> > bugs". But there is a flip side of this too. The companies need to
> > listen to the bugs that are reported. Many companies deal with
> > customers so poorly that we lose our motivation to take the time to
> > report anything.
> >
> > I recently had such an encounter with Microsoft. I wanted to download
> > the latest version of Internet Explorer (last known to be a FREE
> > product). Contacting Microsoft I tried to point out that
> > there isn't a
> > link on their website to obtain IE. After several e-mail exchanges
> > (give Microsoft credit for actually responding), Microsoft decided to
> > launch an "investigation" of ME! Apparently they decided that I was
> > trying to "steal" a copy of IE. HUH??? Microsoft then later
> > apologized, but to this date hasn't provided the information of how to
> > actually download a full copy of IE. Customer service?
> > Appreciation of
> > a customer pointing out a bug?
> >
> > - John Wright
> > Starfire Research
> >
> > Philip Taylor wrote:
> > >
> > > there are two important bits here:
> > > 1) report all driver bugs
> > > 2) D3D fog
> > >
> > > 1) report all driver bugs.
> > >
> > > this is SO important. if all ISVs dont report driver bugs
> > they find, the
> > > quality of the drivers never gets better. please take the
> > time to report
> > > these.
> > >
> > > Most IHVs do have helpful dev-rel folk and want to hear this sort of
> > > thing to make their products better.
> > >
> > > they cant if we arent vigilant, we are all in this together.
> > >
> > > please.
> > >
> > > 2) D3D fog.
> > >
> > > D3D implements two types of fog: vertex fog and pixel fog.
> > >
> > > pixel fog ( sometimes called table fog ) should be
> > preferred over vertex
> > > fog since it appears better, as long as the driver
> > correctly implements
> > > it. note the key statement "as long as the driver correctly
> > implements
> > > it"****. it appears better since its calculated per-pixel instead of
> > > calculated per-vertex and then iterated.
> > >
> > > pixel fog comes in two flavors:
> > >
> > > 1) Eye-relative pixel fog ( or w-fog indicated by the
> > > D3DPRASTERCAPS_WFOG caps bit ) is preferred since it avoids certain
> > > fogging artifacts due to non-linear distribution of z values in the
> > > z-buffer.
> > >
> > > 1) z-based pixel fog. If w-fog isnt supported you get
> > z-based pixel fog.
> > >
> > > if the driver doesnt implement pixel fog, fall back to vertex fox.
> > >
> > > vertex fog comes in two flavors:
> > >
> > > 1) range based fog ( indicated by the
> > D3DPRASTERCAPS_FOGRANGE caps bit )
> > > uses the actual distance from the viewpoint to the vertex
> > rather than
> > > the depth of the vertex; avoiding some rotational artifacts. If
> > > range-based fog isnt supported, you again get z-based fog.
> > >
> > > 2) application fog. the application must use its own fog
> > calculations
> > > when not using the D3D TnL pipeline. the fog factor is
> > calculated and
> > > placed in the alpha component of the specular color, making specular
> > > really RGBF in that case.
> > >
> > > Regardless of which type of fog, pixel or vertex, you use - your
> > > application must provide a compliant projection matrix (
> > what the docs
> > > call a W-Friendly Projection Matrix ) to ensure that fog effects are
> > > properly applied. This restriction applies even to
> > applications that do
> > > not use the Direct3D transformation and lighting engine. If the
> > > projection matrix isn't compliant with this requirement,
> > fog effects are
> > > not applied properly. This is covered in more detail in the D3D doc.
> > >
> > > so, to avoid really bad artifacts the order an application
> > should prefer
> > > fog features is:
> > > pixel w-fog
> > > vertex range-fog
> > > pixel z-fog
> > > vertex z-fog
> > > application fog.
> > >
> > > if the application isnt using the D3D TnL pipeline ( which
> > is quite good
> > > and has per-processor specific optimizations ) then its
> > highly likely
> > > that application fog will produce the most uniform results since you
> > > control your own destiny by informing the iterator what values to
> > > iterate at each vertex.
> > >
> > > and, as always, one must be aware of the bad drivers out there which
> > > would modify that order of feature preference.
> > >
> > > ****GetDeviceIdentifier allows a mechanism to identify
> > card/drivers that
> > > do not comply with the spec, and provide a last-chance method to
> > > fallback. Applications that depend on certain functionality should
> > > consider maintaining an internal list of offending card/drivers and
> > > performing a fall-back mechanism to ensure correct visual
> > appearance.
> > >
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: Kelvin Chung [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > > > Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2001 2:57 PM
> > > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > > Subject: Re: [JAVA3D] Fog (Linear) Differing Results
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > >X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > > >Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 17:49:32 -0400
> > > > >To: Kelvin Chung <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > > >From: Mark Ferneau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > > >Subject: Re: [JAVA3D] Fog (Linear) Differing Results
> > > > >Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > > >Mime-Version: 1.0
> > > > >
> > > > >Kelvin,
> > > > >
> > > > >In the body of the email I indicated J3D (Java3D) 1.2.1_01
> > > > for both OGL and
> > > > >D3D. I think, therefore, that this is a driver
> > > > issue--although I see it
> > > > >across different machines, boards, and operating systems.
> > > > So essentially I
> > > > >should probably not rely on fog looking reasonably
> > consistent across
> > > > >different platforms or graphics boards.
> > > > >
> > > > >Therefore another method will have to be used to achieve the same
> > > > >effect. Would you agree with that statement?
> > > > >
> > > > Not sure. If it is a driver bug we should notify the graphics
> > > > vendor to fix it. I suppose driver should implement it
> > > > according to the fog formula.
> > > >
> > > > At least under Sparc Solaris the fog effect are consistent.
> > > >
> > > > - Kelvin
> > > > -----------------
> > > > Java 3D Team
> > > > Sun Microsystems Inc.
> > > >
> > > > ==============================================================
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> > > > send email to
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> > message "help".
> > > >
> > >
> > >
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