Selection very slow in ATI Catalyst 7.10-8.2 - How to fix it

[martiño]

Hello,

Apparently ATI drivers have been completely rewritten recently, and new versions have serious bugs, that cause the following problems in Glest:

- Trying to select units or place buildings makes the game slow down a lot.
- Projected shadows are really slow (shadow maps are okay).

We will try work around these bugs in case ATI don't fix them, but by now there are a couple of possible solutions:

a) Revert your video card drivers to Catalyst 7.9 or earlier. The bug seems to be there from catalyst 7.10 to 8.2 (latest version at the moment I write this post). The last working Linux version seems to be 8.40.4. The Linux open source diver seems to work too.

b) If you don't want to do that, and you are under Windows, you just copy the atioglxx.dll file from the 7.9 Catalyst into the Glest folder. A step by step install description is stated here.

c) As stated before, under Linux you can use the open source drivers, that seem to work fine.

The problem is caused by OpenGL selection mode being implemented in software. Additionally the problem seems to be better in 8.2 compared to 7.12, so it seems to indicate that ATI knows that this is a serious issue and they are trying to fix it (it doesn't affect Glest only but also Maya and other CAD software apparently).

Everything works fine on NVidia cards which have better drivers. Anyway, we already have a partial fix for it in the svn, and we will work around it eventually if we see ATI doesn't do anything about it.

Martiño.

[Jeremiah]

Fat lot of good it does for anyone in linux.

[martiño]

Well, we will work around it eventually, but it is not our fault that they release new drivers that break functionality that was there in previous builds...

[martiño]

We have a fix for the building placement and shadows being too slow on the SVN, I anyone wants to try it and give us some feedback it would be appreciated!! (It seems to work for Jeremiah).

I've changed the way terrain picking works in general, so it should be more precise too, we are really interested in knowing if it is faster for everybody and if there are any bugs, in both NVidia and ATI cards.

[Jeremiah]

When you say picking do you mean where you can choose to place the building. I'm not sure if it did before but it seems to turn red now when you try to place a building where it can't be built.

Also I have noticed some times when I want to build something it get unselected. I mean I pick a building and then am about to place it and it disappears so I have to select the building all over again. Kinda sucks when I'm trying to build in the heat of battle.

[Jeremiah]

Since AMD bought ATI they have seem to really start making changes. They seem to have done a 180 with there drivers and releasing to the opensource community and even backing an opensource 3d driver. They also seem to be taking alot more interest in there linux closed source driver. So I know there are still problems with ATI but I'm happy to see they are turning that all around. And for the most part I have always been very happy with AMD and ATI even before the merged. So I don't plan on giving up on them yet.

[Jeremiah]

About that crazy shifting colors in the water and uniforms. I noticed it when I tried to set the res to 1440x900 this is the max my LCD can do. So to see if it was the screen size or the 6:10 aspect I tried the highest 3:4 aspect my LCD can do. That is 1200x900 and it did the same thing. Water shifts colors from blue to purple fast. And the uniforms of the characters change colors to.

[thawn]

I just installed the glest 3.1.2 on my gentoo amd64 machine
and graphics work great with the newest ati drivers (version 8.5 or version 8.493 for gentoo users)

enjoy

[edimok]

Hello, my english is very bad, but am going to try to explain my problem

i readed a Wiki-Docu to compile GLest. The first Part was good, and i had null error by compiling "GlestLib" , but now i have more than 400 errors by "GlestSrc".

I don't know what to do, can you help me please.

Here are the errors, i have got. thank you

1>d:\programming\glest\glest_source_v1.0.10\glest_source_v1.0.10\sources\ai.cpp(343) : error C3861: "randRange": Bezeichner wurde nicht gefunden.
1>d:\programming\glest\glest_source_v1.0.10\glest_source_v1.0.10\sources\ai.cpp(357) : error C3861: "randRange": Bezeichner wurde nicht gefunden.
1>d:\programming\glest\glest_source_v1.0.10\glest_source_v1.0.10\sources\ai.cpp(357) : error C3861: "randRange": Bezeichner wurde nicht gefunden.
1>ai_interface.cpp
1>d:\programming\glest\glest_source_v1.0.10\glest_source_v1.0.10\sources\skill_type.h(153) : warning C4244: 'return': Konvertierung von 'const int' in 'float', möglicher Datenverlust
1>d:\programming\glest\glest_source_v1.0.10\glest_source_v1.0.10\sources\game_camera.h(79) : warning C4244: '=': Konvertierung von 'int' in 'float', möglicher Datenverlust
1>d:\programming\glest\glest_source_v1.0.10\glest_source_v1.0.10\sources\ai_interface.cpp(31) : warning C4355: this': wird in Initialisierungslisten für Basisklasse verwendet
1>d:\programming\glest\glest_source_v1.0.10\glest_source_v1.0.10\sources\ai_interface.cpp(46) : warning C4996: 'fopen': This function or variable may be unsafe. Consider using fopen_s instead. To disable deprecation, use _CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS. See online help for details.
1>        c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 9.0\vc\include\stdio.h(237): Siehe Deklaration von 'fopen'
Shared::Util::MultiFactory<T>::registerClass(std::string)": template-Argument für "R" konnte nicht hergeleitet werden.

[Jeremiah]

I am sorry but I don't think I can help you. You said your using Visual c++ so I'm guessing your using windows. I have never seen or used that program or compiled anything in windows before. I only use linux. I run the Myah OS project at myah.org but like I said that is not windows it's linux. I ran your errors though the google translator and your first error is something todo with randRange not being set or found. So that is where I would start looking. Find the first error given and track that one down. The 400 after that are probably because of the first one so that is where you want to search.

[Omega]

What version is the source even?

English please, can't read a word! Try an online translator

Remember that warnings are not errors, so don't worry about them too much. I can't make sense of the first errors, but that might be because they're in german(I think?).