Outerra forum
Outerra Engine => News => Topic started by: cameni on August 19, 2011, 09:51:44 am
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Finally, after a long time we have been able to make Outerra run on ATI cards, after the latest round of fixes and workarounds. The workarounds enable it to run on the latest public drivers, although they come with a small performance penalty. They will be reverted after the fixed beta drivers from AMD pass through to the public channel, which takes 2-3 months.
However, there are still some serious performance issues, and things like two 6870 being slower than a single 4890 probably because of additional crossfire problems.
Things to do before the release:
- Fixing ATI-specific performance issues.
Apart from using our existing 4xxx and 5xxx cards, we are getting a new 6xxx ATI card for testing, as there seem to be some specific problems with the 6xxx line - both performance and driver crashes. Rare driver crashes were experienced on 4/5xxx cards as well. All of the lines need more performance fixes, some things are apparently more costly to do on ATI than on Nvidia cards.
There aren't many rendering issues left that are specific to ATI - there's a bug with ocean foam being blocky, and I think that the tree location generator occasionally produces trees on slightly different positions, between ATI and Nvidia.
- Bittorrent downloader for terrain data in the demo
There was an older version of bittorrent downloader already working, but because of some issues it's been disabled. We need to compile a newer one and fix the integration code that was occasionally losing events. Note that our game will use a more reliable download of data from cloud, but for the free demo mode we need to handle the traffic in a less costly way.
- Sounds
Without the sounds the experience is only partial, so we are implementing both environmental and engine sounds. Environmental sounds will be of two kinds - periodic background sounds that come from multiple points in space, like the rustling of leaves and sea waves, and the second category will be point sources like birds, crickets and such.
Just don't go looking for them :)
- Final terrain processing
There are some issues left to be fixed in the terrain dataset. A great pacific wall along 180° of longitude. Array of pikes sticking from the ocean below Iceland. Ugly aliasing on shores where the sea depth dataset reports bigger depths right close to the shore. Probably not all of them will be fixed.
- fix source tiles
- fix mapressor artifacts
- fix shores and terrain depressions
- HW&driver detection, system info
To avoid excessive error reporting we have to early check the hardware for minimum requirements, and driver versions to be greater or equal to the verified and supported ones. The code that checks if current version of OpenGL driver in the system requires enabling the workarounds comes here as well.
- Integrated bug reporting
A way of easy bug reporting, automatic inclusion of generated logs etc. Will be needed for game beta testers.
- UI for video and quality settings (resolution, lock refresh rate, terrain quality metrics)
Early versions won't be yet fully optimized, so there will be higher minimum recommendations for a good performance. A GTX 460 or better is recommended, but for weaker cards we need to provide the means of adjusting the quality settings in-game. All these settings are currently accessible only through configuration files, and we need to make at least a simple UI interface for it.
- Spawn point selection
We plan to have several entry points selectable on Earth, that people will be able to select the first time. It will serve two main purposes: data for these points should be more readily available via P2P protocol than they would be if everyone selected an arbitrary point, and secondly, these places will also contain some demo infrastructure visible only there, since the first demo will be probably read-only - no editing, that's something to be left for the game. Rest of the world can be explored from there, with the position being saved on exit.
This topic will be progressively updated as we fix/implement the individual items in it, to keep you all informed.
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Fantastic news!
I'm looking forward to the release; or at least to the next news update. :)
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[list=*]
- Sounds
Without the sounds the experience is only partial, so we are implementing both environmental and engine sounds. Environmental sounds will be of two kinds - periodic background sounds that come from multiple points in space, like the rustling of leaves and sea waves, and the second category will be point sources like birds, crickets and such.
Just don't go looking for them :) [/*]
Can't wait to see the first video popup with that :). I remember that one video where you overlayed the cricket chirps post-processing, and it really sold the scene. At the end of the Retrospective video, where I placed the seagulls and the ocean, I had a number of friends and family actually looking to find the seagulls in the shot, and were disappointed when they didn't see them lol.
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Ahh yeah! Can't wait!
Lucky enough to have a GTX 460 SE too. :lol:
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WOW!! It's almost here!! :D :D :D :D
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Congratulations! :)
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Man, I'm in serious need of a newer computer. :(
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I'm sure that if you missed any terrain bugs, someone will spot em. Anyway, awesome!
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I'm very happy :)
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Great news.
Also, I have a 6870 .... just saying if you need someone to test on those 6 Series cards.... :-) (and yes, I would test properly and give u guys test reports and all that)
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I would gladly volunteer for testing as well(ATI firepro M7820 card), but I can imagine it's probably a whole lot of data-streaming.
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I presume biomes for desert, jungle and arctic will come later.
Glad to finally see this post!
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Hi guys
We bought AMD 6850 last Friday, which should be only slightly slower than NV 460. But in Outerra it looks like it has got only 40% power of the 460 now. I was testing it on AMD 4.2 OpenGL beta driver which is the only public one with fixes we need for Outerra.
Now we need to analyze it and find out what is causing the performance issues. I've already made a few changes, today I will test it again and let you know if it was worth it.
Another news:
I've implemented a basic sound system based on OpenAL. It is very early version so it is not very usable yet, but i was able to add engine sound to the cessna with correct positioning. Doppler effect is sometimes very funny especially when i am flying in UFO mode around the aircraft :)
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I've implemented a basic sound system based on OpenAL. It is very early version so it is not very usable yet, but i was able to add engine sound to the cessna with correct positioning. Doppler effect is sometimes very funny especially when i am flying in UFO mode around the aircraft
That's pretty cool. When you think it's ready enough you should make another video showing the sounds, as well as that weird doppler effect "effect", really curious about what that sounds like. :P
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Yes, awesome news from Outerra!
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For notebooks, is a GTX 560M good enough? I'm looking at getting a notebook with that, but I don't know how it compares to the desktop video cards.
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Here's a nice comparison site where you can check the expected performance: www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-560M.48313.0.html (http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-560M.48313.0.html).
Hmm, hard to say which benchmark to use that would be comparable to Outerra. In Crysis 2, high setting, a desktop GTX 460 is 47% faster than a 560M.
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The best benchmark? Outerra itself. ;)
Serious now, we'll see how good performance (on ATI's) is when it's released. It seems like you can get an idea with the minimum requirements for NVidia. ATI users will probably have to wait.
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Thanks, cameni. I was looking for something like that. I've got some thinking to do.
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Actually Cameni some sort of pre-scripted fly-through on a predetermined path with a log file of frame-rates and texture load times as an official benchmark would help out a great deal in determining OpenGL and system performance. Perhaps even downloading all the information before the start to not have internet speed affect the test.
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I agree with what cshawn said, the sound will really sell it. It's amazing really what sound does for a scene/ enviroment.
monks
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If you release the demo (I should say when), consider setting up a (semi) public bugtracker somewhere (maybe only trusted users can add entries or something). I find forums to be rather cumbersome for issue tracking personally.
Looking forward to testing/reporting many bugs ;-)
Just an idea ;-)
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Yes, already setting up one :)
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Brano, Stephen use "Mantis" for World Machine- don't know if that would suit your needs.
monks
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Yes, already setting up one :)
Very nice, you consider me as your tester then. ;)
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Yes, already setting up one :)
iam getting nervous now ... sounds like the demo will be out soon !? :D
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Not that soon :)
I've just incorporated the crash reporting from the list, and been wondering how to integrate it with bug reporting in general.
Yea, there's a painful lot of things to do so that the whole process runs smooth, and of course in the end it won't go smooth :D
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Brano, Stephen use "Mantis" for World Machine- don't know if that would suit your needs.
monks
mantis, meh
I recommend trac (http://trac.edgewall.org/) Been using it for a few projects lately.
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will the railtool and the train be in the demo too?
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will the railtool and the train be in the demo too?
Not in the demo, it will come into the alpha game. Some time ago, Mazz (http://www.outerra.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=72) sent me some very useful drawings and other data of tracks, and we talked a bit about what needs to be supported. I'm now trying to make use of it in designing the rail system in a way that would be extensible and compatible with the way we are doing stuff in the engine, but it's still in relatively early phase.
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Captured a shot of the terrain bug currently appearing in certain regions with sea:
(http://www.outerra.com/shots/icelandic-barrier.jpg) (http://www.outerra.com/shots/icelandic-barrier.jpg)
Might be good for a sci-fi :)
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hell ya, how.. beautiful ^^
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Update on progress
today i swapped my precious NV460 for AMD6950 so i am going to make another series of tests and fixes:
TODO:
- return of texture buffers for object rendering (performance improvements)
- fix shadow issue (it is strange because on older driver it was working)
- fix 3D tree LOD builder (currently there is only LOD0 detail for 3D trees which makes 3D trees unusable on AMD)
I am using the latest 4.2 drivers (http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalystOpenGL42BetaWin.aspx (http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalystOpenGL42BetaWin.aspx)). It looks like i can keep AMD inside for some time, because they fixed one important bug, previous version was unusable for me because there was annoying bug in 2D drv that was messing my visual studio.
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still need the +1 button, because i have nothing to comment, but i do like the comment ;O
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Nice :) i think with my PC, i can make some extreme Tests and look how does it run.
The i7 2600k @ 5GHZ Clock and the GTX 570 Phantom are the Perfect Test Hardware for this ;)
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i7 2600k @ 5GHZ Clock and the GTX 570 Phantom are the Perfect Test Hardware for this ;)
I think my Dell 266Mhz with an AGP VooDoo3 2000 is a better test bed.
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Nice :) i think with my PC, i can make some extreme Tests and look how does it run.
The i7 2600k @ 5GHZ Clock and the GTX 570 Phantom are the Perfect Test Hardware for this ;)
Upgraded for BF3 by any chance? ;)
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Excited to hear about the upcoming demo! Been following Outerra for about a year now and it's a job well done so far! :)
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That is brillant news!
Keep going!
On kinda-sorta related note, what are the average Outerra requirements? I know there isn't truly specified ones, but these most minimal ones...Because my PC is a total piece of junky crap/crappy junk that barely runs any games...
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Hmm, average. We are using Nvidia GTX460 or ATI 6850 cards for development, with average 2-core CPUs. At the moment the engine is still not optimized much, ultimately a good old 8800GT card should work fine with it.
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Well, we will wait and see.
But personally, I'm not pretty sure it will work - but deep in heart I hope so...
Even if it won't, there's always sister's laptop, isn't it?
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Will it be possible to add own models (like car's, ships etc.) or buildings for testing in tech demo?
Marko
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Not in the demo, this functionality will be available in the game, in sandbox mode.
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Ah ok, thx for the info Cameni.
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If outerra will have modding support, users would make everthing :O can't wait cmon !
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so, i hope we are getting a little christmas present this year :)
Can't wait for the techdemo, how are you guys progressing?
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They might have been until Nvidia broke the roads... ::) :P
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Urgh what? care to elaborate?
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Nvidia's latest video/OpenGL drivers make the roads invisible. :-[
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The latest Nvidia beta driver, the one with BF3 and Skyrim updates. Chances are that the final driver won't have the problem.
As for the demo, working really hard to make it ;)
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Awesome, looking forward to it :)
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Hell yes!
That is, I will test you to the fullest - I will check every single blade of grass in my garden to check if it is in proper place!
That's bad, I know - but that's who I am...
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This is getting me pretty excited after the wait, has anyone got information on the crossfire scaling, supposing the AMD drivers even work as they should now, my 6850s are ready.
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Well I know what I want for Christmas...
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Well I know what I want for Christmas...
we're all hoping for a Christmas gift ;-)
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Outerra alpha for xmas plz :P
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Let's explore Outerra world !!! And remember to take the Apache :D !
Not without firing missiles. I don't explore without them.
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How would we get time to open our presents? :(
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Let's explore Outerra world !!! And remember to take the Apache :D !
Not without firing missiles. I don't explore without them.
You noticed my wrote only now ? I had it from 1 year ago lal.
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I can't wait to try this out!
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I'm so excited about that ! I wonder what its going to look like with my new hd 6670
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Anyone mind giving me a rough fps compared to Rigs of Rods, if you can?
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So... how close are we? :)
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So... how close are we? :)
faaaaaaaaaaaaaar... if we are lucky we can preorder at january end.