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[corona]

I don't understand. Are you using very obscure features?
Can you elaborate on what these bugs are? Perhaps a big fat blog post detailing their bugs out in public would cause the two vendors to be more active :-)

[cameni]

We are using very new features
It all relates to GLSL shader language support (version 3.30) which is still rather buggy. The problem is, most games are using DirectX so the bugs are ironed out there already. But we seem to be pioneers in utilizing every one feature in modern OpenGL shaders, constantly hitting and reporting some bugs.

The bugs in Nvidia don't burn us too much since there are workarounds, but otherwise AMD/ATI is much more responsive in handling the reports, the problem is only that it takes 2-3 months until the fixes are available in public signed/certified drivers.
With Nvidia the problem is probably that we don't have a right contact, their registered developers site is seriously outdated and I'm not even sure there's anybody alive there but automatic responders

[Abc94]

I remember reading somewhere that you would be focusing less on getting the demo out in order to get the engine ready for developers who are interested in purchasing a licence.  (I can't remember if that was actually the reason or not)

I know the demo isn't much of a priority right now, but do you have an approximate target for when you plan to release the demo?

[cameni]

Well, I can reveal something from the plan in this direction. Currently we are working on various scene editing tools and building some locations to be shown in a video that kind of sums up the status of the engine. Still needs a week or so.
After that we will focus on optimizing the engine (occlusion being the most important). We want to deal with the remaining ATI issues here as well.
The demo should come directly after that phase, if there will be a public ATI driver that works by that time.

[ZeosPantera]

The demo should come directly after that phase

Good enough for me..

[Abc94]

Awesome!  I appreaciate that you gave an aproximate time unlike many other developers who just say "when it's done".

Also looking forward to another video!  Will it show ground to space transition?

[cameni]

Awesome!  I appreaciate that you gave an aproximate time unlike many other developers who just say "when it's done".

Also looking forward to another video!  Will it show ground to space transition?

Well, I don't know .. estimating the time a development will take is one of the most fallible processes I know. But I'm glad you are satisfied with my sophisticated version of when it's done

Yes the transition should be there as well, hopefully it all fits into the maximum allowed duration of videos on youtube (10min), or it will be split, but that will not have the same effect ..

[Abc94]

the maximum allowed duration of videos on youtube (10min)

I think MODDB supports videos longer than 10 min.

[corona]

May I suggest NOT waiting for ATI drivers, and that's coming from someone who has an ATI card.

Perhaps publicly available bits may motivate them to work on the issue faster. When run on an ATI card you should popup a warning to the user saying that at the time of release ati drivers were not ready, and they should continue at their own risk and/or complain to ATI. This way users know whats up and hopefully ATI will get a few complaints.

[Abc94]

Actually that seems kind of like a good idea.  That probably would speed up ATI's responce time significantly.

And even though all the Nvidea owners would be able to experience Outerra while ATI users can only look at videos and screenshots, I would be ok waiting since it would mean a faster fix for ATI cards.

[cameni]

I think we would receive a lot of negative feedback if the demo didn't work on ATI cards; even now many people don't understand why Outerra can't run on ATI cards when apparently other engines don't have the problem. Until there was no official OpenGL 3.3 driver it was easier to explain.

Anyway, I think the remaining issues will be solved soon. There is still some nonstandard behavior that has to be worked around, in such a way that fixed drivers won't break it again later.

[InviZ]

Do you use some beta drivers?
You can't post them with demo?

[cameni]

Do you use some beta drivers?
You can't post them with demo?

We're under NDA, so no, we can't.

But it seems that the recent public drivers have only the workaroundable bugs, plus there are some unsupported formats that will have to be replaced. And probably some wrong settings that lead to undefined states in OpenGL, and ATI seems to have a knack for displaying the worst possible undefined behavior there is
It would be still our bug though, it's just that Nvidia usually exhibits the expected behavior in such cases, so it's a bit of a problem to identify it as such.

[corona]

I think we would receive a lot of negative feedback if the demo didn't work on ATI cards; even now many people don't understand why Outerra can't run on ATI cards when apparently other engines don't have the problem. Until there was no official OpenGL 3.3 driver it was easier to explain.

Anyway, I think the remaining issues will be solved soon. There is still some nonstandard behavior that has to be worked around, in such a way that fixed drivers won't break it again later.

Hmm, but it's the truth. Wether they understand it or not. Whats so hard to understand about:

"We have detected you are running Outerra on an ATI graphics card with a driver version dated 01.01.2011. To learn
Please note that at the time of the release of this demo, ATI drivers were not available that support some of the advanced OpenGL featureset that is at the core of the Outerra Engine. ATI and Outerra are working together to rectify this situation and expect to have  a solution in the near future. In the meantime, you may want to let ATI know OpenGL compatibility is important to you. To do so, click here. To learn more specifics, please visit our forums, or click here.
Make sure you always run the latest drivers. To Check for new drivers for your ATI hardware, click here.
You may continue at you'r own risk, however graphical glitches and or instabilities may occur during gameplay.

Thank you for trying Outerra!

Sincerly
Team Outerra"

I believe a personal message like this is open, honest and let's people know whats going on. I don't think with your first demo you have to worry about Joe Sixpack, I think mostly more technical people and hardcore simulator fans will want to give it a spin. And they understand what it means and won't blame you, not as long as you don't treat them like a child that is :-)

[cameni]

The thing is, we have to get the exact version of the drivers and allow only those we tested it with (and newer ones). That's true for Nvidia as well, because with older drivers it simply won't work. It's not about glitches - if there were only some glitches, I'd happily display such a warning message.
For ATI there's simply no driver that works as of yet.

But we have been considering releasing it the way you suggested, but decided to optimize some things first. If after that there are still driver bugs preventing it to run on ATI cards, we may release it that way.