Spring RTS Engine

I've been meaning to file a comprehensive bug report, but haven't gotten around to it until now. So first, here's system specs:

• Intel i3-2105 with HD Graphics 3000
• 4GB DDR3 RAM
• ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 motherboard
• NO graphics card (important to know)

These bugs are not reproducible in Windows 7 with the HD 3000 graphics drivers installed, so it is definitely a drivers problem.

I am currently running Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit. Xorg is on version 1:7.6+7ubuntu7. To reproduce, buy a system with similar hardware, install Ubuntu 11.10, and observe :)

I have install driconf to fix the white textures, as that bug affected me as well, but the white textures is not the problem I am reporting here.

So first, the game does not crash (most of the time)
FIX: Now, the last few times I have tested it, the game crashes on startup at the loadscreen.
Here is the infolog.txt http://pastebin.com/QUbEgqVh

So first, this bug affects multiple mods and multiple versions of spring. It affects both .85, .84, and multiple versions of BA and ZK.

So, the actual graphical glitches. The first one is that that buildings seem to float in the air and are positioned relative to the commander, and move with the commander. http://postimage.org/image/eiyvcpmob/ http://postimage.org/image/vlsgh0brp/ http://postimage.org/image/evlrgk4kn/ Their selection boxes remain at their real position, but the render of the buildings as well as the units that come out of those buildings float in the middle of nowhere. http://postimage.org/image/jr2sjidpz/ Note that this bug does not affect all buildings, I'm not sure what determines whether a building is affected by this bug or not. Also, this bug is dependent on the zoom level and field of view of the camera, as at very close zoom levels the bug does not affect the renderings anymore. The strategic icon view displays the buildings in their proper positions. http://postimage.org/image/ex9un62gn/
And since springforums doesn't let you have more than 3 attachments, the rest of the screenshots will be linked

The second visual glitch is what could be called artifacts, just random pixels that change into some other color, and they are animated like static. Commander affected by static http://postimage.org/image/9d6k40icj/ . Missile tower building from ZK also affected, and the light/reflections/textures rendering of it seems to be incorrect as well. http://postimage.org/image/l04wu1vy3/

Third visual glitch is mismatching units. Semirandomly, various commanders at various zoom levels, fields of view, etc start developing...uh various features from other units, with completely screwed up texturing. These become fairly funny and interesting, as I have a solar commander http://postimage.org/image/eq8q3zthn/ a sniper commander http://postimage.org/image/7txdtt7nl/ a commander lab http://postimage.org/image/djvzx37c3/ and best of all, a commander with an enormous hula hoop decorated with team color http://postimage.org/image/d7w61cxdt/ .

These glitches exist with and without driconf, so that is not an issue. If the issue cannot be resolved or reproduced (since I couldn't find anything this badly screwed up on the forums relating to Intel open source graphics), I will test various versions of Xorg and see which versions are affected. My first try will be fedora 16 as they usually have more up-to-date graphics drivers than ubuntu which is more conservative about their graphics drivers choices.
Interestingly enough, these bugs do not affect 0AD, even though it is still in alpha, and the problem is definitely from my drivers.
Any chance anybody else experienced these problems and/or knows a fix?

Good investigation! Currently I am playing on fedora 16 with optimus technology. I have Nvidia videocard too, but by default intel HD is used. My cpu is: i7-2630QM (notebook).

Just played FFA on throne 1 and half of my and enemy units were invisible. Especially t2 units.

And during the game I got strange warning: [f=0055965] Warning: FBO-FARTEXTURE error: 0x0

hi
Under ubuntu precise + balanced annihilation 7.68. and if I play only with my i5 hd 2000 graphic processor (without graphic card ), same kinds of problems than abq911 for me

I have the last stable Intel 12.02 graphics package from http://intellinuxgraphics.org installed. Sometimes it had crash at start on "Creating TreeDrawer", depends of setting for "tree view distance". Too, I tried desactivate all widgets but problem still present. If I add my ATI HD 4850 : these graphical problems aren't.

Under Windows 7 64bits, no particular problem with i5 alone or i5+ATI graphic card.

For both operating system, the trees, the tree view distance seem especially slow down the game.

Related subjects on springrts forum :

• Intel HD3000 Linux (HD 3000 is the graphical part for some Sandy Bridge intel processor).
  Spring on Intel or ATI 'open-source' drivers.

NO graphics card (important to know)

Phi711 wrote:Under Windows 7 (64bits), no particular problem with i5 or i5+ATI graphic card.

It's playable and without much lags, even with many units.
Moreover with only my intel processor, I don't have the problems that I had with ATI graphic card, for example colors circles with widget red minimap or crash with "draw smooth lines" or anti-aliasing.

It sounds to be linked with the Linux drivers in particular.
My ATI HD 4850 fanless gets very hot (during idle at ~80°c, load ~100°c ), I plan not to use it this summer so I would be interested to play only with the processor.

Try LoadingMT=0 in your .springrc

What this does is disable some offscreen rendering code that was added some time around 0.86-0.87 to support pre-loading map textures in a threaded way. The code is only well tested on certain cards and platforms and it tends to have issues on mesa drivers. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's responsible for some of the crash on load you're seeing.

It was already on LoadingMT=0 in my .springrc.

with ati's opensource driver i've similar graphical glitches... see: http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=27257

For the record I've been able to get Spring running smoothly on opensource intel and mesa graphics with massive unit counts by using some custom hacks. Specifically I manually disabled a lot of presentational shader code and I forced fartextures for the majority of units. I think what might be useful is some builtin graphics presets like many other games provide (ie, low, medium, high, ultra and custom).

As it stands now it is possible to force spring into an equivalent of "ultra low" graphics but it requires complicated steps and know-how that put it beyond the reach of casual gamers.

SpliFF wrote:As it stands now it is possible to force spring into an equivalent of "ultra low" graphics but it requires complicated steps and know-how that put it beyond the reach of casual gamers.

spring --safemode goes into that direction... springsettings has a "very low" setting.

wow.. cool Spliff!
it woudl be cool if you could put that into some form that everyone coudl use it more easily, like.. a spring-settings preset.