Project D3D11Client Development

Mandella

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Well, I'm not a professional game developer, and no one is paying me to optimize it like crazy, so I'm doing what I can given the limited amount of spare time I've got...

No criticism intended, of course! In fact I'm rather in awe of how far this project has advanced in so little time. I was merely describing the capabilities of this old card (which was quite the advanced thing, back in the day -- not to mention the "card" is the size of a brick!).
 

Namahage

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No it doesn't - DDI has nothing to do with DX version. Do you receive any error message, or it just silently disappears?

I get the typical "Process has stopped" pop-up. I'm not sure of the exact translation so here is a screen shot for clarity:

error.jpg


I'll also add that I had updated my video drivers to the latest beforehand.
 
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asmi

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That's why all game development studios have a variety of different systems! One run under debugger on DX10-level hardware - and problem is fixed! It's now in SC, so download and enjoy! BTW - even with PP effects my old GFX 275 GTX pumps out respectable 55 FPS.
 

astrosammy

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Namahage, I had this problem because 16x Anti-Aliasing was enabled. Maybe it's the same error here. (IIRC the settings window said everything above 8x is only available with NVIDIA GPU).
 

asmi

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I get the typical "Process has stopped" pop-up. I'm not sure of the exact translation so here is a screen shot for clarity:

error.jpg


I'll also add that I had updated my video drivers to the latest beforehand.

Have you installed required DirectX update? If not - that is likely the reason. Please follow these instructions: http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=26147
If you have - please run DXDiag (open "Run..." and type "dxdiag"), then Click "Save All Information" to save info to the file and attach that file here.

---------- Post added at 20:06 ---------- Previous post was at 20:05 ----------

Namahage, I had this problem because 16x Anti-Aliasing was enabled. Maybe it's the same error here. (IIRC the settings window said everything above 8x is only available with NVIDIA GPU).
Right now this window doesn't checks if specified AA mode is actually supported by GPU, so if something doesn't work - try disabling it.

---------- Post added at 20:36 ---------- Previous post was at 20:06 ----------

No criticism intended, of course! In fact I'm rather in awe of how far this project has advanced in so little time. I was merely describing the capabilities of this old card (which was quite the advanced thing, back in the day -- not to mention the "card" is the size of a brick!).
When I got my 275 GTX I had to buy a new case, because I couldn't stuff this card into old one - it's just too long :lol:
 
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Deep Blue

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I remember seeing this post when it was at 4 pages, thinking "This has a lot of potential", and now its pushing 17 pages with support and rapid development!

First things first, great job guys. The normal maps & the terrain generation & the night runway lights & the kdhfklsdfhksdjf It's all just to awesome.

I'd like to help the project, so first off ill point out a bug
During re-entry, the mach cone is being drawn behind the planet (earth is the only one I've tested so far)
What it should look like
picture.php



And it being rendered behind earth
picture.php




Next, two suggestion.
What about the ability to have friends connect to the orbiter client and be able to view and look around? They wouldn't be able to control the show, just view-only. This way, you could show someone how to preform a specific maneuver, or teach a class on orbital mechanics.
The other is the ability to set up multiple cameras. I've always wanted to make a space simulator using multiple monitors. What I would do is set up several monitors for windows to see outside, like a monitor pointing inwards where the wings would be so you could look out and see the flaps moving.

And lastly, do you need any help programming? I don't have much experience, but I figure everyone has to start somewhere
 

asmi

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I remember seeing this post when it was at 4 pages, thinking "This has a lot of potential", and now its pushing 17 pages with support and rapid development!

First things first, great job guys. The normal maps & the terrain generation & the night runway lights & the kdhfklsdfhksdjf It's all just to awesome.

I'd like to help the project, so first off ill point out a bug
During re-entry, the mach cone is being drawn behind the planet (earth is the only one I've tested so far)
What it should look like
picture.php



And it being rendered behind earth
picture.php
Thanks for submitting this issue! Honestly since I've implemented rwy lights I never made it to space - I was playing Orbiter like it is FSX :lol:

What about the ability to have friends connect to the orbiter client and be able to view and look around? They wouldn't be able to control the show, just view-only. This way, you could show someone how to preform a specific maneuver, or teach a class on orbital mechanics.
This is technically doable, allthough this is quite a task since we basically will need to syncronize two Orbiter simulations, which in turn raises whole bunch of things that needs to be taken care of - for example, orbiter's time propagation settings have to be the same, both instances have to have identical plugins and addons installed, we'll have to deal somehow with the fact that Orbiter dynamically controls simulation presicion based on FPS, and list goes on and on. A was thinking of adding some sort of multiplayer for Orbiter, but came to a conclusion that it's a bigproject on its own, putting the client itself aside.
The other is the ability to set up multiple cameras. I've always wanted to make a space simulator using multiple monitors. What I would do is set up several monitors for windows to see outside, like a monitor pointing inwards where the wings would be so you could look out and see the flaps moving.
I was also thinking about that. Actually I was more into adding new viewports (for example docking cameras, rear-view mirrors and stuff like that), but once this is done, external views (like on second monitor) are also possible.
And lastly, do you need any help programming? I don't have much experience, but I figure everyone has to start somewhere
If you know C++ and at least basics of Direct3D (pipeline stages, shaders, matrix operations) that I think we could use a help. None of us is a professional game engine developer, but once you know some basis, you can of course pitch in. For start you can just download a source code and try learning it, once you learn what is what in the code, you can pick whatever feature you like, do a research on it and try implementing it. If you will have any questions, feel free to ask.
 
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Ripley

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...What about the ability to have friends connect to the orbiter client and be able to view and look around? They wouldn't be able to control the show, just view-only. This way, you could show someone how to preform a specific maneuver, or teach a class on orbital mechanics....
Isn't it already doable with programs like VNC, TeamViewer, ecc? I did it with a friend of mine.
Of course graphics department will suffer quite a bit, but for the sake of pure teaching it works!
 

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Bugs with reentry billboard and visible seams between tiles are fixed. :)
 

Mandella

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I can confirm that the latest build is working, although the framerate drop remained -- from around two hundred to just short of thirty. That is still playable however.

The lighting seems very bright. I get a washed out glare over everything, from lunar surface to the interior of the cockpit. It strikes me that this glare might be realistic, but we're either going to have to add polarized and tinted windows to all the craft, or have a brightness slider.
 

asmi

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I can confirm that the latest build is working, although the framerate drop remained -- from around two hundred to just short of thirty. That is still playable however..
Exactly as I've promised. For now it's important to get this working - I can optimize it later.

The lighting seems very bright. I get a washed out glare over everything, from lunar surface to the interior of the cockpit. It strikes me that this glare might be realistic, but we're either going to have to add polarized and tinted windows to all the craft, or have a brightness slider.
Well we can tweak it around, allthough fundamentally this is the way it should be. Just compate how bright a burning candle is outdoors under sunlight, and in some very dark room... There is one omission though - right now tone mapping is based on average scene luminance, while I think that is not the way human eye works - as far as I understand human eye adapts to the brightest light in the FOV. But this can be done as well - I'm going to try it out sometime and see what it looks like...
 

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Thanks for submitting this issue! Honestly since I've implemented rwy lights I never made it to space - I was playing Orbiter like it is FSX :lol:
To be honest, when I saw that that feature, I thought to myself "It's pretty cool, but I don't think I'll be using it that much". Then I did a de-orbit... during the night... and if it wasn't for the lights, I would not have been able to do an unpowered landing (First one, btw, thanks to you).
This is technically doable, allthough this is quite a task since we basically will need to syncronize two Orbiter simulations, which in turn raises whole bunch of things that needs to be taken care of - for example, orbiter's time propagation settings have to be the same, both instances have to have identical plugins and addons installed, we'll have to deal somehow with the fact that Orbiter dynamically controls simulation presicion based on FPS, and list goes on and on. A was thinking of adding some sort of multiplayer for Orbiter, but came to a conclusion that it's a bigproject on its own, putting the client itself aside.
What I was thinking of was not running a separate orbiter simulation, but just another graphics client. The OGLA client has something like this, where you can run one simulation & run it as a "video" server where it will port the video to its clients across the network. Im not exactly sure how this works, but I'll look into it.

As for the extra viewports, I/you/someone could use this to set up what I wanted. So if its on the to-do list, then that takes care of that. Ill start looking at the code after class, hopefully I wont be diving in to deep :blink:
 
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asmi

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I can confirm that the latest build is working, although the framerate drop remained -- from around two hundred to just short of thirty. That is still playable however.

The lighting seems very bright. I get a washed out glare over everything, from lunar surface to the interior of the cockpit. It strikes me that this glare might be realistic, but we're either going to have to add polarized and tinted windows to all the craft, or have a brightness slider.
Please try now - I've made some optimizations in post-processing effects code - allthough on my laptop it added "only" about 15 FPS (from ~80 to ~95), on my "testbed" GFX 275 GTX it added ~30 FPS (from ~55 to ~85)! And more importantly, PP effects' impact on performance does not depend from AA mode (only from render window's size), so even with 16xQ enabled my testbed GFX 275 GTX's framerate still was in 70s, which is very comfortable by any account.

These optimizations were mostly targeted at reducing dependency on video memory's performance (specifically - video memory bandwidth), which seems to be a critical path for entire renderer performance. And this is especially good news for those of you who run the client on "Intel integrated"-class hardware, since they usually don't have dedicated video memory, instead they rely on system RAM - those of you should get even more spectacular FPS increase (relatively to a current FPS of course).

As usual, latest version can be downloaded from source control.

So someone with DX10-level hardware please give it a try and report here two things:
1) Does it still work as it should?
2) Have FPS improved significantly?
 
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Mandella

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FPS is up from ~27 fps to ~32 in cockpit view. A noticeable improvement.

I should note that I am running in a window sized 1600 x 900. I'll try it later tonight/tomorrow with AA turned to different levels, but for right now it seems to be running fine.

:tiphat:
 

asmi

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FPS is up from ~27 fps to ~32 in cockpit view. A noticeable improvement.

I should note that I am running in a window sized 1600 x 900. I'll try it later tonight/tomorrow with AA turned to different levels, but for right now it seems to be running fine.

:tiphat:
I see. I'm performing all tests on 720p window (1280x720, actually the window itself is a bit bigger so the client area has exact size of 1280x720), so maybe you should try that size just to get some idea of how window size affects performance.

Also since all these PP effects are being performed on full window image, their impact on performance does not depend of what is actually displayed on the screen.

BTW, does lighting still looks too bright? If so - can you please post a couple of screenshots so I can evaluate if algorithm is performing is it should. Because on my computers (both old desktop and laptop) I can't say that image is too bright - it feels very natural.
 
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Mandella

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I see. I'm performing all tests on 720p window (1280x720, actually the window itself is a bit bigger so the client area has exact size of 1280x720), so maybe you should try that size just to get some idea of how window size affects performance.

Also since all these PP effects are being performed on full window image, their impact on performance does not depend of what is actually displayed on the screen.

BTW, does lighting still looks too bright? If so - can you please post a couple of screenshots so I can evaluate if algorithm is performing is it should. Because on my computers (both old desktop and laptop) I can't say that image is too bright - it feels very natural.

Okay. Dropping the resolution down to 1280x720 cranks the framerate up to 50. Turning on AA does show a small drop, but even with AA-8 I'm still looking at 47.5.

By the way, even if PP effects don't care what is actually displayed on the screen, my base framerate sure does, but that is normal. I try to make sure I'm at the same place looking at the same thing when I compare framerates (in this instance, sitting on the pad at Brighten Beach).

The glare seems much diminished. For instance, I can now read the text on the buttons lining the Delta Glider's HUD even when lit. They were washed out before.
 

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@astrosammy - Thank you for the advice. My GPU being on-board AFAIK there isn't even a control panel with which to make AA adjustments. It all must be done within the client software.

@asmi - I have done according to your instructions (IIRC the link for the dx redistributable in your OP was invalid). Of course, I do make mistakes so if you find some error on my part please let me know. My dxdiag.txt follows:
 

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asmi

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@asmi - I have done according to your instructions (IIRC the link for the dx redistributable in your OP was invalid). Of course, I do make mistakes so if you find some error on my part please let me know. My dxdiag.txt follows:

Thanks. Your dxdiag output seems fine. I've corrected link on the instructions page - thanks for the notice btw. Now I'm still not quite clear on one thing - have you actually installed that DirectX update? Of not - please do and see what happens.
 

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...I'm performing all tests on 720p window (1280x720, actually the window itself is a bit bigger so the client area has exact size of 1280x720)...
I remember reading somewhere to make it 6 pixels bigger both sides, in order to allow space for window borders.
 
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