Can a model crash a video card?
by Max Robinson · in Torque Game Engine · 06/10/2004 (7:55 am) · 5 replies
I'd like to say this is a hypothetical question, but it appears to not be. Recently I realized that all of my models were about 2x as big as they should be, so I started scaling down everything, since this helps speed up collision detection as well (I had a big plane that would lag extremely badly if you aimed it at the ground). I scaled one model, 50%, all of its accessories and scripted fx as well.
When I play with it, it looks perfect. But when you fly around a little, it starts to shake a lot. Then maybe a minute later either my video card (ATI thing comes up saying the drivers werent responding, VPU was recovered after about 30 second freeze w/ black screen) or my whole computer will go down (the real thing, black screen + repeating audio!).
I'm wondering - is this possible!?
I've only scaled the model down to something like 17x23x8 - it was giant before.
I even scaled the meshs' points, not the obects, so in the exporter they are still 100% scale.
I backed up the old models, and tried them out, and it runs just fine.
(just so you know I'm sane - I had everything as it was, non crashing, then set the vehicle shape to the new one, and it crashed, so it IS that one shape)
I would like to think its the collision mesh, but its crashing the graphics card.
So has anyone ever heard/seen this bug?
When I play with it, it looks perfect. But when you fly around a little, it starts to shake a lot. Then maybe a minute later either my video card (ATI thing comes up saying the drivers werent responding, VPU was recovered after about 30 second freeze w/ black screen) or my whole computer will go down (the real thing, black screen + repeating audio!).
I'm wondering - is this possible!?
I've only scaled the model down to something like 17x23x8 - it was giant before.
I even scaled the meshs' points, not the obects, so in the exporter they are still 100% scale.
I backed up the old models, and tried them out, and it runs just fine.
(just so you know I'm sane - I had everything as it was, non crashing, then set the vehicle shape to the new one, and it crashed, so it IS that one shape)
I would like to think its the collision mesh, but its crashing the graphics card.
So has anyone ever heard/seen this bug?
#2
06/10/2004 (8:38 am)
OpenGL, as it looks the same and runs faster (on my ATI) 
#3
06/10/2004 (8:59 am)
A physical crash or a data one? The latter is possible but not the first one :P Pretty obvious I know, but I just wanted to make that clear.
#4
06/12/2004 (8:59 am)
Bad drivers can easily crash your system... and a model can trigger the drivers. So yes. But you should complain to the manufacturer, not me, because it's not always possible that "I" (representing the Torque maintainers) can do anything about it.
#5
Operations on the video card go so far beyond Torque's code (not to mention the data from the mesh from 3ds max) that I was skeptical that it was distinctly Torque's (or my) fault.
And the "bad" drivers in question are the latest from ATI - I've never had luck with upgrading my drivers.
06/12/2004 (10:13 am)
Ben I think you are right - using D3D would stop the crash and so did trying it later in the day after I exported it a couple more times.Operations on the video card go so far beyond Torque's code (not to mention the data from the mesh from 3ds max) that I was skeptical that it was distinctly Torque's (or my) fault.
And the "bad" drivers in question are the latest from ATI - I've never had luck with upgrading my drivers.
Torque Owner Chris \"Hobbiticus\" Weiland