Mixing issue, FXAA, Lighting question etc..
by Michael Tornberg · in Torque 3D Professional · 11/18/2011 (4:33 pm) · 23 replies
1. FIXED: It seems VSync is ignored.
Which is very weird considering I set the driver to "Force vsync". .. I'll look into it more closely but I wanted to bring it up. I don't think this is related to T3D at all really. Could be drivers related.
UPDATE:
This was drivers related. Updating to the very latest beta driver from nVidia fixed the issue.
2. When moving it seems the steps between frames are a fraction lagged. Causing the environment to move in a very very tiny rubber band fashion. Possibly related to the (1) issue. Most visible in windowed mode.
UPDATE 1:
After updating the drivers, the issue became even smaller. But motion is still a bit "stepped" in lack of a better word. The motion doesn't look fluid, it looks more like motion-by-integer. It kind of steps, one pixel at a time. I know it doesn't, but it is how it feels. Like something is a bit off.
UPDATE 2:
Turning off shadows fixed the "stepping" issue. When shadowing is off, the fluidity is incredible. I'll look into baking shadows as much as possible in the scene. Shadows seems to be very expensive in T3D.
3. Why does the light animation on the police cars stop when turning the back against them?
4. I can't seem to find how to set FXAA, MLAA or anything of the kind?
Update:
I found how to set it in the source. However, I still think this should go to into menu of some kind (perhaps the editor?) Along with other cool stuff I found, such as Chromatic abbreviation.
5. When zooming in, the crosshair is gone.
6. While zoomed it and firing at the sentry gun. The game crashed when I got hit and I hit the sentry at the same time.
7. Mixing of lights vs. alpha items seems to be off. First, here is an illustration of what I mean:
Here you can see that the light get cut off on the shadow. The one that is included with the car model.
You can also see that the light is not mixed the correct way on the car. The lights seems to be suppressed, rather than adding values to the resulting image.
Here is another example. The one in green is photoshopped to illustrate (kind of) what I expected to happen:
As you can also see, the red section shows that other added objects doesn't mix properly. They totally dominate their environment.
Also, the light shadow volumes doesn't properly trace model edges. As can be seen in the image above, the lights seems to have an issue when they are close to meshes. The edge tracing for the shadow volume seems to be incorrect. You can see how the light shines through the mesh, and a distance away begin to trace the shadow.
Maybe there is a setting to control this?
Here is another example to make it more clear. Here you can clearly see that the objects I am talking about totally dominate the scene. Here I added rain, and made the droplets huge in size. Because I wanted to test if they indeed ended up 'behind' the darker objects. This image also includes a comparison with 1.1. I loaded the scene into version 1.1 and the light behaves as expected there. Obviously the dark objects have been updated for 1.2 and thus don't load in 1.1. However, the light is not mixed in a faint fashion in 1.1.
8. The convex hull (hitbox) is catching the effects of the explosions etc..
9. Setting texture quality to low, causes the flares to disappear.
10. Shadows are clipped
11. Shooting at the ejected bullet casing in flight causes damage to the player.
Making this happen is very hard, since you have to actually hit the casing. But I found it easiest when shooting
at the ground moving backwards and rotating to the right. It is also possible that it's not the bullet casing at all, but rather that I actually manage to shoot myself while moving around. Please note that I am talking about the machine gun, not the grenade launcher etc..
Video sample:
Here is a video of the issues 7,8,10 and also other shadow issues
(Note: The video says 'out' but that is just the name of the video :), just click and it will play.)
Which is very weird considering I set the driver to "Force vsync". .. I'll look into it more closely but I wanted to bring it up. I don't think this is related to T3D at all really. Could be drivers related.
UPDATE:
This was drivers related. Updating to the very latest beta driver from nVidia fixed the issue.
2. When moving it seems the steps between frames are a fraction lagged. Causing the environment to move in a very very tiny rubber band fashion. Possibly related to the (1) issue. Most visible in windowed mode.
UPDATE 1:
After updating the drivers, the issue became even smaller. But motion is still a bit "stepped" in lack of a better word. The motion doesn't look fluid, it looks more like motion-by-integer. It kind of steps, one pixel at a time. I know it doesn't, but it is how it feels. Like something is a bit off.
UPDATE 2:
Turning off shadows fixed the "stepping" issue. When shadowing is off, the fluidity is incredible. I'll look into baking shadows as much as possible in the scene. Shadows seems to be very expensive in T3D.
3. Why does the light animation on the police cars stop when turning the back against them?
4. I can't seem to find how to set FXAA, MLAA or anything of the kind?
Update:
I found how to set it in the source. However, I still think this should go to into menu of some kind (perhaps the editor?) Along with other cool stuff I found, such as Chromatic abbreviation.
5. When zooming in, the crosshair is gone.
6. While zoomed it and firing at the sentry gun. The game crashed when I got hit and I hit the sentry at the same time.
7. Mixing of lights vs. alpha items seems to be off. First, here is an illustration of what I mean:
Here you can see that the light get cut off on the shadow. The one that is included with the car model.
You can also see that the light is not mixed the correct way on the car. The lights seems to be suppressed, rather than adding values to the resulting image.
Here is another example. The one in green is photoshopped to illustrate (kind of) what I expected to happen:
As you can also see, the red section shows that other added objects doesn't mix properly. They totally dominate their environment.
Also, the light shadow volumes doesn't properly trace model edges. As can be seen in the image above, the lights seems to have an issue when they are close to meshes. The edge tracing for the shadow volume seems to be incorrect. You can see how the light shines through the mesh, and a distance away begin to trace the shadow.
Maybe there is a setting to control this?
Here is another example to make it more clear. Here you can clearly see that the objects I am talking about totally dominate the scene. Here I added rain, and made the droplets huge in size. Because I wanted to test if they indeed ended up 'behind' the darker objects. This image also includes a comparison with 1.1. I loaded the scene into version 1.1 and the light behaves as expected there. Obviously the dark objects have been updated for 1.2 and thus don't load in 1.1. However, the light is not mixed in a faint fashion in 1.1.
8. The convex hull (hitbox) is catching the effects of the explosions etc..
9. Setting texture quality to low, causes the flares to disappear.
10. Shadows are clipped
11. Shooting at the ejected bullet casing in flight causes damage to the player.
Making this happen is very hard, since you have to actually hit the casing. But I found it easiest when shooting
at the ground moving backwards and rotating to the right. It is also possible that it's not the bullet casing at all, but rather that I actually manage to shoot myself while moving around. Please note that I am talking about the machine gun, not the grenade launcher etc..
Video sample:
Here is a video of the issues 7,8,10 and also other shadow issues
(Note: The video says 'out' but that is just the name of the video :), just click and it will play.)
#2
Yes, but the thing is I don't seem to be able to activate vsync either via the driver, or T3D. But it does work in other games. It's all very strange.
4)
I understand that, I was more along the lines of seeing the setting in the settings menu, like most other games.
11/18/2011 (5:05 pm)
1)Yes, but the thing is I don't seem to be able to activate vsync either via the driver, or T3D. But it does work in other games. It's all very strange.
4)
I understand that, I was more along the lines of seeing the setting in the settings menu, like most other games.
#4
11/19/2011 (6:04 pm)
the shadow of the car isnt actually a shadow, its part of the model, the car is sat on a plane with a shadow texture
#5
I think you missed "..shadow. The one that is included with the car model." ;)
Anyway, the problem is that the lights don't dominate the scene when they are in front of everything else.
What's more, adding things like road cracks also are improperly mixed. As they too dominate the scene over any lighting. As can be seen in the bottom image (circled in red). Another such item can be seen to the left side of the same image. The light doesn't affect that patch at all.
As shown in the green circled area(bottom image, cars front light to the right. Where I Photoshopped) you can see how I expected it to be. Compare that to the cars front light (on the left, circled in yellow) You can clearly see how faint it is mixed.
I am hoping there is some way to fix this.
11/19/2011 (6:32 pm)
@Bloodknight:I think you missed "..shadow. The one that is included with the car model." ;)
Anyway, the problem is that the lights don't dominate the scene when they are in front of everything else.
What's more, adding things like road cracks also are improperly mixed. As they too dominate the scene over any lighting. As can be seen in the bottom image (circled in red). Another such item can be seen to the left side of the same image. The light doesn't affect that patch at all.
As shown in the green circled area(bottom image, cars front light to the right. Where I Photoshopped) you can see how I expected it to be. Compare that to the cars front light (on the left, circled in yellow) You can clearly see how faint it is mixed.
I am hoping there is some way to fix this.
#6
UPDATE: I removed the image, and moved it top to the top of the page instead. Look for the last image with the 1.2<->1.1 comparison.
11/20/2011 (5:03 am)
Added an image to clearly demonstrate the nature of the issue. UPDATE: I removed the image, and moved it top to the top of the page instead. Look for the last image with the 1.2<->1.1 comparison.
#7
11/20/2011 (4:19 pm)
Another issue: Hitbox.
#8
11/21/2011 (1:34 am)
Great that the 1.2 bug report tag is up. However, I don't know if all of my points are bugs. Although I think points 7-9 might be.
#9
11/21/2011 (4:23 am)
They really should consider a rewrite for T3D. It gets the job done and is modern and real time. But there are lots of artifacts, and it is amazingly slow. I can run Skyrim faster than T3D, both using realtime shadows. Turn off the shadows in T3D and my framerate jumps from 8 to 80!
#10
Shadows are slow depending on your settings, but rewriting the entire engine because shadows are slow? over-react much? :p
As a side note, shadow processing can be manipulated to work much faster, i noticed in skyrim (to use your example) that not all shadows are updated in real time, and that they are relatively low resolution.
11/21/2011 (5:24 am)
Id sooner take it as it is then get charged whatever bethesda get charged for using the gamebryo engine.Shadows are slow depending on your settings, but rewriting the entire engine because shadows are slow? over-react much? :p
As a side note, shadow processing can be manipulated to work much faster, i noticed in skyrim (to use your example) that not all shadows are updated in real time, and that they are relatively low resolution.
#11
11/21/2011 (5:30 am)
The decals seem to be the primary issue here. They're not playing nice with the shadows.
#12
Aside from the mentioned glitches above, I don't have many complaints. It runs well with the hardware I tried it on. I get 20-32 fps on my 1.6 Ghz Atom,ION with XP. Which is actually rather good performance.
It's a dated engine yes (after all it's DX9) But Crysis 2 is also DX9, so I guess it's more about how you polish the game. And a fair bit of shader coding too, which actually is responsible for most magic these days.
To be a bit defensive, with good shaders you can do most things a DX11 game can do.
I'll admit that I don't like the soft shadows in T3D very much. It's too grainy for my taste. And the fact that it lights up near the base of an object annoys me. And the glow has to go, really guys, it needs to go. You are not doing yourself any favors with that effect. A good glow doesn't look anything like that. A good glow looks like any glow from Crysis 2 actually. And since you have a Crysis guy in the office, put him to work on that post haste :) The basic lighting also need an overhaul. Shadows etc.. in that mode seems to be very absolute. Lights and shadows can disappear and reappear with even small motions there.
Seriously though, I think most engines have flaws. UDK is no exception, it's wavy shadow lines irks me tremendously. Not too mention how disgustingly slow it is on any budget hardware. Which is crazy, since that's like half the customer base right there. Unity 3D also performs badly in that segment.
But I digress, this topic was about the issues at the top :)
11/21/2011 (7:52 am)
On a side note. I believe Skyrim uses ID Tech 5, as far as I have heard anyway.Aside from the mentioned glitches above, I don't have many complaints. It runs well with the hardware I tried it on. I get 20-32 fps on my 1.6 Ghz Atom,ION with XP. Which is actually rather good performance.
It's a dated engine yes (after all it's DX9) But Crysis 2 is also DX9, so I guess it's more about how you polish the game. And a fair bit of shader coding too, which actually is responsible for most magic these days.
To be a bit defensive, with good shaders you can do most things a DX11 game can do.
I'll admit that I don't like the soft shadows in T3D very much. It's too grainy for my taste. And the fact that it lights up near the base of an object annoys me. And the glow has to go, really guys, it needs to go. You are not doing yourself any favors with that effect. A good glow doesn't look anything like that. A good glow looks like any glow from Crysis 2 actually. And since you have a Crysis guy in the office, put him to work on that post haste :) The basic lighting also need an overhaul. Shadows etc.. in that mode seems to be very absolute. Lights and shadows can disappear and reappear with even small motions there.
Seriously though, I think most engines have flaws. UDK is no exception, it's wavy shadow lines irks me tremendously. Not too mention how disgustingly slow it is on any budget hardware. Which is crazy, since that's like half the customer base right there. Unity 3D also performs badly in that segment.
But I digress, this topic was about the issues at the top :)
#13
I dont know about other engines as i dont use them, but i suspect that they are in a similar position.
GGs demos are very unoptimised, they have to be that way to some degree to fully show off the feature set, take UDKs latest vids and screenshots for example, that one smoking alien guy? thats a 200k+ poly character + advanced tesselaton, rendered on a quad quatro computer, dont take everything or even anything at face value.
11/21/2011 (8:54 am)
Oddly enough, torque does have the ability to work and work well on low(er) spec machines, i think most people get confused with what will work on lower spec machines, reducing shader complexity, reducing texture sizes, remove shadows, remove grass (everyone knows this one) all things that were added as graphics cards and PCs got bigger and faster.I dont know about other engines as i dont use them, but i suspect that they are in a similar position.
GGs demos are very unoptimised, they have to be that way to some degree to fully show off the feature set, take UDKs latest vids and screenshots for example, that one smoking alien guy? thats a 200k+ poly character + advanced tesselaton, rendered on a quad quatro computer, dont take everything or even anything at face value.
#14
I don't actually follow you there. Are you responding to me, or some other poster? If it's me, I don't think I have ever said that the T3D tutorial should look anything like the Samaritan. At least I hope I am not interpreted in that way.
11/21/2011 (5:17 pm)
@BloodknightI don't actually follow you there. Are you responding to me, or some other poster? If it's me, I don't think I have ever said that the T3D tutorial should look anything like the Samaritan. At least I hope I am not interpreted in that way.
#15
I get slower framerates on an Intel i3 and Radeon HD4330. Is my system great for gaming? Not at all. Do I expect to be able to play a T3D game on low settings smoothly? Yes.
I understand these larger game companies put a lot more money into their engine development, no doubt it's going to be better. But why do I get a higher framerate while overlooking the entire country of Skyrim than the Empty Terrain default mission in Torque?
Took some screenshots, any of the "advanced" lighting options, even lowest quality halves my framerate, bringing it from playable, to not so much.
1600x900 resolution. Intel i3 M350 @ 2.27GHZ , Radeon HD M 4330, 4gb RAM, Windows 7 x64. You can zoom in to see the fraps and metrics() framerates in the corners of the images.
imgur.com/a/4qZdi
I'm totally open that it might just be my system. But I've updated drivers and directX and haven't seen a difference. Maybe my card and T3D just don't play well together. But as other people have admitted, the shadows and lighting don't look that great, which is fine, but it chugs along at framerates equal to games with perfect lighting. I also don't want it to be taken that I'm attacking GG or T3D, I've been a supporter since the original TGE and still am, but this really needs some looking into.
11/21/2011 (10:48 pm)
Quote:I get 20-32 fps on my 1.6 Ghz Atom,ION with XP.
I get slower framerates on an Intel i3 and Radeon HD4330. Is my system great for gaming? Not at all. Do I expect to be able to play a T3D game on low settings smoothly? Yes.
I understand these larger game companies put a lot more money into their engine development, no doubt it's going to be better. But why do I get a higher framerate while overlooking the entire country of Skyrim than the Empty Terrain default mission in Torque?
Took some screenshots, any of the "advanced" lighting options, even lowest quality halves my framerate, bringing it from playable, to not so much.
1600x900 resolution. Intel i3 M350 @ 2.27GHZ , Radeon HD M 4330, 4gb RAM, Windows 7 x64. You can zoom in to see the fraps and metrics() framerates in the corners of the images.
imgur.com/a/4qZdi
I'm totally open that it might just be my system. But I've updated drivers and directX and haven't seen a difference. Maybe my card and T3D just don't play well together. But as other people have admitted, the shadows and lighting don't look that great, which is fine, but it chugs along at framerates equal to games with perfect lighting. I also don't want it to be taken that I'm attacking GG or T3D, I've been a supporter since the original TGE and still am, but this really needs some looking into.
#16
It's my impression that it is the PSSM (in particular) that is slow. I should also mention about the 45-50 fps.. I am also compiling the source in the background. So, it's possible I could get even more fps, had it not been running.
I think the shadow you get with low lighting is good enough. What I don't like is not having the option to never use PSSM in the editor. I can't change it, it's locked. Who knows why?
EDIT: removed a question.
11/22/2011 (5:13 am)
Well, I tested the same thing and having everything on maximum (and *only* setting lighting to the lowest) I got 45-50 fps. And that is very good considering the specs.It's my impression that it is the PSSM (in particular) that is slow. I should also mention about the 45-50 fps.. I am also compiling the source in the background. So, it's possible I could get even more fps, had it not been running.
I think the shadow you get with low lighting is good enough. What I don't like is not having the option to never use PSSM in the editor. I can't change it, it's locked. Who knows why?
EDIT: removed a question.
#17
You can use PSSM in the editor, but not by default with lighting set to lowest. From the world editor, click the 'lighting' dropdown and select Advanced Lighting.
Example
Lowest Lighting, adding objects in real time with the sketch tool.
Low Lighting, adding objects in real tie with the sketch tool.
11/23/2011 (5:04 am)
The issue is that when the shadows are set to lowest, you don't have the real time PSSM shadows and they can't be dynamically updated, you need to rebake everytime you say, add an object, or the sun changes. It's essentially like using the TGE 1.5.2 lighting system.You can use PSSM in the editor, but not by default with lighting set to lowest. From the world editor, click the 'lighting' dropdown and select Advanced Lighting.
Example
Lowest Lighting, adding objects in real time with the sketch tool.
Low Lighting, adding objects in real tie with the sketch tool.
#18
11/23/2011 (6:36 am)
Yes, I know but that is what I want. Because PSSM is not only too expensive, it's too grainy and the shadows also don't behave as I would like to. And unless there is a way to control that behavior, I much rather leave it off. Not only as default setting, but completely. Besides, I don't have any global changes in my lighting. So, it would not matter. I don't mind baking the lighting. I normally do that in my modelling tools anyways.
#19
Even though the zoom reticle was removed, the code to enable it is still partially there. Look in "scripts/client/default.binds.cs"for toggleZoom() and "scripts/client/client.cs"for refeshWeaponHud(). It looks like someone removed the code that looked for the weapon's zoomReticle property and used the default bino.png image if one isn't found (which used to be called from toggleZoom), and tried to stuff that functionality into refreshWeaponHud() - which doesn't work.
To be honest I no longer remember how the bit that is missing worked (though I could try looking for it in a previous version), I just happened to notice that unmounting the weapon and zooming didn't display the bino image as it was supposed to.
11/23/2011 (11:38 am)
Quote:That is by design. Way back during the pre-release betas I had a fake scope graphic that popped up on screen when you zoomed in (configurable by weapon). This was eventually removed to make it easier to see the DOF postfx that gets triggered when you zoom - I remember that as the reasoning in the svn log for that change.
5. When zooming in, the crosshair is gone.
Even though the zoom reticle was removed, the code to enable it is still partially there. Look in "scripts/client/default.binds.cs"for toggleZoom() and "scripts/client/client.cs"for refeshWeaponHud(). It looks like someone removed the code that looked for the weapon's zoomReticle property and used the default bino.png image if one isn't found (which used to be called from toggleZoom), and tried to stuff that functionality into refreshWeaponHud() - which doesn't work.
To be honest I no longer remember how the bit that is missing worked (though I could try looking for it in a previous version), I just happened to notice that unmounting the weapon and zooming didn't display the bino image as it was supposed to.
#20
No point in reporting bugs you already know about :)
11/23/2011 (4:39 pm)
Btw, is there a list of bugs available?No point in reporting bugs you already know about :)
Torque 3D Owner Bloodknight
Bloodknight Studios
4) as far as i can tell this has to be switched around in the source code itself, i dont think switching AA methods on the fly is a simple option.