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Author Topic: Blackness on night maps, varies system to system, investigating...  (Read 13896 times)

Offline TrashMan

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Re: Blackness on night maps, varies system to system, investigating...
« Reply #15 on: November 19, 2008, 06:17:49 pm »
Widescreen. LG. 1440x900 res.

Offline ghosta

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Re: Blackness on night maps, varies system to system, investigating...
« Reply #16 on: November 30, 2008, 02:16:55 pm »
I've got the same problem on my laptop. (LCD screen)

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Offline Mattn

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Re: Blackness on night maps, varies system to system, investigating...
« Reply #17 on: November 30, 2008, 03:12:00 pm »
i will increase the default light values for night maps a little bit

Offline BTAxis

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Re: Blackness on night maps, varies system to system, investigating...
« Reply #18 on: November 30, 2008, 04:33:44 pm »
I suppose it's the only thing we can do, but it doesn't address the underlying problem, namely that the renderer is behaving differently depending on the system. Too bad it can't be reliably reproduced.

Offline Destructavator

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Re: Blackness on night maps, varies system to system, investigating...
« Reply #19 on: November 30, 2008, 04:57:37 pm »
Well considering that Trashman and BTAxis have a very similar setup with regards to OS, video card, and drivers (looking through the posts), I would bet that the actual display makes a difference, because BTAxis stated he was using CRTs, while Trashman has what sounds like a different display screen, and one has blackness while the other doesn't.

As BTAxis said:

Quote
Windows XP Pro Corporate SP2
geForce 8800GTX, driver version 169.21

And Trashman has:

Quote
Win XP SP3
NVidia Gforce 8800 GTX, 169.21 forceware

...And Trashman has blackness while BTAxis doesn't.

Exactly how the display monitor makes a difference isn't something I quite get on a technical level, but I'd bet that's it.
« Last Edit: November 30, 2008, 05:00:08 pm by Destructavator »

Offline BTAxis

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Re: Blackness on night maps, varies system to system, investigating...
« Reply #20 on: November 30, 2008, 05:31:23 pm »
Sounds reasonable, but it's still got to be something in the renderer, seeing how increasing gamma doesn't seem to help when the maps look black, and screenshots made of the black map look black even on my CRT screen.

Offline Mattn

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Re: Blackness on night maps, varies system to system, investigating...
« Reply #21 on: November 30, 2008, 08:33:32 pm »
i don't see how the renderer could differ here - i would guess that the problem is located on the monitor side

Offline TrashMan

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Re: Blackness on night maps, varies system to system, investigating...
« Reply #22 on: November 30, 2008, 08:45:33 pm »
Thing is - night maps worked fine before IIRC. Maybe it's the compiling? Could be something went wrong there...

Offline BTAxis

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Re: Blackness on night maps, varies system to system, investigating...
« Reply #23 on: November 30, 2008, 08:49:59 pm »
i don't see how the renderer could differ here - i would guess that the problem is located on the monitor side

Then explain to me how the screenshots can get affected? Does OpenGL capture screens through the monitor driver or something? Does that even make sense?

Offline Destructavator

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Re: Blackness on night maps, varies system to system, investigating...
« Reply #24 on: November 30, 2008, 09:59:54 pm »
Quote
Then explain to me how the screenshots can get affected? Does OpenGL capture screens through the monitor driver or something? Does that even make sense?

It makes sense to me - I've seen video cards detect what type of screen or monitor they are connected to and adjust to work with them, although I don't know the fine, picky technical details of how they do such a thing.

As a former tech, I recall servicing computers in uncommon circumstances where a monitor driver needed to be manually loaded and configured, although most modern video cards I've seen handle it automatically.

On the other hand, I don't know details of how OpenGL works, or how the screenshot feature is implemented in the code.

I've heard that many OpenGL features are handled directly by the video card and its own processor, and screen capture sometimes involves quite a bit as it often means sending data to the video card, having the video card process it, and then feeding it back into the computer, which is why screen video capture can be very CPU intensive because the computer has to do so much work, although I've also heard this varies depending on the type of screen capture.

I'd imagine that it is possible for a video card to do something with the graphic data that might vary depending on the monitor connected before sending it back to be saved as a graphic file, but I don't know that as a fact.

Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken - this is a bit outside of my main technical expertise.
« Last Edit: November 30, 2008, 10:01:53 pm by Destructavator »

Satanic Mechanic

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Re: Blackness on night maps, varies system to system, investigating...
« Reply #25 on: December 02, 2008, 04:18:56 am »
How's progress going on this? Is there any specific information you're looking for at the moment?

(I notice you're looking at different video card monitor combo's at the moment : as stated earlier, my card is the GeForce 6200, on Ubuntu (Hardy), monitor is IBM P76 CRT (The x server autodetects this also)... my current antarctica mission, everything except snow covered trees and the ufo are almost pitch black... I can get you a screen shot if that helps, otherwise, always willing to provide information) :)

Offline Destructavator

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Re: Blackness on night maps, varies system to system, investigating...
« Reply #26 on: December 02, 2008, 04:21:34 am »
You have the blackness with a CRT?  Interesting...

I think a screenshot would be nice, yes, if it isn't too much trouble, so the rest of us can see how it will display on our monitors.

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Offline Destructavator

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Re: Blackness on night maps, varies system to system, investigating...
« Reply #28 on: December 02, 2008, 04:56:26 am »
Hmmm, on my flat-screen I see total blackness in the dark areas of the screenshot.

OK, so the blackness issue isn't dependent on the monitor being CRT or flatscreen, or at least not exclusively.

That sure zaps that theory...

...And now, therefore, I'm stumped, I have no more ideas at the moment.   :(

Offline Mattn

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Re: Blackness on night maps, varies system to system, investigating...
« Reply #29 on: December 02, 2008, 08:52:26 am »
the status is, that i'm still looking for same nice default values to get the lighting right for most of the maps - but i suppose we need someone who has to look over all the maps and tweak the lighting via worldspawn settings for light color and so on. the default values won't produce the best looking results in most cases.