Announcement: Skybox in 2.06

[duzenko]

TDM 2.06 will have a special optimization for skybox surfaces that use the textures/smf/portal_sky material.

The caulk sky won't have it and will be slower to draw.

[nbohr1more]

That was a lot of hard work.

 

I understand why you created a celebration thread.

 

Congrats!

[Bikerdude]

The caulk sky won't have it and will be slower to draw.

Sound interesting, what is it exactly..?

[duzenko]

Sound interesting, what is it exactly..?

The skybox will be scissored to the bounds of the textures/smf/portal_sky surface. If it's only a fraction of the screen, invisible pixels will be skipped.

 

That was a lot of hard work.

 

I understand why you created a celebration thread.

 

Congrats!

Thanks

It's not done yet though, but I saw this opportunity while working on the multiple remote camera/mirrors fix.

Going to add this until the end of the week.

 

The caulk surface does not exist as far as the engine is concerned so it's not possible to calculate its bounds. If I'm wrong and the engine knows about the caulk surfaces, point me to it.

 

Don't want to create another thread, so here it is: remote cameras are working now when there's more than one in player's view.

Ask @grayman for the sample map.

 

Note the debug log: the attached screenshot includes 10 rendered views, 8 of them subviews. Please be careful with this feature.

[grayman]

I'll be writing wiki pages about this and the revamped security camera.

[Bikerdude]

The caulk surface does not exist as far as the engine is concerned so it's not possible to calculate its bounds. If I'm wrong and the engine knows about the caulk surfaces, point me to it.

How will this effect maps that use caulk to seal to the sky.

[grayman]

There should be no effect, but beta testing will flush out any issues. The test map we were using had part portal_sky texture and part caulk, with models sticking up beyond the caulk. At this point, everything displays correctly.

[nbohr1more]

Ooh, time to see if you've inadvertently fixed: http://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=4085

[Springheel]

At this point, everything displays correctly.

 

 

Did you test it with fog? That was something SteveL fixed fairly recently.

[grayman]

No.

[nbohr1more]

Rev 7176 binaries are up in SVN. Feel free to play Briarwood Manor (etc) and check the fog...

[grayman]

BM's ground fog and sky look the same as they do in 2.05.

 

Is there a mission that uses a foglight that paints over the sky textures? (WS2 uses foglights, but as ground fog only.)

[nbohr1more]

I think "Thief's Den 3: Heart of Lone Salvation" does that...?

 

And NHAT mission 3 Forest.

 

http://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=3664

[HMart]

I still don't know exactly what you did but it sounds cool, from the image it looks like you made portal_sky surfaces look like portals from Prey.

[duzenko]

BTW when was the skybox rotate bug on AMD fixed?

 

 

I still don't know exactly what you did but it sounds cool, from the image it looks like you made portal_sky surfaces look like portals from Prey.

It was like that since time immemorial

[Obsttorte]

The caulk surface does not exist as far as the engine is concerned so it's not possible to calculate its bounds. If I'm wrong and the engine knows about the caulk surfaces, point me to it.

I am not aware of any such place either, but caulk (the parts that will turn out to be sky) represent as infintely far away in the depth image. As far as I thought the main performance issue withthe skybox is that it gets drawn over the whole screen, and then the rest gets drawn over it. If you cut away all surfaces that are not using smf/portal sky and have a depth less then infinite, that should od the trick.

The skybox will be scissored to the bounds of the textures/smf/portal_sky surface

If that is the case, how does it come caulk sky is still drawn? Or did I misunderstand you.

[HMart]

 

It was like that since time immemorial

 

I know portal_sky are "portals" that is right there in the name you know, i'm not that dumb, what i meant is that by putting them in small window, it looked like prey portals where you can go through, it was just a joke.

[nbohr1more]

I hate to make this a bug report thread but there's no internal thread about this.

 

The fireflies outside in Alberic's Curse are rendering through everything.

 

The old workaround of g_enablePortalsky 1 no longer fixes that fogged caulk\portal in NHAT 1: Politics.

 

The sky fog is broken in NHAT 3 Forest. (I think that might've been broken before this work though.)

It works in 2.05.

[nbohr1more]

envshot captures the sky (good)

envshot captures the console (bad)

envshot can be invoked by a keybind in Darkmod.cfg" bind "h" "envshot nameofshot 256" (good)

envshot doesn't capture all direction and duplicates forward. (bad)

[duzenko]

 

I am not aware of any such place either, but caulk (the parts that will turn out to be sky) represent as infintely far away in the depth image.

The caulk surface don't draw at all allowing the leftover pixels from the skybox render to be reused. It was a smart trick to show the geometry above the "ceiling". Regret it now makes things harder.

As far as I thought the main performance issue withthe skybox is that it gets drawn over the whole screen, and then the rest gets drawn over it. If you cut away all surfaces that are not using smf/portal sky and have a depth less then infinite, that should od the trick.

I thought about that more than many times. I'm afraid there are blocks here.

It will break the complex skyboxes that have surfaces of more than one depth.

It will also break transparent surfaces in the main view, maybe fog and smoke too.

If that is the case, how does it come caulk sky is still drawn? Or did I misunderstand you.

For one there was a skybox draw forced by player view when current area has sky.

But @grayman says he also puts small "invisibile" surface with textures/smf/portal_sky.

That will be incompatible with my idea of scissoring the portal_sky surface.

[duzenko]

I hate to make this a bug report thread but there's no internal thread about this.

 

The fireflies outside in Alberic's Curse are rendering through everything.

 

The old workaround of g_enablePortalsky 1 no longer fixes that fogged caulk\portal in NHAT 1: Politics.

 

The sky fog is broken in NHAT 3 Forest. (I think that might've been broken before this work though.)

It works in 2.05.

All bug reports are greatly appreciated.

Not sure about how to reproduce the fireflies - I actually can't see them at all.

Is it the place with a pond and a fire with some bottles? I can see the moving light interactions, but not the light sources.

[Bikerdude]

Is it the place with a pond and a fire with some bottles? I can see the moving light interactions, but not the light sources.

Yes, I bound light sources to the func_anims. I dont have access to the latest SVN so am unable to do any bug testing for you.

[duzenko]

Yes, I bound light sources to the func_anims. I dont have access to the latest SVN so am unable to do any bug testing for you.

Where are we on public access to assets svn?

 

Bikerdude, there is a problem with the pump station in the beginning of the politics part.

There is a square something right where the skybox surface is.

It gets in the way of the new fast sky render.

It seems to be a part of the pump station area, because it only shows when the door to the station is in player's view.

Can we do something about it?

[duzenko]

The old workaround of g_enablePortalsky 1 no longer fixes that fogged caulk\portal in NHAT 1: Politics.

Is that it (my previous post) or is there something else?

[Bikerdude]

Where are we on public access to assets svn?

 

Bikerdude, there is a problem with the pump station in the beginning of the politics part.

 

I would like to know this also, as it looks like i will need read only acess to help you with this.

 

That will be caulk brushes, and i figured thia would happen which ia why I asked a few posts abovr about caulk. I will need to open up the fm to check though.