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Big Black Box

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Re: Big Black Box

Postby cj chitwood » Sun Dec 28, 2008 6:26 am

Okay, so I have a nearly identical "black box" on mine but not 100% identical. Still, the description fits.

I'm running Debian GNU/Linux, Etch/Lenny with a hint of Sid, custom-compiled SEVERAL versions of FlightGear, SimGear, OpenSceneGraph. I can say that OpenSceneGraph 2.7.8 with FlightGear and SimGear both at 1.99.5-rc2 have this problem, so an upgrade to OSG.latest is not the fix in this case. Personally, I spent 11 hours this week upgrading from an ancient version 0.9 installed from Debian packages to 1.9.0 installed from source (and all the prereq's and must-have-latest-cvs-version-of-everythings that go with it) and then several hours more trying to compile the absolute latest available code of OSG, SG, and FG and no matter what I've done, I've got graphical bugs.

In my case, the black box starts at the ground and will touch ground until I'm at least 300 feet in the air. It's right edge is always dead center of my screen, and runs from bottom of screen (or ground, whichever is higher) to about 2/3 of the height of the screen (someone else mentioned 70% -- this is about right). View angle does not affect it, aircraft position does not affect it, view source (cockpit, tower, chase) does not affect it. It's always there.

http://gallery.dennettesdesigns.com/mai ... &g2_page=7

http://gallery.dennettesdesigns.com/mai ... &g2_page=9


It also is not affected by the aircraft, nor location. Above was at KSFO, San Fran, below was at KNIP, Jacksonville FL.
http://gallery.dennettesdesigns.com/mai ... g2_page=10
[edit: Turns out (see below) that some aircraft ARE affected and some ARE NOT.]

Feel free to browse the above, but know that I'm on a residential cable line and I don't know how Comcast feels about serving on port 80. If anyone else can host my screencaps above, feel free to grab them and post a new location. Thanks!

Also, I'm running on an old nVidia GeForce2 Ti card with IIRC only 64 MB of vidram. I saw someone else had an ATI, so I believe it's not a card or driver issue. Since it's present on Linux and Windows, I'll say it's not an OS issue.


The last post here says there's info shown in the black box, but the only thing I ever see displayed on mine is my HUD. However, I too have an AMD Athlon64 3000+ (2.0 GHz chip) though I wonder how many others have it.

Finally, when doing ./configure in the Linux compile, I do notice it complaining (one of the packages) that I don't have wxWidgets. Could this be a part of the problem?


Any further info much appreciated. Now that I've found this forum, I plan to keep an eye on it....
Last edited by cj chitwood on Mon Dec 29, 2008 1:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Big Black Box

Postby cj chitwood » Sun Dec 28, 2008 6:52 am

Update on my setup: No joy.

Just upgraded from nVidia driver version 71.86.04 to the latest available 71.86.06 with no change. I've also downgraded to OpenSceneGraph 2.7.6 from 2.7.8 and no difference. I recompiled OSG, SimGear, and FlightGear after the OSG downgrade, so that isn't the problem either.

I've also tried it with e.g. --disable-textures and --enable-textures, --shading-smooth, --shading-flat, and others. No joy. I've tried enabling and disabling every feature I could think would have an effect, but no effect was to be had.

Edit: I've also tried changing the display resolution from 1024x768 down to 800x600 and the box is now LARGER. It extends from the left bottom corner about 2/3 of the way to the right and about 7/8 of the way to the top. Also of no effect was going from 32 to 24 to 16 bpp. UFO? A-6E? No difference.

Edit 2: Does this mean anything? On exit, the last line (after failing to load a bunch of models during runtime, which I've ALWAYS had), I get:
Code: Select all
 AL lib: alBuffer.c:1097: exit() 1 Buffer(s) NOT deleted 



I, too, liked how .. actually, 0.9 looked compared to the latest. Latest has the black box, and I've also noticed that 3D clouds are squished-looking and don't always render correctly (sometimes they have horizontal or vertical stripes in small sections of the clouds). Also, the scenery (mainly the ground) seemed to render more realistically-looking in 0.9 though the newer version had more scenery in it (buildings, utility towers, etc). That said, 1.90 and 1.99 seemed to be smoother (even AFTER going to a larger 1024x768 window from an 800x600 one I used with 0.9!). I'm eager to get 1.90 or even 1.99 running correctly, though. I'll keep an eye out here if anyone has a suggestion they'd like to try.
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Re: Big Black Box

Postby toshi » Sun Dec 28, 2008 10:18 am

Hi.

cj chitwood wrote:Personally, I spent 11 hours this week upgrading from an ancient version 0.9 installed from Debian packages to 1.9.0 installed from source (and all the prereq's and must-have-latest-cvs-version-of-everythings that go with it) and then several hours more trying to compile the absolute latest available code of OSG, SG, and FG and no matter what I've done, I've got graphical bugs.


When did you get the latest FG code?
Although I don't have compile enviroments on my machine, I'm interested in some modifications to cvs codes which were posted by timoore about 18 hours ago.

Here is a log from git mirror.
http://mapserver.flightgear.org/git/git ... d398024ed8

cj chitwood wrote:Edit 2: Does this mean anything? On exit, the last line (after failing to load a bunch of models during runtime, which I've ALWAYS had), I get:
Code: Select all
 AL lib: alBuffer.c:1097: exit() 1 Buffer(s) NOT deleted 


Perhaps, it would be better to quote all the messages.
For my case: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2585#p23347

And, aircraft dependies for v1.9.0 base package:
- Blackbox appears: 777-200, A6M2, c172p, CitationX, Dragonfly, f-14b, j3cub, sopwithCamel, ufo
- Blackbox doesn't appear: b1900d, bo105, dhc2, senecaII, ZLT-NT

Note that I didn't pay attention to variants.

EDIT: Black box doesn't appear for c172p-panel-only (thanks to virtfly in FlightGear JP Forum).
Last edited by toshi on Sun Dec 28, 2008 4:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Big Black Box

Postby statto » Sun Dec 28, 2008 10:18 am

Here's how it is for me, using osg 2.7.5 and a downloaded CVS build from 12/6 on Windows:
- The Big, Black Box is about 200-300 feet in front of the aircraft.
- It is a set number of pixels - if I increase resolution, it covers less of the screen - perhaps about 300-400pixels.
- It is not aircraft dependent.
- It is not location dependent.
- When performing ATC, the ATC texture displays over the big black box - for instance, say there is a B747 x miles west, where x is to the left of the edge of the radar. This would be picked up on the big black box and is displayed as if it were on the radar, as seen in the above screenshot - but it works with the ATC "aircraft" as well.
- I have changed every setting available in fgrun in an attempt to isolate the problem, and nothing fixed the problem.

I am using an Intel 965 chipset, no idea on NVIDIA/ATI - don't know how to check that on windows
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Re: Big Black Box

Postby cj chitwood » Sun Dec 28, 2008 4:42 pm

toshi wrote:Hi.

When did you get the latest FG code?
Although I don't have compile enviroments on my machine, I'm interested in some modifications to cvs codes which were posted by timoore about 18 hours ago.

Here is a log from git mirror.
http://mapserver.flightgear.org/git/git ... d398024ed8


I got 1.99.5-rc2..... well, by the date on the tar.gz file, around 8:21 p.m. EST on Dec 27.

I just went through the properties browser and although I did find references to cameras in a couple places (in /sim[0] for instance) by browsing a layer or two deep, I'm not sure what to change and I don't want to b0rk the whole thing. I assume these reset with a reload...?


cj chitwood wrote:Edit 2: Does this mean anything? On exit, the last line (after failing to load a bunch of models during runtime, which I've ALWAYS had), I get:
Code: Select all
 AL lib: alBuffer.c:1097: exit() 1 Buffer(s) NOT deleted 


Perhaps, it would be better to quote all the messages.
For my case: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2585#p23347


It's a whole bunch of
Code: Select all

Failed to load xml: Failed to open file
 at /usr/local/share/FlightGear/data/Models/Structures/radio-medium.xml
Failed to load model: Failed to open file
 at /usr/local/share/FlightGear/data/Models/Structures/radio-medium.xml
Failed to load xml: Failed to open file
 at /usr/local/share/FlightGear/data/Models/Structures/radio-medium.xml
Failed to load model: Failed to open file
 at /usr/local/share/FlightGear/data/Models/Structures/radio-medium.xml
Failed to load xml: Failed to open file
 at /usr/local/share/FlightGear/data/Models/Structures/radio-medium.xml
Failed to load model: Failed to open file
 at /usr/local/share/FlightGear/data/Models/Structures/radio-medium.xml
Failed to load xml: Failed to open file
 at /usr/local/share/FlightGear/data/Models/Structures/radio-medium.xml
Failed to load model: Failed to open file
 at /usr/local/share/FlightGear/data/Models/Structures/radio-medium.xml
Failed to load xml: Failed to open file
 at /usr/local/share/FlightGear/data/Models/Structures/radio-medium.xml
Failed to load model: Failed to open file
 at /usr/local/share/FlightGear/data/Models/Structures/radio-medium.xml
Failed to load xml: Failed to open file
 at /usr/local/share/FlightGear/data/Models/Structures/radio-medium.xml
Failed to load model: Failed to open file
 at /usr/local/share/FlightGear/data/Models/Structures/radio-medium.xml


followed by
Code: Select all
Electrical System ... ok
system  ...Check
Alerts   ...Check
KLN-90B GPS  ...Check
Flight Director ...Check


And, aircraft dependies for v1.9.0 base package:
- Blackbox appears: 777-200, A6M2, c172p, CitationX, Dragonfly, f-14b, j3cub, sopwithCamel, ufo
- Blackbox doesn't appear: b1900d, bo105, dhc2, senecaII, ZLT-NT

Note that I didn't pay attention to variants.


I didn't try the b1900d before, but now that I do, I see that it works fine. So what commonalities do the near/far cameras have in these models? Anyone?
Last edited by cj chitwood on Sun Dec 28, 2008 4:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Big Black Box

Postby cj chitwood » Sun Dec 28, 2008 4:50 pm

statto wrote:
I am using an Intel 965 chipset, no idea on NVIDIA/ATI - don't know how to check that on windows


No worries... nVidia/ATI is like Intel or Matrox... they're all brand names. If you have Intel, you don't have nVidia, ATI, or Matrox.

I think we can reasonably say it's in the software and not the hardware or drivers. Now, if we can find out exactly which property to change for the camera, then we can set it in a .fgfsrc (at least, in linux we can) and not worry about it.
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Re: Big Black Box

Postby Jester » Sun Dec 28, 2008 6:31 pm

toshi wrote:Although I don't have compile enviroments on my machine, I'm interested in some modifications to cvs codes which were posted by timoore about 18 hours ago.

Here is a log from git mirror.
http://mapserver.flightgear.org/git/git ... d398024ed8

Yes, running latest CVS you could try --prop:/sim/rendering/camera-group/near-field=0.0 or --prop:/sim/rendering/camera-group/znear=0.0
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Re: Big Black Box

Postby stuart » Sun Dec 28, 2008 6:48 pm

cj chitwood wrote:I can say that OpenSceneGraph 2.7.8 with FlightGear and SimGear both at 1.99.5-rc2 have this problem, so an upgrade to OSG.latest is not the fix in this case.


CJ - there is a known issue with the 1.99.5-rc (not sure if it is 1 or 2) which had a badly defined camera.

If you are still using the 1.99.5-rc2, I'd suggest re-compiling from the CVS HEAD, or picking up the 1.90 release.

-Stuart
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Re: Big Black Box

Postby AK-Emm » Sun Dec 28, 2008 8:14 pm

could this help :idea:

there is a debugger in the console
but could it work


the black box could be fixed if altering the coding by tracing the bug then the hotfix code can be applied to the bug
i dont know if this applies to FG
but in NetBeans 6.0 or any other IDEs debugger this can be applied



another solution as mentioned earlier rather than waiting for a 1.99.x or a 2.0

an update patch, service pack or a hot fix would be recommended for future bugs and errors this can buy more time for the developers releasing a later version making it more perfect
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking at Flight level 350 it seems we are experiencing engine failure we're Out to fix the problem we'll be back in a moment.................... :?:



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Re: Big Black Box

Postby cj chitwood » Sun Dec 28, 2008 9:11 pm

stuart wrote:
cj chitwood wrote:I can say that OpenSceneGraph 2.7.8 with FlightGear and SimGear both at 1.99.5-rc2 have this problem, so an upgrade to OSG.latest is not the fix in this case.


CJ - there is a known issue with the 1.99.5-rc (not sure if it is 1 or 2) which had a badly defined camera.

If you are still using the 1.99.5-rc2, I'd suggest re-compiling from the CVS HEAD, or picking up the 1.90 release.

-Stuart


Thanks Stuart...


When I tried getting CVS, I saw the version file, and it claimed to be 1.9.0, which I already have as downloaded from FG.org; is this an incorrect version file, and is the latest CVS actually today's snapshot code?

I also tried git, as shown on the fg.org site, but when I apt-get git, I get other files, not git per se but rather gitaction, gitkeys, gitfm and the like, so I don't know what command to use to get the latest if indeed CVS is truly version 1.9.0.

I checked on the site earlier, and newer than 1.99.5-rc2 was not available, but even the 1.99 I downloaded was no longer there. I assumed they were updating, so I shall check again soon (only stopped at the computer briefly to check the forum for updates).

Thanks again
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Re: Big Black Box

Postby Jester » Sun Dec 28, 2008 9:28 pm

Version file in cvs says 1.9.0 and probably will not be updated until next release.
debian package of git lives in git-core, the git package contains a file manager (that predates git). The FG git is not official yet, better stick to CVS.
There was some confusion with version numbers, current release was at one point destined to be 2.0, hence the 1.99.5 pre-release. Later it was decided to name it 1.9 instead, so 1.99.5 is actually older than 1.9.0. Sorry about that :oops:
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Re: Big Black Box

Postby cj chitwood » Mon Dec 29, 2008 12:09 am

Thanks for clarifying, Jester....


One quick dev-question... when it comes time to compile, if I want to use OSG 2.7.8 and I'm currently on 2.7.6, I don't need to recompile OSG 2.7.8 if I have 2.7.8 in .deb form already, do I? I just need to reinstall the 2.7.8 dot-deb, right?
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Re: Big Black Box

Postby jentron » Mon Dec 29, 2008 2:16 am

cj chitwood wrote:Thanks for clarifying, Jester....


One quick dev-question... when it comes time to compile, if I want to use OSG 2.7.8 and I'm currently on 2.7.6, I don't need to recompile OSG 2.7.8 if I have 2.7.8 in .deb form already, do I? I just need to reinstall the 2.7.8 dot-deb, right?


As long as you get all the dev packages you should be fine... I have 7 total homerolled packages for OSG:
../OSG/libopenscenegraph-dev_2.7.8-53l_i386.deb ../OSG/libopenthreads6_2.7.8-53l_i386.deb ../OSG/openthreads-doc_2.7.8-53l_all.deb
../OSG/libopenscenegraph6_2.7.8-53l_i386.deb ../OSG/openscenegraph-doc_2.7.8-53l_all.deb
../OSG/libopenthreads-dev_2.7.8-53l_i386.deb ../OSG/openscenegraph_2.7.8-53l_i386.deb
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Re: Big Black Box

Postby MD-Terp » Mon Dec 29, 2008 5:04 am

statto wrote:I am using an Intel 965 chipset, no idea on NVIDIA/ATI - don't know how to check that on windows

click "Start"
right-click "My Computer"
on the pop-up menu, choose the bottom option, "Properties"
in the new window, click the tab that says "Hardware"
in the top section, click the button that says "Device Manager"
if only your PC's name is displayed, click on the plus sign to expand it
find the entry called "Display Adapters" and click on the plus sign to expand it

That should tell you what video card you have. Then you can right-click that and get further windows to give you information on the latest update date of the driver.

However, the Intel 965 chipset may in fact be your display hardware -- that sounds like maybe a laptop video hardware thing, is that right?
Cheers,
-Rob.

"Retired" from FlightGear involvement as of July 2010.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8809
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Re: Big Black Box

Postby cj chitwood » Mon Dec 29, 2008 5:20 am

Alright... So...


I downloaded from CVS SimGear 1.9.0 and FlightGear Source 1.9.0 and Data 1.9.0. Took a long time, to say the least. I didn't realize when I started Data that I was downloading every available airplane. But no bother, saves me the trouble later on.

I start it up, and there's the box. Ah, but wait, we now can browse the properties.

File, Browse Internal Properties (or hit "/").
Go to sim/rendering/camera-group
Select "near-field" and make it "0" (zero). Hit set, close property browser, black box is gone.


Problem is, if you reset the scenario, you have to do this all over again. I think I recall being able to set properties in the .fgfsrc file, and if so, no prob. Otherwise, this would get annoying for e.g. chopper practice.

[edit]
So, found an easier way.

Whatever options you want in your .fgfsrc file, go for it. Then, add to the end of the file, the following line:

--config=/path/to/your/config.xml

(changing it, of course, to suit the actual path)
Then, create the xml file mentioned above and insert the following:

Code: Select all
<PropertyList>
  <sim>
    <rendering>
      <camera-group>
        <near-field>
          0
        </near-field>
      </camera-group>
    </rendering>
  </sim>
</PropertyList>



in my case, all of my FlightGear data is in

/usr/local/share/FlightGear/data

and I have system.fgfsrc there (which is no different from having it in .fgfsrc except that it's systemwide now no matter what user runs it). So, the last line of my system.fgfsrc file is:

--config=/usr/local/share/FlightGear/data/noblackbox.xml

Works for me. However, I do notice what I think may be a tradeoff: My Cessna's cockpit isn't completely rendered when e.g. I look up and to the left (into the wing root). Oh well. No more often than I look there, I can live with it to get rid of the black box.

[edit 3!]
alternatively, as a line in ~/.fgfsrc or $FG_ROOT/system.fgfsrc, add

--prop:/sim/rendering/camera-group/near-field=0

Much easier. It's funny, I found that and I wasn't even looking for it. There was a blurb about --prop in the multiplayer part of the manual.
[/edit 3!]

To the developers: Should I have changed a different property instead? Maybe used some value a little larger than zero? I'll play with it, but I'll check back here, too...
[/edit]







Question for the developers: What is the purpose of having "two cameras" as I've read it called? Why have one near and one far renderer? I'm curious, not complaining...

thanks,

CJ




[edit 2]
Oh, and check out this screenshot: http://gallery.dennettesdesigns.com/mai ... temId=1708
Turns out, my clouds are still broken, as I expected, but what I didn't expect was the prop arc to blank them out entirely. I'll just keep clouds3d disabled for now... They're nice, but I don't need them (considering Microsoft FS98 was the best I'd used up until now).
[/edit 2]
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