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strange water colour and tile selection modes

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strange water colour and tile selection modes

Postby gsagostinho » Sun Apr 12, 2015 2:17 am

Hi all,

Has anyone seen these type of white waters when using ALS and setting "tile selection mode" as "realistic weather"?:
Image

Reverting it to "METAR" mode I get:
Image

Is this a bug or do you think this may be something wrong on my side? I was using the fair weather scenario. Here are my rendering configurations:
Image

Also, I am one of those unfortunate souls who have ATI cards :(

Cheers,
Gilberto
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Re: strange water colour and tile selection modes

Postby Hooray » Sun Apr 12, 2015 3:00 am

given the legacy GUI style you're using, I assume that you're using an ATI/AMD card ?

speaking just in general here: for anything involving graphics, please also make sure to post your GPU specs (as per the HELP/ABOUT dialog) - equally, a screen shot showing your console or posting the log file would help to see if there were any GLSL compilation errors.

Obviously, it would also be good to know if you're seeing artefacts elsewhere or have taken any customization measures to prevent those (referring to your non-default GUI style here)
Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
Thanks & all the best,
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Re: strange water colour and tile selection modes

Postby someguy » Sun Apr 12, 2015 3:08 am

I didn't grab a screenie, unfortunately, but today the tropical waters around Ascension Island turned spontaneously from turquoise to dark olive green while just flying around. The land colors were strange as well, almost like being inverted, but the glitch was only affecting the immediate area, as the distant sea was normal blue. I'd never seen anything quite like it. Reloading scenery or respawning (shift-escape) didn't help, but the weird colors were gone when I quit FG and relaunched from scratch. My video card is Nvidia GTX750 with 2 GB. I was using METAR.
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Re: strange water colour and tile selection modes

Postby gsagostinho » Sun Apr 12, 2015 3:11 am

Thanks for the reply, Hooray!

Hooray wrote in Sun Apr 12, 2015 3:00 am:for anything involving graphics, please also make sure to post your GPU specs (as per the HELP/ABOUT dialog)


Here it is:
Image

equally, a screen shot showing your console or posting the log file would help to see if there were any GLSL compilation errors.


Doesn't seem to be the case (and please ignore the quadrillion errors this 727 is giving):
Code: Select all
Enabling ATI viewport hack
File not found: 'Aircraft/737-100/Sounds/737-100-sound.xml
default catalog not found, installing 'org.flightgear.default' from 'http://fgfs.goneabitbursar.com/pkg/3.5.0/default-catalog.xml'.
osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi-more.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi-more.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi-more.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi-more.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi-more.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi-more.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi-more.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi-more.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi-more.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi-more.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi-more.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "shadow.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "hsi-more.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "rmi.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "rmi.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "rmi_needles.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "rmi_needles.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "rmi.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "dme.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "dme.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "dme.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "dme.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "dme.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "dme.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "dme-bg.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "dme.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "ki266.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "ki266.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "ki266.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "ki266.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "ki266.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "ki266.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "ki266.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "ki266.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "ki266.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "ki266.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "ki266.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "ki266.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "clock.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "clock.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "clock.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "AP1.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "AP1.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "AP1.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "AP1.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "AP1.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "AP1.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "AP1.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "AP1.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "AP1.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "AP1.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "AP1.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "AP1.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "AP1.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "AP1.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "AP1.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "AP1.png"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "AP1.png"

Texture file not found: '../../Models/Instruments/AP1/AP1.lightmap.png'
Texture file not found: '../../Models/Instruments/AP1/AP1.lightmap.png'
Texture file not found: '../../Models/Instruments/AP1/AP1.lightmap.png'
osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "txt_knobs.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "txt_knobs.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "comm.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "txt_knobs.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "txt_knobs.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "comm.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "txt_knobs.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "txt_knobs.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "nav_radio.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "txt_knobs.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "txt_knobs.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "comm.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "txt_knobs.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "txt_knobs.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "adf.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "digits.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "txt_knobs.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "txt_knobs.rgb"

osgDB ac3d reader: could not find texture "comm.rgb"

environment init
Loading local weather routines...
Nasal runtime error: bad/missing argument to split()
  at /home/gilberto/.FlightGear/addons/Aircraft/727-230/Nasal/mk-rmi-adf-nav.nas, line 87
KI266 dme indicator[0] ... ok
This aircraft does not use the latest yasim configuration version.
catalog download failure:http://fgfs.goneabitbursar.com/pkg/3.5.0/default-catalog.xml
Starting hard-coded terrain presampling
Starting hard-coded terrain presampling
Starting hard-coded terrain presampling
Starting hard-coded terrain presampling


Obviously, it would also be good to know if you're seeing artefacts elsewhere or have taken any customization measures to prevent those (referring to your non-default GUI style here)
[/quote]
I changed the GUI style because of the known problem of flickering/disappearing menu texts when using ALS. The only other artefact I have seen is the occasional red coloured random buildings.

But to be honest, if this is an ATI issue then I can just live with it, particularly since one of the tile modes does solve the problem. I was actually just wondering if I am the only seeing this problem or if I found something broken with the ALS system. It seems to me that it may be related to how the ALS deals with visibility (you can see that in the white ocean screenshot, the visibility of those islands in the back is vastly greater then in the other screenshot, even though I didin't touch the max visibility slider).

Cheers!
Gilberto
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Re: strange water colour and tile selection modes

Postby Hooray » Sun Apr 12, 2015 3:23 am

not saying that this is necessarily the case here, but ALS is primarily being developed on a NVIDIA-based machine and AW/ALS may not be getting as much testing/feedback as needed to iron out certain vendor-specific issues that its developer simply isn't seeing, and thus cannot reproduce easily (absent someone donating ATI/AMD hardware...).

That also applies to Intel GPUs - not just to ALS though ...

That said, Thorsten has been generally pretty responsive whenever GLSL issues were seemingly involved - so as long as you're willing to provide action-able feedback and do regular testing, the odds of getting this fixed are not too bad if Thorsten finds your information sufficiently complete to identify what is going on, and as long as you're willing to edit GLSL (text) files and modify things if requested to, and post screen shots/log files for troubleshooting purposes.

Keep in mind that there's a plethora of factors involved meanwhile, i.e. different aircraft may be using different shaders/effects and different shader settings, in conjunction with location-specific weather stuff this may obviously trigger hardly reproducible issues (however, I don't know if your aircraft is using any shaders/effects that may interfere with ALS or other effects/shaders elsewhere)
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Re: strange water colour and tile selection modes

Postby gsagostinho » Sun Apr 12, 2015 3:28 am

I see Hooray, thanks once again. I will wait to see if Thorsten comes across this post and what he has to say about this. And of course I am willing to help and make tests.

Cheers,
Gilberto
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Re: strange water colour and tile selection modes

Postby Thorsten » Sun Apr 12, 2015 6:14 am

I fly with AW set to selection mode 'realistic' basically all the time (I hardly ever do METAR), and I've never had an issue like that. The way weather and rendering are interfaced, the problem can't easily be a particular mode anyway.

I have seen similar water during shader development when I did something wrong. I'm not sure what this one smells like, somehow not like an ATI issue, but there's not enough data to be sure. If the issue ever occurs again, I'd be interested in the values of the properties

/environment/visibility-m
/environment/ground-visibility-m
/environment/ground-haze-thickness-m
/rendering/scene/scattering
/environment/surface/scattering
/rendering/scene/overcast
/environment/air-pollution-norm

Alternatively, you can pause FG with AW on and play with the values using the property browser to see if you can find a setting that gives you the same strange appearance.

Is there any way you can reliably reproduce this, i.e. does it happen every time you use fair weather in AW?
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Re: strange water colour and tile selection modes

Postby gsagostinho » Sun Apr 12, 2015 6:14 pm

Is there any way you can reliably reproduce this, i.e. does it happen every time you use fair weather in AW?

Yes, it happens every time I use Fair Weather and the "realistic" tile selection mode (although I feel there the effect is sometimes stronger than other times, but also I notice that there is some randomness in the values of some properties. More on this below). Here is how I reproduce it. Using default cessna 172 @ LICT rnw 13 with these wizard settings:
Image

Start FG, choose Fair weather and click apply, and I get the white ocean every time.

Here is the result of fg_log.csv (you will notice the moment in which I applied the fair weather theme):

Code: Select all
Time,visibility-m,ground-visibility-m,ground-haze-thickness-m,scene-scattering,surface-scattering,overcast,pollution
243.783,19312.09464,16000,,0.8,0.7,0,0.16
253.775,19312.09464,16000,,0.8,0.7,0,0.16
263.792,19312.09464,16000,,0.8,0.7,0,0.16
273.8,44443.95816,44443.95816,,1,1,0,0.16
283.775,44434.98937,44434.98937,,0.99926,0.9987661193,0.00148097,0.16
293.775,44434.99239,44434.99239,,0.99926,0.9987661831,0.00148093,0.16
303.792,44434.9954,44434.9954,,0.99926,0.998766247,0.00148089,0.16
313.8,44434.9984,44434.9984,,0.99926,0.9987663104,0.00148086,0.16
323.792,44435.00141,44435.00141,,0.99926,0.9987663742,0.00148082,0.16


When I click apply, the visibility-m parameter is set (apparently randomly) to a value around 38000-45000.

Alternatively, you can pause FG with AW on and play with the values using the property browser to see if you can find a setting that gives you the same strange appearance.

I will do that.
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Re: strange water colour and tile selection modes

Postby gsagostinho » Sun Apr 12, 2015 6:21 pm

I found the problematic property. It is /environment/surface/scattering.

If set to <0.6, the world looks a bit dark and so does the water. At 0.7, the world is fine and so is the water. At 0.75+, the world keeps the same luminosity, while the water keeps getting brighter. At 0.8, the water looks like my first screenshots, at 0.9 it's completely white.
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Re: strange water colour and tile selection modes

Postby Thorsten » Sun Apr 12, 2015 6:41 pm

Okay, cool, that's very useful. I'll have a look tomorrow whether I can find anything.

Just to confirm - you're on FG version 3.5 (current devel), right?
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Re: strange water colour and tile selection modes

Postby gsagostinho » Sun Apr 12, 2015 6:42 pm

Just to confirm - you're on FG version 3.5 (current devel), right?


Yes, I am (I think I last pulled it from git some 7-10 days ago).

Thanks a lot Thorsten, and let me know if you need me to run any more tests here.
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Re: strange water colour and tile selection modes

Postby Thorsten » Mon Apr 13, 2015 6:47 am

Open

/Shaders/water-ALS-high.frag

in an editor. Seach for ground_scattering (that's how /environment/surface/scattering is called inside the GLSL code) - there's two lines containing it

Code: Select all
// de-saturate for reduced light
   refl.rgb = mix(refl.rgb,  vec3 (0.248, 0.248, 0.248), 1.0 - smoothstep(0.1, 0.8, ground_scattering));


and

Code: Select all
finalColor = refl + specular * smoothstep(0.3, 0.6, ground_scattering) + vec4 (secondary_light, 0.0) * light_distance_fading(dist) * 2.0 * pow(max(0.0,dot(E,N)), water_shininess);


Comment out the first line - does that fix the issue?

Change the second line into

Code: Select all
finalColor = refl +  vec4 (secondary_light, 0.0) * light_distance_fading(dist) * 2.0 * pow(max(0.0,dot(E,N)), water_shininess);


Does that fix the issue? If yes, does

Code: Select all
finalColor = refl + clamp(specular,0.0,1.0)  * smoothstep(0.3, 0.6, ground_scattering) + vec4 (secondary_light, 0.0) * light_distance_fading(dist) * 2.0 * pow(max(0.0,dot(E,N)), water_shininess);


work as well?
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Re: strange water colour and tile selection modes

Postby gsagostinho » Mon Apr 13, 2015 1:04 pm

Thorsten wrote in Mon Apr 13, 2015 6:47 am:Comment out the first line - does that fix the issue?

No, I can't see any difference.

Thorsten wrote in Mon Apr 13, 2015 6:47 am:Change the second line into
Code: Select all
finalColor = refl +  vec4 (secondary_light, 0.0) * light_distance_fading(dist) * 2.0 * pow(max(0.0,dot(E,N)), water_shininess);

Does that fix the issue?

Yes it does! Beautiful water in fair weather :)

Thorsten wrote in Mon Apr 13, 2015 6:47 am:If yes, does
Code: Select all
finalColor = refl + clamp(specular,0.0,1.0)  * smoothstep(0.3, 0.6, ground_scattering) + vec4 (secondary_light, 0.0) * light_distance_fading(dist) * 2.0 * pow(max(0.0,dot(E,N)), water_shininess);

work as well?

Not really, the ocean appears white again.

Also, just to be clear, the problem is much more visible from the ground. The higher I am in the air, the more normal-looking the water becomes (it likely has something to do with the angle of reflections).

Now, if I may ask a (possibly stupid) question: since I use the git version, any modification I make to any file inside /fgdata will be lost on my next pull, correct? So in that case, to fix this I will have to wait for any corrections to be applied to the fgdata repository rather than do it myself here, right? If that's the case, there is absolutely no rush or whatsoever, I am just trying to understand how this works.

Thanks a lot, Thorsten, I really appreciate your help.

Cheers,
Gilberto
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Re: strange water colour and tile selection modes

Postby Thorsten » Mon Apr 13, 2015 5:51 pm

Now, if I may ask a (possibly stupid) question: since I use the git version, any modification I make to any file inside /fgdata will be lost on my next pull, correct?


This is just diagnostics - I'm trying to understand where the problem comes from. The line that worked removes a specular contribution - which I think we might want to have in the end.

I suspect the problem is that somewhere (rgb) values outside [0:1] creep in, which NVIDIA just clamps to the correct limits automatically but ATI does not. So I just need to find where that happens, and the angular dependence you observe is another important telltale. So it's probably the Fresnel scattering term.

What happens if you comment

Code: Select all
   specular_color += ((0.15*(1.0-ctrefl* ctrefl) * fresnel) - 0.3) * specular_light.rgb;


out?
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Re: strange water colour and tile selection modes

Postby gsagostinho » Mon Apr 13, 2015 6:07 pm

Thorsten wrote in Mon Apr 13, 2015 5:51 pm:This is just diagnostics

Okay!

Thorsten wrote in Mon Apr 13, 2015 5:51 pm:What happens if you comment
Code: Select all
   specular_color += ((0.15*(1.0-ctrefl* ctrefl) * fresnel) - 0.3) * specular_light.rgb;

out?

This also seem to make the problem go away.

And here is another interesting thing: the problem is related to the angle of the sun, and there is an exact angle in which the water colour comes back to normal. Look at these two pictures taken with exactly the same settings (no reloading of weather or anything), I just simply moved the sun down slightly with the time warp:

Image
Image
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