Cool VL Viewer forum

I just got a new video card (going in a new computer on Friday, but for now I've just popped it into my old one), Radeon 6670, and now under Cool Viewer 1.26.2 (2) Linden trees "flicker" and look kinda messed up even when not flickering. I did a quick Google search and came up with https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SH-2181 which seems like it might be the same problem, already fixed in the official viewer, and indeed if I run the official viewer the problem goes away. Possibly the same bug, still in Cool Viewer?

I'm afraid it's a graphics driver issue (I don't see it happening here, with Nvidia), and "fixing" it (i.e. moving from the v2.6 renderer to the v3.0 one) would only break more things (and cause many crashes with many card/drivers combinations, like what many users are experiencing with LL's v3 viewers for now). The fix will only come after LL will be able to deliver a renderer that runs stably on all configurations.

In the mean time, you could try any of the following and see if it cures the issue on your system:

• Try disabling "Advanced" -> "Rendering" -> "Automatic Alpha Masks".
• Try updating to a newer driver version or downgrading to an older one.
• Try disabling deferred rendering.

Uffda... after reading the comments on the bug, I was hoping it was as simple as changing the call to the deprecated OpenGL function they mention, rather than moving to a whole new renderer. No such luck, eh?

I already had Automatic Alpha Masks off, since it screws up anti-aliasing on a bunch of stuff. I also had deferred rendering off. Interestingly enough, turning it on fixes the problem, but alas, also messes up anti-aliasing.

I'll try playing around with different driver versions. The bug comments mention older drivers apparently support the deprecated functions better...

UPDATE: The card came with their Catalyst 11.8 drivers. Upgrading to 11.9 (the latest as I write this) did not fix the problem. However, downgrading to 11.5 did fix it. (I did not try any in between, since the comments in the JIRA suggested the problem started with 11.6.) So, problem solved.

Yes, it's an ATI driver problem... ATI has always been providing very poor OpenGL support, and in their newer drivers they pretty much broke compatibility with older OpenGL implementations, thus the issues and the move to "non-fixed" (shader based) OpenGL functions in v3 viewers. Alas, this move also incurs many stability issues on many systems and incompatibility with older graphics card and drivers, thus why I won't do this move till proper fixes are found.

Just for the record, I have similar issues with my Intel GMA card, but knowing how poorly OpenGL works with those cards, I'm just grateful it even works

Its definitely an ATI problem, since drivers past 11.5.

If you are running windows, one simple fix to try tho if you don't want (or can't) downgrade the whole driver set, is placing a copy of the 32 bit atioglxx.dll from the 11.5 driver set directly into the cool VL program folder. The system will use that version of GL for the viewer instead of the currently installed one, and that is the best version I've found so far for the viewer currently, no tree problems and a much faster frame rate than the newer driver versions offer.

I have to do this currently so I have a good experiance in Cool VL for normal daily use, but be able to run 3.2.4 from LL to upload mesh. (Whatever LL did between 3.2.1 and 3.2.4 has badly broken rendering in 11.5, sadly.)

Thank you Max for posting this work around. The flicker had been driving me bonkers for months now. Putting the atioglxx.dll from the 11.5 driver set into my Cool VL folder did the trick... YAY!