Cool VL Viewer forum

Turning on local lights causes hideous rendering. I've only noticed this fairly recently, and no other tested viewers (Linden viewer, singularity, firestorm V4, catznip) exhibit this behaviour (they do all have other problems though, that CoolVL doesn't have). I've attached a partial grab to illustrate the problem.

Found in both 1.26.2 and 1.26.4

Running on ArchLinux X64 - ATI HD4670 gfx card and catalyst 12.3 (it's there with 12.2 and 12.1, too).

I can't be certain when this first started, but it's fairly recent (I've been using CoolVL for a few months). Doesn't matter whether shadows are active or not. Simply enabling local lights is enough.

probably worth mentioning that the distortion is only there when the viewer is in the illumination radius of the light. Zoom out the light still illuminates within it's range, but the corruption vanishes.

Graphics driver issue, not a viewer bug... I'm afraid I can't do anything about it. Try disabling "Automatic Alpha Masks (deferred)" in Advanced -> Rendering.

Disabling automatic alpha masks makes no difference.

I'm a bit concerned that you say it's a driver bug. If that were the case, surely other viewers would be similarly affected, which I've already confirmed they aren't?

No need to - for the record:

Imprudence renders correctly (1.3 and 1.4)
Singularity renders correctly
LL viewer renders correctly
Firestorm renders correctly
Catnipz renders correctly

CoolVL - doesn't

CoolVL DOES do everything else better, which is why I'd rather it worked than jump. If the drivers were at fault, I would expect at least one of the others to share symptoms, which they don't. The ONLY viewer exhibiting this behaviour is coolvl. Since in all other respects CoolVl is my preferred viewer, I'll tolerate it. Firestorm would be my next choice, but still proves unstable here. That could improve, too.

NONE of the cited viewers uses the v2.6 renderer !!!!!

They either use the v1.23/SG v1.4 renderer (for which deferred rendering was not even officially supported) or the v3 renderer (which got an entirely different renderer, that many old cards and Open GL drivers have *many* troubles with, even with deferred rendering off).

The Cool VL Viewer for now uses the v2.6 renderer that got the immense advantage of working on all hardware (old and modern) but that does not support deferred rendering as well as the v3 renderer does. Deferred rendering shall be considered BETA code anyway (even v3 viewers got troubles with it on many drivers/hardware combinations). It is NOT guaranteed to work on your particular hardware/driver combination, PERIOD.

See the roadmap about planned renderer changes. In the mean time I will NOT waste my time trying to chase graphic glitches that I cannot even reproduce on my systems.

If you are not happy with my decisions, I encourage you to go search elsewhere for greener pastures !

Thank you for your more detailed explanation. I now better understand the issue (which is all I really wanted - it saves me going through every setting I can find trying to fix it locally over and over again). I also note the .5 experimental branch will start the migration to the new renderer, so I can wait until then.