New Radeon Drivers out... 3.8

Must have just been released today... I'm downloading them as we speak.

Do ya think they'll work a smidge better with SL? I pray to god yeah

Lordfly

Well, I played for about 5 minutes before my internet connection died...

here's what i found.

Good: Texture banding is removed /fixed (silly stripes on textures, making grey textures, for instance, bright red)

REALLY REALLY BAD: My avatar looks like he's the half-brother of Tinkerbell. He shimmers and twinkles like he's covered in fairy dust.

This is not only annoying, but bothersome to look at.

Every Driver Release from ATI is getting worse for SL, and it's starting to make me a mite pissed off.

I would roll back to previous releases, but I do play other games, and they hoot and holler if I try to put an older release up.

I'll try fidgeting with the settings and see if I can make it live again.

BTW, my card is a Radeon 9000, 128 MB DDR ram.... currently running Catalyst 3.8 drivers... but for how long?

Grr,
Lordfly

Hey, Lordfly -

We've been testing with the latest ATI drivers, we are aware of the problem, and are in contact with ATI regarding it. Hopefully we'll be able to figure out what the cause of the problem is, and get the fixes into either an upcoming Second Life or ATI Catalyst release.

In any case, in the 1.1 release we do have a workaround that gets rid of this problem, at the cost of either running slower (software blending) or disabling bump-mapping on avatars.

- Doug

And upon further investigation, the texture banding is still at large

Lordfly

Well I guess I won't be upgrading to Catalyst 3.8, then. Thanks for the heads-up, Lordfly!

Ah, thank goodness, it isn't just me and my screwed-up PC. I had exactly the same symptoms Lordfly reported.

I tried it with the SL 1.1 preview as well. Not nearly as bad, but there was still a spurious lighting effect at the edge of my AV's hair fringe. Also in 1.1, the "ripple water" effect looks absolutely freaky -- you occasionally see a huge green flickering matrix when looking out at the "ocean" -- but all is well if you simply turn that feature off.

texture banding is fixed in 1.1... that's the single most annoying artifact i've ever seen on any game, EVER. At least, I think it's fixed... i hung around in 1.1 for about a half hour, and it didn't come up. Hopefully the texture corruption isn't a result of going to many sims, because i can't test that in 1.1.

Lordfly

Pretty similar situation with my 9200 128DDR, running 1.1 Version 8 with the Cat 3.8 driver. I've submitted bug reports with screen caps showing all the screwed up rendering (black ripple water, Avatar flicker, etc.).

But, for everything other than SL the Cat 3.8 kicks major buttocks! I would never go back to an earlier version.

So, is there going to be a patch to 1.0.x to handle the Catalyst 3.8 drivers? Or is 1.1 so close to release that it's not worth it. (FWIW, I've dropped back to the old drivers, and don't plan on reinstalling as long as SL is still running 1.0.11.)

What the heck is "texture banding"?

imagine seeing an off-color candycane on everything in SL. Now imagine the candycane disappearing or reappearing depending on how far you were from the prim.

Texture banding

LF

i cant wait to see SL without all the texture banding.. it seemed to only happen when i saw a really nice build :/

Im having major problems with the Catalyst 3.8 drivers... am fiddling with settings atm to try and not crash directly upon entry to the world.

WOOT!! OMG It worked! I turned off Object Bump Map (damn) and I can walk and move my camera without immediately crashing... Spread the word!!

Lindens, I want this fixed, Now I dont get to experiance bump mapping on objects for awhile


Im running on a Dell Inspiron 8200, 512 MB RAM, 64 MB video Ram, on an ATI Radeon Mobility 9000. I downloaded a copy of the 3.8 drivers from ATI.com, but they wouldnt work (by default) w/ mobility (OEM issue). So I downloaded the Mobility Modder from driverheaven.net and modded the driver installer, and all is peachy (Save Object Bump Mapping, of course)


EDIT:

AARRGH! It happened again... Just after I was finishing this post, I moved again in game, and responded to an IM... and I crashed with the same appearence (cmd.exe window pops up)

I turned off bump mapping for avitars now.. trying again...

Responce: Nope, crashed again.

Test 5: Turning off all unnecessessarry effects.

Crashed AGAIN. This time I had Object and Avitar Bump Map off, Object, Tree, and Avitar detail sliders to minimum... Trying again.. unchecking the things that are supposed to make it 'fast' now.

Ok, unchecked all checkboxes, including avitar vertex program and AGP graphics accelleration, and I ran smoothly. My avitar was glossy/shiny though, so I turned it back on (while in-game). Then a few minutes after, there was this black shadow around my avitar. I tryed turning avitar vertex program back off, but as I closed the prefrences window, I crashed.

Trying again, turning everything back on (to defaults) except the avitar vertex program thing.