Shaders for lights :(

[Nash]

I guess there is no chance of seeing this work in an ATI, ever, now is there?

Looking at the shots in this, it appears that shader lights fixes the "lights appear additive in coloured fog" problem - and it looks very nice. And I'll never be able to experience it.

(I'm on an ATI 4870 X2, it's not an old card... it's pretty high end for its time (last year)).

[Graf Zahl]

I don't know how to fix this because I don't know which part of this is responsible for the problems - and both are no easy fixes.

There's 2 possibilities:

1. This feature uploads a large buffer of data to the card for each lit primitive. The way this is done may cause problems

My problem here is that 'proper' means to do this would necessitate some awkward buffer synchronization which would render the whole feature useless because it would stall the rendering pipeline even more than it already is on ATI.

2. The card or compiler cannot handle shaders with dynamic loops. (Unlikely but with ATI's track record not completely impossible.)

If that's the case I cannot do much except writing separate shaders for different amounts of lights. Again something that would render the feature useless.


Add to that that I don't own an ATI card to test on (and I most certainly won't waste money on pne!) so you can imagine where this is going. When you think about the fact that almost all the optimizations I implemented last fall did not work on ATI cards due to driver bugs you can imagine my motivation to invest work here, can't you?

[Nash]

I wish I lived in Germany. I would soooo send you my second (and now collecting dust) 4870 X2 just to motivate you.

[spoiler]For the record, it's collecting dust because when I switched to a new motherboard, its design - in addition to the fact that the power supply for my casing has to be at the bottom - simply did not allow two thick graphics cards like the 4870 X2. There simply wasn't enough space. I can *sort* of cram it in, but it would leave no space for air to flow and the cards would heat up quickly. On top of that, all of my experiences with CrossFire X performance during actual gameplay were most unimpressive, I decided to not even bother using the second card. [/spoiler]

[doomexpert]

I wish I lived in Germany. I would soooo send you my second (and now collecting dust) 4870 X2 just to motivate you.

[spoiler]For the record, it's collecting dust because when I switched to a new motherboard, its design - in addition to the fact that the power supply for my casing has to be at the bottom - simply did not allow two thick graphics cards like the 4870 X2. There simply wasn't enough space. I can *sort* of cram it in, but it would leave no space for air to flow and the cards would heat up quickly. On top of that, all of my experiences with CrossFire X performance during actual gameplay were most unimpressive, I decided to not even bother using the second card. [/spoiler]

i have also a ati 4870x2 with an 4870x2 cooler, so silents is he. you cant heard him also when playing crysis at his top. i get around 40 fps with crysis at High settings.
i agree with you this ati card is a very big card i had to build my system cooler out otherwise the grafice card wont fit.
that why i'm so happy because gzdoom didn't work on later versions then catalist 9.10. and i had a very lag in splintercell conviction because video driver was a bit old.
now with the latest ati driver i get 60 fps. in scc and gzdoom works fine with r786.

i agree with shaders for lights doesn't work, i get 0 fps or 3 fps. lol.