Linux support thread

[dracflam]

On another note, an issue I'd like to report with FPS: Occasionally the game will drop from 50-60 fps to 1-5 fps and it never recovers. This only seems to happen sometimes, when docking and walking off the ship. From then on the game is in perma-slow mode. However if I go into graphics options during this slowdown and choose a graphic preset (can even be the one i'm already on), the slowdown instantly disappears and the game goes back to playing just fine.

Linux mint 17.2, Nvidia gtx 970, v 346.72, amd fx8350, 16gb ram

A few questions:
- How much memory does that gtx 970 have?
- How long do you usually have to play for this to happen?
- It only happens when docking or did it sometimes happen when doing something else?

We've had this kind of problem before especially on 1gb gpus. Whenever settings change or alt+tab happens, we sometimes have to reallocate render-targets. If the gpu is low on memory they could end up in system memory killing performance. I implemented some additional flushing to help with this but it only kicks in when ATI_meminfo extension reports we're low on memory.
Can you check with glxinfo and/or glewinfo if your gpu/driver supports ATI_meminfo?

Another issue: my saitek av8r won't let me remap any axes. Buttons generally work however, and ingame basic pitch/yaw are working despite the options screen not detecting them.

Hmm weird, you can't even remap pitch/yaw? If you load the default mapping you should see "X Axis", "Y Axis" and a few others already mapped, regardless of whether you even have a joystick. When you click to remap one of the axes does simply nothing happen and you have to press escape, or does the setting immediately get set to something (could be blank)?

@ezra-r

Hmm this is bad, we've had that before the first alpha release, originally it was just a problem with the fact that we upload meshes on another thread, and if there's just a few commands queued GL wouldn't actually push them for execution so we had to call glFlush. In general problems like this are either clobbering of vertex/index buffers, bad or incomplete uploads, unfinished uploads (the driver didn't sync properly), or other such.
My first guess would be that it's related to the driver, did you switch to 352.63 recently-ish? Can you try the older 340.96 or other similar? I'll try 352.63 soon as well (I did use it before but it was causing problems with nsight so I had to rollback).

The main question I have is if the artifacts go away after a few moments? Or once they happen they're permanent as long as a certain mesh is in view?

EDIT:
@fallenwizard Ohh, thanks I didn't notice that thread, will read through it in a sec.

@everyone I'm reading/aware of the other issues in this thread and bug-tracker, if I'm not replying it usually means I've no questions, or not enough time to look into it yet;p

970 has 4gb total, 3.5gb of 'good' vram, and 512mb of 'not so good' vram, which is reported as if it were just a 'solid' 4gb by the card itself.

I'm not sure its time-related. It seems to be relatively random, but maybe an hour or so? Sometimes I can play for many hours and repeated dockings and travelling without seeing it at all.

I've only ever seen it immediately after docking and starting to walk down the ship ramp.

I did get one instance of visual artifacts after upgrading my nvidia driver to 352.x so I'm guessing that one is a driver-related bug. I haven't seen it other than that one time so far.

Here is my glxinfo
~ $ glxinfo|grep ATI
GL_ARB_viewport_array, GL_ARB_window_pos, GL_ATI_draw_buffers,
GL_ATI_texture_float, GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once,
GL_ARB_viewport_array, GL_ARB_window_pos, GL_ATI_draw_buffers,
GL_ATI_texture_float, GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once,

With regard to the joysticks, what you described is correct. If I load default joystick controls, i can generally use the X/Y axes but not throttle, etc since its not bound to the right axis. If i click to rebind an axis, including the X/Ys it doesn't detect anything and I have to ESC out of the binding.

[ezra-r]

@timon37

I tried again in Beta 7 (before switching kernel and graphics driver to see if it was fixed) and I coulnd't reproduce the issue, so, beta 7 had some changes for this ? Even took a screenshot with steam to see if the screen would free, but nothing, every works now. I see no mention in the changes list.

[timon37]

@ezra-r

Yeah things are "a bit" hectic, and now that I don't do builds/releases on my own it's harder to keep track of what lands when/where;p

Beta 7 aka build 42, has a workaround for the steam-print-screen issue (they clobber the gl_read_framebuffer binding).
I also updated sdl to the official 2.0.4 version.

[ezra-r]

@ezra-r

Yeah things are "a bit" hectic, and now that I don't do builds/releases on my own it's harder to keep track of what lands when/where;p

Beta 7 aka build 42, has a workaround for the steam-print-screen issue (they clobber the gl_read_framebuffer binding).
I also updated sdl to the official 2.0.4 version.

I exited and started the game several times, now I changed graphic settings from ultra tu custom and improve framerate a bit, from high to normal in most cases and when heading to the wheat station I got the artifacts when I was approaching the station through the highway, BUT the thing "goes back to normal by itself" upon arrival (exiting out of highway), some artifacts can be seen or at least the shadows of the artifacts on the map (which looks clear blue), but the difference is the game is playable and I travelled around a bit and the thing seems to remain stable.

So whatever, an improvement has been made, the issue is less annoying and does not stop playability.


Btw,about the long range scanner sound. Will we get the real effect soon(ish)?

Also, I activated the -showfps parameter, no biggy but sometimes it doesn't show up as parts of the cockpit seems to show in front of it on occasions (not always), as in the counter sometimes is on the front, sometimes not.

[fallenwizard]

Seems like I've hit a point where the performance issues are apparent even after loading the game:

Here's the save game:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bzilq ... nFtTExFX28

This save immediately uses 4.8 GB of RAM, then RAM usage grows. I've also gotten a "trade offer has been added to the computer database" message while sitting in empty space. Afaik this shouldn't happen.

Frame rate is really bad as well. I seem to get max ~10 fps with this one.

Version: 4.0 Beta 7

(For everyone else, this save requires HoL so don't bother to try to load it if you are not a HoL beta tester )

[timon37]

@ezra-r

I didn't really change anything that could affect this, so it probably didn't get better, you were just lucky recently or the settings changes make it less likely to occur.

The "is broken when approaching but is good when close" is just a matter of which LOD of a model gets broken, if you flew further away from the station the artifact would reappear.

@fallenwizard

I'll look into it. Do you have any mods (you probably mentioned already but searching through the forum is annoying;p)?

[fallenwizard]

@fallenwizard

I'll look into it. Do you have any mods (you probably mentioned already but searching through the forum is annoying;p)?

Only TAF to make collecting trade offer updates less infuriating. Thanks for taking a look into it.

[fallenwizard]

Please take a look at this issue before the release of 4.0. Thanks: http://www.egosoft.com:8282/jira/browse/XRNIX-65

[radcapricorn]

I'm wondering if anyone tried using HRTF with OpenAL. I've found a couple of data sets that do seem to sound "right" to me when I just listen to the demo sound. However, in-game it makes certain sounds appear as if coming from behind instead of from the front, i.e. NPCs speaking in front of me, so I'm not sure whether it's the data set, OpenAL, the game, or my head Did anyone try it?

[timon37]

I'm wondering if anyone tried using HRTF with OpenAL. I've found a couple of data sets that do seem to sound "right" to me when I just listen to the demo sound. However, in-game it makes certain sounds appear as if coming from behind instead of from the front, i.e. NPCs speaking in front of me, so I'm not sure whether it's the data set, OpenAL, the game, or my head Did anyone try it?

Hmm, actually now that I think about it, it could be the game...
I don't really have time right now but it can probably be verified with a second pair of headphones or speakers, just to make a "real" 4 or 6 speaker setup and see if the corners or center-front are correct (so that we can rule out the hrtf or head quality variables;).

So anyone feeling adventurous to test it for me?

[radcapricorn]

You mean test it on, say, 5.1 with hrtf disabled? I should've thought of that myself Assuming I'm able to convince openal/pulseaudio to output 5.1, I think I'll be able to test it tomorrow

[timon37]

@fallenwizard you'll need to make the savegame public, or accept my access request;p

[radcapricorn]

timon37, some feedback regarding the issues I opened (some of it is scattered all around, so I thought to consolidate a bit):

PrintScreen crashes: I haven't encountered a single crash since then.

Alt+Tab on GNOME3: Original response is here in case it was missed. I must add that in RC1 the delay got significantly shorter. But if I e.g. alt+tab in main menu, alt+tabbing back results in strange colorful spots all over the Overwatch. This screenshot is taken with Gnome's PrintScreen, since the game is still unresponsive at that time. The rendering returns to normal once the game resumes processing.
Unfortunately, I also discovered that on occasion alt+tabbing will crash the game (coincidentally, this happens with X3 as well). I'll try to catch it on the log.

Graphical glitches still do occur, though rarely, even with the nvidia 340 driver (originally commented here, screenshots and Steam log provided).

UI mission briefing glitch is also still present, though feels more rare with the 340 driver.

Freigher details not updating: apparently, wasn't really a Linux issue and it looks like it's fixed now.

[fallenwizard]

@fallenwizard you'll need to make the savegame public, or accept my access request;p

Sorry, I don't know why it wasn't public. Please try again.

[timon37]

@radcapricorn

Yeah, the dots in the envmap can happen, nothing to be really worried about, just a shortcoming of how the engine handles reloading UI. Probably won't get fixed.

The UI mission briefing is mission dependent, basically the given mission doesn't specify what to render, so whatever was rendered before will be shown, which because on some codepaths we don't clear stuff can result in garbage, which frankly is preferable to black since then there's a bugreport and it can get fixed (btw I did forward the issue to the right person, though I can't guarantee it'll get fixed).

@fallenwizard

We can reproduce the problem and we're looking into it.
How exactly did you get into that situation? E.g. did you just stay in that zone and leave the game running for a long time, or were you mining there?

As a workaround you can fly forward and a bit to the right until you enter "Buried Treasure", and the performance should be much more acceptable.
Then you can fly back to the empty zone and it should still be fine.

[fallenwizard]

We can reproduce the problem and we're looking into it.
How exactly did you get into that situation? E.g. did you just stay in that zone and leave the game running for a long time, or were you mining there?

I was there wating with SETA for my fleet to catch up with me, since they are too damn slow. I was in the temp zone to prevent the random marauder attacks.

Then I got the performance drop and it seems to persist even after saving the game. After a few seconds, I got the "trade offer has been stored in the ship computer database" voice line while I was in the temp zone.

[radcapricorn]

timon37, thanks for the feedback.

Regarding HRTF, it turned out that OpenAL simply wasn't loading the preset (found out via steam -console), and specifying full path to it in .alsoftrc config file was required. Now the game does sound much better, especially in combat and in highways (i.e. when passing by ships or stationary ad-signs).
There seem to be a few weird positioning things, but I'll have to test with 5.1 first (still haven't gotten around to it), and find a way to record it, because explaining sounds with words is not very productive

[ezra-r]

@timon37

I tried with new specs, in fact new install with debian 8 jessie and default kernel/nvidia driver:

Code: Select all

Processor Information:
    Vendor:  GenuineIntel
    CPU Family:  0x6
    CPU Model:  0x3e
    CPU Stepping:  0x4
    CPU Type:  0x0
    Speed:  25500 Mhz
    12 logical processors
    6 physical processors
    HyperThreading:  Supported
    FCMOV:  Supported
    SSE2:  Supported
    SSE3:  Supported
    SSSE3:  Supported
    SSE4a:  Unsupported
    SSE41:  Supported
    SSE42:  Supported
    
Network Information:
    Network Speed:  
    
Operating System Version:
    Debian GNU/Linux 8.3 (jessie) (64 bit)
    Kernel Name:  Linux
    Kernel Version:  3.16.0-4-amd64
    X Server Vendor:  The X.Org Foundation
    X Server Release:  11604000
    X Window Manager:  GNOME Shell
    Steam Runtime Version:  steam-runtime-release_2015-06-12
    
Video Card:
    Driver:  NVIDIA Corporation GeForce GTX 780/PCIe/SSE2

    Driver Version:  4.4.0 NVIDIA 340.96
    OpenGL Version: 4.4
    Desktop Color Depth: 24 bits per pixel
    Monitor Refresh Rate: 60 Hz
    VendorID:  0x10de
    DeviceID:  0x1004
    Number of Monitors:  1
    Number of Logical Video Cards:  1
    Primary Display Resolution:  1920 x 1080
    Desktop Resolution: 1920 x 1080
    Primary Display Size: 20,91" x 11,77"  (23,98" diag)
                                            53,1cm x 29,9cm  (60,9cm diag)
    Primary Bus: PCI Express 16x
    Primary VRAM: 3072 MB
    Supported MSAA Modes:  2x 4x 8x 16x 
    
Sound card:
    Audio device: Realtek ALC898
    
Memory:
    RAM:  16035 Mb
    
Miscellaneous:
    UI Language:  English
    LANG:  es_ES.UTF-8
    Microphone:  Not set
    Total Hard Disk Space Available:  466558 Mb
    Largest Free Hard Disk Block:  114609 Mb   

At first, new config, everything seemed fine when I arrive to the big wheat station in MAelstron, until I change graphic settings (default is borderless window, 0x antialias, medium setting, etc), when I switch to fullscreen, then the screen goes nuts, most things except planets are not correctly painted and dark black, but I noticed one thing, the moment I selected FXAA, it started working perfectly, no matter what else I changed in graphic settings, will keep testing under this to see if it changes and I will add stuff If I have new findings.

[radcapricorn]

Noticed that too, on very rare occasions screen-space shaders seem to misbehave, and we get either all black objects with just backgrounds visible, or some sort of edge-detection paintover Happens very rarely when changing graphics settings, and in my whole playtime only happened once on it's own (possibly caused by Steam pop-up).

Toggling FXAA or Glow effects seems to return things to normal.

[Corbet]

Just wanted to say big thank you to whole Linux team. The last slowdown and flickering problem in stations seems to be fixed in X Rebirth v4.0 + (HOL).
Great work!

(SteamOS 2.0, GTX 750 Ti)