Thanks for reporting the problem, I'll look into how that can be avoided. Unfortunately I can't replicate any of the problems here. Can you switch cameras between F1 and F2 to see if the problem persists? And you're using the latest version of my exe?
First, I wouldn't recommend running really high detail level.
They way it renders it, is X * X quads (2 triangles) per face, with 6 faces. Total polys >12 million, total vertexes > 6 million for detail 1024. the amount of data (float values) pumped per vertex is 2 for texture coord, 3 for vertex, 3 for normal, 4 for colour. Colour probably becomes a 32 bit for the whole lot, but the others will probably still be stored as 32-bit float, so there's a total of 8*4+4 = 36 bytes of video data per vertex. Plus it has to store which vertex belongs to which ploygon strip, and each vertex is a member of two adjacent strips, that adds 2 x 32 bit values for each vertex, bringing the total to 44 bytes per vertex.
With 6 million vertex's that means the video card is trying to store a single dlist object with something like at least 6 x 44 million = 254 MB of video data. I wouldn't be surprised if that's more than OpenGL can handle with a single display list, and it's returning an error code rather than creating the display list, hence the "invisible" planet. At 96, it's only storing 1% the about of data, or 2.5 MB.
Second - can you check whether reducing hardware acceleration avoids the problem? And let me know something about your video card? Eg make, V-Ram etc. I'm surprised that there's errors at the 96 level. I might try breaking up the dlist into smaller pieces and see if that fixes your problem.
Consider me stupid - I can't figure out HOW to reduce acceleration. I know it's usually done through DxDiag, but apparently it's not so in Windows 7. The NVidia control panel is of no use either.
My card's a GeForce GT330M, with 1GB VRAM.
I've tried the "debug" version, but can see no log or anything. Once again, I tried "Bob" (and "BOB") as planet names, two times out of four I got screen garblage, at default 96 detail. Switching camera modes does nothing, it's as if the rendering engine itself goes haywire. I can (vaguely) see how stuff rotates as I move the mouse, but there isn't a single shape, triangles notwithstanding. When I zoom in, the whole screen is just two triangle faces, in primary colors of the planet. Zoomed out, it's a black strip between two grayish polygons. Weird stuff.
Edit: Er, whoops, that wasn't the debug version. Unrarred the old one again by accident. Still see no log though, but there's definitely a change. Now ANYTHING I try ends up with a big black screen through which various polygons occasionally flicker. I guess my laptop just can't stomach your programming.
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Topic: Planet Generator 110902 Crashing into the Sun Edition (Read 11196 times)