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#20 Scaling shaders don't work on MacBook integrated graphics

open
vade
Graphics (7)
5
2009-07-11
2009-06-24
miragj
No

I'm running Open Emu 1.0.0b2, and the QC files now load, but they just show an empty black screen in the billboard.

Discussion

  • Josh

    Josh - 2009-06-24

    Can we get the console output please?

    Thanks

     
  • miragj

    miragj - 2009-06-25

    Console output

     
  • miragj

    miragj - 2009-06-25

    Billboard output

     
  • miragj

    miragj - 2009-06-25

    I realized that the ROM path was wrong, so I changed it to the right path. There's still a problem, although it doesn't exactly do nothing now...

    Using the included glitchnes.nes ROM (which works find in OpenEmu.app), QC gets quite bogged down, and essentially stops doing anything. And all I see in the billboard output is what you can see in the attached picture. It doesn't change. And there's no FPS display either. (At least with the bad rom path, the FPS display worked.)

    The console output doesn't seem to give any indication of this, as far as I can tell, but I've attached it anyway.

    (Also, I wasn't sure if I should file this as a new bug report, or just continue it on this one.)

     
  • vade

    vade - 2009-06-25

    Interesting. What machine are you on? I would suggest removing the Open Emu scaler/filter patch if it is there and just go right out to the billboard from the Open Emu plugin.

    Thanks.

     
  • miragj

    miragj - 2009-06-25

    Removing the scale/filter patch doesn't make any difference.

    I'm on a 1st gen Macbook, running Leopard 10.5.7. (This wouldn't happen to be an issue with my macbook not having a supported graphics chip, would it?)

    Additional info about the problem: I just realized that if I stop the viewer and then move the editor window over the viewer window, then switch back to the viewer window (without starting it again), I can see what I suspect was the correct output when I pressed 'stop'.

     
  • plasticpool

    plasticpool - 2009-06-26

    If it runs fine in OpenEmu.app, the ROM's not the issue. However, using the RAM-glitching methods on certain ROMs may crash QC -- were you using the OpenEmuQCNES or the 'vanilla' OpenEmuQC? You should consider the glitching methods experimental and unstable until we figure out how to safely corrupt the NES despite its many graphical eccentricities.

     
  • plasticpool

    plasticpool - 2009-06-26

    And another thing: if you're using QCNES, do you have the rewinder turned on? If you leave it on long enough, it may fill up your available system RAM -- I can't recall at the moment whether Nestopia automatically puts a limit on rewinder length.

     
  • miragj

    miragj - 2009-06-27

    I was using the included "1 - OpenEmu.qtz" file, so no, this isnt an OpenEmuQCNES issue. (More precisely: it isn't _just_ an OpenEmuQCNES issue, since that's not working either.)

    Are there any other settings besides ROM path I should have changed? And is there any other way I could provide some debug info? And is it possible that the previous version might have left something laying around somewhere that's messing stuff up?

    Oh, and I tried other (non-OpenEmu) QC files and they work fine.

     
  • plasticpool

    plasticpool - 2009-06-27

    If you installed our first release or one from svn, you might indeed have old files causing issues. The current release installs the following files:

    /Library/Application Support/OpenEmu/Cores/[all supported cores as .oecoreplugin files]
    /Library/Application Support/OpenEmu/Filters/[all the scalling filters as .oefilterplugin files]
    /Library/Framework/OpenEmuBase.framework
    /Applications/OpenEmu.app

    The old version put files in:

    ~/Library/Application Support/OpenEmu/
    ~/Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Plug-Ins/
    (where "~" means your home directory)

    Look in the old locations and if you have OE files there, tell us and delete them.

     
  • miragj

    miragj - 2009-06-27

    I check, and I had a ~/Library/Application Support/OpenEmu/ dir but it was empty. I deleted it anyway. Also, I had some plugins in ~/Library/Graphics/Quartz Composer Plug-Ins/ but I don't think they were for OpenEmu (they were v002 RuttEtra.plugin, v002Blur.plugin, v002MotionBlur.plugin, and v002ZoomBlur.plugin) but I deleted those anyway, also (I don't need them). After those deletions, there was no change in the behavior of Open Emu in QC.

    And, for good measure, I checked to make sure the other dirs you mentioned had stuff there, and they did, as they are supposed to.

     
  • plasticpool

    plasticpool - 2009-06-27

    Hmmm. Try this:

    * Make sure you're using the original version of the example patch: copy "1 - OpenEmu.qtz" from the disk image to your desktop. Open it.
    * Load some other ROM -- something that works in OpenEmu.app and not glitchNES -- in the Open Emu patch. After typing in the path, hit Enter or click somewhere else so that the patch processes the new path (from your logs it looks like you know this but it has tripped up some other users who are new to QC).
    * If you don't see video from the ROM in the Viewer window, please describe anything the situation here and paste the console log (grab a generous number of lines above and below the QC lines just so we can see what else is going on).

    thanks again for keeping at it and filing this report. :)

     
  • miragj

    miragj - 2009-06-28

    Well, it's working now. I had to get rid of the filter before the billboard, but now it works great. Perhaps the first time it was suggested to me to drop the filter, I was using an older version or had something else screwy going on. Thanks for your time with helping me solve this.

    It should be noted that with the filter, I was hearing the music REALLY slowly, and seeing no graphics (in fact, same issue as I detailed before: bogged down system, no graphics output, after I stop the viewer I can see graphics after moving another window over the viewer window). So I suppose my issue was with the filter all along. Should the filter be bogging my system down this much? If not, I'll continue helping out debugging this, just let me know. (Without the filter, I get 60fps or better running either Metroid or glitchnes)

     
  • plasticpool

    plasticpool - 2009-06-28

    Glad you've got it working now! Sounds like your graphics card can't handle one of the scaling filters. Please try all of them (via the dropdown box in the filters patch) and let us know which ones kill the framerate. Also save and upload a copy of your system profile (/Applications/Utilities/System Profiler, File > Save) so we can try to make a version of the filter that will work on your card or, if not, at least make a list of non-compatible GPUs. Thanks.

     
  • miragj

    miragj - 2009-07-03

    Alright. I tested them all, and none of them work. I was using "2x" and that and "2xHQ" (I think it's called) gave the problems described. The 4x ones gave the problems, plus some OSX spinning beachballs, too.

    I've attached an abridged profile, since much of it seemed irrelevant and I'm slightly paranoid. If you needed stuff that I left out, though, let me know.

     
  • miragj

    miragj - 2009-07-03

    Profile of the computer with the problems

     
  • plasticpool

    plasticpool - 2009-07-11
    • labels: 1165579 --> Graphics
    • assigned_to: nobody --> drparallax
    • summary: QC examples don't do anything --> Scaling shaders don't work on MacBook integrated graphics
     
  • plasticpool

    plasticpool - 2009-07-11

    Thanks for the profile. That MacBook's integrated graphics chip has notoriously limited support for certain OpenGL and GLSL capabilities. vade (drparallax below) might know of ways to accommodate that so I'll assign this bug to him. ;) Thanks again for testing!

     

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