Gsdx Hardware Rendering problem

[Steel01]

Looks like you've got that commit in already. I'll test that as soon as the build finishes. And question of curiosity about r5696. What was added in gcc 4.5 that's crucial to pcsx2?

Okay, other problems. None of these are showstoppers, just annoyances. And looks like another couple already got fixed by removing the shader files.

1. ALSA buffer underflows. I'm using pulseaudio like most people on recent distros. I'm not certain if this is a pulse misconfiguration or if alsa is getting assigned the incorrect buffer size or what. But any game I run has poor sounding audio and the console gets spammed with underflow messages. The prime example I have of this is in Xenosaga I, with alsa, the voices in the opening cutscenes are completely indecipherable. Currently, I'm running jack when I'm using pcsx2, but that's kinda annoying right now since I haven't yet set up pulse to use jack when it's running, so all other sound ceases to work during that. On a related note, when using jack output, there's still alsa messages in stdio. Doesn't seem right.

2. Seg fault on exit. I tried to get a gdb output of this, but I can't. Seems Fedora doesn't ship debuginfo packages for multilib and gdb won't run without them. I also don't have a 32-bit install to test with. All I know about this is that if I run pcsx2 and immediately exit, it's fine. But if I run a game, then later exit, it will seg fault instead of exiting normally.

3. This isn't a bug, per-se, but another question of curiosity. What is it about GSdx's hardware renderer that has everyone scared to touch it? Once I got it running yesterday, I was noticing that the character models in FFX (about the only thing to actually render) looked smoother and nicer than in software. It was also already faster than software. It seems to be a great start, but nobody wants to finish it.

Steel01

Edit: Looks like you added a couple new perl dependencies to the project with r5696. perl-Digest and perl-Digest-MD5. *updates build-bot machine*

Edit 2: *thumbsup* The shader files no longer cause problems.

[gregory]

1/ I think the issue is pulseaudio and portaudio. We got portaudio=> alsa => pulseaudio => sound_card and probably a bunch of bug in the interface.
2/ can you give me more details how to reproduce the issue on my side
3/ Don't understand why are you saying that nobody are working on the HW renderer. Did you get any glitches on FFX?
4/ craps, I didn't want to add new dependency! I need to fix it.

[Steel01]

1. So, is that a 'deal with it for now'?
Can portaudio output to pulse? Or would another interface have to be written?

2. *double-checks* Hey, it didn't crash this time. Maybe that was another something related to the GSdx problem. I'll let you know if I see it again and can reproduce it.

3. I thought I saw people commenting that they didn't want to touch the hardware rendering code. Maybe I'm imaging things...
Yeah, lot's of problems. And this is the same in r5669 and r5697. Most games just give me a black screen and never render anything. FFXII doesn't render the videos and the first thing it renders is the 'new game' / 'load' buttons. In the tutorial level, none of the background stuff renders and only sections of the character models. For FFX, nothing in the backgrounds render. The character models are fine, but with the background rendering problem, those models smear across the screen as they move. Inside some buildings, textures flash, then disappear repeatedly. In the menus, the background renders, but no text. Do you want me to grab some screenshots for you?

Steel01

Edit: Reference for someone not liking the HW rendering code: http://code.google.com/p/pcsx2/source/detail?r=5677 (Gabest, comment #7)

[DaTankAC]

Sometimes it takes a few "tries" loading pcsx2, killing it, then loading again to try and get it to cooperate. Linux version can be stubborn. Plus sound issue, as a workaround for scratchy voice and other sound odities, can be dealt with by going to sound plugin setting, switch from alsa to oss, hit ok, then switch back. Gotta love that pulseaudio (sarcasm).

[gregory]

1/ portaudio doesn't support pulse. So it would need to be replaced. However futur plan of SPU2x was to only support portaudio!
3/ Gabest write completely GSdx. Besides you can't compare DX and openGL. Gabest said that the future was APU rathen than GPU. I check FFXII i got the intro video. Could you check error in terminal. Maybe there is a shader compiler error somewhere. Reset GSdx config (just move the ini).

[Steel01]

1. Yuck. Guess I'll poke around upstream portaudio a bit and see if there's any similar alsa->pulse related bug reports.

3. Yeah, I understand that Gabest wrote GSdx (originally DX only and recently ported to OGL). Which was why I was kinda surprised he didn't want to update the hw renderer. I was referring to the first sentence of his comment.
With a new GSdx.ini, the only change being a switch to the hw renderer on r5697 release, I get no intro video on FFXII. Same with r5695 debug, though I also added the debug shader option to the ini. On both, I get no shader compile errors, only the same as mentioned before (replicated below, first a snip from stdio, second Debug.txt)

Code:

DEBUG: check_gl_supported_extension
INFO: GL_ARB_gpu_shader5 is not supported

Code:

Type:Performance        ID:6    Severity:Med    Message:Program/shader state performance warning: Fragment Shader is going to be recompiled because the shader key based on GL state mismatches.
Type:Performance        ID:482  Severity:Med    Message:Program/shader state performance warning: Fragment Shader is going to be recompiled because the shader key based on GL state mismatches.

And yes, it works fine with the software renderer.

Steel01

[gregory]

1/ see here: http://code.google.com/p/pcsx2/issues/detail?id=1413

3/ Yes but DX renderer is working fine for most games. Any change to improve a game will break others.
There is definitevely somethings wrong with Nvidia. Can you test older version? Be aware that older version still need glsl file.

[Steel01]

1. Hey, that looks promising. I'll have to apply the patch and test it. I've also had problems with latency. Even with jack, sounds are delayed about 500ms from the graphics.

3. So, maybe I misunderstood something along the way. Who wrote the opengl port of GSdx? Wasn't it Gabest, or did someone else do that.
Do you have a Nvidia tester or has all the Linux testing been done on ati/amd hardware?
How far back do you want me to test? r5669 did the same thing when I tested it a couple days ago. As I recall, when I started testing the ogl branch a while back, the hardware renderer acted about the same as it does now for me.

Steel01

[gregory]

It's me that wrote the opengl part of gsdx ;-) Target was linux but also made a windows port. Opengl was only tested on amd because I only got an amd card.

I don'k know! I got good report on windows maybe you can do a test (if you can dual boot). Otherwise we will need to do a debug session with apitrace.

[Steel01]

Oh sorry, didn't realize that. Most of it is working great. I only use Linux. Got sick of problems with Windows and the proprietary nature of the beast. So no, I don't have any dual boot available. The only two problems I'm noticing now are the sound latency which seems likely to be fixed by the SDL patch, and the HW renderer. Once those are resolved, pcsx2 on Linux for me should be at least on par with Windows, if not better. You've brought it a long way since I started using pcsx2 on Linux five or six years ago.

Apitrace? That doesn't ring a bell off-hand. I tried to run pcsx2 with gdb a couple days ago and couldn't due to not being able to get the i686 debugtrace packages for Fedora 19. If necessary, I could dual-boot a 32-bit install of Fedora for a while to get the debug output.

I'm currently away from my desktop and won't be back until later tonight. Once back, I'll test the SDL patch (already got a build waiting). After that, I can get back to GSdx testing.

Steel01