I'm having problems with TG2 as in both the preview render and the Node Graph is not working for me. I had updated to the newest graphics drivers for my ATI X1900XT on the day I came back from holiday, and it also then after I had installed the new drivers that TG2 wouldn't work anymore. I've tried reinstalling it but the problem persists, as in greyed out blank where the preview and node graph screens are.
Anyone else having this problem, or am I the only one? ???
What operating system are you running? Are the drivers you have installed "beta" drivers, or final release, WHQL? I presume you have restarted after driver install of course. As an experiment you can try reducing acceleration on the Troubleshooting tab of the Advanced section of your graphics card settings.
- Oshyan
I have XP x64 edition, and whenever I install new graphics drivers, I do a clean install, removing the previous drivers before installing the new ones, and I only use final release, WHQL certified drivers. ATI Catalyst version 7.7 to be precise, the newest ones on the ATI website. I'll give the Acceleration thing a try, but I won't do it permenantly, as my system is also a gaming rig :P
EDIT: Tried lowering the video acceleration, but the results the same, the windows aren't showing up. :-\
TG2 uses OpenGL for several of its drawing functions, including of course the 3D preview. The only thing I can imagine then is that this newest driver changes some of the basic OGL functionality in some way. Is it possible for you to revert to the previous drivers? Did you upgrade with specific improvements in mind, or just to be using the latest? You might try looking through the control panel for OGL-specific settings and see if any have an effect. You might also try (just as a temporary test) adjusting bit depth and/or resolution.
- Oshyan
I upgraded the drivers as I was in need of updating, plus to improve on the performance and stability of certain games I have (Colin McRae Dirt, along with various recent games). I tried changing the two OpenGL options in ATI Catalyst Control Centre (Triple Buffering & Force 24-bit Z-buffer depth), but both of them don't help in any way as both screens remain greyed out. Is it possible that the windows aren't initialising properly under these drivers? Either something to do with the coding or with the drivers themselves, or a bit of both that have caused these problems... I dunno what I can do to test Terragen 2 as to see what is exactly going on, but it seems to me like the windows are frozen and not updating. Well, I'm not going to use a previous driver any time soon, but I'll wait and see what the next drivers will do. I could send some feedback to ATI to see if anything can be done, but I haven't seen any other forum posts with the same problem, so I don't know if its just me or not. Would be more helpful if more people with similar hardware or OS would leave feedback really...
For better or worse Vista is in the minority amongst TG2 users at the moment. We are working on getting Vista systems in-house for testing but we have already had mixed reports of compatibility - many people seem to have no problems, but a few like yourself have fairly serious issues. It's probably worth reporting to ATI, though as you said if nobody else has seen it and if it's not affecting other applications, it's unlikely to get major attention on their end. We'll also be looking into general OpenGL compatibility and stability issues as we move toward the final product and this, combined with more extensive Vista testing, will hopefully lead to a solution.
It's unfortunate that the problem can't be resolved more immediately for you but I think we've exhausted most troubleshooting options at this point. I will post here again if we come up with any other possible fixes so you may want to put this topic on Notify if it's not already.
- Oshyan
Oh well... I'll just have to take another hiatus on Terragen 2 for the moment. I'll put this thread on notify, so I'll be informed by any new posts. It's not like my life depends on TG2, so I'll wait for any new drivers from ATI or patches made by you. I'm also not intending to migrate to Vista any time soon, but I'll wait and see on any developments and such. Thanks for all the help though.
Ah my mistake, you're on XP64 not Vista. I actually have that installed in a dual boot configuration. I will see if I can test it, although I don't have the same graphics card you do unfortunately.
- Oshyan
Ahh... it'll still be useful to check nonetheless. Unfortunate you don't have a similar graphics card, but thanks for checking.
I tried the new drivers from ATI, but the problem persists. Could be something more fundamental within the coding in TG2 which may be conflicting with newer iterations of ATI's graphics drivers. Something isn't initialising properly, and its causing both the Preview and Node graph windows to be greyed out and frozen. That's all I can really think of, but again, since it seems to be only me getting this bug, looks like I'll just have to sit and wait this one out.
Oshyan pointed me here from another thread I started on the same problem.
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=2134.0
From what I can tell it seems to be a problem with the new drivers not something specific to Terragen 2. Since upgrading i've got the same problem as you Bluefinger. But i've also got a problem with Blender since upgrading the drivers as well which I didn't have before. So it seems we may have to wait for ATI to fix this problem.
Quote from: reck on August 25, 2007, 07:59:01 PM
Oshyan pointed me here from another thread I started on the same problem.
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=2134.0
From what I can tell it seems to be a problem with the new drivers not something specific to Terragen 2. Since upgrading i've got the same problem as you Bluefinger. But i've also got a problem with Blender since upgrading the drivers as well which I didn't have before. So it seems we may have to wait for ATI to fix this problem.
Excellent... if it's affecting something like Blender, then it is a driver problem. With this, I can be sure to send feedback to ATI, so all that's left to do is wait for a fix.
Do either of you have other OpenGL applications to test with? It would be useful to know if there are additional applications affected...
- Oshyan
Quote from: Oshyan on August 25, 2007, 08:22:19 PM
Do either of you have other OpenGL applications to test with? It would be useful to know if there are additional applications affected...
- Oshyan
HAHAHA! I just tried running Google Earth in OpenGL mode.... and guess what? It doesn't work either! Works just fine in DirectX mode though... so it's definitely drivers issues...
Well that's a relief from our end anyway! A bit poor form by ATI to have released a driver with broken OpenGL though. Granted it's not used in the majority of games these days, but lots of professional apps still rely heavily on it, as do many open source graphics-related projects.
- Oshyan
Quote from: Oshyan on August 25, 2007, 08:35:00 PM
Well that's a relief from our end anyway! A bit poor form by ATI to have released a driver with broken OpenGL though. Granted it's not used in the majority of games these days, but lots of professional apps still rely heavily on it, as do many open source graphics-related projects.
- Oshyan
Yeah... I checked with other applications which can use OpenGL for draw functions, and its all the same. A serious fault on ATI's part... and usually they are pretty good with their drivers. Shame really...
I've just uninstalled 7.8 and installed 7.7 but i've still got the redrawing problem :( I've found out it's only a problem on my main monitor, if I drag terragen to my second monitor everything works ok (same with blender) so why would this make a difference do you think? I could keep going back to older ATI drivers but I play a lot of games as well so don't really want to do this.
Can anyone offer any suggetions to what I might alter to get TG2 working on my main monitor? Could it be some setting in the ati control panel?
I know this is probably a ati problem not a TG2 problem but I can't find any info on this when I did a google seach.
Thanks
Quote from: reck on August 31, 2007, 04:31:45 PM
I've just uninstalled 7.8 and installed 7.7 but i've still got the redrawing problem :( I've found out it's only a problem on my main monitor, if I drag terragen to my second monitor everything works ok (same with blender) so why would this make a difference do you think? I could keep going back to older ATI drivers but I play a lot of games as well so don't really want to do this.
Can anyone offer any suggetions to what I might alter to get TG2 working on my main monitor? Could it be some setting in the ati control panel?
I know this is probably a ati problem not a TG2 problem but I can't find any info on this when I did a google seach.
Thanks
Why didn't I think of this? I have two monitors as well, and I can confirm the SAME effect. OpenGL is broken on primary monitors, but not secondary... that is quite a wierd bug ATI has with their drivers...
Yeah found out by accident. But it seems this didn't appear in the latest driver version as i'm now using 7.7. Before that I hadn't updated for quite some time so dontt know/remember what version I was using before, and this version didn't have this problem.
I think its strange how it's only affecting the primary monitor and not the secondary one. You would think if its a problem with opengl generally it would happen regardless of monitor.
So any ideas?
Quote from: reck on August 31, 2007, 04:46:26 PM
Yeah found out by accident. But it seems this didn't appear in the latest driver version as i'm now using 7.7. Before that I hadn't updated for quite some time so dontt know/remember what version I was using before, and this version didn't have this problem.
I think its strange how it's only affecting the primary monitor and not the secondary one. You would think if its a problem with opengl generally it would happen regardless of monitor.
So any ideas?
I'm using 7.8, and I also have the same effect with the monitors. As for ideas... send more feedback to ATI as to the nature of the problem? Probably the only sensible thing to do.
I've raised a ticket with AMD/ATI regarding this issue but at the moment they are just sending me auto-replies with unhelpful information. I'll let you know if I get any useful info back.
AARRGGGHH AMD/ATI support are not helping with this problem at all. I raised a ticket with their customer care department and over the last few days I've been sending them information regarding my system and describing the problem i'm having. Today they said they had reviewed the problem and the issue is with Catalyst 7.8 drivers and I should use the 7.7 drivers. Well I'd already installed the 7.7 drivers and it made no difference so I replied to say so and now they've replied to say it's a driver related problem (surely not!!!) and I should submit my comments to the Catalyst crew for their consideration and they have now set my ticket to "problem resolved".
"Submit my comments for their consideration!" I just want some technical support, arrghh. Anyway I've gone to the Catalyst crew support form web page using the link they gave me (http://support.ati.com/ics/survey/survey.asp?deptID=894&surveyID=486&type=web) and it says the following at the top of the page.
"This is NOT the location for support for your product. Support requests will NOT be responded to.
Submissions to the Catalyst Crew Feedback will NOT be responded to.
If you have an issue that requires a technical response, please contact Customer Care."
If I click the link for customer care I get taken back to the page where I created a ticket. So the Catalyst Crew won't respond to my "comments" and suggest I contact customer care and customer care suggest I give my "comments" to the Catalyst crew who have said they don't respond to support requests. So basically I'm stuck in the middle of two AMD/ATI departments and neither side will help.
What a load of crap. I know this has nothing to do with Terragen at all, but I just wanted to vent some anger about this. I'm going to be installing Vista soon so hopefully this issue will go away. I know one thing after this after this my next graphics card is going to be an nVidia.
Quote from: reck on September 06, 2007, 04:09:17 PM
...What a load of crap. I know this has nothing to do with Terragen at all, but I just wanted to vent some anger about this. I'm going to be installing Vista soon so hopefully this issue will go away. I know one thing after this after this my next graphics card is going to be an nVidia.
Dude... I've also heard bad things about Nvidia's Vista drivers (unless things have improved). It seems both sides are slipping with their driver releases.
At the same time, of the two vendors here mentioned (ATI and Nvidia), Nvidia has always had more stability in their software.
Quote from: Bluefinger on September 06, 2007, 04:41:13 PM
Quote from: reck on September 06, 2007, 04:09:17 PM
...What a load of crap. I know this has nothing to do with Terragen at all, but I just wanted to vent some anger about this. I'm going to be installing Vista soon so hopefully this issue will go away. I know one thing after this after this my next graphics card is going to be an nVidia.
Dude... I've also heard bad things about Nvidia's Vista drivers (unless things have improved). It seems both sides are slipping with their driver releases.
Quote from: calico on September 07, 2007, 10:25:18 AM
At the same time, of the two vendors here mentioned (ATI and Nvidia), Nvidia has always had more stability in their software.
Well, ATI has Catalyst Control Centre, which is bloatware... sucks a bit, but as for stability, I've never had much in terms of problems (up until now that is with Terragen 2 and such). I think it all depends on one's experience and preference... I've always had ATI cards, so I guess I may be a little biased towards them. Though either way, with regards to Vista, I'm not upgrading for quite a while as I've heard nothing but bad news about it, from both ATI and Nvidia setups.
Quote from: Bluefinger on September 06, 2007, 04:41:13 PM
Quote from: reck on September 06, 2007, 04:09:17 PM
...What a load of crap. I know this has nothing to do with Terragen at all, but I just wanted to vent some anger about this. I'm going to be installing Vista soon so hopefully this issue will go away. I know one thing after this after this my next graphics card is going to be an nVidia.
Dude... I've also heard bad things about Nvidia's Vista drivers (unless things have improved). It seems both sides are slipping with their driver releases.
Well I won't be buying an nVidia card till next summer anyway, by then I hope the drivers will have matured to an acceptable level.
I installed Vista yesterday and TG2 is now working ok again, as well as blender.
Quote from: reck on September 09, 2007, 05:35:35 AM
Well I won't be buying an nVidia card till next summer anyway, by then I hope the drivers will have matured to an acceptable level.
I installed Vista yesterday and TG2 is now working ok again, as well as blender.
I guess it's a problem that's restricted to XP x64. And if you are gonna buy a card by then, I should think both ATI and Nvidia's drivers would be nicely matured. If not, well then.... go Matrox!
I was using XP x32 before upgrading to Vista. Older version of the Catylist driver didn't have this problem but I can't remember what version I had on before upgrading to 7.8, it was quite an old version though >6 months old.