While running Heli-X under Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron (linux), with a 945G Intel on-board card, I get recurring "unable to allocate texture" errors. lshw says: 945G Integrated Graphics Controller / size: 256MB (so that should be enough).

Is there anything I could try to fix this? This system has 1Gb of memory, so I don't think that is the problem. A colleague with an Intel 965G and 1Gb of memory has no problems running Heli-X. Is this a serious chipset limitation, or is there a simple workaround?

Hello,

what do you see in the program? Are the scenes loaded and visible? What about the helicopters? How many FPS are displayed in the title bar?

Greetings,

Michael

MichaelS hat folgendes geschrieben:

what do you see in the program?

The scenes are loaded; I can see the helicopter, but FPS is around 0 - 2 (yes, that's null bis zwei).

When I switch to lwjgl, it's a bit better - with 800x600, framerates can be around 5-50, but response feels a bit choppy. It feels like there's really some sort of issue with the texture memory, and when it's full, a drop in framerates occurs. But that's just a feeling - I'm not sure.

If I use driconf to limit memory to existing memory (no overcommitting for 3D, at least that's what I understand from it), then the background dissapears completely, and only the helicopter is visible. However, framerates are OK now and response feels good too.

I tried the Alvier environment, judging from ls -lh, that's the smallest one; however, it doesn't help. (And yes, the "small" environment does work correctly, without rendering problems).

If I can do anything to give you more clues, please let me know.

As a sidenote, at http://valentijn.sessink.nl I'm writing about getting a Walkera sim working with Heli-X. One of the things that are to be fixed is that HELI-X/libs/lwjgl/ contains a "linux" directory that should be called "linux-i586". Also, you might want to add the LWJGL-switches to the FAQ, as it took me a couple of hours to find them back (there's only one posting where you refer to them, but they could be useful for other people, too

If I can be of help with this documentation, please let me know.

Hello,

since the small scene runs well, it looks as all your problems will go, if you use scenes with a lower memory consumption. You can do this by yourself: Each scene consists out of 6 pictures with a resolution of 2024x2048. Open the pictures with a graphics program and safe them with a lower resolution. Since in older graphics cards 2^n sizes are preferred for textures, try 1024x1024. If this works for you, you can mix the sizes. You can give each picture a different resolution. Also 2048x1024 is possible. The picture will then be streched to the right appearance.

The memory consumption inside the graphics adapter does not depend on a compression in the jpg-file. It depends only on the size of the pictures. So the Alvier scene is not better (though it is a nice place to fly

lwjgl is not really a preferred solution: I do not know any windows system, where it runs better than jogl in HELI-X. The xith developers feel it might be better on Linux, but my own experience shows that the simulation does not run smooth with lwjgl.

Hope this helps,

Michael

MichaelS hat folgendes geschrieben:

it looks as all your problems will go, if you use scenes with a lower memory consumption.

And yes: this helps. I get some 25+ FPS, and some 35+ FPS under lwjgl, but the latter is jerky and sometimes seems to render wrong. But no more texture errors and a good response.

BTW what I did was a mass conversion; for those who are interested:
sudo aptitude install imagemagick
find -type f -name '*.jpg'|xargs -i mogrify -geometry 1024x1024'>' -verbose {}

(So write in your notebook: 945G chipset works OK, but has lower memory available and you need to decrease the airport texture sizes). Thanks!

Hi,

I would give the resolution 2048x1024 a try. Some use it succesfully and you might get sharper scenes ...

Have fun.

Michael

Hi!

Response time: 1h 6 min
time till solution: 5h 18 min

this is PLATIN Support Level!

remember - this is a FREE Sim! I'm not sure if a commercial sim can deliver that quality of support!

Michael - you ROCK!

cu
Andi