Problem Strange constant diagonal artifacting.

[TremorAcePV]

Hi,

Recently discovered Terasology via Voat.co (alternative to Reddit). I liked the concept of an Open Source better "Minecraft" (sorry if you guys don't like the comparison but... yeah), so here I am.

At all times while in game, I get a line of what appears to be artifacting diagonally across my screen. This doesn't happen in any other game. It doesn't appear when looking at the sky, only when voxels are "behind" it in a sense.

My System Specifications:

• Radeon Software Version - 15.11
• Radeon Software Edition - Crimson
• Graphics Chipset - AMD Radeon (TM) R9 Fury Series
• Memory Size - 4096 MB
• Core Clock - 1050 MHz (This is stock)
• Windows Version - Windows 10 Pro
• System Memory - 32 GB
• CPU Type - Intel Core i7-5930K CPU @ 3.50GHz
• Java Version 8 Update 91 (build 1.8.0_91-b14)

The world was created with Core Gameplay Template (no other modules added) and it was Perlin as the World Generator. I'm running the latest stable version of the game.

Attached are my log files. I tried on both Minimal with vanilla View Distance, and on Extreme with everything on.

Here is a Youtube video showing my issue. I included my settings (although I'm sure those are in the log files). I enter the game at 20 seconds in.

Thanks for any and all help!

- TremorAcePV

 

[Cervator]

Heya @TremorAcePV and thanks for the detailed report! The comparison is fair - the project was inspired largely by MC anyway, plus some other stuff to bring in some different angles

@manu3d and @tdgunes are at present working on overhauling the rendering and might find the issue relevant to their interests. It doesn't seem like it would be caused by your system, all sounds pretty new and beefy.

Could you check an older build or two to see if the issue occurs there as well? For instance the Alpha 1 release from March (predates all the recent rendering work): https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/releases/tag/v1.0.0

 

[manu3d]

@TremorAcePV: I just had a look at the video and the logs. No idea of what's causing the artifact at this stage. I was going to ask you to disable all settings and re-enable them one at the time, but you already disabled everything and the problem is still there. I am tempted to say that's a polygon that for whatever reason has one of its vertices pulled to the top-left corner of the screen. But I don't know for sure nor what would be causing it and why it's causing it only to you (as far as I know).

The rendering engine is currently going through some major re-engineering. Within this work I really hope we'll be able to cleanup some of the (visual) debug tools we have in Terasology and that have been somewhat neglected. Perhaps they will be able to help. You can currently access the available visual debug tools with the F6 key and cycle through them via the F7 key. Can you please try this and see if the artifacts appear in some debug modes but not in others? That would narrow the search for us a little.

 

[TremorAcePV]

The March Alpha 1 does not have the issue. Although when turning on Volumetric Fog, the screen is black except for the crosshair (not that it matters since it's an old build).

In going back to the current Stable Release, I found something interesting. If I increase the resolution scale, the artifacting moves up the diagonal to the top left corner and gets smaller, but... on to the debug tools.

Just an FYI, F6 only worked to change rendering modes after I hit F3 to get the session information. Had to fiddle with it til I figured that out.

Here is the video of me toggling between each debug mode:

It seems to only appear when over the water areas in any of the debug modes. However, when in the normal game, it appears over shadows as well. It also appears over whatever item I'm holding in game.

Another thing I found was that one line in the NUI editor doesn't change with language choice. Everything in my game is English, but Clicking Settings after hitting F10 brings up a box that says: "Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio."

 

[manu3d]

Hehehe, regarding the language issue at the end, that's Latin, but it's just a placeholder text. =D I'm not sure who to inform though. @Cervator ?

Regarding the artifact, thank you for going through the debug modes and sorry I didn't mention about the F3. It is indeed a bit confusing as I feel F3 should really only enable debug information rather than (visual) debug mode. F6 should be enough for that.

Thank you nevertheless for the excellent testing and reporting via video. It seems to me that the problem occurs only in three debug modes: the water rendering and the two ambient occlusion modes (the two modes showing a whitish landscape with generic shadows - not dependent on the sun). Can you confirm @TremorAcePV ?

Just to give you some background info, the rendering engine in Terasology is a little bit like a realtime photoshop: it has layers that get combined together to produce the final image that people normally see and play with. The debug modes show you the various layers and if any one of them has problems you will normally see those problems also in the final image on screen.

Anybody else meanwhile has been able to reproduce the problem? @tdgunes can you see anything in your work branch?

 

[Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi]

Another thing I found was that one line in the NUI editor doesn't change with language choice. Everything in my game is English, but Clicking Settings after hitting F10 brings up a box that says: "Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio."

As @manu3d mentioned, that's a random line from a lorem ipsum generator The editor's a work in progress and there aren't any features that can be customized just yet.

That being said, I'll change the line to make it more obvious that it's a placeholder.

 

[TremorAcePV]

Hehehe, regarding the language issue at the end, that's Latin, but it's just a placeholder text. =D I'm not sure who to inform though.

Regarding the artifact, thank you for going through the debug modes and sorry I didn't mention about the F3. It is indeed a bit confusing as I feel F3 should really only enable debug information rather than (visual) debug mode. F6 should be enough for that.

Thank you nevertheless for the excellent testing and reporting via video. It seems to me that the problem occurs only in three debug modes: the water rendering and the two ambient occlusion modes (the two modes showing a whitish landscape with generic shadows - not dependent on the sun). Can you confirm?

Just to give you some background info, the rendering engine in Terasology is a little bit like a realtime photoshop: it has layers that get combined together to produce the final image that people normally see and play with. The debug modes show you the various layers and if any one of them has problems you will normally see those problems also in the final image on screen.

Anybody else meanwhile has been able to reproduce the problem? tdgunes can you see anything in your work branch?

Ah, that makes sense.

It's cool.

You're welcome. To summarize everything I've noticed about it:

1. It only occurs where shadows are.
2. It moves and decreases in size when I scale resolution. Going to 200% makes it thinner and moves it up along the diagonal line towards the top left corner.
3. It shows up in the 1st, 4th, and 7th debug modes. 1st being the water only one, and the 4th & 7th both being Ambient Occlusion.
4. For some reason, at 100% resolution scale, it doesn't appear nearly as much or even at all in the top-left quarter of the screen. Turning resolution scale up to 200% makes it *only* appear in that section though. It actually has an end before the crosshair when doing that.
5. It shows up on my held item when I'm in a shadow.
6. No setting affects it showing up. Turning off all shadow options makes it far less noticeable but it still appears on the dark side of a voxel. Since that shading is necessary to create depth perception, I can't make it 100% go away in the normal game.

Between that description and your avatar, are you using imagemagick? I only say so because I view that software as literal wizardry. The engine sounds very interesting regardless.

I forgot to attach the log files in my prior message with the debug modes. It's probably not useful, but just in case, here they are.

 

[manu3d]

Responding to your message point by point:

1. you mean where -dark areas- are?

2. this sounds like the problem arises in a buffer (layer) whose resolution is NOT refreshed when the user changes it. Note for me and @tdgunes: this could be potentially crucial for finding where the problem is.

3. Thank you for the confirmation. @tdgunes this should also be quite useful. What (buffer?) water reflection pass and ambient occlusion passes have in common I wonder? Or perhaps a required buffer clearing is not happening? These are potential lines of investigation.

4. Yes, this confirms the symptoms described in point 2. @Cervator I just realized there is no explicit way to set the resolution? Just the resolution scale slider?

5. Understood.

6. Can you confirm you see the problem even if you start the game at 100% resolution scale and you don't touch it?

Regarding your question about imagemagick, are you referring to the server-side software? In any case my image is unrelated to it.

By the way, I wanted to confirm that at this stage the logs are not necessary and you don't have to post them.

 

[manu3d]

Also the term "Pixel Forge" is related only to my current working space within the Terasology codebase, deep into the labyrinthine meanders of the rendering engine, there where pixel are created in the hundreds of millions per second and will eventually overrun your screen. =D

 

[TremorAcePV]

Note: Red lines added via paint to highlight artifacts.

Here's an example. This might be a hard thing to notice though since the artifacts themselves are dark. I don't see any in the trench I made in the water, for example. I believe the ones in the grass are due to the proximity to the dark sides of those voxels, but I am not sure. The artifacting generally is very small in that portion of the screen so that explains why there aren't a lot. Just to be sure, here's another angle:


I doubled the brightness and contrast to make the artifacts more noticeable. Thus the problem with finding them in dark places.

So I'd say no. It's shadows and AO I'd guess. Tree Leaves don't seem to cause the artifacts in them either unless they are in a Cloud Shadow.

That makes sense regarding the resolution not affecting the artifacts meaning it doesn't get refreshed.

Yes, I start the game at 100% resolution scale and usually stay at that. So it's there all the time for me. In the above examples, that is at 100% resolution scale. Here is a 200% resolution scale example to compare:


And here is an example at night (note how some parts of it become white):


The "they turn white at night" thing is a lot more noticeable in a video, so here:

Looking at that, maybe it is just "wherever it's dark" and I'm not seeing the artifacts in the dark places because they themselves are dark.

"I just realized there is no explicit way to set the resolution? Just the resolution scale slider?"

Yeah I was curious about that. I haven't found any way to change resolution aside from the slider. Another thing: Brightness setting? Like, usually when you start some games, it asks you to set brightness so your display's brightness doesn't effect how you experience the game. I think one would be useful for Terasology if it's not too much trouble.

It defaulted to 1150x720 for me. Not sure if it's strictly that resolution or a % of my display (1080p).

Cool.

I just realized I could expand/contract the window by normal methods. i.e. drag the corner. I'm not sure if that affects rendering resolution, but I assume it doesn't since the artifacts don't move.

 

[Cervator]

I'm more impressed by that trench and nice cut-out in the landscape, that's some precision railgunning!

Resolution is just window size, defaulted to 1152x720, yup. I'm actually unsure how that would interact with fullscreen, since that's usually when picking a particular resolution matters more.

Really appreciating the good details! Not entirely sure we can puzzle it out in the near future, but this is pretty good detective work for helping find it when there's more 3d wizard time available.

 

[TremorAcePV]

I'm more impressed by that trench and nice cut-out in the landscape, that's some precision railgunning!

Resolution is just window size, defaulted to 1152x720, yup. I'm actually unsure how that would interact with fullscreen, since that's usually when picking a particular resolution matters more.

Really appreciating the good details! Not entirely sure we can puzzle it out in the near future, but this is pretty good detective work for helping find it when there's more 3d wizard time available.

Heh, found the "thorough railgun" and just held right click .

Ah, that makes sense. And turning resolution scale to 200% would just double whatever the current size of the window is I guess.

I like tinkering with stuff. And since I'm literally the only one with this problem (AFAIK but based on you mentioning no one could replicate the issue), I figure it makes sense that I should be proactive in helping find it.

Honestly, I can play the game fine if I just push resolution scale to 200% and will probably do so. Then it's just a minor annoyance. But an eventual fix would be nice. Who knows? Maybe a new build will magically fix it one day. That'd be neat.

 

[manu3d]

Have we created a github issue on this already?

 

[Cervator]

I don't believe so, I had thought maybe it was related to https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/issues/2392 but now I see how saying that made me look dense, haha. I saw two "similar" usernames (two words-in-one followed by two ending capital letters) and my brain saw a pattern. Yay human brain!

Issue submitted: https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/issues/2397