Great news Tomm! 🙂 I've taken the liberty of letting the good folks on the Frontier Forum know also 😉

I am having problems running this on both Ubuntu maverick x64 and windows 7 x64.

My hardware is ATI HD Radeon 2400 pro, 1gig of ram and AMD Athlon 64bit X2 Dual Core 3800+ .

On Windows7 after I try and launch the game the monitor seems to switch off with an out of range message until I kill the game.

On Ubuntu Maverick 64bit I get this error message:

Congratulations on the latest release! I loved alpha .5 and only had issues with the shaders

(I have a Radeon X1950 Pro, 2GB of RAM and an AMD Sempron 3600+, ~2Ghz, running Windows XP 32bit), so I was itching to download this and check out the new planets types but unfortunately it won't run! It just crashes to the desktop while loading the game (when it says 3.0 Billion Years) without any sort of error message.

Excellent. Thanks Tom !!

I look forward to trying this in a little while.

@tretle, I'm just guessing here but that 'out of range' thing could be a resolution problem. Try changing the resolution in the .ini file or just deleting the .ini file from the older alpha.

Ini is here for me with win7 : C:\Users\NAME\AppData\Local\Pioneer

Edit//. @ Tom. Looks like I forgot to commit a small change to make the desert and water worlds use the new system view icon:

in StarSystem.cpp

to

and

to

P.S. Im liking the new alpha. Everything seems to look nice and crisp and textures are clearer perhaps thats because all the shader errors have been fixed?

Thanks, changing the resolution seemed to do the trick for my windows testing. I was greeted with a new error this time from the game itself 🙂 getting there 😀 Here's what the error was ->

Any idea what the new windows testing problem might be or whether it could be linked to the ubuntu maverick problem.

Also where should I be posting bug reports. I posted an issue on github but afterwards noticed that I was the only one to post an issue which made me wonder whether that was the right place to post an issue, lol.

Looks graphics card related.

Try removing that file then turning off HDR in the options and it should run with shaders but no hdr.

edit// Btw, I mean this file: data/shaders/postprocessCompose.frag.glsl

edit2// I re-read your post and noticed this: data/sharders/postprocessCompose.frag.glsl

should be shaders, if that folder has a wrong name Im sure it would throw up lots of errors.

I tried folowing the target to the destination system to avoid the police, but it crashes on entry to the system.

If you replace that shader file (in data/shaders) with this one, does it work?

http://pioneerspacesim.net/sites/defaul ... .frag.glsl

Yeah I totally should have tested it... why would I assume code that worked 6 months ago still does...

This should fix it:

http://pioneerspacesim.net/sites/defaul ... .1-exe.rar

Downloaded the new Alpha 6 yesterday and I've been playing for about two hours now. All in all, this looks like a good progress with a few little downsides which I'm sure will be fixed. I'm sure there are many new features which I haven't seen yet but this, to me, was most apparent:

Pro's:

The HDR looks stunning, sun's now actually have a nice corona!

Planets farther away from a star appear to be much darker now! I just visited a rocky planet which was almost pitch black. That's very nice.

HDR makes overall lighting much nicer and more atmospheric. From space, dark sides of a planet look much better now with a smoother transition from the dark side to the bright side. Certain planettypes look worse from a distance with HDR enabled, but I'll come to that later.

I noticed more difference in planet's atmospheres. Some have much thicker atmospheres now than others. This may also be the case because the HDR makes the difference between dark and bright stand out more? Maybe atmospheric values haven't actually been changed but I think I saw more difference between planets. Each difference between planets is welcome i.m.o., I hate it when they all look the same. One oceanic planet I visisited had such a thick atmosphere, it looked purple from space, and when I went through the haze, I could only see the blue water when I was a couple of meters away from it. I like having good visibility but on this planet, it looked kinda nice.

I haven't seen many "new" planet types yet but I did stumble upon a "rocky frozen planet with a thin atmosphere" that looked freaky from space but very cool on the surface. From space it looked very spikey because of the extremely high mountains but on the surface it looked very nice. There was a brown/grayish haze and weird brownish seas. I hadn't seen that terrain type yet. Very nice! I also came accross a socalled "dead world". Also, very nice! It had a nice variation of open terrain and mountain ranges. Not just mountains everywhere. I'm looking forward to exploring these planets further. I really liked what I saw. I have yet to see snow and desert worlds.

Asteroids! The game now actually has asteroid orbiting planets. I explored deep canyons on a small asteroid today. Very cool!

Okay, the CONS. Don't think I suddenly don't like Pioneer anymore. On the contrary. Just because I'm stating more negative things here than positive doesn't mean I don't like the game. All good things still remain but because I've mentioned the good things tens of times already, I think it's time for a little constructive criticism. For all people who think I'm being negative here: I LOVE PIONEER, THIS GAME ROCKS!!! Here are the cons 😀 .

Cons:

With HDR enabled, I can hardly see my HUD when I'm approaching a planet and when I'm close to the terrain. I can't read my speed and can't see my heading reticules.

As stated by Tomm, I can't use my old savegames so I guess I'll just have to start over again 😀 . Read: this is not really a con, it's just the way it is.

Just something I noticed and not really a bad thing, maybe not even alpha 6 related but quite funny anyway: when I started on Earth, I bought a Talon. The Talon had a minus 570t free cargo value, I didn't have any fuel and couldn't buy any fuel because I was way out of cargo space. I saw the Talon had a hyperdrive engine weighing 540t so I sold it, bought a class 1 civilian drive and afterwards I had 10t free space. Also, the Eagle I started with had a -1t free cargo value.

I haven't seen any traffic so far. Maybe AI traffic is only added when you accept missions? Or maybe I was just in quiet sectors. No big deal. Maybe we see some more traffic in the future; I didn't expect to see it so soon already anyway. Still, not really a con. More something to wait for in the future. I haven't tried the assassination mission yet so maybe I'll get to see more AI traffic then.

When setting course for a planet, when you're far away from it, I can see flashes of light blinking like crazy. When you get close enough to make out the shape of a planet, the blinking/flashing disappears. I think this is a HDR thing, haven't tested it yet without HDR. This doesn't happen constantly, maybe 2 out of the 5 times I'm approaching a planet. This is a real bug i.m.o.

While Pioneer has some very beautiful planets and the best planetary engine yet, I always thought certain planet types looked kind of bland and ugly from space. Namely the bright red moons and bright yellow and bright green moons & planets are a bit too red, yellow and green. These planets look better, although a bit boring and repetitive when on the surface but from space they look too brightly colored. The previous alpha's didn't have HDR so it was acceptable, but with HDR enabled, the standard red, green and yellow moons look even more over saturated from space than before. When you're a couple hundredthousand km's away, you see them as ugly bright red or green/yellow marbles. I hope the color tone of these planet/moon types will be dimmed a bit in the future. When you're near a planet, HDR actually helps make things look beautiful because of the better shades of lighting of the day/night side, but a bit farther away from planets these ultrabright red marbles are just too saturated. I can live with this, though, as the surface still looks nice.

When starting on Epsilon Eridani, I believe the huge gasplanet Epsilon Eridani I, used to be a ringed gasgiant like Saturn. Now it's a standard yellow/green cheese planet without rings. What happened to it? According to the planet info, it's still a ringed giant. In fact, even Saturn itself has lost its rings. Which brings me to the following.

Planet info sometimes doesn't make much sense. This was the case with previous alpha's but with the addition of extra terrain I would have hoped for a little change in this. Maybe something for the next release. Planets stated as being frozen, icey worlds, i.e. don't appear frozen and icey at all. Maybe they are frozen and icey but they don't really look that way. I thought, with the snow/ice screenshots I saw, the frozen icey worlds would have ice and snow. It's not a bad thing that they look the way they do, but planetary info shouldn't lie. I'll go searching for a snowy icey planet like I've seen in s20dan's screenshots later today but the info screen won't be of much help I tink. I'll just have to approach each planet and take a look for myself without relying on planet info. This isn't much of an alpha 6 related con by the way, because it always has been like this. But I hope this will be improved in the future. Now that we have more diverse terrain types, planetary info screen should also be accordingly adjusted.

Finally, the new alpha crashes often. I've experienced 10 CTD's in 1 hour of playing. This happens especially when I die and want to start a new game, in other words, when I'm in the menu screens. During gameplay I haven't had a single crash. I think alpha 5 was a bit more stable.

All in all, I kinda like the new alhpa, mainly because HDR looks so nice up close to a planet and the corona's around suns are beautiful. Lighting on planets and atmospheres have been improved. We now have asteroids! And I want to visit those nice new terrain types again this evening. I do think it's a shame the game crashes often and the ringed planets have disappeared. Also, I hope the green and yellow cheese balls and red tomato planets will be improved a bit in future.

Job well done, Tomm and others!

I'll explain those new planet types a bit more:

The dead worlds at the moment are both dead and desert worlds. Its basically a terran or ocean world that has been dried out with many more hills/dunes, so it can look like a craggy mountainous wasteland all the way to a very flat dried out ocean world covered in sand dunes. Unfortunately at the moment there is only one description for all the dead/desert worlds so you will see a massive variety beween them. Also at the moment they are sharing the same graphic as methane worlds on the system view due to an oversight on my part, so it can be hard to find them. But if it mentions dead world in the description it should have those characteristics. If it doesnt then there is a bug somewhere, and feel free to tell me the planet location so I can 'investigate' it 😉

The Ice worlds should either be frozen water planets or mountainous 'snowy' worlds, although it really is just ice but it looks like snow when there are mountains. Again there is just one description for now, so you won't know what type of world it will be till you explore it, you will only know that it is a sub-zero world with snow/ice instead of water. Again if you find a planet that says it has ice but actually doesnt, please give me the location and I'll take a look.

You mentioned the brown planet, well I think this is a possibility if the sun has odd colors when combined with the atmosphere. The ice world 'should' be white and whatever colour the rocks are for that system, so that would generally mean orange/red/brown/gred-grey ect, but the white snow/ice shoudl be as obvious as the random coloured rock.

Water worlds have a very thick atmosphere due to the water vapour and hot oceans. If your lucky you will find a couple of small islands on them.

There are 2 kinds of terraformed worlds too. The successfully terraformed worlds are very similar to regular terran worlds and the marginal worlds are somewhere in between a terran world and a rocky world. They should have green oceans if they have water at all, I was thinking algae on the surface as a way of terraforming the planet...

Volcanic worlds were changed also, but they need some more work as they were the first I changed and I know a little more about the planetary terrain now.

I changed methane worlds a little too, added some more large mountains and the possibility of pools of liquid methane, like Titan.

As for the Talon and Eagle bug, thats down to wrong starting equipment. The talon starts with the wrong size drive at the moment, it should start with a military class 1 and the Eagle just needs 1ton of items removed from its starting setup.

I don't think that ringed planets will have disappered. I think if we look a bit harder we will find some as they may have moved around a little now that the galaxy is slightly different.

Tomm, I nearly wept when I found I couldn't use the shaders or HDR on my system - the new planetary terrains are gorgeous but how much sweeter they'd look with all the fancy effects...! 🙁

After this...I think I'm in love with you. 😀

Tom just a little something you might not have noticed:

With hdr enabled ship glows and internal lights don't seem to be visible.

Edit/ I looked into that more, its actually only in an atmosphere that they aren't visible. Out in space the glows and internal lights work just fine.

The Sol system is getting more populated. Very nice, but "Pluto Researh Station"? Then there's -1 ton of cargo space in the Eagle. It must be in the cockpit. I thought was feeling a little light headed. Docking at the new Gates Spaceport is trippy. (Maybe a little too trippy!) I was hoping for potsmoke's power of two textures, but I'm probably the only one on this planet who needs them. In all, I'm thrilled and excited to go exploring again, and thanks for all the money! I wish I could use some of it to buy a better computer. 😆

Blame my shitty wireless keyboard 🙂

Oh, I thought that's the way they spell it in the 33rd century. Are they studying what happened to Charon? 😉

Yes they are. The research indicates that Charon was sacrificed to appease the Flying Spaghetti Monster. If the church receives enough in donations, then its possible they might ask on our behalf for the return of Charon.

On another note, who on earth is that in your avatar? It makes me laugh, all those odd expressions the guy pulls 🙂 He could be a dodgy mechanic at the spaceport 🙂

Is he not one of the infamous FFE video characters Marcel?

He is indeed. You win a Diet Steakette! He's the one that looks the most like me, or at least like I looked when FFE came out. I'm actually older and grayer and uglier than that now. 😆 The pics are 120x120, perfect size for Spacesim avatars.

hey guys. in the meantime i bought a new laptop. now i have ati graphics, i think it is a mobility radeon 5200 or something like that. however, i remember tomm saying that he is not very satisfied with they way ati deals with the shaders and i think i know exactly what he means now..

with the fix tomm gave us on page 1 of this thread i can get the shaders to work BUT unfortunately planets do not seem to be perfect marvels any more... furthermore, and that is really annoying: i can't see models at all, when in front of a planet. that means when i look into the sky, i can see my ship. but when i look on my ship in front of a planet it disappears. that means too: i can't see any cities any more... (because they are in front of the shaders i bet.) 🙁

when i turn off shaders everything's fine.

🙁

i just wanted to give this feedback. i really love this game 🙂

Thanks for the info guys. Now I know to avoid ATI on my next computer.

Hm. Planets appear squared? what does that mean?

HDR should work on the HD3650, but I don't have a card to test it on so it is tricky to know what is wrong. If you can download something like this to show what GL extensions your driver supports:

http://www.realtech-vr.com/glview/extensions.html

For HDR on pioneer you need EXT_framebuffer_object, ARB_color_buffer_float & ARB_texture_rectangle.

I noticed something very odd with HDR. Can someone please try flying to the Sirius system to confirm it? Once your there have a look at your ship from outside and see if anything looks odd.

Cheers.

Yeah that is probably normal, and very very wrong 😉

Maybe I'll disable HDR lighting, since it needs a lot of stuff fixed and there are better things to be doing.