For me shaders are always on ..

Always with shaders except when I had glitches caused by the eclipse effect + ati drivers.

Since I think I originally overturned this rock, i'll say that I did turn off shaders on my work machine for performance reasons. 

Recently however I have found that enabling shaders and disabling the eclipse shader from the config allows me to run acceptably well.

I voted 1 (since its not inconvenient for 'me')  but having finer control of which shaders are used (and making the options easier to access for users) would IMO be a useful feature for average users.

@Zordey, it wasn't you, I've been pushing for this for ages 😉

it's really starting to get in the way of stuff I want to do or seen done.

gogo shaders!! 🙂

Much eyecandy to be had if legacy is to be dropped.

I voted 1 (since its not inconvenient for 'me')  but having finer control of which shaders are used (and making the options easier to access for users) would IMO be a useful feature for average users.

Definitely. That's the "quality settings" I mentioned in the original post.

As an outsider, I wouldn't vote - but you gotta ditch the legacy stuff sometime.

1 person voted that it would become unplayable, would they mind sharing the reason it would be unplayable?

Does yo/there gpu not support OpenGL 2.0?

Can it not be upgraded (laptop)?

Is the performance too slow with shaders?

Can it not be upgraded (laptop)?

We still see this every so often on the Oolite forum - the early intel integrated gfx are mierda!

@Cody, yes the Intel "GPUs" are just a bag of shit, they're 99.99% of the problem whatever the OS.

Can't let them hold back progress forever though.

EDIT: I should add that I have one of the newer Intel GPUs that will run the game, a HD4000, however it's slow as a dog and so I use the nVidia 650M whenever it's possible to do so.

My most wonderful, fevered dream is that Intel license the nVidia GPUs now that it's become an option and drop these crappy things. Even the GOOD Intel GPUs are still slower than the low/mid range nVidia ones.

To be fair, Intel GPUs are only intended for "incidental" graphics work like desktop compositing. They were never really meant for the kind of demand games put on them, even though they can handle some low-end stuff. And the power consumption is an issue on laptops - firing up the Nvidia when I'm on battery leads to a fairly short session at the computer and thus a rather disappointing train ride home 😉

My Intel is a HD3000. It plays Pioneer fine, just slow. Once we have a "low quality" set of shaders, I'll be running on those most of the time.

Shaders on. All the time. Just add the "low quality" option - never hurts 🙂

I've been using sharers for years. Had an 8800GTS from 2007 to 2011, then got myself a GTX 470, so no problem there.

2 people say unplayable but still no explanation as to why :/

Both my work and home laptops when using the inbuilt Intel 3000 graphics play at <10fps so I would say unplayable .

It would be interesting if the 2 'unplayable' votes could try and turn off the eclipse shader in the config and see if this changes their vote. 

Turning off the eclipse shader pushes both my machines to 30+ fps

Maybe we should parse the opengl vendor string for the word "Intel" and just turn off stuff like that by default - meaning on for everyone else by default, but requires turning it on manually if using Intel?

Perhaps with a warning message to let players know.

Maybe we should parse the opengl vendor string for the word "Intel" and just turn off stuff like that by default

<nods> We do something similar in Oolite for specific problems.

@Cody, hmm, that's a shame I was hoping it wouldn't be necessary these days :/

I'd just put the eclipse shader in the "medium" or "high" quality setting and leave it at that.

I'd just put the eclipse shader in the "medium" or "high" quality setting and leave it at that.

Wouldn't it better to have it as a separate flag? In my setup it's the only shader effect that gives problems. I don't want to accidentally disable other effects.

Possibly. Depends what else ends up in those categories. Right now we don't have enough shader variation to really warrant any changes to settings, but I expect we will.

I suppose eventually we can have a shader config screen with a simple quality slider and checkboxes for custom settings - for now though, a simple toggle button to enable or disable it and disable by default for certain makes of GPU (Intel).

Ok, it looks pretty clear that most people can cope with shaders, and turning the eclipse effect off helps a lot for people using machines with little graphics power. The extra development effort required to maintain a shader-free graphics implementation that very few people use does not seem worthwhile.

So, we have a decision: We will remove the legacy (shader-free) graphics code. Exactly when that happens depends on when someone finds time to go through and rip it all out, but I would guess it'll be done within a couple of months from now.

I would still like to hear from the two people who've said the game is unplayable with shaders enabled. Perhaps we can find some other way to fix the game so that you can run it with shaders enabled. Specific questions: Does the game not run at all, or does it run but with performance too bad to play? Is it still unplayable with the eclipse effect turned off? What graphics card/chip do you have?

John B