Radeon 3D Wiki drive

[nhaehnle]

Since I did it mostly in response to comments / complaints here in this forum, I'd be interesting in getting feedback here. The blog post is here, but for the incurably lazy, I'll replicate it here

Outsiders of the group of developers regularly complain that it's very hard to get an understanding of what happens in development of the Radeon driver(s). They have convinced me.

So I've spent some time to refactor the documentation on the DRI Wiki, creating a new, cleanup up and up-to-date portal page in the process. However, this refactoring is not complete, and the amount of information is not yet entirely satisfying. The real test now is whether this can be more than a one-shot effort by me, so this is a shout out to others - particularly to the users who have been asking for this - to help improve the documentation.

Partly, this can be done in very mundane ways by normal users. The application support matrix needs to be updated for Mesa 7.6 (there have been a lot of significant improvements), which mostly requires testing by a lot of people who own the necessary hardware/software combinations.

I have also created a stub page for 3D troubleshooting and known problems, and I want to rely mostly on users to help filling that with useful information. After all, the kind of trouble I run into usually has to do with me breaking the driver during development, which is on a rather different level from the kind of trouble users run into.

Now my main goal is actually to improve the way we present ourselves to potential new developers. This is also quite tricky because after having been immersed in this stuff for so long, it is hard for me to judge what kind of information and documentation would be most helpful to newcomers. If you have a concrete question, or set of questions, I'd be curious to know, and I may end up blogging on it, or documenting it on the Wiki, or documenting it in the source code. However, please give me more than a muddy "this stuff is complicated, can you hold my hand through it?", because yes, unfortunately, this stuff /is/ complicated.

In my experience, the first step to understanding the 3D driver is to understand OpenGL. After all, the purpose of the 3D driver is ultimately to implement an API - and you just won't understand the driver if you don't understand that API. So if you're curious about 3D driver development, hack on little OpenGL samples first, or even at the same time! It doesn't have to be a large game engine; the samples that come with Mesa may be more than enough as a starting point. Then maybe you want to step through your program and what the driver does in a debugger, or experiment with other little ways that can help you understand the driver.

I hope that we will be able to welcome you into the fold one day.

[nightmorph]

Okay, you sold me.

I registered for the wiki and updated the RadeonProgram page: Nexuiz runs just fine on R700, on my RadeonHD 4550. The nice thing is that it finally launches and loads without needing the LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT hack, and it even renders everything perfectly!

I'm not on Mesa 7.6; instead I'm on git master, as I'm interested in pulling in all the good updates and features as they arrive. Once a future stable version arrives, I'll probably switch to it as long as it contains all the code I'm getting now. Unless, of course, by that time there are even more awesome things found only in the master branch . . .

I also tested Quake3-demo, OpenArena, and QuakeLive. Quake3-demo and QuakeLive work perfectly (no LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT hacks needed!), but OpenArena kills the system. I end up with a blank monitor screen and a monitor message that slowly cascades across it: "Input not supported." I saw this before with the other Quake games on an earlier git checkout, and had to work around those games with the LIBGL_INDIRECT hack. However, it fails to work for OpenArena, so I'll update the wiki.

[nhaehnle]

Thank you! One suggestion: Since you got things to run using Mesa master, I think you should note that as PLATINUM (7.7-dev), to indicate it was a post-7.6 but pre-7.7 development version.

For R100-R500 which are already very stable, this feature matrix should probably stick to stable versions, but since R600-R700 are still progressing very rapidly, testing on master makes sense.

[maderat]

and you could add
master mesa, master ati driver, fedora 12 kernel last from koji
native:
Enemy Territory Garbage soft rendering runs
Compiz Fusion Gold
Neverball Platinium
Nexuiz Gold

tests was done 14Oct white radeon mobility 4650

[legume]

Enemy Territory Garbage soft rendering runs
...
tests was done 14Oct white radeon mobility 4650

R6/7xx doesn't have hardware texture compression implemented yet.

If a game is rendering garbage, it may work (et does for me) if you find the cvar/menu setting to get it to use uncompressed textures. IIRC for et you can still see the menues - so try unchecking texture compression.

[nhaehnle]

Thanks nightmorph, Fabio and maderat for doing tests!

maderat: You should be able to add these games into the table yourself, feel free to do so!

[pingufunkybeat]

I can report OpenArena working perfectly on r710 (HD4550) here, both with and without KMS, with all git stuff.

I assume that nightmorph's issues are a regression of some sort, I play OA regularly. Either that, or a problem somewhere else, as we're using the exact same chip.

KWin4 effects also gets platinum from me, though I didn't test every single effect. The desktop cube, the wobbles, compositing, expose, etc. all work.

Sauerbraten hangs while loading. The music plays, but the system is dead.

[nightmorph]

Pingu, might very well be a regression. I'll be updating my checkouts soonish to see what effect that has. I did find it very odd that the only Quake-based game that didn't work was OpenArena.

So far, I've provided all the R700 reports on the wiki. I'm going through each program listed and installing them (where feasible, i.e. nothing I have to purchase) and trying 'em out. So far the only two things that completely fail are the ioQuake3 games.

I'm also discovering some new games along the way. Neverball is pretty neat, and it renders perfectly. Lookin' forward to doing some more testing and more wiki updates.

[Deagleson]

Thanks for posting this.
Even if im not a experienced linux user, (Only tried Fedora & Ubuntu)
i do want to change from windows since AMD driver support on windows 7 is crap and vista doesent feel that good since i tried 7. xD

Saw that World of Warcraft got a "silver" on the r500 gpu's, so would that mean that it would be playable?
Since i only do casual play fps is not that important, like for example Counter-Strike.

[dungeon]

ATI 9250
libdrm 2.4.15
mesa-7.6
no kms (dri 1)

wine + Max Payne 2 (crashing when it wants, but i can kill it).

bo(0x728a5b20, 65536) is mapped (-1) can't valide it.
validated 0x728a5b20 [0xD103B000, 0xD1046000]
*********************************WARN_ONCE*********************************
File radeon_dma.c function radeonReleaseDmaRegions line 348
Leaking dma buffer object!
***************************************************************************

Secret Maryo Chronicles (won't start) message in console:

smc: radeon_lock.c:65: radeonGetLock: Assertion `drawable != ((void *)0)' failed.
Aborted

Doom 3 (GPU lockup on level load)

no messages.

The Goonies (GPU lockup)

Nearly after start it fill all of 1.5 GB ram, if i am fast i can switch with CTRL-Fn and kill it, if i wait GPU lockup.

mupen64 + glide64 (plugin want start game and emulator crashed)

mupen64 + glN64 (games works but graphics is messed up)

ppracer is 6 times slower then with 7.5

Everything is slower then 7.5.

So i think none is interested in dri 1, but it is supported.