Shadow Mapping Wobble - graphics

Ive been researching omnidirectional shadow mapping and have been stuck on this problem for a while. Basically the shadows seem to wobble as the camera is moved or rotated. I made a video here:
http://youtu.be/w8IAdNPglAc
The problem is most visible about half way through on the gravestones at the bottom of the screen.
The project is implemented in a deferred renderer and at first i thought the problem was to do with aligning texels to pixels but i read that since directx 10 (which i'm using) this is no longer a problem. Someone also suggested that i was updating the camera after the render call so it was a frame behind but this is not the problem.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I didn't want to start by posting massive amounts of code. If there is anything needed i can post it.

Related

SDL2 + openGL ES 2.0 frame rate performance boost with less CPU load

I am developing on a linux system using latest (at the moment) SDL2 (2.0.8) + openGL ES 2.0 (GLSL 1.0) eventually targeting a raspberry pi 3 board. I have so far done a few things like drawing text with freetype, drawing lines, text boxes (editable), text lists, waveform boxes (all i need to pass to a function is an array of vertices) and other shapes with glDrawArrays(). Now, there are things that need to be refreshed at, let's say, 10 times per sec and others that need 1 time per second. What would be the best approach to skip re-rendering everything at the rate of 10 times per sec? Because obviously openGL works by drawing everything from scratch on every 'frame'. However i know and you know that other approaches exist that include: rendering on top of the screen you already have or taking a screenshot and rendering on top of it only the fast changing things as well as other solutions. What do you thing would be the best approach to skip re-doing everything before calling SDL_GL_SwapWindow() ? How can i take a screen shot and render it on the invisible buffer then render only the fast changing objects and then call SDL_GL_SwapWindow() ?
This is a screen shot of the app so far drawing basic things
Thanks in advance.
i eventually had to realize that i should not have posted the question in the first place but since this is a place where people learn from others i now feel somewhat nicer :) . So, the thing i had to do was to simply stop clearing the invisible buffer (i will call it that for simplicity) and render on top of it only controls that change. Those that change are updated by covering the area that they take by a rectangle and then draw new stuff on that area. I have already done it and the frame rate just 'exploded'. I do not really think that there is a better approach since the way i do it requires no action at all. All i had to do was to add a few if conditions that selectively rendered or skipped every time the execution reached the point where functions iterate through the controls that have to be drawn on screen and therefore decide what to render and what not. However a well thought set of structures is required for every control instead of declaring and defining endlessly global variables which will only makes things confusing and difficult to maintain.
Regards to all.

Nvidia High Performance Processor Setting leads to graphical bug (Seizure Warning) with current lighting system, drawing completely in the shader code

I followed the Lighting tutorial on learnopenGL, modifying some of the code to work in a 2D game engine. Everything was looking great and my team got our game done and the lights were quite simple for our designers to use. However we ran into a rare bug. as shown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to0mMP5I0cs one team member was able to recreate the bug by switching his Nvidia settings to use the "High Performance Processor" as opposed to "Integrated Graphics". Otherwise everything renders properly. The bug doesn't appear when there are no lights and everything is rendered in its full color. We have gone through alot of Ideas already but they haven't worked and now I am at a loss. Does anyone have any ideas about what is going on?
Always make sure you initialize your variables. Apparently some cards and drivers automatically initialize vec3 to (0,0,0), but others don't. That was what was going on here. Garbage values causing different colors at each fragment. By Initializing my resulting color vec3 to (0,0,0) at the beginning the problem is fixed.

2D Sprite Scaling in Unreal Engine 4.13.2

I'm working on a Sprite Scaling pickup for a 2D Platformer assignment, and have most of it worked out.
I am running into a few issues however.
When scaling the Capsule Component (It being the Parent object), when walking up to a sprite on the TileMap, the map disappears until you move away again.
I am not sure entirely why. The player is not falling off the map, and it will reappear again if you move to the side a little, but when the player is small and is colliding with the TileMap, it disappears.
Player Resize Code:
GIF of the described Issue:
https://gyazo.com/e23d24cfc9af406c2808bcf73ea5dad4
Any help is appreciated guys!
This question has been resolved.
Turns out that this is an engine issue with Unreal Engine using the TileMap. The TileMap is currently experimental and does not correctly handle rendering tiles when the Capsule Component is Scaled.
This bug has been reported to Epic Games and is awaiting a hotfix in the upcoming patches.

zooming out on terrain mesh colour distortion: Unity

I'm creating a procedural terrain in unity with hexagons. When the camera is fairly close the textures and colours work perfectly fine but... as soon as I zoom out I get this.
Map view from an angle:
As you can see I get these weird dots that become more exagerated the further I zoom...
When I'm up close I don't get this and the hexes blend very well toghether.
The textures blend very nicely when it's close and you can't see any boundaries. But as you go further out, some dots start appearing and even further so the colours get completly distorted.
Does anyone know what's causing it and how it could be fixed? I'm sorry, I'm really new to unity and this is my first unity project
Also, I presume this wouldn't be due to the texture bleding at boundaries because when I set the colour of the hexagons to be the same, I still get that effect.
(for example the sea in the pic below)
Same Colour hexes still show the problem
And when it gets further out, the problem pops up
Any help would be greatly appreciated! :)
Hmm, these might be artifacts caused by mipmapping (lower texture resolution as you zoom out). Try disabling mipmaps in your textures. It will negatively affect your game's performance but it might fix the problem.

How to read Location of a view whilst it is being animated

I am animating a small space ship (derived from UIView) and periodically (whilst in animation) send it a PointF to check if this is near the space ship's current position.
However, when reading out the Frame position of the View it keeps returning the starting position before the animation started.
I think this is by design but it is causing me big problems since the space ship(s) should move independently along Paths and it is very tricky for me to do this by hand.
Is there another way - and/or has anyone some sample code?
Not sure of a workaround for your issue, but I have some suggestions on game development for iOS.
Your problem is one of the reasons why using GUI frameworks like UIKit/CoreGraphics for games isn't a good idea. For both performance reasons, as well as the fact as they aren't designed for it.
If you are looking for a simple framework for making games on iOS, have you looked at MonoGame? If you are doing lots of animations, we also use XNA Tweener along with MonoGame to get some lifelike animations.
PS - check out our game here.

Resources