Leadwerks requirements

[isidisi]

I tried to run Leadwerks 2.28 on a 5 years computer with a GeForce 7300 without success...

 

I read on the Leadwerks main page that the Requirements of Leadkwers are:

NVidia GEForce series 7000

 

and the wiki says

NVidia GEForce 6600

 

My engine.log seems to say that my video card is unsupported but fits the specifications. Are the requirements unupdated????

 

My log:

 

Leadwerks Engine 2.28

Initializing Renderer...

OpenGL Version: 2.1.2

GLSL Version: 1.20 NVIDIA via Cg compiler

Render device: GeForce 7300 SE/7200 GS/PCI/SSE2/3DNOW!

Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation

DrawBuffers2 supported: 0

16 texture units supported.

GPU instancing supported: 0

Shader model 4.0 supported: 0

Conditional render supported: 0

[Josh]

Try updating your graphics drivers. The engine will run on your card, though it will be pretty slow.

[isidisi]

Try updating your graphics drivers. The engine will run on your card, though it will be pretty slow.

 

I updated the drivers, the train demo runs at 4 FPS :-(, but I see strange shadow artifacts that appear randomly ... I did a simple program with a light and 2 simple models and also see extrange shadows.... and all works really slow

[Josh]

I have a GEForce 7200, and the performance is less than 10 FPS, usually. Realistically, you will need to get a better card to use the engine. I recommend a GEForce 8800 or 9800. You can get the 8800 for less than $100.

[Naughty Alien]

..my low end test rig is 7600GT and everything i set, works just fine on it..it helped me a lot to carefully design things and code so everything more than 7600 simply just fly..

[cassius]

Geforce 7600 is the practical minimum requirement in my opinion. I used one once. The problem is some old computers have agp connectors and they are not suitable for 8800 or higher.So a new motherboard and possibly power pack would also be needed.

[Xaron]

Is there anything performance wise with the upcoming LE 3.0? I mean will the render part be faster?

[Canardia]

I think it will be a bit faster, because all octree occlusion culling and looping through entities is much faster in C++. So a part of the rendering would be around 3-4 times faster, but not the whole rendering. It might result in that the whole rendering is about 1-1.5 times faster. But I think there will be new options to make rendering even faster by disabling certain features, some of them you can do already now: disable post-effects, render to a smaller buffer.

[Xaron]

Will it may be run on older hardware as well like Irrlicht/Ogre?

[Canardia]

I heard some rumours that there was a console version planned, and possibly also a mobile phone version, so it should run also on low-end PCs if the same renderer is used for PC.

[Xaron]

Thanks Lumooja, actually that would be some kind of a "killer" feature for me. I don't expect the same render quality of course but it would be great if it just run on low-end PCs. The reason is simple: I target casual gamers who are usually not like the typical gamers and don't upgrade their hardware that often. I like all the BB syntax from LE and that I get all in one (physics, network, sound, graphics).

 

So maybe you Josh could tell some words about this? I know your point and up to now you always said that there won't be any low-end support.

[Josh]

The plan is to have a low-spec graphics driver for sub-SM4 machines in version 3.0.

[Xaron]

Thanks Josh, that are great news for me. If I hadn't bought LE already I would do it again.

 

Could you please define "low-spec"? Is it SM2, SM3? Or just the good old fixed pipeline stuff without shaders? I understand the limitations and don't care about less quality in that case.

 

Do you have any ETA when LE 3.0 will be around?

 

Thanks again!

[Josh]

Anything below SM4 is low-spec.

 

I don't know when 3.0 will be out because there are factors beyond my control.

[Xaron]

Thanks Josh. For me everything below SM2 is low spec, SM3 is middle and SM4+ is high, but that's a matter of definition.

 

I'm looking forward to this and might just start with BMax (which I'm just in love with, I do C++ all the day as a softwareengineer by profession so I just need some other stuff ) and the current version. I guess till I finish my game LE will run on all PC's (not because of LE3.0 but because of the fact that at least a 8800 should be standard).

 

Another issue for me is the performance. It's a bit weak compared to other engines like Ogre even though the features are better. Any chance to improve this as well? It's just a fact that without a good SM4 card everything's a bit rusty. Again, that's not a rant, I aim for casual gamers and there the hardware is often a bit "older".

[Josh]

The renderer for low-spec cards will be fast, but won't look any better than other low-spec engines.

[Xaron]

That's good enough and rather fair. Thanks Josh. I don't expect wonders though. So will that low-spec cards renderer use shaders at all?

[Josh]

No, because then we would have the renderer for SM3, the renderer for SM2, SM1, then the fixed-function renderer...it will just be fixed function.

[Xaron]

Thanks Josh. Must be deep at night now over there. Good morning and a nice week from Germany!

[hairy_mug]

The renderer for low-spec cards will be fast, but won't look any better than other low-spec engines.

 

I just was reviewing this thread and can I ask if this new "low-spec" display driver will work on a Net-Book?

I am developing a small app (only five 3d objects and 3 lights) and I want to move to Leadwerks (with c#).

And, can the current version possibly work on this platform? (given the small number of objects...)

Thanks!

[macklebee]

possibly once LE3.0 comes, but currently the hold up low-spec machines and LE playing nicely is the shaders requirement... these are the current requirements if you even hope to run LE

[Mumbles]

You know what you should do Josh?

 

Keep your current GLSL renderer, and for people who don't have SM 3.0 capable cards - implement a software renderer. They have the advantage of supporting -all- features, but of course, they are inherently slow because it's all done on the CPU.

 

Then it would just as good as your current version, so for people who complain that it's too slow, they can already see what the engine is capable of. Tell them to upgrade, and then they will get the same visual quality, but at a much higher frame rate because the calculations are being performed on the much more efficient graphics card.

 

For people trying to run the engine on netbooks or low-powered laptops. If they want something fast - and looking good, they're in cloud cuckoo land. I would not dream of playing Quake 4 on my netbook, so why should I expect something that is graphically superior* to work on it. To have Leadwerks working on a netbook at all would be a huge improvement to how it is now, however slow (referring to my idea of the software renderer again). If a person wants to play games on the move, you would buy a laptop that's designed to so, Toshiba's Qosmio range springs to mind.

 

 

* Depending on available assets. Obiously, if I used my own assets, it would not look so good...