Strong blue fog in Parasite Eve 3 (3rd Birthday)

[daniel229]

relate to 416f0c5

0.9.1-27
buffered rendering

previous build
buffered rendering

non buffered rendering

psp

[unknownbrackets]

I wonder if it just doesn't write alpha for certain funcs?

-[Unknown]

[solarmystic]

Confirmed. Problem can be mitigated temporarily on the newest builds by disabling buffered rendering:-

[daniel229]

@unknownbrackets
how to test that?

[daniel229]

comment out like this
/#if 1
// Fixes some Persona 2 issues, may be correct? (that is, don't change dest alpha at all if blending)
// If this doesn't break anything else, it's likely to be right.
// I guess an alternative solution would be to simply disable alpha writes if alpha blending is enabled.
glstate.blendFuncSeparate.set(glBlendFuncA, glBlendFuncB, GL_ZERO, GL_ONE);
#else/
glstate.blendFuncSeparate.set(glBlendFuncA, glBlendFuncB, glBlendFuncA, glBlendFuncB);
//#endif

seem to fix.

[dbz400]

Just wonder did this blue fog still appeared here in latest build ?

[daniel229]

still there

[dbz400]

Thanks for testing .If comment out that glstate.blendFuncSeparate() , will disappear ?

[daniel229]

comment outglstate.blendFuncSeparate.set(glBlendFuncA, glBlendFuncB, GL_ZERO, GL_ONE);,
it will disappear

[dbz400]

Thanks .I did came across this blue fog previously however at that time seems to be affected in my case .#3029

[dbz400]

Blue fog should be gone now although not very prefect .I did tried if i remove the following GE_TFMT_CLUT32 check , the screen is much more clearer and close to real PSP one.

    // 3rd Birthday (and possibly other games) render to a 16 bit clut texture.
    const bool compatFormat = framebuffer->format == entry->format
        || (framebuffer->format == GE_FORMAT_8888 && entry->format == GE_TFMT_CLUT32)
        || (framebuffer->format != GE_FORMAT_8888 && entry->format == GE_TFMT_CLUT16);

[unknownbrackets]

If you skip the video in the middle, won't it render garbage again? Also, there clearly (from the screenshot) should be a blue flog, just not as strong, right?

-[Unknown]

[dbz400]

No ,it didn't render the garbage at all and very clear .

Yes , a slight blue fog but not a very strong one

[dbz400]

With that CLUT32 check removed , here is the screenshot from 3rd birthday

[solarmystic]

Just a small note (so that it's easier to track and @raven02's comment #1778 (comment) is in a closed thread and thus less visible), the issue has returned again since v0.9.5-858-g10b9e83 10b9e83

You can disable buffered rendering to get rid of most of the "fog" but in certain stages, and after video cutscenes the scene will be "dirty":

Alternatively, enabling Read Framebuffers to Memory will eliminate all of the fog and restore status quo, with the requisite performance penalty:

[dbz400]

Just for record .This is the correct fog rendering from framebuffer read mode

[dbz400]

Wondering if the following still needed as it is originally used for Wipeout , i can see without it , wipeout also render correct now .However with it , 3rd brithday break .

    // Let's not write to alpha if stencil isn't enabled.
    if (!gstate.isStencilTestEnabled()) {
        amask = false;
    } 

[unknownbrackets]

Code is not about what games need but what is correct - unless you have all 1000+ games and are verifying your assumption with each and every one. The alpha channel is simply not altered on the PSP when stencil testing is disabled.

-[Unknown]

[dbz400]

I see.

[unknownbrackets]

If you hold triangle, it goes away. I'm not actually sure why... it seems to flush the alpha channel or something? I'm not really sure.

Software renderer has... interesting problems. Seems like bad lighting maybe? But stepping through, the blueness looks correct per the PSP.

Anyway, the texture (0x04154000) ends up red in the software renderer, and the blurring just makes it darker and darker (it becomes nearly black.) It uses multiple rounds of clut lookups.

-[Unknown]

[dbz400]

Yep hold triangle works and clear those artifact :0

I did try to use it in other stages , it causes the following interesting artfact

[unknownbrackets]

Possibly related to #2917.

-[Unknown]

[thedax]

We can add Ultimate Ghosts n' Goblins to the list of games affected by the CLUT thing, I think:

Looks pretty similar to Assassin's Creed and 3rd Birthday's halo issues. It's a bit off-topic for this specific bug, but all of the other issues have been closed, so there's no point creating another duplicate.

[dbz400]

With block transfer enabled , the intro screen and in-game pause screen appears okay and correct.

[hrydgard]

That's great, two less mysteries.

[unknownbrackets]

Pretty sure this works well now with the framebuffer clut and size estimation changes. I'll close, but if there are still issues we can reopen/create a new more specific issue.

-[Unknown]

[ShanxTadeu]

Well, the halo issue (#5414) still in ppsspp-v0.9.8-1515-ge505655 as you can see here

Is not like before, but the issue persists.

[unknownbrackets]

I suppose that's #6192. Does it look better at 1x?

-[Unknown]

[ShanxTadeu]

Apparently yes

In my previous pic my rendering resolution was set to Auto

In this one

the rendering resolution is set to 10x PSP

and in this one the rendering res is 1x PSP and you can see the bloom effect

There's any fix for this issue?

[hrydgard]

It looks like a bloom effect at 1x (as intended) because the resolution is so low that it samples between the pixels, causing extra blur. This does of course not happen at higher resolutions, and you get ugly halos.

There's no real fix possible. A potential hack would be somehow to try to figure out which buffers are used only for bloom effects and keep them at standard resolution, but it won't work if those buffers are also used for other things that need to be high resolution, etc.

[hrydgard]

This game needs Skip buffer effects to be off to work correctly. Leave it off.

[hrydgard]

The ghosts are meant to be there (they're really a bloom effect or something like that). Unfortunately, they don't look very good at higher resolutions than 1x, the game creators didn't expect us to render at high resoltuions.