Asphalt 2: Glowing things draw through roads and walls (also range culling, worked around)

[SecularSteve]

What happens?

Easier just to show a link to a self-evident recording (sorry about the size, quality and all that), along with a screenshot:

https://ufile.io/ev5r1gux

Basically, the artifacts still render weirdly (or disappear for a fraction of a second) when they get to the edges of the screen, some glowing items are visible through the walls where they shouldn't be, and shadows give some weird effects in some maps.

What should happen?

None of the above.

Include a GE frame capture

DUMP.zip

What are you using?

What hardware / device and operating system?

Intel i5-4200M 2.5 GHz
Windows 10

What graphics card (GPU) or mobile phone model?

Intel HD Graphics 4600

What PPSSPP version (standalone/official), and did it work before?

1.11.3
Same as in 1.9 (playable, but glitchy)

Which game or games?

ULES00719 - Asphalt Urban GT 2

Graphics backend (Vulkan, OpenGL, etc.)?

DirectX11 at 1x resolution (frameskip set to auto)

Checklist

• Test in the latest git build in case it's already fixed.
• Search for other reports of the same issue.
• Try resetting settings or older versions and include if the issue is related.
• Try changing graphics settings to determine if one causes the bug.
• Include logs or screenshots of issue.

[hrydgard]

The little triangular glitches are almost certainly an instance of the "Range culling" problem, where we don't yet understand perfectly why triangles that reach outside the clipping box should not get culled in some situations.

I'll try the usual workaround shortly.

[SecularSteve]

Thanks for responding immediately.
I myself own a still working soft-modded PSP-1008 (with a broken analogue unfortunately, had it for 9 years).
So really, I can confirm which things should and shouldn't be there.

I just have a couple of questions (if you don't mind answering):
-Is PPSSPP 2.0 going to have that tiny little video preview you get in the thumbnails on the normal PSP?
-Is it also going to have the option to run a BIOS (because I want this to be included, or at least a replica variation of it):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulb6Ic4517g

[hrydgard]

The latest build from https://buildbot.orphis.net/ppsspp/ should have the workaround now, please test.

The little video previews I've been meaning to do for a long time, there's just always been more important things to do. At least the sound is there if you hold-press or rightclick a game (or keyboard navigate to it).

As for the XMB, this question has been answered many times - PPSSPP's main focus is playing the games, and getting the XMB to work is a lot of extra work that is not likely to be useful for running games. So, it's not gonna be prioritized, similarly to the video clips...

[SecularSteve]

Well, now it mostly looks as it should (but the literal glow of the items can still be seen through objects).

Maybe it's a "render distance set to high" thing or something. Because I notice that the glows render only if you're close by on the PSP (then again, you can see the headlight through the rider in the above photos).

What I'm really curious about is what kind of disadvantages the workaround's responsible for?

[hrydgard]

Oh, yeah the glow-shining-through issue is not fixed and a separate bug, but at least the very distracting triangular glitches are gone, so that's a plus for playability.

There aren't really any disadvantages. Here's the problem: Triangles that have one corner far outside the screen are discarded by the PSP in some circumstances. Some games rely on that, like the DTM Race Driver series - without this behavior, the screen is full of glitches.

Unfortunately there seems to be many factors that affect whether triangles are discarded or not, the PSP has some kind of clipping that we don't really know how it works that can reduce the size of these triangles. Our logic for this is not perfect and thus some games will get triangles discarded that shouldn't be.

So for now, the games affected by that we add to a list, and disable discarding triangles in them. Usually there are no negative effects.

[unknownbrackets]

Unfortunately, the frame dump here is corrupt. It would be very helpful if you could upload a GE frame dump where the issue is showing (please make sure frameskip is disabled while making the frame dump.)

If possible, use v1.11.3 to reproduce and capture the frame dump:
https://github.com/hrydgard/ppsspp/wiki/How-to-create-a-frame-dump

If you're already using a newer version, you can temporarily disable the workaround by creating a file "compat.ini" inside PSP -> SYSTEM, next to "ppsspp.ini". Inside it, paste:

[DisableRangeCulling]
ULES00719 = false

It'd be helpful to capture BOTH issues, either as separate dumps or a single dump that shows both. A frame dump is like a screenshot, it only captures the things visible on the screen at the time. You can open the frame dump with PPSSPP after creating it to double check whether it shows the issue.

I'd like to remove the workaround as I think we've discovered the real fix for this, but I'm asking for the frame dump as it would help me confirm that this fix would remove the need for the workaround. Noting #14168 / #12058 here for reference, which I expect talk about the underlying issue.

-[Unknown]

[Panderner]

I tried to create GE dump for Asphalt Urban GT 2 unfortunately the frame dump is corrupted and only creates black screen image and the file size is 2KB.

[ghost]

This game is lag on selection :(


selection.ppdmp.zip

[ghost]

This is not related to #11013?

[Panderner]

This game is lag on selection :(


selection.ppdmp.zip

Works fine in these sections:

[ghost]

Panderner because your android version is not 11 🤔

[Panderner]

Panderner because your android version is not 11 🤔

@Gamemulatorer Have you lowered the resolution to 1x and tried an older version of PPSSPP? Maybe it's not related to Scoped Storage.

[ghost]

Panderner because your android version is not 11 🤔

@Gamemulatorer Have you lowered the resolution to 1x and tried an older version of PPSSPP? Maybe it's not related to Scoped Storage.

It's ok now after updating my ppsspp to latest git 🤔

[ghost]

GE dump can't work properly on this game 🤔
asphalt 2.zip

Remaining issue here is the light, right? depth/Z?

[ghost]

I have a feeling that this game uses the same engine as Street Riders...
So its basically the same as #14746

[hrydgard]

This is a case where two framebuffers share the same depth buffer, but the blit from one to the other doesn't happen since we only do that blit when switching directly between two framebuffers with the same depth buffer (we don't directly share depth buffers because stencil is merged with depth on PC but not on PSP).

	if (prevVfb && !isClearingDepth) {
		BlitFramebufferDepth(prevVfb, vfb);
	}

It draws the arrows to a different framebuffer but expects testing against the main depth buffer, but does some other stuff in between the two passes (rendering an environment map that curiously entirely fails a depth test).

Quite fixable, but a risky fix with some potential additional overhead in games that don't actually need it. Maybe yet another
compat flag...

[unknownbrackets]

I definitely did the direct depth switching thing to be most cautious and thinking about perf. I don't remember there being any game compat reason for it.

My suspicion is that copying depth from A -> C when B is rendered in between would be pretty safe from a regression perspective (though, you never know) but would just have perf risk. However, if any backend copies stencil while copying depth, that's a different story.

Feasibly, we could untether it from the actual switch event. The most optimal thing MIGHT be to copy the depth prior to the first flush (if any) that reads or writes depth, from the most recent vfb with a matching z_address where a write (or copy) happened. That might actually skip copies in some games.

-[Unknown]

[hrydgard]

Yes, only doing the copy once depth is accessed would probably be the best indeed. Though, a little more involved, so feel like we can start with #15700 (or at least after 1.13) .

[ghost]

@Panderner can you test this game again?

[Panderner]

Glowing through walls are gone