Jove 2.0: DX11 Rendering System (Alpha Release)

Thank you for such a thorough response! I think I can port my current shader logic over pretty easily, after reading yours and bac9-flcl's replies. It basically takes a 2D texture and four picked Colors correlated to each RGBA channel, then uses those channels to determine where and how much of each of those Colors to apply to the main diffuse texture. I think that's fairly simple, compared to some of the crazy/amazing things I've seen folks do with shaders.

I'm eagerly awaiting your announcement.

 

Looks like Unity 5 pre-order beta is kicking off. Hopefully that means more and better testing of Jove and Unity 5.

 

Nice, might try Jove in unity 5, hopefully it works (64 bit editor )

 

Yes, indeed. Anything in screen space is not going to work in VR.

 

I'm not sure that I am following. Are you talking about lens dirt working ok with VR or adding to say the window of an in game car model?

I'm holding off on working with Unity 5 until it is closer to release, but there should be no major issues with moving Jove to it

 

Makes good sense. Will be interesting to see what you choose to do with Enlighten.

 

That's not entirely true. I have some scripts that work fine in VR SSAO, HDAO, HBAO for some, using screen space techniques. Candella is another one although it's very slow.

 

Lens dirt (or flare) has two use cases. One is caused by dirt or scratches on a window of a vehicle, so that effect has to properly placed in 3d.

The other use case is lens flare caused by scattering in the biological lens of your eye. This effect is much less pronounced and only happens with very bright lights.

With "screen space doesn't work in VR" I meant so say that you have to put some thought into what actually happens in a physical sense as jus slapping a flare on the screen will probably break in VR.

 

Sure. Lens dirt/scratches I've had working on the DK1 Rift, bloom also works well. Lens flares might need some customization to render correctly.

People often say we shouldn't see lens dirt or flares in real life, they are more a cinematic effect. I wear contact lenses and glasses. I see both types of phenomena every day either on my glasses or when my contacts get worn or dry.

 

Yeah, I know. There is a lively discussion about it here as well:
https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=6007

 

Is anyone else having issues getting the alpha demo (linked in the first post of the thread) to work? The web player crashes out on my Windows 8.1 computer for both IE11 and Chrome. I've also tried on my MacBook Pro in Safari and Chrome with no success.

 

What GPU do you have? It definitely won't work on Mac because Jove requires dx11

 

Jove uses compute shaders heavily which are a directx11 feature currently (DirectCompute), so you'd have no luck with Mac

Do you have a strong discrete graphics processor capable of a lot of directx 11 based computation? Jove 2.0 has had a mandate of catering for the strongest gaming systems since its inception i think, and its use of gpu features reflects this

 

The MacBook just has the onboard GPU (although it is Iris Pro). My PC laptop has an NVIDIA GTX 780M, so I'm doubtful it's because my rig can't handle the DX11 requirements.

 

The 780 should be fine, so i'm not sure where there'd be a problem, ive been using a 580 with this the entire time i've spent with it in Unity. I don't know if it's feasible or already in there but some logging would be great when checking random builds with Jove

 

Yeah, I'm not at home at present (work, boo), but I'm happy to try to help debug if possible. I'm just not sure how to do that, since the webplayer just crashes in my browser (or stalls long enough for Chrome to tell me to shut it down).

 

Have you tried a different browser? Just in case

Maybe Aieth can supply standalones to test/check too, i'm happy to host them if needed

 

Yup, I've tried Internet Explorer and Chrome, as noted above.

 

I thought I'd run that webplayer on page 1, and while it does run for me I think it is behaving differently that it originally did. I guess it has been updated recently ...?

When I resize to fullscreen it goes mostly black and there are other visual problems. When I exit, the webplayer locks up my system and requires me to kill the plugin.

Testing it again, even without going to fullscreen the webplayer plugin will lock up upon closing.

IIRC, when I ran the demo weeks ago there was a relatively minor graphics problem upon resizing and no issue with the plugin locking up.

 

I'm wondering if there was a recent update that is causing the issue as well. I remember looking at the demo successfully last week, when I first discovered Jove.

 

There havn't been any updates to the webplayer, the webplayer is actually kind of outdated. The issues with maximizing the window have been fixed.
I have no idea why it won't load for you though, it runs fine on my end. Anyone else with a DX11 compatible system had any issues with loading the demo?

 

@Aieth, would you be able to upload an executable version of the demo to test? I'd be interested in seeing whether that would work for me.

 

If the demo hasn't been updated, I guess it must have always locked up the webplayer plugin and I just didn't remember it.

Windows 8.1, ATI HD5750

 

I just tested the web player, runs fine until I go full screen then I get random artifacts constantly changing all over the screen. I tried to take a screen cap but won't capture it full screen. Needless to say Jove works fine in the editor and standalone.

Windows 8.1 with up to date drivers - Radeon r9 290

 

It's probably a unity webplayer problem

 

I am in the middle of creating a custom terrain solution for my game which isn't quite ready to be used so I wrote a basic Jove shader for Unity's terrain as a temporary solution. We all know how bad Unity's terrain is but I am getting some very weird performance issues, although this shouldn't come as a surprise I guess.

I get 3-400fps in the Jove demo scene, with Unity terrain I get ~40fps. I know I shouldn't care as it's just temporary but I would like to get to the bottom of it if possible. Below is profiler screenshot and the basic test shader. @Aieth or anyone else, do you have any idea what is going on? I have a few ideas but would like to get a few opinions.

I am using 2k maps on a single terrain with default settings.

Edit: Forgot to mention, I have put the terrain object on my deferred layer.

Test Terrain Shader:
https://gist.github.com/braaad/e2a77260282c5f4e3b5a

 

Man I sure hate to beat on this dead horse but there is another plugin "VertExmotion" that seems to be the kind of plugin that I would use like crazy that is a shader based vertex animation system for cloth, hair, procedural dynamic motion with inflate and he's considering making a shader forge node for that as well...

I know I know Aieth... but still... man....

 

Well I just tried out Jove 2 for the first time and wow. The visual fidelity is crazy.

Just an FYI for anyone interested my SceneViewFX plugin seems to play real nice with Jove so you can have your scene view look exactly like the gorgeous game view does
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#!/content/18949

 

Hi Aieth it looks like Jove 2 isn't working with the Unity 5 beta. It gets compute shader compile errors when trying to convert the package for unity 5 from the asset store package. You might want to test it yourself so you can get Jove ready for unity 5.

I've attached a screenshot of the list of errors it gives

 

bought it and dont like it! my framerate went from 2600 to 10, i cant believe why unity puts this on its store
hondreds of warnings and errors also, nah

 

Hey Mister D,

It's Halloween today, not April Fool's

 

Mister D it works as advertised in Unity 4 it's just Unity 5 that it doesn't work in. If you are getting performance that bad in Unity 4 is sounds like you have setup something wrong. Try importing it into a blank project and run the demo project. Even with an integrated directx 11 graphics chip I find Jove outperforms unity. Either you haven't setup the renderer in unity as detailed in the instructions , haven't setup unity in directx11 mode or your download from the asset store was corrupt and hasn't compiled properly.

also push the play button in unity before quoting any performance figures they are only accurate after pressing play. You wouldn't have a framerate of 2600 as unity will automatically vsync to 60. Any framerate figure above 60 is usually a false reading.

 

Thank you Mister D for reminding me why I don't work in tech support.

 

ok people, im not happy with it, if u are thats fine, but im getting a refund, my fps was in play mode btw, i dont use vsync.
i had set up everything like in the manual and adding one animated character dropped my framerate tremendously.

 

What are your system specs?

 

quadro k 5200 intel xeon , 32g ram

 

I would wait Aieth answer this (or you can PM him?) maybe you found some bizarre bug, because in my tests (in far far worse computers than yours) it ran pretty good.

 

lol OK well it's obviously not due to a lack of power...

You said you had hundreds of errors? Can you post a screenshot?

 

yes its a monster thats why i was so dissapointed ,but maybe something went wrong(in download or import). either way im just gonna wait for unity5 for better graphics. i cant give u a screenshot cause im on my laptop right now. didnt guess my post would get so many people angry, so ill say it again, if u re happy with jove thats fine.

 

I think what people are contending is that you made a snap judgment that Jove was a bad asset. It might not be working for you right now because of various errors, but that doesn't mean it can't work for you, once those issues are resolved.

 

It could be something to do with your quadro card, correct if I'm wrong but don't they work slightly differently to regular graphics cards? What errors are you getting? It could be something really simple but we or @Aieth can't help unless you give us some info

 

What did the demo scene give you in fps Mister D , the one included with Jove ? Also turn vsync on and then test it. Also if it's got errors then send them to Aieth so he has a chance to look into it.

 

@braaad
My initial testing with a terrain suggests that for some reason it screws with Unitys terrain engine. What happens if you remove the shadow caster tag?

Your issues sound very strange. So only animated characters cause issues? Jove doesnt do anything with animations, that is all Unity. If you remove Jove from the project and use a standard Unity shader, do the performance issues go away?
Also, what errors are you seeing? Are you using Unity 4 or 5 beta?

 

hi aieth i was using a terrain and one character, using the latest unity 4. as i remember i was getting all sorts of shader warnings, ill import the latest jove version in a new project tommorow and report to u how it gos

 

No change. I'm pretty sure I've tried every different combo of settings I can.

I am thinking the terrain does something internally that is messing with the material somehow. It's like it's getting rendered in forward mode or something. There is one more thing I can try and that's override the default internal terrain shader as I think I have read that giving it a material makes it behave differently. I'm not 100% sure though, I try to stay clear of Unity's terrain.

But anyway, I'm not too concerned I was just checking in case it was something obvious. I will try the internal shader at some stage today.

 

well, there you go! Jove currently does not have a terrain shader. Might want to research a bit more on your end.

 

Hows progress on the release of ssr and point light shadows coming along?

 

It would be very helpful if you could either PM the errors or post them here. It is definitely not supposed to throw you errors, so something is obviously wrong.

Point and spot light shadows are working, although they could do with a bit of polish still SSR is the last thing to do before shipping the new patch, although it really shouldn't take long. Working on SSR is going to be a breeze after what I've just been through.

 

hi aieth ive imported it in a new project and everything works fine now,no errors or warnings this time, sorry for my rambling. also didnt now that jove doesnt have a terrain shader.

 

It is ok to get frustrated
A basic terrain shader is coming in the next patch. I am really looking forward to getting it out, it is a huge step forward, especially lighting wise.