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Having this weird issue where I land on objects and they sometimes go transparent. Very annoying / distracting (I don't need any additional constraints to success).

BZFlag v2.4.22, MacOS Big Sur 11.5.2

Happens quite regularly on APOC, not sure if I've seen in on other maps but I'm gonna pay more attention now.

Thoughts?

M

Which mac is this specifically? What graphics chip?

Macbook Air
M1 chipset

This is a known issue with Apple Silicon computers at the moment. Right now, our developers have limited access to this hardware, so diagnosing the issue is difficult, but that will hopefully change in the future.

If you could post a video or screen capture of the issue, that would give us a good place to start.

A native build for Apple silicon (M1) CPU family Macs has been created. This build resolves all of the known issues with running one of our older builds (for Intel Macs) on an M1 Mac. The build is posted here: https://download.bzflag.org/bzflag/maco ... -arm64.zip. We are not yet signing and notarizing the builds, so you will need to right-click (or ctrl-click) on the application and select "Open" from the contextual menu in order to bypass Gatekeeper for the first launch.

The transparency issue specifically was resolved by upgrading to the latest version of Big Sur (I believe) or to Monterey.

Outstanding! Ill give it a shot tomorrow and report back.

FYI - 2.4.24 still appears to have the problem (for me at least)

QuantumFoam wrote: ↑Sun Apr 10, 2022 10:21 pm FYI - 2.4.24 still appears to have the problem (for me at least)

What version of macOS? And can you take a screen capture demonstrating the issue?

Edit: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208721

Monterey 12.0.1

There is no OpenGL on M1 Macs, so it's kinda amazing that we see anything at all.
I'm pretty much the only mapper that uses significant amounts of Drawinfo in my BZ maps, and this effect only happens on the objects that include drawinfo LOD's. So the only place you're going to see this blinking effect is at Planet MoFo.
For the record, I'm on an M1 too, and see this effect myself. It's not that bad, and in some locations can be helpful.

Yeah I figured it was something unique with the way those surfaces were being rendered on APOC. Thanks for the diagnostics.

As to "helpful", yeah I suppose if I could condition myself to exactly where and what triggered them I could use the side transparencies to advantage. But when the top of the object you're on goes away and you need to know where the edge is (that would be some DareDevil skills) .....

Oh well, could be worse. I could be an epilectic (the flashing on and off with movement....)

Thanks again

Know what, As soon as I posted my comments above, I knew they were wrong, or at least only partially correct.I never really looked at it closely. I'm going to have to investigate further.
Non-Drawinfo meshes can also do the disappearing trick.

Enter the M1 Mac transparency hack...

I took a vid using a slightly older version of the map. (ignore the outer wall because _noWalls is not set)
It's important to note that the object is still there for collisions, even though it looks invisible.
http://images.planet-mofo.com/A-Delusio ... BZHack.mp4

Here is a snippet from one of the pyramids in question. Notice one face has 3 sides (side of pyramid), and another face has 4 sides (bottom of pyramid). It is not properly triangulated.
face
vertices 15 16 12
texcoords 10 9 8
endface
matref FrontColor
face
vertices 1 2 3 0
texcoords 2 3 1 0
endface

-------
So I found an object that was all triangles, no problems there.
Then I found an object that was 100% square (4-sided faces), no problem there

------

This is a tall pillar that is all 4-sided faces, except the top and bottom which are 16-sided. Which face do you suppose blinks?
face
vertices 0 14 15 1
texcoords 3 2 13 14
endface
face
vertices 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 0
texcoords 19 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 15 16 17 18
endface

------
I'm putting the blame squarely on WHAMMO! He did this version of the map using sketchup(?).
I use Wings3d which has the "triangulate on export" checkbox, and everything I do is 100% triangulated.

There are problems with the map...I noticed the issues playing with my m1 MacBook today. Perhaps I could even fix them. If Mr Blinky wants to blame me, that is totally fine with me. I will defer to his superior map making skills but he has no idea what he is talking about cuz I use Wings3D to export with the triangulate on export feature checkbox as well, and still have the problems. If he would like to fix the map let him. I may get around to trying to fix it on a future rev if I have the time or if he wants to pay me to do so.

Cheers

WHAMMO!

Additionally, the video he is showing is running on his own server and is not APOC. if you notice it has a 2 shot bar and not a 4 shot bar. So it appears to me that Mr. Blinky is trying to run my map work on his M1 Mac server and it is not working to his liking. I'm sorry, I will try to get around to fixing it at some point in the future.

Well I for one consider a Whammo apology to be totally worth the price of admission to this thread. However disingenuous. :-p