Installation on systems without NVIDIA cards (GLSL)

[vsam]

Hello All,

This post might be helpful for those who are struggling to get Panthera working on systems without NVIDIA cards, and perhaps, more particularly with systems that have Intel HD Graphics cards. In this case, you might be trying to use GLSL option and may be encountering error related to GLSL compilation error or wrong version number. I recently tried to install Panthera Free on a modest laptop configuration (Dell Latitude E6430 running Windows 7 64-bit on i5-3380M with 8GB RAM and Intel HD Graphics 4000) and noticed that the visualizer would not start due to the previously mentioned errors. I could not find a resolution on Cruden website, so I thought I will share my learning for benefit of others.

Issue:
When using Panthera on laptops with Intel HD graphics cards (no NVIDIA), the visualizer does not startup. (Using "Start Panthera Free" button on "Cruden Session Manager Lite").

Symptom:
Get error message indicating wrong GLSL version number and compilation error.

Fix:
The issue is caused due to the fact that Intel HD graphics card work with older version of the shader.
The compilation of .glsl files will typically fail when using the defult version number as specified
in the installation (#version 420 for Panthera release in 09/16).
1. Open explorer and search for all *.glsl files in C:\Cruden\Panthera\data\renderer
2. Open all files in Textpad (or such editor)
3. Do a search and replace of all "#version 420" with "#version 150"
4. Save all files and exit editor
5. Restart Cruden Panthera (and hopefully it should work now).

Notes:
The version number to which the downgrade needs to be done may depend on the OpenGL installations on the user system.

Hope this helps,

Sam

[rvangaal]

Hi Sam,

Thanks for the notes.
Note that Panthera currently uses v4.20 GLSL shaders indeed, which is from around August 2011, so around 5.5 years old now. Perhaps a driver update helps as well.

Note that the next PantheraFree release will be GLSL only; this hopefully alleviates some of the problems concerning nVidia/Cg.

Ruud

[pete]

Hi,

I'm new to using Panthera and really impressed so far. However, I'm having some issues creating my own tracks, which I think might be linked to my graphics card.

I follow the workflow set out in the developer information, however when I reload my track in TrackEd it is different shades of bright green and not correctly shaded with my maps.

The reason I think that this maybe linked to my graphics card is when I run the default Cruden dynamic platform in GLSL mode it is fine. When I switch to CG mode the whole screen is black.

The graphics card I am using is an AMD Radeon HD 7900, which works perfectly fine for Rfactor.

Any suggestions gratefully received!

[jvd]

Hi Pete,

You are probably right that this has to do with the graphics card. Unfortunately Panthera only supports nvidia graphics cards at the moment with CG shaders. For other (i.e. amd, intel) cards you can use the glsl shaders but the quality is not as good as it is for nvidia cards. However: panthera free is updated every now and then, and there might be some improvements for glsl in the next release!

Jelle

[thejesh13]

Hi All,

While installing free Panthera tool, I am facing some errors in
C:\Cruden\Panthera\data\renderer\shaders\particles_f.glsl failed:
Fragment shder failed to compile with the following errors:
Error:6:2143:error(#202) No matching overload function found: texture
Error:6:2202:error(#202) No matching overload function found: texture
Error:6:2347:error(#202) No matching overload function found: texture
Error:error(#273)3 cpmpilation errors. No code generated.

Please let me know how to fix such errors.

thanks in advance,

Regards,
Thejesh

[jvd]

Hi Thejesh,

Thanks for trying to install our free software!

Can you give us more detail about the hardware setup you are using?
More specifically: which graphics card and which drivers?
And do you perhaps have a different PC available to try out?

Cheers,
Jelle