Font problem on low spec (32mbyte) graphics cards

[KeithT]

We have a problem with NGUI rendering text that is loaded dynamically on older graphics cards. The rest of the game and static 2D NGUI menu and 3D in game NGUI controls all work fine, so we would like to get to the bottom of this. We had a problem with the whole 2D menu to start with but then reduced the Atlas down to 4Mb from 64Mb which cured that, but we are still left with this issue below, which does not look like the same cause. Anyone any idea what is happening ? This is the problem.



and it should look like this

[Ferazel]

Just a guess, but it might have to do with the GPU not supporting the shader requirements of the Soft Edge Shader. If you change the clipping on the panel to none does this resolve the text issue? Seems to me like the internal components are being rendered with a diffuse/fallback shader that doesn't support transparency.

[KeithT]

Good call, indeed testing shows it is that. Thank you.

I guess this means we have to use the "camera" rather than "panel" approach to scrolling content in windows, unless anyone knows different ?

[ArenMook]

A videocard that doesn't support shaders... why support videocards from the previous century?

[KeithT]

Ha, I wish.

There's lots of old hardware out there, we met this issue 3 times in the last 10 days each at different organisations.

[KeithT]

Actually on looking at this a bit deeper the machine/graphics card that clipping does not work on is Windows XP, DirectX9.0C, Shader Model 3. It works fine on Vista and W7 machines with DirectX11.

Has anyone tested/know what the minimum spec for clipping support is ?

[ArenMook]

Basic shader support is all you need.

[KeithT]

What do you define as "Basic shader support" ?

Do you mean that this issue identified here, should in fact work on a card supporting Shader Model 3 ?

If so, do you know what we need to do to make it work ? We have categorical proof from testing that enabling/disabling clipping causes the problem to occur.

A different solution would be vastly preferably to reworking the menus to use the camera approach, which we are already several days into trying to get working with a load of issues still to solve.

[ArenMook]

Shader model 3 is "advanced" shader support, so yes, most certainly.

Unity doesn't use DirectX 11. It uses DirectX 9. I'd say the issue is in your videocard's drivers. I'm guessing the drivers you have installed don't support shaders.

Another possibility may be Win7 actually doing shaders on the CPU in order to make it possible, while WinXP doesn't.

[KeithT]

Hmmm, we have had it reported on 3 machines, starting to wonder if is something else.

[ArenMook]

Open up the SoftClip shader and change all instances of "fixed" to be "half" instead. (ie: fixed4 -> half4).

I thought I changed that a while ago... I guess this got reverted at some point somewhere.

[KeithT]

Thanks. Tried that no noticeable difference.

Have found another machine with the same issue. Windows XP but with a later card GeForce2 MX-400 64MB DDR PCI (The other machine we can test on has a Rage 128 Pro).

[ArenMook]

Rage doesn't do shaders, and neither does GeForce 2.