GRAPHIC PROBLEMS

[TEDALTON]

HI FOLKS, MAYBE ONE OF YOU CAN ANSWER A QUESTION.  I AM USING A S3 GRAPHICS SAVAGE/ IX CARD, MY SKINS PROJECT PATTERNS FROM THE TOP LEFT CORNER TO THE MIDDLE OF THE SKIN. IS THERE A WAY TO STOP THIS FROM HAPPENING.[?]

[Don Ferguson]

Hello Terry,

It might help if you describe in more detail the "pattern" that is appearing on the upper left quadrant of the skin that you created.

Does your skin design include any gradual variations in hue or luminance?  If a color-bit depth for a display is set for something less than maximum, I've seen video cards change a smooth color transition into a series of odd-looking "whorls" and "steps" when shown on the monitor.

Does your skin design include any fine detail, such as a texture?  Sometimes interference patterns can emerge when a texture is displayed at a different resolution (or different size) than the one in which it was created.

If you have a .jpg file showing the skin you designed, you might post it here, and let some of the other developers try to help figure this out.

Welcome to the Ultra Hal forum.  Hopefully, a number of the developers who have made skins will help you diagnose this.

Sincerely,

Don

[TEDALTON]

The skin is one supplied with hal, the problem exsists with all the skins and is hard to describe.... the pattern is trapiziodial flashing multi-colors the best I can describe it.

[Don Ferguson]

Hello Terry,

Back on Hal 4.5, I used to occasionally see a pattern like the one you describe.  It would sometimes appear in the Haptek window when a Haptek People Putty character was chosen (when it happened, the character background would not display properly).  I used to be able to make it go away by re-starting Hal as the only application running.  However, I haven't seen anything like that phenomenon on Hal 5.

There is evidently something different about the interaction of your graphics card with the content of the Hal skins, as opposed to anything else displayed by your video card and monitor. (I am going on the premise that you never see these patterns at any other time, or on any other content besides the Hal skins.)

Other forum members: Do any of you use the same video card that Terry has listed above?  Have any of you ever seen flashing multi-colored patterns on the Hal skins?  Do any of you have a way to fix it, or a theory that could lead to fixing it?

Sincerely,

Don

[vonsmith]

TEDALTON,
Hal's 3d Haptek characters can be quirky on some systems. In general when someone has video card issues I suggest downloading the latest  drivers from the video card manufacturer and installing them. This may be in the form of an updated Windows driver or a flash firmware update on the video card. On rare occasions updating the computer motherboard flash BIOS can make a difference too.


=vonsmith=