LDCad 1.0 Beta 2 available (incl Linux version)

[Roland Melkert]

Hi all,

2nd beta of my editor is available at

http://www.melkert.net/LDCad

Some fixes (Improved stability, file handling), Some user friendliness improvements and a couple of new dialogs I kinda forgot to add in beta 1 (grid stepping management and LDRaw config file location management).

The biggest addition by far is Linux support. For now it's 32 bit only and some what experimental (distro wise, the application itself has the exact same features as the windows version).

The Linux binary should have very little decencies and runs on 'out of the box' Ubuntu 9.04 and 11.10 (these I test with, everything in between should work too).

Any recent distro should work as long GTK 2.x (Gnome) is available

I'm very interested to know if en on what people can get it to run, so please let me know ether here or directly.

When the application runs it seem to run very well, I edited the 5550 model using the Windows version for the first half and the Linux version for the second half (can you guess where I switched ).

ps: The site itself isn't completely up-to-date yet, I'll fix that this weekend though.

[Jean-Philippe Ouellet]

Looks awesome.

Can't wait for a mac version (hopefully one will come).

[Orion Pobursky]

As you can see from the above screenshot, I'm getting rendering problem where the top of the tiles is missing

[Jim DeVona]

I'm very interested to know if en on what people can get it to run, so please let me know ether here or directly.

Hi Roland,

I just downloaded the linux beta 2 and the LDraw library on an otherwise bone stock installation of Linux Mint 12 and it seems to work without any trouble. Of course I have yet to experiment with it and familiarize myself with the interface and features. I can't really judge graphics performance well because I am running linux within VirtualBox with default video settings, so I don't think there's any hardware acceleration. Anyway, it looks neat.

[Roland Melkert]

This model (the version in posted in the official models section), seems to render correct for me.

On your system it also seems to fail locating some other parts (red crosses), some questions:

Is the library the latest?
If it's a different version then the one posted on the forum, could you send it to me.
Does the log complain about 'could not locate'? Or send me the log file(s).
It could also be a bfc problem, are other models rendering correct?

[Roland Melkert]

Thanks,

the only 'glitch' I'm seeing in your screen-cap is one that all software renderers seem to have. It maps the font texture a pixel off (noticeable in the e.g. the 'p' and 's' -es).

[Roland Melkert]

Only problem with that is me not having a mac at the moment, but I'm considering one next year when it's time to upgrade my (stone age) laptop.

[Travis Cobbs]

I think the software renderers may be rendering correctly to the official OpenGL spec in this case. LDView contains the following code that gets called after setting up an Orthographic pixel-scaled view:

Code:

if (strncmp(glVendor, "ATI Technologies Inc.", 3) != 0)
    {
        // This doesn't work right on ATI video cards, so skip.
        glTranslatef(0.375f, 0.375f, 0.0f);
    }

The reasoning behind the above is related to the fact that each pixel is actually a box, with min, max, and center, and OpenGL renders either to the bottom left corner or to the center (can't remember which), when you're expecting the opposite. I chose 0.375 based on empirical testing on various video cards.

[Roland Melkert]

Thanks for the info,

It's probably a rasterization / rounding issue that's implementation depended. I tried to setup 2D overlay ortho in such a way it maps like normal pixels for gui 'painting'. In order to that i do a .5 correction in gluOrtho2D, which is very similar to a translate like you are doing.

I'll try 0.375 in gluOrtho it might force down rounding for that last pixel (or causes all other implementation to go wrong ).

[Orion Pobursky]

It should be up to date since I just updated it when I made the MPD of the SSD. I verify, maybe I'm wrong. I'll look at the other things you brought up.

[Roland Melkert]

I'm going to fix some minor bugs this weekend in order to get to a definitive 1.0 version somewhere next week.

So if anybody is having (rendering) problems or (very small) requests please report them as soon as possible.

Also once I released the def. 1.0 version I'm starting work on 1.1 which will have a couple of major new features. I'm still open for suggestions on additional (larger) features, so feel free to trow in your 2cts in about such things.

Things I decided on myself (e.g. 99% certain to be included) are:

(optional) Split view (the classic 4 views e.g. mlcad uses).
Additional part bin groups (parts in current step, parts in model, etc).


Things I might add depending on time and or complexity etc:

Ghosting.
Tubes, wires and other 'flexable' parts (maybe springs to).
a minifig generator.


Any additions / ideas are welcome.

[Roland Melkert]

Have you found the time to compile more information about this issue?

Because I can't reproduce this on any of my systems, but with them all having ATI hardware I'm suspecting this is an NVIDIA issue?

[Orion Pobursky]

I clean installed my parts library and there's not issue.

Ok, there are no video issues when running Windows. They only show up when I use my virtualization software. So basically this isn't something that wrong with your program.

[Roland Melkert]

Thanks,

I also noticed a similar dual lighting problem with the Linux open source Radeon driver that's not present in the AMD one, this might be a similar driver bug.

Or I'm doing something wrong, but Mesa renders it correctly and at the moment I've taken the rule 'if mesa renders it correctly, glitches on other platforms are most likely driver bugs', based on Travis' side notes.

Anyway thanks again.

[Jason Smith]

Beta 2 just as Beta 1 is working great on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Beta 2). Full release is only 6 days away so I think it's safe to safe it will continue to function.

Edit: I'm running 64bit.

EDIT2: No idea why I posted here since I am already on 1.0... I'm loosing my mind, please ignore.