I am trying to add fixed function fog to my game. The problem is that I am currently using a rather cheap rental computer with a somewhat flaky video card. On this card, when I turn on vertex fog or table fog, both are 100% dense (you can't see through them) unless they are in D3DFOG_EXP mode with density set to below 0.01 (which is far lower than I should have to go, if the D3D docs are correct.) I want my users to be able to have fog enabled for my game. 1) What is the cap in D3DCAPS9 which indicates if vertex fog is supported? What about the one for table fog? I just looked through the docs and there do not seem to be any flags directly concerned with whether or not these kinds of fog actually work or not. 2) What are some good values for fog density/start/end? Since this video card handles fog so badly, I have no way of determining what a good setup should be. Thanks! Greg [Edited by - synth_cat on October 12, 2007 3:05:33 PM]

OK, thanks for explaining that - now I understand why I had to use such low values.


I'm still a bit confused about which caps I need to check on a user's system.

Here are the only fog-relevant caps I was able to find in D3DCAPS9:

In RasterCaps:

- D3DPRASTERCAPS_FOGRANGE
- D3DPRASTERCAPS_FOGTABLE
- D3DPRASTERCAPS_FOGVERTEX
- D3DPRASTERCAPS_ZFOG
- D3DPRASTERCAPS_WFOG

In ShadeCaps:

- D3DPSHADECAPS_FOGGOURAUD

In LineCaps:

- D3DLINECAPS_FOG


Let's say I just want to use table fog on a user's machine. Does this look OK to completely verify that table fog will work?



Does this next snippet look OK to completely verify that vertex fog will work?

In the second snippet, is it really necessary to check the FOGRANGE cap? It doesn't seem as if range fog is necessary to make vertex fog work.

Anyway, please tell me if I've set up the caps-checking correctly for this stuff. Have I left anything out? I have a feeling there should be a more general cap like FOGSUPPORTED which would automatically tell if any kind of fixed-func fog were supported at all, but I can find no such thing in the docs.

There's no "you have fixed function fog (of some variety)" cap bit. There's just the bit for vertex fog and the bit for pixel fog.

I cover vertex fog in Chapter 6. Vertex Transformations and pixel fog in Chapter 14. The Frame Buffer in my book.

My pipeline poster gives an overview of all the caps stuff and how it relates to different parts of the pipeline.

I just went over the docs you sent me - they were very informative. Thanks a lot!

So am I correct to say that I do _not_ need to check the D3DPRASTERCAPS_FOGRANGE bit just to use basic vertex fog?

Also, your pipeline does not mention the D3DPSHADECAPS_FOGGOURAUD bit in the Vertex Fog section. So am I also correct to assume that I do not need to check this either?

I have another question about the table fog checking code:

Is the second if statement redundant? Does the D3DPRASTERCAPS_FOGTABLE bit automatically mean that either W or Z fog is enabled?