I always read the forum and have always found solutions for my problems. However, now i stuck for some time on a problem i cannot solve. I did implement a prelight renderer in my engine, but i have a problem with outputting depth values. All the math is clear to me, and thats what i do for depth: -PositionInViewspace.Z / DistanceNearToFar, so resulting value is linear and in [0;1] range. At the same time i do output the normal vectors. The setup of rendertarget is simple: rt1: Normal.x, Normal.y, Normal.z, specularPower rt2: linearDepth Writing values in the first pass, where normals and depth are gatherd to rendertargets, the rt1 is filled with normals but there are holes at rt2. i spent a lot of time checking all my Renderstate changes, but everything looks fine. I tried to clear the targets with different colors: Cleard both targets to transparent black (0, 0, 0, 0), gives black holes at rt2. Cleard both targets to white (1, 1, 1, 1), gives white holes at rt2. It is more strage when i try different surface formats fro rt2: Format: Color => no holes, but ugly banding when pointlights are rendered Format: halfVector2 => lots of holes Format: Single => less holes but still there Format: halfVector4 => no holes, everything fine (but wasted bandwidth) Format: Vector2 => no holes, everything fine (but wasted bandwidth) rt1 is always filled correctly I really dont know what it is. Any help is appreciated. http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/6004/finalck.jpg P.S. my GPU is: Geforce 7900GT

thanks, i would like to read the preview version, but i get a directory listing denied error.
Stencil and alpha is turned off. Actually i dont understand how pixels can be written to the one rendertarget but not to some areas of the second, since in shader model 2.0 you have to write to all active rendertargets.
Seems like i have to learn how to use PIX in the next fev days.

[EDIT]: aargh, running an experiment does show the depth holes in the started application, but holes are gone when PIX re-renders the scene.

Tried application on another hardware with Geforce 7600, everything fine there. Debug runtime doesnt show anything wrong, just lots of ignored redundant renderstate changes. Thanks four your article, its very informative. Still have no luck, but i keep on playing with pix.

Just startet the application with reference rasterizer, everything looks fine. So now i'll grab the newest driver for my card and see what happens. Thank you very much for your useful tips.

[EDIT] no luck with this

[Edited by - GinieDP on September 12, 2009 4:54:51 AM]

now i am able to see the holes in the PIX renderer:

Rendertarget with linear depth contains pixels that are black (depth = 0), since the rendertarget was cleared to black.
But trying to debug the pixel, pixel history shows a depthvalue above 0 (for example s.th. like 0.188, which is about 96 units in the scene). Steppung through the debugger shows correct depth calculation and resulting value.

damn, this is getting more and more nasty.

The issue is potentially solved now. I took a deeper look into the libraries i wrote for my engine. Seems like a thing i always wanted to fix but always forgot caused an unexpected behaviour of the GPU. Here is a little explanation:

My instancing library also manages different vertex streams on a model. Bad thing is that i allowed some vertex streams to be null (disabled), but did not change the vertex declaration. So vertexdeclaration was declared for some streams that have never been set to GPU (using models like terrain). Weird thing is that i never got an error or warning. Rendering was always fine until i tried deferred lighting with two rendertargets where i got holes in the second one. Using proper vertexdeclaration seems to solve the issue: No holes anymore :D. I cant explain the behaviour with different surface formats. Why did halfVector4 work but halfVector2 not?

So i hope vertexdeclaration was really the problem and its not a short phenomenon.

P.S.: Using PIX leads me to try a different vertexdeclaration, after i was seing lots of: "SetStreamSource(1, NULL, ...)". Thank you very much MJP, you helped me really a lot.