Hello,

I started writing on a virtual reality extension for an existing Google Earth-like project (which I haven't written myself).

Drawing the scene (mostly terrain and buildings in the far distance) works, but drawing the controllers with the same shader doesn't and I

see ugly artifacts/z fighting.

The important code parts are

Vertex Shader:

#version 420
[..]
uniform float farPlane;
smooth out float flogz;

void main()
{
[..]
    gl_Position = viewProjModel * position;

    float C = 10.0;
    float Fcoef = 2.0 / log2(farPlane * C + 1.0);
    gl_Position.z = log2(max(1e-6, gl_Position.w * C + 1.0)) * Fcoef - 1.0;
    flogz = 1.0 + gl_Position.w * C;
}

Fragment Shader:

#version 420

#extension GL_ARB_conservative_depth : enable

layout(depth_less) out float gl_FragDepth;

uniform float farPlane;
smooth in float flogz;

[..]

void main()
{
[..]
    float C = 10.0;
    float Fcoef = 2.0 / log2(farPlane * C + 1.0);
    gl_FragDepth = log2(flogz) * Fcoef * 0.5;
}

The Framebuffer is created with

glGenFramebuffers(1, &renderFramebufferId);
glBindFramebuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, renderFramebufferId);
		   
glGenRenderbuffers(1, &depthBufferId);
glBindRenderbuffer(GL_RENDERBUFFER, depthBufferId);
glRenderbufferStorageMultisample(GL_RENDERBUFFER, 4, GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT32, width, height);
glFramebufferRenderbuffer(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_DEPTH_ATTACHMENT, GL_RENDERBUFFER, depthBufferId);
		   
glGenTextures(1, &renderTextureId);
glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D_MULTISAMPLE, renderTextureId);
glTexImage2DMultisample(GL_TEXTURE_2D_MULTISAMPLE, 4, GL_RGBA8, width, height, true);
glFramebufferTexture2D(GL_FRAMEBUFFER, GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0, GL_TEXTURE_2D_MULTISAMPLE, renderTextureId, 0);

GLenum statusRenderFB = glCheckFramebufferStatus(GL_FRAMEBUFFER);
if (statusRenderFB != GL_FRAMEBUFFER_COMPLETE)
{
    [..] // abort
}

I also played with different C-constants, different depth texture formats and with glEnable(GL_DEPTH_CLAMP) and nothing seems to help.

Does anyone know a solution? These artifacts bother me for days.

Okay, I think I fixed it. It had nothing todo with the logarithmic depth buffer and was more of a problem with the 32 bit floating point precision (the position of my controller was around ~100000 in x,y,z).

Using a double matrix on a certain place fixed it (even though it seems more like a workaround).

Don't move the camera around the world - instead move the world around the camera, which should always be at 0,0,0. This will avoid needing any double precision hacks.