[HOWTO] R300 and Google Earth

[bszente]

Hello,

I have an Ati Mobility Radeon X300 video card, and finally I managed to switch to the Open Source driver. All the applications work well, including Google Earth. Until know GE locked my system, but with the new Mesa release it works well. I thought I share my settings with you.

Upgrade the following packages to these versions:

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xorg-server-1.4.0.90-r3
xf86-video-ati-6.8.0-r1
xf86driproto-2.0.4
mesa-7.0.3
mesa-progs-7.0.3

The relevant part of my xorg.conf file:

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Section "Device"
        Identifier      "ATI Radeon X300"
        Driver          "radeon"
        Option          "GARTSize"              "64"
        Option          "DynamicClocks"         "on"
EndSection

Google Earth gives the following warning message, if started from a terminal:

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*********************************WARN_ONCE*********************************
File r300_render.c function r300Fallback line 471
Software fallback:ctx->Line.SmoothFlag
**************************************************************************

It starts but it is very very slow. It seems that the R300 driver does not implement this function, thus it falls back to software implementation. In order to bypass this problem I installed the driconf utility:

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emerge driconf

Now start this utility and set the "Disable Low-impact fallback" option to Yes. Here is my complete .drirc file, as it was generated by driconf:

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<driconf>
    <device screen="0" driver="r300">
        <application name="Default">
            <option name="force_s3tc_enable" value="false" />
            <option name="fp_optimization" value="0" />
            <option name="fthrottle_mode" value="2" />
            <option name="texture_coord_units" value="8" />
            <option name="disable_stencil_two_side" value="false" />
            <option name="tcl_mode" value="3" />
            <option name="texture_depth" value="0" />
            <option name="def_max_anisotropy" value="1.0" />
            <option name="no_neg_lod_bias" value="false" />
            <option name="command_buffer_size" value="8" />
            <option name="round_mode" value="0" />
            <option name="dither_mode" value="0" />
            <option name="no_rast" value="false" />
            <option name="disable_lowimpact_fallback" value="true" />
            <option name="texture_image_units" value="8" />
            <option name="disable_s3tc" value="false" />
            <option name="color_reduction" value="1" />
            <option name="vblank_mode" value="1" />
        </application>
    </device>
</driconf>

That's all. Google Earth now works very nice and extremely fast. In my opinion it is much faster than it was with the fglrx driver. I did not observed any visual corruption or rendering problems due to disabling that Line.SmoothFlag option. I think the only "loss" is that the lines are not anti-aliased, but it does not bother me at all.
I'm happy that it works finally with the Open Source driver and I could get rid of Ati's poor closed source driver.

[DeliciousT]

Thanks for the advice! That combo is working great for my Radeon Mobility 9600. Googleearth runs great, as does ProjectM, my favorite music visualization. These were the last two 3d apps that didn't work with the open source drivers. I'll never even have to think about fglrx ever again!

[El Tazar]

Thanks a lot. I now have my Radeon 9600 working with Googlearth by using driconf with mesa 7.0.1 and xorg-server 1.3.0.0-r5. Very decent performance

[Ska`]

I have another error, the first was the same yours and is fixed with low-impact fallback but this remains

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*********************************WARN_ONCE*********************************
File r300_state.c function r300Enable line 512
TODO - double side stencil !
***************************************************************************
Google Earth has caught signal 11.

Somebody knows what can i do?

[Ska`]

I have another error, the first was the same yours and is fixed with low-impact fallback but this remains

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*********************************WARN_ONCE*********************************
File r300_state.c function r300Enable line 512
TODO - double side stencil !
***************************************************************************
Google Earth has caught signal 11.

Somebody knows what can i do?

I was with mesa 6.5.2-r1, updated to 7.0.3 and now all seems to be ok, thanks for the howto

[sourcez]

I also recommend to disable the EnablePageFlip Option, at least for the ATI mobility R300 with the radeon driver and googleearth version 4.3.7284.3916.

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Option     "EnablePageFlip"   "no" 

With this option enabled googleearth freeze my system and a reboot was needed.

hope this helps