Android - Bug Galaxy Note 10.1 / Mali 400 blurry textures

Asure · Jan 20, 2013

Any idea why my top-of-the-line quadcore Mali MP400 GPU that comes with the Exynos SoC renders like this?

I drew the white line so you can see where the texture for the playfield is blurry and no longer rendered correctly.. Images are clickable.
The last image speaks for itself i'd think. (look at the rocket & town square for example.)

Full Size version

Full Size version

Full Size version

Looking at this guide it seems the Mali GPU likes 16/32 bit textures better, hates 24-bit textures, and prefers compressed textures. Anybody know what sort of textures Farsight used?

Ryan Routon · Jan 21, 2013

etc for non-alpha (opaque) textures, 16 bit 4444 for transparent. Download the opengl extension info app see if you have anisotropic filtering as an option.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/...1bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5yZWFsdGVjaHZyLmdsdmlldyJd

My guess is you don't have access to that extension (or its named something weird).

Asure · Jan 22, 2013

Thanks for your reply Ryan!

I took another screenshot, because i don't know what i should be looking for.

And, missing from the picture itself, GL_EXT_discard_framebuffer.

I don't know exactly what category i should be looking at for the Anisotropic filtering..

(If there's anything i can log or screengrab in addition to this, just let me know.)

Ryan Routon · Jan 22, 2013

yeah =( that's what I thought, you don't have the extension available. Who knows, maybe they will update the firmware in the future to add it. Unfortunately, there are so many devices I can't keep up with them all.

jaredmorgs · Jan 22, 2013

Ryan Routon said:
yeah =( that's what I thought, you don't have the extension available. Who knows, maybe they will update the firmware in the future to add it. Unfortunately, there are so many devices I can't keep up with them all.

So this is not something that could be solved by installing a custom ROM? One with that support baked in?

Our would Samsung have to update the opengl driver for the hardware?

Asure · Feb 7, 2013

jaredmorgs said:
So this is not something that could be solved by installing a custom ROM? One with that support baked in?
Our would Samsung have to update the opengl driver for the hardware?

The actual hardware does not offer this filtering. I could be done in software.. most mali400 are bundled with quad- or dual core cpu's as well.
There's a lot of mali-400 based devices out there. I could only find support for this type of filtering on Tegra for now..

Ryan Routon said:
yeah =( that's what I thought, you don't have the extension available. Who knows, maybe they will update the firmware in the future to add it. Unfortunately, there are so many devices I can't keep up with them all.

A fix could be to disable the current (crappy) filtering on mali400 gpu's or have an option to turn this on/off in the game. It looks really bad the way it's implemented now. I'd prefer a sharp table all around instead of the current effect..

Ryan Routon · Feb 7, 2013

we are using the standard opengl mipmaping bilinear filtering with optional anisotropic filtering. Software filtering was not an option due to performance. Unfortunately it sounds like your hardware just picks a low mip map from the chain for textures at a distance. Its up to the OEM to implement the drivers for filtering etc.

goforthewall · Feb 8, 2013

Is there any workaround for Samsung Galaxy S2 running newest stock rom and Android 4.0.4 ?? I have the same texture filtering problem...

Ryan Routon · Feb 8, 2013

not really, its a hardware limitation I believe.

George Klepacz · Feb 9, 2013

Crap, my Note 2 has the same GPU!

noneed4me2 · Feb 10, 2013

I doubt the galaxy note 2 lacks this implementation even if it has the same GPU. I was pretty sure the note 2 had a newer version Mali GPU. I would demo it and see how the tables look.

George Klepacz · Feb 11, 2013

I took this from my Note 2, Landscape, Camera 2.

goforthewall · Feb 11, 2013

yup, same problem as on the Galaxy S2 =( Quite annoying that there is no way to fix this - either on FS' or Samsung's side...

George Klepacz · Feb 11, 2013

Especially for it being a high end phone.

It looks like in Jellybean 4.2 an option will be added to let the GPU do anti-aliasing. Maybe there will also be an option to handle textures differently. Hope so.

noneed4me2 · Feb 12, 2013

I was deciding between the note 2 and the HTC 1 x+. Guess this helps to narrow my choices.

Asure · Feb 14, 2013

Ryan Routon said:
we are using the standard opengl mipmaping bilinear filtering with optional anisotropic filtering. Software filtering was not an option due to performance. Unfortunately it sounds like your hardware just picks a low mip map from the chain for textures at a distance. Its up to the OEM to implement the drivers for filtering etc.

As there's so many Mali-400 devices out there, like i suggested, an option to turn this filtering on/off in the menu could not be implemented then?
It would solve the problem for lots of end users.

There's millions and millions of Samsung devices out there with this chipset (Galaxy S2, S3, Note, Note2, Note 10.1.. and so much more..)

Sure, the newer Mali-6 series and PowerVR SGX 544 have this kind of filtering, but it will take a long time before there will be a significant installed-base for these new and unreleased device.

Right now, if i'm correct, only Tegra and perhaps the older (Galaxy series with SGX540 perhaps?) have true hardware anisotropic filters, but it's hard to find this kind of information for simple end users.
Vendors just say 'yeah it has openGL ES 2' but this does not mean the whole subset is supported.

It reminds me of the PC days when we had Nvidia, Ati, 3DFX.. and i think nvidia cheated on some benchmarks/games where filtering was really bad..

noneed4me2 said:
I was deciding between the note 2 and the HTC 1 x+. Guess this helps to narrow my choices.

Don't get the North America One X, as it has the lesser Adreno-GPU which i can't find any info online of it having anisotropic filtering.

Ryan Routon · Feb 14, 2013

Its not just Tegra, my S3 Mali has the extension. You can download an extension viewer off the market for free. We don't offer this because we have not implemented a filter for this and honestly I don't think it would work, its a pretty extensive process and its hard enough for us to hit 60fps.

Ryan Routon · Feb 14, 2013

also note that the hardware might be there, but the oem did not write the driver for it.

Ryan Routon · Feb 14, 2013

One thing I can do however is look into rewriting the shader to bias the mipmap. When things settle down I will take a look at this when time allows it. Currently I have several other things on my plate (ouya, and several other things I can't talk about).

Asure · Feb 14, 2013

Thanks for the replies Ryan, good to see that some companies still care these days!

So, wait, the S3 driver has the extension !? That's shoddy coding from Samsung then.. (Time to go off and pulls the mali.ko drivers from some S3 rom for experimenting.)
In that case, i guess we must bother Samsung for updated drivers.. Is your S3 North American(Dual Core) or International(quadcore) model?

P.s. Which rom/os version are you running? (ex. XXEMA / 4.1.2 or something like that, would narrow my search for that driver down a bit..)

Android - Bug Galaxy Note 10.1 / Mali 400 blurry textures

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