Why do my static meshes disappear?

[Devil Master]

I tried to replace parts of the architecture in my map with static meshes, but I ran into a problem: they disappear randomly whenever I get too close to them (where by "too close" I mean "closer than five meters or so") or I look at them from certain angles.

I have uploaded the simplest map that reproduces the problem at
https://mega.nz/#!9lAhXAgQ!1ekaHBAL5NVm ... 0DA12GI7-c

Just unzip wtf.zip in your Unreal directory, the two files will automatically be copied into the appropriate directories.

To run the map, type:
open omg_wtf

To reproduce the problem, just walk up the stairs.
How do I solve?

EDIT:
It's just the Glide renderer that does that. Using the D3D9 renderer works fine. Still, (how) can I prevent it from happening with the Glide renderer too?

[Turboman.]

It's not related to your map, it's really an old issue with the game (pre-227 mostly).
For some reason meshes are culled way too aggressively in unreal, once the pivot/center of an object leaves your screen the game simply decides to stop rendering the entire object. You can test it with the trees in nyleve by walking up to them and looking at their base.

This issue got fixed in 227 for D3d and Opengl, but I believe Glide has never been updated (and neither has the software renderer, which has a lot more issues with staticmeshes).

Best thing to do is just to run the game in D3d or Opengl, I think later 3dfx cards work under Opengl as well?

[Devil Master]

Ah, I see. So is there any hope for the problem in the Glide renderer to be solved in future versions of v227?

The reason I'm using the Glide renderer is that it's the one that gives the least problems on my target system (an XP computer with nVidia drivers v78.01 and dgVoodoo wrapper, that I plan to take to a retrocomputing exhibition).
With those drivers, here's how the other renderers perform:
- OpenGL lighting is all wrong (polygons that should be lit appear black, colored lights affect structures on the opposite side of the map, adjacent polygons that should be affected by the same light are lit with different colors...)
- Direct3D 8 and 9 cause randomly textured and positioned triangles to flash whenever a scripted pawn is being rendered
- Normal Direct3D mode (7, I presume? no, the original Direct3D renderer used Direct3D 6) renders normal and static meshes at the wrong depth, so, for example, a wall 10 meters from the POV covers a mesh 2 meters from the POV

In fact, had I not discovered the problem with the meshes, I would've said that the Glide renderer is the only one that does not give me any problem at all.

I have determined the cause of the behavior with those renderers to be that particular version of the drivers, because they don't occur on my Windows 7 computer, while they do occur on other XP computers if they have the same video drivers.
Updating the drivers on the retro system is not a viable choice, because it would destroy the ability to render stereoscopic scenes, and what I want to show is a retro-VR system, which requires stereoscopy.

[Smirftsch]

Glide is entirely out of scope nowadays. Of course I'd never remove it due to the "retro" reasons you mentioned, but I am happy it still compiles and works to be honest. There are no plans to work on it again.
Did you try with other drivers as well? IIrc the 78 series had some trouble previous and later versions did not have. Maybe downgrading could help to make OpenGL/D3D work correctly.
I am wondering, if D3D is flawed, which most glidewrappers use that I can remember, why is the emulation working properly then. Weird.

[Devil Master]

Did you try with other drivers as well? IIrc the 78 series had some trouble previous and later versions did not have. Maybe downgrading could help to make OpenGL/D3D work correctly.

Okay, I'll try downgrading to 77.77.

I am wondering, if D3D is flawed, which most glidewrappers use that I can remember, why is the emulation working properly then. Weird.

Because the new renderers use D3D 8 and 9, while the version of dgVoodoo I use is based on D3D 7.

EDIT: all right, going back to 77.77 fixed the problem.