Hey everyone, I figured I'd start a thread about Zink because I'm super excited about it. So excited, I even wrote a blog post about it:

https://developer.x-plane.com/2023/02/addressing-plugin-flickering/

TL;DR: If you are on Vulkan, so either Linux or Windows, you might want to try Zink. Especially with an AMD GPU. If you run into issues with your favourite plugin, please file a bug report and mention what those plugins are.

There's most definitely going to be a few bugs, in fact, I already know about a couple. This is still very much a work in progress and it touches a huge part of X-Plane, so don't expect perfection right away. You can always run without Zink. I'll keep this thread updated about issues and I'm happy to answer any questions.

If you get stuck and can't launch X-Plane anymore after enabling Zink, please file a bug report. You can manually disable it by going into Output/preferences and deleting the gfx_zink.prf file. In theory Zink should disable itself, kinda like how Vulkan did for 11.50, but I guess there is a bug in there? Those are the instructions to unstuck yourself though, if you do get stuck. Sorry!

Stuff I know about:

• Crash on startup with Nvidia GPUs. The X-Plane ticket for this is XPD-13878 and it'll be fixed next beta
• If something loads the system GL library before X-Plane gets a chance to load Zink, plugins will render with the system GL and never be visible. This manifests in DataRef Editor as half of the window chrome missing around it but text being visible (XPD-13886)
• The above can be triggered with some VR compositors
• One person reported a crash on exit with Fly With LUA
• On Linux you might see error messages of a GPU crash in stdout/stderr. These are from CEF, not X-Plane and can be ignored
• Apparently quite a few people experiencing a crash on startup (digging into this now). If this is you, see above for instructions on how to get out of that situation again, but the underlying issue that it keeps crashing on startup and not backing off Zink is tracked as XPD-13884)

Edit: X-Plane 12.04r1 is out and fixes a bunch of Zink issues. If you get an error message saying that Zink couldn't be enabled in time, this is most likely due to something on your system injecting OpenGL at startup time into X-Plane. X-Plane will try to load Zink as early as possible, long before either initializing plugins or even initializing Vulkan. I know that on Linux, Steam will do this (and I'm talking to Valve about possible workarounds). Please file this so we can figure out what's going wrong on your system and add workarounds into X-Plane.

Edited March 2, 20232 yr by JustSid
Amendment

My "beta" copy of XP12 will not even open.  Thank goodness I tried it on this one first.  Any ideas how I can revert or whatever?  Don't want to have to download another beta copy...

Log.txt

1 minute ago, oldflyguy64 said:

My "beta" copy of XP12 will not even open.

After enabling Zink or without Zink? By default X-Plane will not launch with Zink enabled and does what it used to do in 12.04b2, so if that worked, this is something else

4 minutes ago, JustSid said:

After enabling Zink or without Zink? By default X-Plane will not launch with Zink enabled and does what it used to do in 12.04b2, so if that worked, this is something else

After checking the Zinc option, exiting XP and re-starting the computer (when XP would not open).  Don't think it's anything else.  Only addition to beta copy is SimHeaven (America).  Removed plug-in's as well.

 

Edited February 24, 20232 yr by oldflyguy64

Just now, oldflyguy64 said:

After checking the Zinc option,

Way to bury the lede here

In theory X-Plane should reset itself and not start with Zink after a crash. If not, you can disable it by going into Output/preferences and deleting the gfx_zink.prf file. Can you look in Output/crash_reports too and file a bug report with any .dmp file that's in there so we can figure out why you crashed?

1 minute ago, JustSid said:

Can you look in Output/crash_reports too and file a bug report with any .dmp file that's in there so we can figure out why you crashed?

Absolutely!  Updating that copy right now to "repair" any damage.  Probably not necessary but I've been around for a while and this is all SOP with me. 

 

16 minutes ago, JustSid said:

Can you look in Output/crash_reports too and file a bug report with any .dmp file that's in there so we can figure out why you crashed?

I have several .dmp files I will send over in a bug report.  Coming up against a "hard break" right now but will get them over later this afternoon.

Yeeeeeehaw! Finally no more "rumors say that Zink..."!

For such an extensive modification of XP12's rendering engine, Zink has been working really well so far. FWL crashing at shutdown is a comparatively minor nuisance.

A heads up for anyone who flies the Hot Start CL650: Totoriko posted today (24 Feb 2023) on the Hot Start Discord that the CL650 won't work in Zink mode yet as, "... [it's] using pretty complex features and I'm gonna have to make changes to get it supported."

 

1 hour ago, JustSid said:

Way to bury the lede here

In theory X-Plane should reset itself and not start with Zink after a crash. If not, you can disable it by going into Output/preferences and deleting the gfx_zink.prf file. Can you look in Output/crash_reports too and file a bug report with any .dmp file that's in there so we can figure out why you crashed?

Same here, enabling zink with my GTX1070 will prevent XP to start. Nothing is being created in the Output/crash_reports folder.
Only hint is this line in the log

Vulkan Layers       : VK_LAYER_NV_optimus (1), VK_LAYER_VALVE_steam_overlay (1), VK_LAYER_VALVE_steam_fossilize (1), VK_LAYER_OBS_HOOK (1), VK_LAYER_EOS_Overlay (1), VK_LAYER_EOS_Overlay (1), VK_LAYER_ROCKSTAR_GAMES_social_club (1)
--=={This application has crashed!}==--

XP will not start anymore unless I delete the gfx_zink.prf file

edit: NV driver version is 526.98

Edited February 24, 20232 yr by Pep Peroni

Hi JustSid

 

Thanks for the incredible work on Zink. With the ZiboMod on EGLL R27, live weather, live date and time (sunset), all settings on max I went from 17 fps to 43 fps.

@JustSidLog.txt

No luck on my first try with Zink. GTX1080 v528.49 Attached crash report dmp file

f83788c9-0c54-4371-af94-08ed51388f52.zip. 

 

I have filed an official bug report.

Edited February 24, 20232 yr by mfd529
more details

Note: Nvidia generally handles all Vulkan - OpenGL synching on the driver level and has done so forever. Nvidia users therefore do not require Zink.

4 minutes ago, RandomUser said:

Nvidia users therefore do not require Zink.

1 hour ago, JustSid said:

TL;DR: If you are on Vulkan, so either Linux or Windows, you might want to try Zink. Especially with an AMD GPU.

I read especially not exclusively. 

Dears 

working here

found 2 plugins incompatible, skuncraft updater and  VR tools. 

Edited February 24, 20232 yr by Severina

Long term, but like, looooong term, the goal is to have just Zink as the way to do plugin interop. But also have it available on macOS through MoltenVK, so plugin authors and us internally have only one backend to be concerned about. So Nvidia users are more than welcome to try this as well, although as already mentioned will most likely not see a whole lot of benefits.

Edited February 24, 20232 yr by JustSid

Will Zink help with the issues that us 900 series card users are having?

crash  with  reshade at  launch

Faulting application name: X-Plane.exe, version: 12.0.4.2, time stamp: 0x63f78272
Faulting module name: ReShade64.dll, version: 5.6.0.1690, time stamp: 0x63c42b72
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000002acef8
Faulting process id: 0x0x1AD8
Faulting application start time: 0x0x1D94888D3A72B7D
Faulting application path: N:\X-Plane 12\X-Plane.exe
Faulting module path: C:\ProgramData\ReShade\ReShade64.dll

 

Yeah to be absolutely real with you, I have not much hope of this ever running with ReShade. But you knew ReShade would be unstable, that's why you had to enable it via a command line argument.

4 minutes ago, cessna_man said:

Will Zink help with the issues that us 900 series card users are having?

If it's the black sun then no.

@JustSid
Thanks for alll your explanations. It looks like the SAM-plugin doesn't work with Zink, since i get an error each time i am loading an airport using SAM. With Zink deactivated everything works fine.

12 minutes ago, JustSid said:

 

If it's the black sun then no.

How about the magenta? I can still fly with sun, but I can't with magenta. As soon as I get home from work I will update and check.

Thanks

Edited February 24, 20232 yr by cessna_man

OpenGL Python (XPPython3) fails (but does not crash) with zink enabled. Zink disabled, runs fine.

EXCEPTION>> [Main] Traceback (most recent call last):
EXCEPTION>> [Main]   File "D:\X-Plane 12/Resources/plugins\PythonPlugins\PI_OpenGL.py", line 175, in drawWindowCallback
EXCEPTION>> [Main]     GL.glEnd()
EXCEPTION>> [Main]   File "C:\Users\Peter\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python311\site-packages\OpenGL\latebind.py", line 63, in __call__
EXCEPTION>> [Main]     return self.wrapperFunction( self.baseFunction, *args, **named )
EXCEPTION>> [Main]            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
EXCEPTION>> [Main]   File "C:\Users\Peter\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python311\site-packages\OpenGL\GL\exceptional.py", line 45, in glEnd
EXCEPTION>> [Main]     return baseFunction( )
EXCEPTION>> [Main]            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
EXCEPTION>> [Main]   File "C:\Users\Peter\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python311\site-packages\OpenGL\platform\baseplatform.py", line 415, in __call__
EXCEPTION>> [Main]     return self( *args, **named )
EXCEPTION>> [Main]            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
EXCEPTION>> [Main]   File "C:\Users\Peter\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python311\site-packages\OpenGL\error.py", line 230, in glCheckError
EXCEPTION>> [Main]     raise self._errorClass(
EXCEPTION>> [Main] OpenGL.error.GLError: GLError(
EXCEPTION>> [Main] 	err = 1282,
EXCEPTION>> [Main] 	description = b'invalid operation',
EXCEPTION>> [Main] 	baseOperation = glEnd,
EXCEPTION>> [Main] 	cArguments = ()
EXCEPTION>> [Main] )

I'm guessing(?) the python bindings to opengl are interfering with zink, but this is all new to me. Any ideas?

2 minutes ago, cessna_man said:

As soon as I get home from work I will update and check.

I can fast forward you to the disappointment phase already: That'll be the same, sorry.

This is a separate bug entirely and not something Zink attempts to address.

4 minutes ago, JustSid said:

I can fast forward you to the disappointment phase already: That'll be the same, sorry.

This is a separate bug entirely and not something Zink attempts to address.

Bummer, guess I'll take my time going home lol

Any idea if it will ever get resolved or will I just have buy a new card.

Edited February 24, 20232 yr by cessna_man

6 minutes ago, pbuckner said:

OpenGL Python (XPPython3) fails (but does not crash) with zink enabled. Zink disabled, runs fine.

...

I'm guessing(?) the python bindings to opengl are interfering with zink, but this is all new to me. Any ideas?

Not seeing any issues at all with XPPython3 and Zink. But I use an AMD GPU.