A videogame programmer's blog

Voxelviewer (Part 2) - Porting it to the GPU!

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:42:00 -0500

We finally started porting the core of the voxel viewer to the GPU using OpenCL. This is our first debug build after a few hours playing around with it. We don’t fully rasterize the mesh yet nor do we have any textures like we do in the CPU version. And yes there is noise but hey, we’ve just started ;)

Here’s a more interactive video, it shows the model being scaled through voxelspace.

Voxelviewer ( Part 1 )

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:30:34 -0500

Together with a friend of mine ( Quinten Lansu ) I started a new project which will also be part of an assignment in our GPU programming course. Our idea is to create modelviewer which doesn’t show meshes the normal way but convert it to voxels on the GPU or CPU ( depending on the settings ) in realtime.

The idea of it being realtime is that voxels do not have an orientation that changes. They are always unit cubes which are aligned on the axis. When you rotate your model you do not want to rotate your voxels but rather rotate your model through the voxels ‘space’ and generate new ones on the fly. Of course if you just fly around with a camera this isn’t an issue, you can generate the voxels once. This is also a way of doing it, we are implementing a dynamic and static rendering routine. The dynamic one rasterizes the loaded mesh in realtime to a pointcloud which are turned into voxels. The static one generates the pointcloud once and keeps this rendering, you can fly around with the camera but not move the model in any way because its static.

Our first problem was actually getting some voxels on the screen. Because they were cubes we would need to send 8 points the the GPU which was not exactly fast for 1 million voxels. We went for a different approach, we generate a pointcloud which are always a unit space apart ( In our case 1 unit, this is the size of 1 voxel ). We then send the pointcloud to the GPU and generate cubes with them using a geometry shader. What the shader does it receive the point and wrap a triangle strip around the point and creating a cube this way.This is what our first tries looked like:

Really simpel pointcloud and a standard red color which we forced in the fragment shader. Our next step was to actually generate a pointcloud from a sphere.

To do this we had to rasterize the triangle in 3D rather than 2D which is the normal routine enforced by GPU’s. In 3D it is still the normal approach like in 2D, you create spanlines for your triangles by walking over the Y between vertices, every step you save the start and the end of the line creating a span of the triangle. Just simple interpolation. In 3D it has a bit of a twist, you will have to do it per axis. Named the “Dominant Axis” and the “Submissive Axis” by Quinten. Basically you rasterize per axis and in the end merge these together. With a little fiddling we got to this:

We were pretty happy but one big problem was overlapping voxels. We had a lot of them unfortunately. We decided to tackle this problem at a later time because right now performance wasn’t our big concern, getting it to actually work was the main concern.

We went onto coloring the voxels. What we had to do when rasterizing just like with a triangle was to interpolate the U and V of the triangle and put this into the Voxel and implement it in the shader to make it use the color. This is what our first attempts looked like:

The UV’s were a bit off but we were getting there. After we worked out the interpolation a bit better we got to this:

We added some extra features like scaling the model which would give the whole thing more detail ( and more Voxels which in turn caused it to have more detail. )

The thing is that when you have a small model and a set unit size for the voxels it will mean that if your model is small and the voxels, in comparison, really big it will look like a low resolution version of the ship. Hard to explain in words so here’s a screenshot:

So as you can see there’s more detail every step, this shows scale 1 2 4 8 and 10. As you can see it really improves on the overall detail of the model.

Our next and old problem was performance, this was all done on the CPU on a single core and we want to port it to the GPU when we were done and be able to switch between it in runtime so the difference in performance on the CPU and GPU would be noticeable. We were still dealing with the problem of having voxels at the same position when rasterizing the different axis. We decided to build a Octree to see if this would fix the issue. Our first tries weren’t so good:

It did fix our issue but it wasn’t optimal, the working version (props to Quinten for coding this in an hour or so ) would take up one gigabyte of RAM when building a tree for the ship model. Not good! It didn’t help our performance for the dynamic one at all, the performance went down. The static version did gain performance because the tree was only needed one tick, one rendertick was done for the static version so this was quite fast and we didn’t have voxels existing at the same spot. Right now it looks like this with the voxels using the Octree, we also added some extra features like drag and drop of models when loading and some rendering options. I’ll might post a build of it next week, if we feel like its worthy of a public build.

We have decided to ditch the Octree because of the RAM usage plus it wasn’t really giving us the performance we wanted. We are working on a perfect spacial hashing algorithm which will tackle the same problem but do it in a less RAM costly way and not have such a bad performance at runtime. I’ll write a new entry when we’ve improved on the current version, I was a bit behind on this project thats why the post is so long. I’ll explain the 3D rasterization in detail in my next entry.

Untill next time!

Network Distributed Pathtracer (Part 5) - Build available!

Sat, 14 May 2011 05:57:09 -0400

Here’s the latest version of the NDP, still a POC and far from finished. Project has been put aside until we have more time. Read the readme.txt to see how to get it up and running.

Download: http://0x3a.com/projects/NDP/NDP_14_05_2011.rar

Network Distributed Pathtracer (Part 4) - More visuals!

Mon, 09 May 2011 18:15:47 -0400

2 clients connected this time. Pretty pictures even faster. And yes the hostnames are the same, I forgot to actually clear the list, not really an issue regarding the rendering.

Network Distributed Pathtracer (Part 3) - We have visuals!

Mon, 09 May 2011 17:57:57 -0400

First render came through, all seems to be working! Finally getting somewhere.

Note: This is one client running on the same system as the server itself. Still need to test it on multiple systems.

Network Distributed Pathtracer (Part 2)

Sat, 07 May 2011 17:58:00 -0400

An update from my previous post, clients are now fully reconized and stored by the server. Here’s the view as of 11:57pm, this shows the server running in the background and a client connecting to the server and showing up in the list. This might seem like nothing but it’s actually some work to get this all working properly with clients connecting and disconnecting the whole time.

Network Distributed Pathtracer (Part 1)

Fri, 06 May 2011 19:12:00 -0400

I’ve started a project with 2 friends, Martijn and Wessel. It started as a college assignment but we took it a bit further. My initial idea was to do something that is network distributed in terms of rendering, kinda like a renderfarm for example.

I initially thought about raytracing which is quite nice to have at a decent speed and gives fancy results to look at. Martijn opted for a pathtracer. The advantage of making a pathtracer is that the clients only have to send the amount of passes they did and send the full image buffer. With raytracing the screen had to be split up in jobs which would have been a pain to get working nicely. It would also be heavier on the administration side. When new clients would join or when a client disconnected the server has to recalculate the jobs for every connection client and send them their new sections to render. So it became a network distributed pathtracer.

At the moment I’ve build the base of the project, a server and a client which sync with each other. The initial setup routine goes like this:

Server starts, initializes the network and starts listening for clients.
Client starts, it also initializes networking.
Client connects to the server, server responds by accepting the connection
Client sees the connection is accepted and sends over its personal information. At the moment this is the local hostname and the amount of cores the CPU has. ( This is mainly to build a fancy list of information and show this in the server window. )
Server receives the information, generates an ID for the client and stores the ID with the data it received. It sends this ID to the client so it can attach this when sending any rendered data. Server also rebuilds the list of clients on the server window. This happens when clients connect successfully and when a client disconnects.
The Client stores its personal ID and sends over a “I’m ready to go!” packet to tell the server the client is available for rendering.

At this point the server should start sending the scene data and tell the client to start rendering, Martijn is starting on that tomorrow.

The basic infrastructure is there, hopefully the rest will be implemented this weekend. When the client / server interaction properly works we can focus on optimizing the renderer to get pretty results even faster.

I’ll post a working build somewhere next week.

Public transit seems to understand my problem (partially)

Tue, 03 May 2011 11:45:32 -0400

Previous blog post which has most of the story:

http://blog.0x3a.com/post/2826619813/the-stupidity-of-the-public-transit

They finally send me a partial refund, with partial I mean that again they are fighting amongst each other I think.

I received the refund for the train tickets, the subway is still to come. At least we’re getting somewhere :)

"My friend has access to my privates."

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 16:09:12 -0400

“My friend has access to my privates.”

- C++ (1983)

The stupidity of the public transit

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 09:20:00 -0500

(Nederlandse versie is onderaan te lezen)

English version:

Wednesday the 19th of january

I’m a student and in the Netherlands you get this thing called an “Studenten OV-Kaart” which gives you the ability to travel freely through the country either during the week or the weekend. You have to choose this before you get it.

Since yesterday my card started to malfunction. I checked in at the subway-station, the gates opened but as soon as I set one foot through them they immediately closed with me in-between. I got onto the platform, possibly with a few bruises but I’ll survive that. I made it to my station and wanted to do a check-out but it didn’t read my card… nothing happened, it didn’t say “Try again” or “Faulty card”, it just didn’t say a thing. I then called someone to get me out because I couldn’t exit the station in any way because you need to go through the gates.

While I was calling someone to pick me up I still had my hand with the card inside on the check-out thing. After a few minutes it decided to do a check-out anyway and the gates opened.. I walked through them and they didn’t close up whatsoever.

So today I decided to go to the service-point where they can help you if there are problems with your card or something similar. To get there I had to take the subway again, but my card didn’t work so I had to pay for a temp one. (Normally it would be free because I’m a student but I had to use my student card for that which wasn’t working..).

At the service-point they could read everything on my card, see everything. According to them they couldn’t do a thing because it was working fine when they read it on the computer. But I still couldn’t do a check-in and use my card. They told me to call the ‘OV’ service-center. I went home (Costing me money again wooo), and called the ‘OV’ service-center.

Now the fun part starts, the service-point I went too is from the RET which are the people who own the subway carts, the gates for check-ins and the subway tracks/stations etc. The ‘OV’ which I was calling owns the system for payment and traveling.. It’s split up (which makes no sense at all when you read the rest.)

I called the OV service-center and because the card worked fine at the service-point as well as with the hand-held scanning device AND in the train with the hand-held scanning device I had to call the RET (?????). Because the RET owns and places those gates I have to use to do check-ins to get onto the platform.

I called the RET people, you know what they said? “Call the OV because they own the cards and apparently something is wrong with them.” I had explained them all what happened. Even when explaining again that I already called them and they send me here it didn’t help, I had to call the OV people.

These two companies who maintain the SAME system apparently don’t even want to discuss with each other or even THINK about a problem together which involves one of their customers. I’m now being send in an endless loop from one to the other.. how helpful.

Edit 3:29pm:

I called the OV people, and guess what, my problem was recorded (woo-hoo.) Just like last time. And… *drum roll please* they told me to call the RET! How unexpected.

Edit 3:46pm:

Called the RET, they told me to call the OV again. Rutger said, call them at the same time and let them discuss it themselves. Seemed like a pretty ironic thing to do since they were so busy sending me to each other. As soon as I told one of them what I was planning they told me they did not want this and hung up the phone. I then tried it without telling one of them (the first one to pick up) but they also hung up as soon as I noticed what I was trying. Nice teamwork they’ve got going on there!

Edit 3:52pm:

Called the RET again and finally got someone who actually understood that this was a ridiculous way of treating me. My information was noted, my phone number as well and I would be called back the same day. Of course I have to see it to believe it.

Edit next day 2:03pm:

As expected no phone call. I can’t get a new one because they say it’s not broken but the RET tells me I have to call the OV for a new one. I’m getting fed up with this, seems there’s no way to get out of this loophole.

Thursday the 20st of january.

Today I went to the actual service desk of the RET to ask them for help. They tried to scan my card but this time it didn’t work (even though I haven’t used since I went to the service-desk 1 day ago). The person there then told me that I should get a new one, figured as much. I then asked about the costs I would make while traveling without a card because it would take about a month before I got the new one. She said there was a slim to non chance I would see my money back… Wait a second… So apparently it will cost me money because the thing broke? That obviously my fault.. NOT. She then told me to go the the DUO service desk. DUO is basically the organization that does registrations for students, who’s studying and who gets which loans etc. I expected they couldn’t really do anything about it but since nobody asked me to go to those guys yet I tried. Once there they explained the same thing, get a new card and probably no refund. Went back home and started calling the OV again, they also explained to me that I wouldn’t get my money back. This is ridiculous, when something is wrong and money gets withdrawn when you take the subway you can get a refund but because I also take the train they can’t do anything about it? Seems I found a loophole in their nice system. When you have an OV student card you’re safe, once it breaks you’re in hell and you have to pay apparently. All the companies can do is point fingers to each other and just tell me to call somebody else.

So in the end, I now have to get a month subscription for the subway and the train which will cost me 300 euro’s. 300 Euro’s I apparently have to pay and won’t get refunded because they don’t have anything setup for these kinds of situations. I’m a poor student so it’s not like I can just pull these 300 euro’s out of thin air. And the fact is, which the lady at the DUO service-desk told me, for the past year that these OV students cards have been used they get people like me everyday. So after a whole year of complaints and problems they don’t figure they should put some kind of refund system or easier way of dealing with this situation in place ? Too much work I guess, they can’t afford it, and they think I can. They kept blaming each other and just ignoring me and sending me from one place to the other and back again. And the problem is, you simply can’t get any better information or help.. the service-desk is the only place they can help you and apparently even they can’t and just tell you to go away in a sense. I spend 2 days on these and it has gotten me nowhere except 300 euro’s lighter. Thanks, thanks a lot!

If anyone has a similar story please mail it to me and I’ll get it all in one big post and maybe we can do something about this together because it’s just ridiculous.

Email address: ovproblemen (at) 0x3a (dot) com

Nederlandse versie:

Woensdag 20 januari 2011

Ik ben een student en ik heb dus een studenten OV-chipkaart waarmee ik doordeweeks gratis kan reizen. Sinds gisteren begon mijn kaart opeens defecten te vertonen. Ik kon inchecken bij het metrostation maar zodra ik een voet binnen de poortjes zette sloten ze meteen met mij ertussen. Ik trek mezelf tussen de poortjes vandaan met misschien wat blauwe plekken, maar dat overleef ik wel. Ik stap in de metro en even later ben ik het station waar ik uit moet stappen. Ik probeer uit te checken maar er gebeurt niks. Ik kreeg geen melding met “Foutieve kaart” of “Probeer het nog een keer”, er kwam geen melding niks. Dus belde ik iemand om mij op te komen halen aangezien ik er niet uit kwam. Terwijl ik aan het bellen was had ik mijn hand met het pasje daarin nog steeds op het uitcheck poortje liggen. Een paar minuten later terwijl ik aan het bellen was checkte hij mij opeens wel uit, erg apart.

Vandaag besloot ik naar een servicedesk van de RET te gaan om maar eens uit te zoeken wat er mis was met mijn kaart. Nog steeds kon ik niet in-of uitchecken. Ik heb dus moeten betalen voor die rit. Dit zou normaal gesproken niet hoeven met mijn studenten OV.

Bij de servicedesk was mijn kaart prima. De medewerkers konden hem uitlezen en alles er gewoon op zien. Maar ik kon er nog steeds niet mee inchecken bij de poortjes en er dus niet mee reizen. De mensen bij de servicedesk vertelden mij dat ik de OV hulplijn moest bellen. Ik ging dus terug naar huis (waarvoor ik overigens weer heb moeten betalen ) en ik heb het OV service center gebeld.

Nu komt het leuke stuk. Mij was door de RET verteld dat ik het OV moest bellen. Eenmaal het OV aan de lijn, vertelde ik hen mijn hele verhaal. Dat hij dus nog gewoon kon worden uitgelezen enz. en dat hij ook bij de NS prima werkte. Ik was die dag ervoor (de dag dat ik niet kon uitchecken) eerst met de trein naar Rotterdam gekomen en werd tussendoor gecontroleerd. Dit verliep zonder problemen. Degene van de OV hulplijn vertelde mij de RET te bellen (????). Hier komt de logica; de RET is verantwoordelijk voor de poortjes en dus is het hun taak om dit probleem op te lossen als ik niet kan inchecken op die poortjes. Tegelijkertijd is mij verteld dat ik geen nieuwe pas kan aanvragen omdat mijn oude pas dus alleen niet bij die poortjes werkt maar wel op de PC.

Dus ik bel opnieuw de RET, ra ra wat zeiden die tegen mij? “Bel het OV op want zij zijn de eigenaars van die kaarten dus als er iets mis is moet u bij hun zijn”. Ik had hun al alles uitgelegd (dat ik bij hun servicedesk was geweest en dat ik het OV al had gebeld), maar blijkbaar drong dit niet door en moest ik persé het OV bellen.

Deze twee bedrijven zijn eigenlijk gefocust op hetzelfde system, maar ze willen niet met elkaar praten of er überhaupt over nadenken als één klant van hun hier problemen mee heeft. Ik word nu dus in een soort eindeloze loop heen en weer gestuurd van de ene naar de andere, hoe behulpzaam!

Edit 15:29:
Ik heb het OV gebeld en zij hebben mijn probleem genoteerd. En wat vertelden zij mij daarna? *tromgeroffel* Ik moest de RET bellen! Hoe onverwachts dat ze mij dat zouden vertellen.

Edit 15:46:
De RET weer gebeld en zij vertelden mij alweer om het OV te bellen. Zij begrepen niet dat ik hier zojuist al naartoe gebeld had. Uiteindelijk heb ik dit dan ook een stuk of 8 keer gedaan en ik heb er nu een beetje genoeg van. Een vriend had het idee om hen met elkaar te laten discussiëren over wat er gedaan moet worden. Dit leek mij best een grappig idee en aangezien ik echt niets wijzer werd en er maar verteld werd dat ik maar de ene moest bellen en dan maar de andere, ging ik dit doen. Ik belde ze alle twee en die eerste die opnam heb ik verteld dat ik dus ook de andere aan het bellen was. Dit was niet zo’n slim idee want dit accepteerden ze blijkbaar niet en er werd meteen opgehangen. Erg volwassen dit gedrag. Dus ik probeerde het nog een keer, deze keer vertelde ik ze niet wat ik van plan was. Zodra een van de twee het in de gaten kreeg werd er alweer opgehangen. Goed teamwork!

Edit 15:52:
Heb nog eens de RET gebeld en ik heb eindelijk een persoon aan de lijn gekregen die dit alles ook belachelijk vond. Ze stuurde een klacht door naar de desbetreffende afdeling met al mijn informatie en mijn telefoonnummer. Ik zou dezelfde dag nog worden gebeld. Eerst zien dan geloven.

Donderdag 20-01-2011

Zoals te verwachten was ben ik gister en ook vandaag (nog) niet gebeld. Het probleem is dat ik geen nieuwe kaart aan kan vragen, want hij is niet echt kapot volgens de mensen van het OV. De RET zegt: vraag een nieuwe kaart aan want hij is defect. Ik krijg hier een beetje genoeg van, schijnbaar is er geen enkele manier om hier ook maar uit te komen met een oplossing..

Vandaag ben ik naar het RET service center in Rotterdam geweest om hun maar eens om hulp te vragen. Zo’n telefonische helpdesk werkt blijkbaar niet. Nu ging ik het eens maar eens face to face proberen. Deze keer keken ze en beetje naar me kaart en zagen dus een klein scheurtje. Dit scheurtje zat er al een aantal weken. Even kijken hoe groot dat scheurtje is en goed heen en weer bewegen, daar wordt hij vast kleiner van. Natuurlijk kon mijn kaart daarna niet meer worden ingescant. Ook al heb ik er de afgelopen dagen helemaal niks mee gedaan want ik kon er überhaupt niks mee doen. Degene achter de balie vertelde dat ik maar een nieuwe OV kaart moest aanvragen, alsof dit een oplossing is die ik nog niet gehoord heb! Ook tegen deze persoon heb ik mijn hele verhaal van de afgelopen 2 dagen verteld. Ik legde haar uit dat het mij veel zou gaan kosten als ik een maand zonder OV zit. Aangezien ik elke dag gebruik maar van de trein en dus van de NS is er zo goed als geen kans dat ik deze gedane kosten vergoed krijg verteld ze mij. Kortom; het gaat mij ongeveer 500 euro kosten om een maand lang elke dag een trein- en metrokaartje te kopen voor de trein en met de metro te reizen omdat mijn kaart defect is? Dit is natuurlijk mijn schuld, want ik heb die kaart met opzet kapot gemaakt, niet dus. Ze vertelde mij dat ik maar naar de DUO (voormalige IB-groep) helpdesk moet gaan. Aangezien niemand deze optie nog aan mij had voorgelegd besloot ik dat maar te proberen. Ook hier kwam ik niet veel verder. Opnieuw heb ik het hele verhaal verteld maar ik kreeg hetzelfde verhaal terug; haal en nieuwe kaart en je krijgt geen geld terug voor je onkosten. Hierna ben ik terug naar huis gegaan en daar heb ik weer het OV gebeld. Zij vertelde mij precies hetzelfde, nieuwe kaart aanvragen en je geld krijg je gewoon niet terug. Dit vind ik belachelijk. Stel; er is een fout met je studentenkaart. Er wordt geld afgeschreven wat niet hoeft (bijvoorbeeld bij de metro of iets dergelijks) dan is het zo terug te krijgen. Doordat ik de trein gebruik kan dit niet? Dit kost bij veel geld aangezien ik voor mijn studie elke dag het halve land door moet. Dit is blijkbaar iets wat niet in hun system zit, want er is geen oplossing voor. Als je als student een OV hebt ben je blij maar zodra hij kapot gaat zonder dat dit jouw schuld is, kost het je bakken met geld. De bedrijven nemen hun verantwoordelijkheid door naar elkaar te wijzen en elkaar de schuld geven.

Uiteindelijk heb ik nu een maand abonnement voor de metro en de trein moeten kopen. Dit is iets goedkoper dan losse kaartjes. Het kost me nu ‘maar’ iets meet dan 300 euro. 300 euro die ik dus zelf moet betalen en nooit terug krijg, want ze hebben geen oplossing voor dit soort ‘problemen’. Ik ben een arme student die die 300 euro niet even uit zijn zak tovert. Een ander feit is het volgende: toen ik bij de DUO service balie was vertelde diegene mij dat ze al een jaar lang elke dag mensen met precies hetzelfde probleem krijgen. Al een jaar lang hebben ze hiervoor geen oplossing en moet men hiervoor bakken met geld betalen. Het is blijkbaar teveel werk om dit op te lossen en dat hebben ze hier niet voor over.

Het enige wat deze bedrijven kunnen is een als een stel kleuters elkaar aanwijzen als schuldige, mij negeren en mij heen en weer sturen. Het probleem is; ik kan niet verder komen dan die service balies. Ik heb hier nu 2 dagen over gedaan en het heeft me niks opgeleverd. Het enige wat dit grapje me op heeft geleverd is de 300 euro die uit mij portemonnee verdwijnt. Hierbij ook nog eens een eurotje of 10 voor een nieuwe OV studentenkaart. Heel erg bedankt DUO, RET en het OV!

Als iemand anders een vergelijkbaar verhaal heeft, mail het dan naar mij. Ik zet alle verhalen bij elkaar en samen kunnen we hopelijk een oplossing (en dus een vergoeding) zien te krijgen. Ik vind het belachelijk zoals het nu is gegaan!

Email adres: ovproblemen (at) 0x3a (punt) com

Putting the FUN in FUNCTIONS!

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 19:41:53 -0500

Putting the FUN in FUNCTIONS!

Cheating with Labtec drivers

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 16:08:00 -0500

For a project I’m doing I needed a webcam. The only I have is possibly from the stone age so I feared problems with drivers. My fear was confirmed when I went and plugged it in and got the what-the-hell-is-this-thing sound from Windows. I’m using Windows 7 so there was a hope of it possibly having a driver available for it as it does for most things I plug in to the USB.

I went on the Labtec website to check whether there were any drivers available. There were… for Window XP and Vista… *cringe*. So it seems they don’t feel like supporting their products, sadly.

I downloaded a 64bit driver for Vista as I figured it might work for Windows 7 as well. When I started it I got a nice message.

Sadly it had a nice version check which did not allow me to even test if it were possible to use it on Windows 7.

After a little bit I found out it had actually extracted the installer files to a directory instead of the file I downloaded being the actual installer. It extracts to this directory :

C:\Program Files (x86)\Labtec\WebCamWebInstall\

In this directory I found a file called “Setup.ini” which appeared to be the installer’s configuration file. I opened it up and just scrolled through it to see what it would use from there. In the file there are some intresting lines :

MinVersion=5.2.3790

and

MaxVersion=5.2.3790

Which seems to tell the installer the version of windows that it’s allowed to install on. Let’s change something about that. I only had to bother with the MaxVersion, I made it look like this :

MaxVersion=6.2.7600

My computer is 6.1.7600 but this is the maximum number and the max needs to be higher than the actual installed OS.

Note: This MaxVersion is in the document on two places, both need to be edited.

So, after I’d done that it worked, I clicked the installer and got the installation screen :

Success! Simple enough to actually work. But of course this didn’t mean the driver would actually work. Ran the installer and got to the “Plug in your webcam” screen. Moment of truth!

“Webcam detected and successfully installed.”

Done, it worked, as simple as that. Tested the webcam and I got a clean picture. So it seems Labtec doesn’t like Windows 7 users ? Who knows.

So for anyone having problems with this, try my approach. I saw quite a few people in need of some help regarding this problem with Labtec drivers. Here’s the fix.

I don’t know if it will work for everybody but it did for me, just try and tell me if it didn’t work via blog [at] 0x3a [dot] com