Nvidia and game visual quality

[soccerballtux]

Text

I noticed this on my 6800GT but I thought it was just something funky about the card because it did this with hardware accelerated video as well.

Now with my 8800GT I'm finding the same.

I'm not happy with this. These are not the accurate colors! It's like they make everything darker so that the browns and dark colors can be rendered as blacks.

I've heard of questionable driver optimizations to make things run better, and I'm guessing this is it. What can I do? I have this same problem with UT3.

Using 169.21.

 

[WaTaGuMp]

Same drivers here no issues.



http://img132.imageshack.us/my...ge=shot00061600id8.jpg

 

[nullpointerus]

soccerballtux:

No 3D optimizations should affect the color tables like this AFAIK.

Just to clarify:

- Do you have digital vibrance turned ON?
- What setup did NOT have these problems?
- Did you switch to a LCD when you noticed this?

Please check your dark grayscale here:
http://lcdresource.com/tools/blacktest.htm

...you may have to lean left a little to see if the dark gray bars ARE different.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: nullpointerus
soccerballtux:

No 3D optimizations should affect the color tables like this AFAIK.

Just to clarify:

- Do you have digital vibrance turned ON?
- What setup did NOT have these problems?
- Did you switch to a LCD when you noticed this?

Please check your dark grayscale here:
http://lcdresource.com/tools/blacktest.htm

...you may have to lean left a little to see if the dark gray bars ARE different.

Digital Vibrance is ON. Is this it?

Never had a setup without these problems.

Had these problems on CRT as well.

 

[soccerballtux]

.

 

[angry hampster]

I thought this was actually a problem with the 6-series cards, not the drivers.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: angry hampster
I thought this was actually a problem with the 6-series cards, not the drivers.

Ya me too.

When I had WoW open and I was fiddling around with the Nvidia control panel on my second screen, at one time when I changed some Digital Vibrance stuff~

it changed. Ie it wasn't this dark. Then I touched it once more and it changed back.

So it's definitely something funky in the drivers.

 

[ja1484]

You're blaming brightness, probably the easiest thing to adjust in a display, on driver optimizations?

1) Run the monitor optimization wizard.
2) Adjust digital vibrance. Usually, more than 25% causes colors to start to bleed together, so stay around there or below.
3) Once you have the monitor/GPU settings properly calibrated, adjust application settings as needed.


I highly doubt this is a driver issue - I think your settings are just out of wack.

 

[nullpointerus]

Agreed.

But "digital vibrance" is not what you should be using if you want accurate color reproduction. It's a misfeature that sacrifices accuracy to increase color saturation. People use digital vibrance because it appears to make the colors richer and brighter, but all its doing is shifting the color values higher (which reduces fine detail normally apparent in gradients).

The OP should disable digital vibrance and then reset all other card and monitor color settings back to their default values.

Then check to see if this problem has been solved.

- If so, then you inadvertently caused it (through improper settings). Calibrate as needed to improve other aspects of the display while retesting to make sure you do not reintroduce the same problem.

- If not, then it's a natural problem with your setup. (I can't really tell from the screenshot because I'm not familiar with the game.) Maybe calibration will fix it.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: ja1484

You're blaming brightness, probably the easiest thing to adjust in a display, on driver optimizations?

1) Run the monitor optimization wizard.
2) Adjust digital vibrance. Usually, more than 25% causes colors to start to bleed together, so stay around there or below.
3) Once you have the monitor/GPU settings properly calibrated, adjust application settings as needed.


I highly doubt this is a driver issue - I think your settings are just out of wack.

I sure hope so, but I'm out in the blue on this one. Can you give any more recommendations? I've already run the display optimization wizard, and I've turned off Dvibe. There aren't any color settings in WoW that I'm aware of that I can change.

I'm going to do what Null says and post again in a sec. This is rediculous (vib turned off on this one).

 

[soccerballtux]

It's no better after returning it all to factory defaults.

http://img228.imageshack.us/im...hot011608002612gf4.jpg

 

[Andvari]

The fact that we can see it as being too dark, means it is not an issue with his monitor.

I have no idea what the problem is. =\ Turn the gamma in-game up?

 

[SniperDaws]

im confused, how should it look ? do you have anything to compare it with ?

 

[natto fire]

Originally posted by: SniperDaws
im confused, how should it look ? do you have anything to compare it with ?

I am not sure what kind of mount that is, as I never got into WoW, but I have a feeling the colors are not supposed to be a washed out glob of darkness in the middle.

 

[asintu]

Originally posted by: WaTaGuMp
Same drivers here no issues.



http://img132.imageshack.us/my...ge=shot00061600id8.jpg

what game is that from?

 

[WaTaGuMp]

Originally posted by: asintu

Originally posted by: WaTaGuMp
Same drivers here no issues.



http://img132.imageshack.us/my...ge=shot00061600id8.jpg

what game is that from?

COD4

Here are some more, enjoy.
http://img148.imageshack.us/my...?image=shot0000jx7.jpg
http://img132.imageshack.us/my...?image=shot0003zw7.jpg
http://img230.imageshack.us/my...?image=shot0001dt9.jpg

 

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: WaTaGuMp

Originally posted by: asintu

Originally posted by: WaTaGuMp
Same drivers here no issues.



http://img132.imageshack.us/my...ge=shot00061600id8.jpg

what game is that from?

COD4

Here are some more, enjoy.
http://img148.imageshack.us/my...?image=shot0000jx7.jpg
http://img132.imageshack.us/my...?image=shot0003zw7.jpg
http://img230.imageshack.us/my...?image=shot0001dt9.jpg

man cod4 is game of the year at gamespot

I used to be all about crysis, and never even played cod4. Cod4 is the best pc game I've ever played - and i've played all the first person shooters out there

its like playing a jamesbond/diehard/saving private ryan MOVIE!

 

[ja1484]

Originally posted by: jaredpace

Originally posted by: WaTaGuMp

Originally posted by: asintu

Originally posted by: WaTaGuMp
Same drivers here no issues.



http://img132.imageshack.us/my...ge=shot00061600id8.jpg

what game is that from?

COD4

Here are some more, enjoy.
http://img148.imageshack.us/my...?image=shot0000jx7.jpg
http://img132.imageshack.us/my...?image=shot0003zw7.jpg
http://img230.imageshack.us/my...?image=shot0001dt9.jpg

man cod4 is game of the year at gamespot

I used to be all about crysis, and never even played cod4. Cod4 is the best pc game I've ever played - and i've played all the first person shooters out there

its like playing a jamesbond/diehard/saving private ryan MOVIE!

I found it quite mediocre. Graphics were nice at least.

 

[WaTaGuMp]

While the SP was short I really did enjoy it, as for the MP its beyond annoying at times. I can pretty much only handle playing on hardcore servers, the regular servers are just full of camping idiots and grenade throwers. The game does need some tweaking, but its fun to play for a while, hopefully they will balance it out a bit, work on some of the perks and they get more maps in.

 

[soccerballtux]

Alright I'm hijacking this thread back!

If I turn gamma up ALL the way, then I can see more of the colors.

I've made a post on this on the nvidia forums if anyone else like angry hampster wants to follow it: Text

 

[zagood]

Originally posted by: soccerballtux
Alright I'm hijacking this thread back!

If I turn gamma up ALL the way, then I can see more of the colors.

Sounds like you may have a bad ICC profile. Switch to a generic one and that may take care of it.

-z

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: zagood

Originally posted by: soccerballtux
Alright I'm hijacking this thread back!

If I turn gamma up ALL the way, then I can see more of the colors.

Sounds like you may have a bad ICC profile. Switch to a generic one and that may take care of it.

-z

This has helped a lot of the problem in WoW. Thanks for the recommendation.

edit:

Alright here's what I'm getting in UT3. Text.

Somehow I don't think it should look like that. This is with a custom sRGB profile that one of the guys here who also owns a Soyo 24" (that officemax deal) and some image calibration software+hardware made; it helped a lot with the WoW problems (but not completely; my mount's rear end is still black in some levels).

What do you guys think?

edit2: Ok, some of it seems to be the post-processing. But much of it isn't. For example, this picture, with PP set to default. This circled area is how I think these darker parts of the level should appear at all times. However, in the path of vision is a lamp shining down, and the bloom from that lamp, though it is not shining on the circled area, is illuminating it some:
Text1.

Now on this second picture, I move two steps to the left, removing the beam of light that is in the path of vision to the circled area. This is how it looks ordinarily when you're running around:
Text2

Pretty messed up imo. It looks horribly unnatural having huge black blobs like that in the level.

 

[soccerballtux]

Bump. Can anyone comment?

 

[soccerballtux]

bump

 

[Saiyukimot]

Its nvidia's way of increasing performance.

ATi cards do not suffer from this problem at all.

To increase performance, nvidia cards render very dark colours as simple blacks as its faster to render that

ATi ftw