Wanted: A driver fix for the HORRIBLE Nvidia shadow IQ in Farcry...

[dug777]

Originally posted by: Tanclearas
Tried forcing SM2, but it didn't help.

Tried OpenGL, but it didn't help. Actually, OpenGL was quite messed up.

yeah we tried sm2 a while back, and it was exactly the same...that had seemed like the most logical problem. I haven't tried OGl, but IIRC when i tried that way back on my 9800 pro it was a bit messed up anyway...

 

[xtknight]

I had a shadow issue in Battlefield 2. New drivers fixed it for me...

Cliffnotes on this thread? What was the problem? I haven't seen anything particularly weird in the few screenshots I looked at. What am I looking for?

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: xtknight
I had a shadow issue in Battlefield 2. New drivers fixed it for me...

Cliffnotes on this thread? What was the problem? I haven't seen anything particularly weird in the few screenshots I looked at. What am I looking for?

How it should look (ATI cards/drivers): http://img380.imageshack.us/my.php?image=farcry00033fc.jpg & http://img362.imageshack.us/my.php?image=farcry00053dw.jpg & http://img374.imageshack.us/my.php?image=farcry00012fd.jpg.

How it looks on nvidia cards: http://www.synthdude.com/dug777/farcry/FarCry0003.jpg & http://zenblue.net/ded/FarCry0005.jpg & http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/dug777/6800GT4xAA8xAF.jpg

 

[xtknight]

Sorry double post

 

[xtknight]

Ahh, OK.

Here's my guess: Alpha textures cause the problem. The alpha is interpreted as a full color and shows up as a shadow where it shouldn't.

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: xtknight
You mean that spikey shadow effect on the gun on NVIDIA cards?

i do, and on pretty much all other shadows cast by vegitation (but the gun shadows are by far the worst)...

I can't see how anyone would say it's insignificant since at least 1/2 of the game you are outside among vegitation, and those nasty ass shadows are playing accross your gun and arm...at least i only get that at 1024 on a 17'CRT, i'd be really pissed if that was staring at me at 1920 on my 24' widescreen LCD/7800GTX rig...

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: xtknight
Ahh, OK.

Here's my guess: Alpha textures cause the problem. The alpha is interpreted as a full color and shows up as a shadow where it shouldn't.

care to elaborate on that? I'm not at all up to speed with the cause of the problem, and exactly why it doesn't affect ATI cards/drivers too...

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: dug777

Originally posted by: xtknight
Ahh, OK.

Here's my guess: Alpha textures cause the problem. The alpha is interpreted as a full color and shows up as a shadow where it shouldn't.

care to elaborate on that? I'm not at all up to speed with the cause of the problem, and exactly why it doesn't affect ATI cards/drivers too...

It's just a guess...but I mean it probably is indeed a bug in NVIDIA's drivers. Do they know about it? Does this only happen around vegetation? I know vegetation is HEAVY on alpha textures. Are there any inside maps where this problem comes up? There is no amount of setting changes that fixes the issue?

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: dug777

Originally posted by: xtknight
Ahh, OK.

Here's my guess: Alpha textures cause the problem. The alpha is interpreted as a full color and shows up as a shadow where it shouldn't.

care to elaborate on that? I'm not at all up to speed with the cause of the problem, and exactly why it doesn't affect ATI cards/drivers too...

It's just a guess...but I mean it probably is indeed a bug in NVIDIA's drivers. Do they know about it? Does this only happen around vegetation? I know vegetation is HEAVY on alpha textures. Are there any inside maps where this problem comes up? There is no amount of setting changes that fixes the issue?

i've only seen it with vegitation outside and in/on huts...Played around with sm2/3 to no avail, of course i always play with 'high quality' set in the drivers...read back through the thread and a whole bunch of people have tried stuff, none of which got rid of the problem...

I'm hoping (as i have said repeatedly in this thread ) that it is just a simple driver problem and that Nvidia will fix it with the next driver revision... I have no idea who to email about this..i emailed anand a few times but no reply

 

[CP5670]

Originally posted by: xtknight
Ahh, OK.

Here's my guess: Alpha textures cause the problem. The alpha is interpreted as a full color and shows up as a shadow where it shouldn't.

I think I see what you're saying. That may well be the reason it's happening in Far Cry. The pixellation also shows up on shadows cast by geometry though, as seen in the SC screenshot I posted above. I don't know if that's a different issue or what.

Also, I just came across this article. The 3dmark05 airship demo is one of the more obvious places where this issue shows up. It looks rather worse for me than it does in their image quality comparison screenshots, but the blocky shadows can still be seen in one or two places. (their animation links actually don't work for me, but it's easy to guess what the url for the other frame is) This is with DST and this is without it. The non-DST screenshots don't solve the problem entirely, but seem to look somewhat better. I haven't ran 3dmark in a while so I need to check exactly how it looks for me.

I have never actually tried turning off this DST thing in 3dmark05 (I didn't even know what that setting was until yesterday), but I will give it a try later today and see what kind of impact it has on the shadows.

 

[CP5670]

I checked out that test in 3dmark and it seems that disabling DST doesn't really solve the problem, although the shadows look slightly different. Do the blocky shadows in 3dmark also show up on ATI cards?

 

[forumposter32]

As requested, a screenshot of UT2004 with my ATI X700 Pro in DM-1on1-Desolation:
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b182/forumposter32/utshadows.jpg

 

[CP5670]

Thanks. Looks like the UT2004 shadows have nothing to do with this.

 

[dug777]

So what are the chances that someone at nvidia will see this and fix the problem?

 

[CP5670]

I'm not sure how to reach them about something like this. If it's limited to Far Cry and the other things I've been posting about were unrelated, then it might be worth contacting Ubi/Crytek about it first.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: CP5670

Originally posted by: xtknight
Ahh, OK.

Here's my guess: Alpha textures cause the problem. The alpha is interpreted as a full color and shows up as a shadow where it shouldn't.

I think I see what you're saying. That may well be the reason it's happening in Far Cry. The pixellation also shows up on shadows cast by geometry though, as seen in the SC screenshot I posted above. I don't know if that's a different issue or what.

Also, I just came across this article. The 3dmark05 airship demo is one of the more obvious places where this issue shows up. It looks rather worse for me than it does in their image quality comparison screenshots, but the blocky shadows can still be seen in one or two places. (their animation links actually don't work for me, but it's easy to guess what the url for the other frame is) This is with DST and this is without it. The non-DST screenshots don't solve the problem entirely, but seem to look somewhat better. I haven't ran 3dmark in a while so I need to check exactly how it looks for me.

I have never actually tried turning off this DST thing in 3dmark05 (I didn't even know what that setting was until yesterday), but I will give it a try later today and see what kind of impact it has on the shadows.

Yeah, hmm, don't know about that DST thing.

Oh, and this type of shadow totally reminds me of Quake 2 and its crappy shadows. They look almost the same. It's amazing. Maybe Quake 2 exhibits this the worst?

Did you guys miss this guy's post?

Originally posted by: Fresh Daemon
I tried messing around with some settings today.

This is with SM3.0:

Screen

This was the worst example I could find. It seems slightly better, although it is still there.

The default r_shadowblur is "2" on my rig. This is with it set to 3:

Screen

This is with 1:

Screen

This is with 0:

Screen

This setting doesn't do anything for this problem.

This is with e_activeshadowmapsreceiving set to "1" (default is 2):

Screen

This looks better.

Someone else, try SM3.0, change e_activeshadowmapsreceiving to 2, and see if you show any improvement. It's not perfect but it seems a little better to me.

It looks like e_activeshadowmapsreceiving 1 fixed the problem?

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: CP5670

Originally posted by: xtknight
Ahh, OK.

Here's my guess: Alpha textures cause the problem. The alpha is interpreted as a full color and shows up as a shadow where it shouldn't.

I think I see what you're saying. That may well be the reason it's happening in Far Cry. The pixellation also shows up on shadows cast by geometry though, as seen in the SC screenshot I posted above. I don't know if that's a different issue or what.

Also, I just came across this article. The 3dmark05 airship demo is one of the more obvious places where this issue shows up. It looks rather worse for me than it does in their image quality comparison screenshots, but the blocky shadows can still be seen in one or two places. (their animation links actually don't work for me, but it's easy to guess what the url for the other frame is) This is with DST and this is without it. The non-DST screenshots don't solve the problem entirely, but seem to look somewhat better. I haven't ran 3dmark in a while so I need to check exactly how it looks for me.

I have never actually tried turning off this DST thing in 3dmark05 (I didn't even know what that setting was until yesterday), but I will give it a try later today and see what kind of impact it has on the shadows.

Yeah, hmm, don't know about that DST thing.

Oh, and this type of shadow totally reminds me of Quake 2 and its crappy shadows. They look almost the same. It's amazing. Maybe Quake 2 exhibits this the worst?

Did you guys miss this guy's post?

Originally posted by: Fresh Daemon
I tried messing around with some settings today.

This is with SM3.0:

Screen

This was the worst example I could find. It seems slightly better, although it is still there.

The default r_shadowblur is "2" on my rig. This is with it set to 3:

Screen

This is with 1:

Screen

This is with 0:

Screen

This setting doesn't do anything for this problem.

This is with e_activeshadowmapsreceiving set to "1" (default is 2):

Screen

This looks better.

Someone else, try SM3.0, change e_activeshadowmapsreceiving to 2, and see if you show any improvement. It's not perfect but it seems a little better to me.

It looks like e_activeshadowmapsreceiving 1 fixed the problem?

i'll try that now...

 

[Tanclearas]

I tried a bunch of different settings, including \e_active_shadow_maps_receving (receving is not a spelling mistake... on my part anyway). Setting it to 1 made the shadows blockier, so I started heading the other way. According to the tweak guide, valid settings are from 0 to 2. I kept bumping the value higher just to see what would happen. The blocks/jaggies continued getting smaller to a value of 6. I didn't notice any difference going to 7. I pushed on anyway, and values higher than 7 just disabled my driver-forced antialiasing settings, and after reaching a certain point (12 I think), it will go totally messed up (I had to restart my computer). Unfortunately, the shadow blur disappears at values 3 and higher, so although the jaggies are smaller, they are almost more noticeable.

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: Tanclearas
I tried a bunch of different settings, including \e_active_shadow_maps_receving (receving is not a spelling mistake... on my part anyway). Setting it to 1 made the shadows blockier, so I started heading the other way. According to the tweak guide, valid settings are from 0 to 2. I kept bumping the value higher just to see what would happen. The blocks/jaggies continued getting smaller to a value of 6. I didn't notice any difference going to 7. I pushed on anyway, and values higher than 7 just disabled my driver-forced antialiasing settings, and after reaching a certain point (12 I think), it will go totally messed up (I had to restart my computer). Unfortunately, the shadow blur disappears at values 3 and higher, so although the jaggies are smaller, they are almost more noticeable.

yeah i had a play just now, and it doesn't solve the problem

 

[Tanclearas]

Looks like it's related to nVidia's DST (Depth-Stencil Texture) "optimization". There is a way to disable it in 3DMark05 Pro, and it definitely impacts performance.

I'm not absolutely certain this is the same thing being seen in FarCry, but it sure looks like it is.

Sadly, it doesn't look like there is a way to disable this feature in the driver.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: anandtechrocks
Here is a pic from my PC, I'm running the 77.72 drivers.

FarCry

However, If you think THIS is a problem you should see those poor NVIDIA 6 Series users that have NF3 motherboards.

This is so damn pathetic. A friend of mine has a MSI K8N Neo2 and a BFG 6800 GT and he cannot play a single game unless he runs 6x.xx drivers. Here's the issue, every 10-30 seconds the game just freezes, then comes back a few seconds later. This is a huge problem and NVIDIA is seriously angering a lot of people. What the hell is with having two products from the same manufacturer (nForce and Geforce) and them not being compatible with each other?!? Here are a few examples of the severity of these user's problems:

6800 and NF3 Freezing

More Problems (90 pages long!!)

Last one

Sorry for the semi-off topic post but personally I find the shadow problem to be very trivial compared to this. And if NVIDIA has done nothing about this issues since the 7x.xx drivers were released, I think we have a long road ahead of us as far as blocky shadows go.

Tell your dumbass friend to turn off fastwrites and sideband addressing.

*EDIT* Oh, and tell him if he wants any problems solved, don't ask for help at HardOCP.

 

[Jeff7181]

Oh by the way... this happens in Battlefield 2 also, not just Far Cry... at least for me.

 

[Powermoloch]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
Oh by the way... this happens in Battlefield 2 also, not just Far Cry... at least for me.

I noticed that on my 6600 also....just to let you know =)

 

[dug777]

So can nvidia fix the problem without causing a significant fps penalty? A 9800 pro can provide similar fps (and slightly faster fps with AA) without this DST...so i'd hope that the 6600GT (which is generally a marginally quicker card) should only take a small hit in turning this DST optimization off i'd hope...

I'm amazed that this hasn't attracted more attention, pretty much anyone seeing a side by side comparison would agree our nvidia screenshots look awful...and it's not as if you hardly ever see the shadows, since you probably spend 1/2 of the game with vegitation shadows playing over your gun it really does detract from the unarguable beauty of farcry...

 

[skace]

Kind of surprised such a large IQ issue doesn't have a larger following. I remember when people used to freak out over all sorts of little things. The sort of color differences you can't even tell until people photoshop 2 pictures side by side.