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

[orangat]

I think most people are pretty jaded about iq. As long as its not too visible or something blatant, most would just opt for higher fps.

 

[vikingblade]

FOR 400 BUCKS WE SHOULD HAVE BOTH

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: orangat
I think most people are pretty jaded about iq. As long as its not too visible or something blatant, most would just opt for higher fps.

yeah, but in this case it is both visible AND blatant...

 

[CP5670]

Yeah, I think this is far worse than the shimmering, which got so much attention around here. In fact, in Far Cry I had turned the shadow detail down to medium (which gets rid of the shadows on your gun altogether) when I played through the game because I thought no shadows looked actually better and less distracting than those jagged shadows.

I need to give that active_shadow_maps_receving thing a try.

Can anyone with Splinter Cell or Unreal 2 and an ATI card say whether or not you are getting the issue with pixellated shadows cast by NPCs and world objects (not by level geometry) in those games? I want to make sure I'm not going off on some tangent issue with that, as it looks like I was with the UT2004 static map shadows.

 

[Tanclearas]

From various pages I've read, it looks like DST support was added to FarCry in 1.2. So, I backed up my save games, uninstalled FC, and reinstalled fresh. This didn't really work. I don't think the patches were properly removed when the game was uninstalled. I ran the patches again, and they have a Remove procedure, so I started over. I ran all of the patches again to remove them, uninstalled the game, and made sure the directory was empty.

I reinstalled the game and applied patch 1.1.

The blocky shadows are still there. So, if anyone was thinking about going back to a previous patch level to solve this, it won't help.

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: Tanclearas
From various pages I've read, it looks like DST support was added to FarCry in 1.2. So, I backed up my save games, uninstalled FC, and reinstalled fresh. This didn't really work. I don't think the patches were properly removed when the game was uninstalled. I ran the patches again, and they have a Remove procedure, so I started over. I ran all of the patches again to remove them, uninstalled the game, and made sure the directory was empty.

I reinstalled the game and applied patch 1.1.

The blocky shadows are still there. So, if anyone was thinking about going back to a previous patch level to solve this, it won't help.

Cheers mate :beer:

well it looks like the problem is still an unknown issue then

 

[dug777]

bump

 

[BespinReactorShaft]

What a way to mess up my 6800GT vs X800XL upgrade decision. :frown:

Searched thru the nvidia forums and found no major threads on this issue.

 

[slash196]

I noticed a similar phenominon in BF2 with the shadows...although that could very well just be a problem with BF2.

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: BespinReactorShaft
What a way to mess up my 6800GT vs X800XL upgrade decision. :frown:

Searched thru the nvidia forums and found no major threads on this issue.

i'm suprised it hasn't got more attention myself, and i certainly would have thought very hard about letting my supplier replace my 9800 pro with a 6600GT had i known about this, since farcry is my favourite game by a long shot, has been since it came out, and this IQ problem really makes the shadow aspect of it look awful :|

 

[DeeSlanger]

you should make a poll dug, it seems many are having image problems.

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: DeeSlanger
you should make a poll dug, it seems many are having image problems.

i edited my OP with a brief summary of the thread, for those who don't want to read the lot...tho again i suggest you do to get the full picture...

 

[forumposter32]

Originally posted by: slash196
I noticed a similar phenominon in BF2 with the shadows...although that could very well just be a problem with BF2.

I think the patch solves that. Although that same patch screws up the ability of playing the same game for different "accounts" on the same computer. Something that has to do with key serial protection.

 

[Janooo]

Originally posted by: BespinReactorShaft
What a way to mess up my 6800GT vs X800XL upgrade decision. :frown:
...

I couldn't take it anymore. I bought X800XL for about $240 ($299CAD). I am happy now

 

[forumposter32]

Originally posted by: Janooo

Originally posted by: BespinReactorShaft
What a way to mess up my 6800GT vs X800XL upgrade decision. :frown:
...

I couldn't take it anymore. I bought X800XL for about $240 ($299CAD). I am happy now

I beat you in that department.
I bought my X700 Pro for $135 CDN at tigerdirect.ca
UT2004 uses mainly the CPU so the GPU is not a big factor. Plus, for whatever reason, the X700 Pro gives almost the same performance as the 6600 GT in BF2.
This seems like the perfect solution for me since I want to buy a new card when UT2007 comes out.

I'm glad I tried ATI for the first time (though I don't like the CCC, I formatted and did not re-install that, I didn't like .NET either).

 

[moonboy403]

any solution to the shadow problem yet?

 

[Boomer93]

I am knew here . This is the first I have heard of any problems with the 7800GTX.
My 6800ultra has some problems but I learned to live with it.

So your saying the 7800GTX has those problems also.

Geez I want to order a 7800GTX so bad . But still not sure if its 100% Vista compliant.
Now I hear about this problem.

What would you guys do ? X1800XT?

 

[Powermoloch]

Powermoloch pats his x850xt agp.... lol jk

Thanks for posting my screenshots Dug :thumbsup:

 

[moonboy403]

x1800 xt isn't gonna come out till november =(
by that time....maybe the new version of gtx (512mb with higher clock speed) would be able to compete or even overtake x1800 xt?

maybe you should wait boomer93

 

[Janooo]

Originally posted by: moonboy403
any solution to the shadow problem yet?

Nvidia knows abouth the issues. They read these threads.

So why there is no fix?

- they don't know how to fix it (0.01% of chance)
- they don't want to fix it (99.99%)

What could be the reason for that?
- short on developers?
- low priority?
- performance hit?

I am starting to believe the performace is the biggest one.

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: Janooo

Originally posted by: moonboy403
any solution to the shadow problem yet?

Nvidia knows abouth the issues. They read these threads.

So why there is no fix?

- they don't know how to fix it (0.01% of chance)
- they don't want to fix it (99.99%)

What could be the reason for that?
- short on developers?
- low priority?
- performance hit?

I am starting to believe the performace is the biggest one.

well thats beginning to be my thought on the matter, i mean there's no doubt it's a serious IQ problem that would make a lot of people very happy if it were fixed, and i hope they pay at least a little attention to issues posted on forums like this...maybe that's too much to ask, i don't know...

 

[lifeguard1999]

Originally posted by: Janooo

Originally posted by: moonboy403
any solution to the shadow problem yet?

Nvidia knows abouth the issues. They read these threads.

So why there is no fix?

- they don't know how to fix it (0.01% of chance)
- they don't want to fix it (99.99%)

What could be the reason for that?
- short on developers?
- low priority?
- performance hit?

I am starting to believe the performace is the biggest one.

Assuming that NVidia found out about this problem from this thread, it has only been 14 days (give or take). Of course, they could have known about it before, but none of us is privledged to that information. That puts it on their list of "to fix" list behind whatever else has higher priority. After a developer fixes the problem, then it has to go through testing to make sure it does not break something else. All this takes time. I am not surprised it has not been fixed yet, in a mere 14 days, especially since the last driver release was 6 weeks ago.

And if it were ATI with the bug? I would not blame them either.

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: lifeguard1999

Originally posted by: Janooo

Originally posted by: moonboy403
any solution to the shadow problem yet?

Nvidia knows abouth the issues. They read these threads.

So why there is no fix?

- they don't know how to fix it (0.01% of chance)
- they don't want to fix it (99.99%)

What could be the reason for that?
- short on developers?
- low priority?
- performance hit?

I am starting to believe the performace is the biggest one.

Assuming that NVidia found out about this problem from this thread, it has only been 14 days (give or take). Of course, they could have known about it before, but none of us is privledged to that information. That puts it on their list of "to fix" list behind whatever else has higher priority. After a developer fixes the problem, then it has to go through testing to make sure it does not break something else. All this takes time. I am not surprised it has not been fixed yet, in a mere 14 days, especially since the last driver release was 6 weeks ago.

And if it were ATI with the bug? I would not blame them either.

Good points I'm interested to know how long this problem has existed..does it go right back to farcry's release? I can't imagine that being the case, although i guess most reviews would have tested the game on one card only, and later with both companies cards they would have been far more interested in banchmarks than IQ...it would be interesting to know tho...

 

[BFG10K]

I thought that DST was just nVidia's way of inflating 3DMark; it's concerning if they're applying it to games as well.

 

[Janooo]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
I thought that DST was just nVidia's way of inflating 3DMark; it's concerning if they're applying it to games as well.

Both companies have issues with IQ but it's generally agreed that ATI is better in this department. NV wants to beat ATI in speed so badly that it made trade off - higher speed for less IQ. It's up to us if we take it or we leave it.