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

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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.

 
Originally posted by: sundevb
Originally posted by: sundevb
I have this same problem as well (6800GT). I posted about this a while ago (you can read the OP here).

Fern responded to my post and said that he didn't have these problems with his 6800GT, and said the reason might be that he didn't update to the latest patch... so maybe someone wants to try uninstalling FarCry and then reinstalling without the latest patches?

EDIT: In the post that I linked to I had a 6600GT, and now I have a 6800GT, I had the same problem with both.
Click to expand...
Can anyone confirm that this is a problem with ALL patch versions of FarCry? Or is it just patches 1.3 and later?
Click to expand...


I think it is both patch and driver. I used to have a 6800Gt and when I played FarCry wit old nvidia drivers and unpatched FarCry I did not experience this problem. Sinve I upgraded to a 7800 GTX and I noticed this problem in 3DMark05 in canyon flight, havent tried FarCry yet but will give it a try.
 
Rollo, Ronin. Can either of you kindly ask your nvidia friend/contact if they are aware of this shadow on the gun issue in FarCry? And if they are planning a driver fix or if they believe its the patch in the game plus the driver. Or whatever.

I am currently using patch 1.33 with the 78.01's and have the blocky shadows on the guns. It doesn't really bother me as I never really noticed it until dugs thread here. Then I actually looked for it.

Thanks,
🙂
 
I haven't read the entire thread but I'd like to chime in that although my 6800GT does have blocky shadows in Far Cry, I experience no crash issues with my Neo2 Plat + eVGA 6800GT, and I'm on the 77.72's. And though I want this fixed as bad as anyone else, the thread title is a little overkill, dug.
 
Tried the original game (with no patch) and the latest nvidia driver 81.84 on a 7800GTX. Everythign was on max but the graph was horrible and unplayable. So it is probably a driver issue.
 
Now this issue i can see to be much more obvious as compared to the shimmering issue. For those of u w/ these nv 6xxx or 7xxx cards, can we get some different patch comparisons or possibly some tests in other games? Possibly this could be an issue for ubisoft and not nv. Im hoping this is the case because if not, this could apply to much more then just farcry. Come on guys, lets try and narrow down our parties which were blaming here!
 
Tried with FarCry 1.1 now I have good graph. Shadows are the same as in the above posted pics. So the problem is not with the game's patch but rather with nvidia's driver.
 
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.
 
Originally posted by: ZobarStyl
I haven't read the entire thread but I'd like to chime in that although my 6800GT does have blocky shadows in Far Cry, I experience no crash issues with my Neo2 Plat + eVGA 6800GT, and I'm on the 77.72's. And though I want this fixed as bad as anyone else, the thread title is a little overkill, dug.
Click to expand...

why? If it was an ATI problem Rollo & the nvida fanboy club would have threads screaming about it...and i'm actually a 6600GT owner who mainly plays Farcry atm, and would dearly love to see the problem fixed...since in my mind the IQ is TOTALLY unacceptable in this day and age...it is HORRIBLE if you compare it to the ATI shadow IQ...

At least as far as i can see it should be a very simple driver fix...
 
First of all, I don't think the shadows in that UT2k map are related. I think they're shadow maps, which are typically blocky (how blocky depends on the texture resolution and thus size), and so look the same on all cards. I could be wrong.

(Man, that UT map looks exactly like one in CS. What was it called, Oilrig?)

I was going to search for the same link CP5670 posted, the one to the Xbit mention. It's possible Digit-Life investigated as well, but I can't find it with a quick search. IIRC, the reason the shadows became blocky is because nV switched to using its DST and PCF hardware acceleration. This was a big deal with 3DM05, remember? See pics here and explanation here and here. Again, I could be wrong.

The difference, IIRC, is that shadow in the UT map isn't dynamic (edit: I don't think the shadow gets cast on you when you run under it), whereas the shadow on the FC guy's arm and gun are (dependent on your location and direction).

fp32, that may be a separate issue with the shadowing algorithm used in BF2. They likely sacrificed IQ for speed.
 
I was just about to buy 6800GT. Now what? Being informed by this thread the shadows would drive me nuts! :|
 
I tried to see them in UT2004 and Far Cry and couldn't really see them. And as for BF2, I could not see except for the odd shadow in some places like inside a vehicle.

The ATIs that are acceptable start with the X1600 (I think). But, they're not out.

I don't know about you but I would rather choose an X700 Pro or 6600 GT on sale and patiently wait for the Geforce 8 or ATI equivalent. My X700 Pro was on sale for $135 CDN.
 
Seriously, this problem isnt aas noticable as the shimmering problem I mean, who looks at the gun when your playing FPS?????
 
Originally posted by: Pete
First of all, I don't think the shadows in that UT2k map are related. I think they're shadow maps, which are typically blocky (how blocky depends on the texture resolution and thus size), and so look the same on all cards. I could be wrong.

(Man, that UT map looks exactly like one in CS. What was it called, Oilrig?)

I was going to search for the same link CP5670 posted, the one to the Xbit mention. It's possible Digit-Life investigated as well, but I can't find it with a quick search. IIRC, the reason the shadows became blocky is because nV switched to using its DST and PCF hardware acceleration. This was a big deal with 3DM05, remember? See pics here and explanation here and here. Again, I could be wrong.

The difference, IIRC, is that shadow in the UT map isn't dynamic (edit: I don't think the shadow gets cast on you when you run under it), whereas the shadow on the FC guy's arm and gun are (dependent on your location and direction).

fp32, that may be a separate issue with the shadowing algorithm used in BF2. They likely sacrificed IQ for speed.
Click to expand...

Okay, at least that's cleared up. I tried UT2004 out on my old computer and still saw the bad shadows there, but it's running the XG 76.41 drivers instead of the 56.72 ones I used to use, so it was hard to tell. In any case I'm not sure I never saw it on that old Geforce3 either; I used to play this game in 640x480 with most of the settings turned down on it, so I couldn't make out a whole lot of details anyway. 😀

In any case, I would be interested in seeing how these shadows look on an ATI card. I think it's way more noticeable in UT2004 than Far Cry.

Also, there is one remark in your first link that caught my attention:

Again, they're ON by default on compatible hardware, increasing the chances of a non apples-to-apples comparison between hardware than can do DST acceleration, and hardware that can't.
Click to expand...

Does that mean that this technique can be somehow turned off?
 
i want to see some UT2004 pics on an ATI card, remember the map is deathmatch desolation, check the eariler posts for the pics with nVidia cards.
 
fp32, that's the same issue as with the UT map. It's not a hardware issue, but rather depends on the res of the shadow map being used.

CP, I guess that would depend on if the game was actually using DST/PCF (which is still just a guess on my part), and if it offered an option to disable it (which 3DM05 does).

md, the previous page contains a pic of that same UT map on both an nV card and an ATI one.
 
Originally posted by: pacho108
Originally posted by: dug777
why? If it was an ATI problem Rollo & the nvida fanboy club would have threads screaming about it...
Click to expand...

that means you wanna become ATIs Rollo?
Click to expand...

no, but i think i have an equal right to use a controversial thread title to draw attention to what is in my mind an extremely unpleasant IQ problem specifically affecting nvidia cards...and thus me as the owner of a 6600GT and regular farcry player...

 
Originally posted by: Pete
fp32, that's the same issue as with the UT map. It's not a hardware issue, but rather depends on the res of the shadow map being used.

CP, I guess that would depend on if the game was actually using DST/PCF (which is still just a guess on my part), and if it offered an option to disable it (which 3DM05 does).

md, the previous page contains a pic of that same UT map on both an nV card and an ATI one.
Click to expand...

You're right. I didn't notice that he had an ATI card. Perhaps the UT2004 blockiness is some separate issue with the map design, since those are static shadows. However, I'm also getting it with real-time shadows cast by moving objects. Here is an example of the issue in Splinter Cell:

http://home.comcast.net/~cp5670/SC.jpg

Can someone with an ATI card check this out and see if they get the same thing?

Please post names of UT2004 maps that cast shadows. Are they online maps? Because I looked and have a hard time finding them.
Click to expand...

The one I was using was DM-1on1-Desolation, where it's really noticeable, but I have seen it some other maps as well.
 
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