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

[Sc4freak]

Read the thread...

 

[dug777]

bah, nothing good to report

 

[dug777]

bump :|

 

[CP5670]

does that leaked patch do anything about this?

By the way, on a somewhat related note, is there anyone who has Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow (the second SC game) and an ATI card? When you turn on the nightvision, does everything become extremely blocky and pixellated, looking like 320x240 resolution? I'm wondering if this has any connection to this Far Cry problem. (or even if it's an bug at all, as it might just be a bad design decision) This does not occur in the original SC, despite the engine being nearly identical.

 

[nRollo]

LOL- I'm sure they're putting in lots of overtime to fix the shape of the shadows on a two year old game.

I heard last week three nVidia driver programmers jumped out of their windows with notes pinned to their chests, "I have failed the world".

:roll:

Note to nVidia if you're reading AT these days:

A lot of us could care less if Far Cry is rendered only in pink and orange squares. The game is very old, don't waste your time on it, work on games that are upcoming and actually played.

BTW Dug777- there are actually issues with some old games on ATIs "To Do" list as well.
:Q
The valuable lesson? Nothing is perfect and you have to buy the hardware that suits your needs best.

 

[MikalCarbine257]

I'm having the same problem with BF2, using 6.70 Unified and 81.95, just formatted a week or two ago. The shadows look horrible

 

[lavaheadache]

Originally posted by: Rollo
LOL- I'm sure they're putting in lots of overtime to fix the shape of the shadows on a two year old game.

I heard last week three nVidia driver programmers jumped out of their windows with notes pinned to their chests, "I have failed the world".

:roll:

Note to nVidia if you're reading AT these days:

A lot of us could care less if Far Cry is rendered only in pink and orange squares. The game is very old, don't waste your time on it, work on games that are upcoming and actually played.

BTW Dug777- there are actually issues with some old games on ATIs "To Do" list as well.
:Q
The valuable lesson? Nothing is perfect and you have to buy the hardware that suits your needs best.

I still play farcry. I guess Rollo only plays games that his dual GTX's render correctly.

 

[McArra]

This bug is ugly. Since a lot of games are rendered correctly I guess they should really try to fix it. And it doesn't only happen in Farcry

 

[SynthDude2001]

A lot of people still play FarCry, whether Rollo wants to believe it or not. Fixing this bug probably wouldn't result in any extra sales for Nvidia, so it might not be worth it in their eyes (if it's something difficult to fix). But I hardly see the logic in calling an advanced DX9 game unimportant just because it came out in 2004. Not everyone plays a game for only two months and then forgets it ever existed. :roll:

 

[dug777]

It's ugly, i'm sure it would be an easy fix, and Farcry is still one of the best, if not the best looking FPS out there (esp if you've seen the screenshots in my extended content pack thread ), and as far as i'm aware MANY people still play the game regularly, and i certainly do.

 

[Wellsoul2]

This thread has settled it for me..no way am I paying $300 or more for a
Nvidia video card with IQ problems.

I'll admit I was reluctant before because I've always bought ATI.

Really I don't care how fast the card is if it doesn't render as well.

I wasn't impressed with the 7800GTX vs 1800XT image quality differences
in HL2 (Which is in another thread here) either.

I was seriously going to buy a 6800GS or 7800GT but now I'll wait on
the 1800XL to drop a bit lower.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
A lot of people still play FarCry, whether Rollo wants to believe it or not. Fixing this bug probably wouldn't result in any extra sales for Nvidia, so it might not be worth it in their eyes (if it's something difficult to fix). But I hardly see the logic in calling an advanced DX9 game unimportant just because it came out in 2004. Not everyone plays a game for only two months and then forgets it ever existed. :roll:

LOL- how "advanced" can a two year old piece of software be? Advanced then? Yep. Advanced now? Hardly. There are several SM3 titles out now, a few other HDR titles, and in general, things have moved on since Far Cry.

Like most other people, I've never even noticed these "horrible" shadows. (and I've played Far Cry MANY times)

I don't recall ever seeing these "horrible" shadows noted in a review either.

Maybe nVidia just doesn't think enough people care about this aged game and have better things to pay people to do than make Far Cry shadows more realistic.

They're probably smart enough to realize no one is making any buying choices based on Far Cry anymore (or not enough to care about) much the same way ATI let the Sacrifice issue slide for years.

Bottom line is that all video cards have rendering issues in a some games, and if you want perfect rendering in all games, you should be using a XBox or Playstation.

Whining on a forum about these shadows is going to get you only two things: "jack" and "sh*t".

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: Rollo

Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
A lot of people still play FarCry, whether Rollo wants to believe it or not. Fixing this bug probably wouldn't result in any extra sales for Nvidia, so it might not be worth it in their eyes (if it's something difficult to fix). But I hardly see the logic in calling an advanced DX9 game unimportant just because it came out in 2004. Not everyone plays a game for only two months and then forgets it ever existed. :roll:

LOL- how "advanced" can a two year old piece of software be? Advanced then? Yep. Advanced now? Hardly. There are several SM3 titles out now, a few other HDR titles, and in general, things have moved on since Far Cry.

Like most other people, I've never even noticed these "horrible" shadows. (and I've played Far Cry MANY times)

I don't recall ever seeing these "horrible" shadows noted in a review either.

Maybe nVidia just doesn't think enough people care about this aged game and have better things to pay people to do than make Far Cry shadows more realistic.

They're probably smart enough to realize no one is making any buying choices based on Far Cry anymore (or not enough to care about) much the same way ATI let the Sacrifice issue slide for years.

Bottom line is that all video cards have rendering issues in a some games, and if you want perfect rendering in all games, you should be using a XBox or Playstation.

Whining on a forum about these shadows is going to get you only two things: "jack" and "sh*t".

there's a difference between whining and making a complaint public...just b/c it's against nvidia is the issue for you isn't it? (*remembers that TOTALLY innaccurate and wrong sacrifice thread you made*)....If people weren't making buying decisions based on Farcry WHY would most sites continue to bench it? Things have moved on? Then why do we have extended content patches that make the game look even better, and an AA+HDR patch (leaked but in the wings) on the way? I would assume given the reappearance of this thread you are going to do what you did last time it came to your attention, post totally wrong threads and a failed link to the ATI driver problems page?

Strange that you are the only person who has a problem with this thread or people wanting an issue to be fixed (especially given us nvidia owners, of whom most of the thread is made up (well, maybe 90% plus, is that enough for you?)...)

 

[Munky]

Not to go off topic or anything, but the games I played after Farcry dont look much better at all. Maybe FEAR, and only indoors with the realistic bullet damage on walls, but then again I've seen destructible environments in Red Faction on the PS2, and that was like 4 years ago. The only game I can definitely say looks better is Lost Coast, but that's just a tech demo. I havent seen any game yet that makes FC look primitive and outdated, and definitely nothing to justify the ridiculous hardware requirements of newer games like FEAR.

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: munky
Not to go off topic or anything, but the games I played after Farcry dont look much better at all. Maybe FEAR, and only indoors with the realistic bullet damage on walls, but then again I've seen destructible environments in Red Faction on the PS2, and that was like 4 years ago. The only game I can definitely say looks better is Lost Coast, but that's just a tech demo. I havent seen any game yet that makes FC look primitive and outdated, and definitely nothing to justify the ridiculous hardware requirements of newer games like FEAR.

agreed

Hence my thread on farcry with the 64-bit hax goodness

 

[Qbah]

Just dropped by to say until my last working driver (81.98) it's still bad. I would try the newer betas, but they just won't work on my machine. Anyway, the 84.xx have some excellent IQ improvements (as far as I could test them, I get BSOD-mayhem with all betas...), maybe they resolved the Farcry shadows issue?

And indeed, even after so many years, Farcry looks absolutely amazing, especially with HDR. It's boring as hell though

And wicked sig, dug :shocked:

EDIT: Hmm, back to the old one?

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: Qbah
Just dropped by to say until my last working driver (81.98) it's still bad. I would try the newer betas, but they just won't work on my machine. Anyway, the 84.xx have some excellent IQ improvements (as far as I could test them, I get BSOD-mayhem with all betas...), maybe they resolved the Farcry shadows issue?

And indeed, even after so many years, Farcry looks absolutely amazing, especially with HDR. It's boring as hell though

And wicked sig, dug :shocked:

EDIT: Hmm, back to the old one?

yeah

i suspected the heavy hand of a mod was about to descend on me

 

[moonboy403]

with the flood of 7900 gt and gtx in anandtech forum

can anyone test out if these card/new beta driver fixed the shadow problem yet?

i won't get my gtx till tomorrow, so i can't test it out =(

 

[MrJim]

Originally posted by: Rollo
LOL- I'm sure they're putting in lots of overtime to fix the shape of the shadows on a two year old game.

I heard last week three nVidia driver programmers jumped out of their windows with notes pinned to their chests, "I have failed the world".

:roll:

Note to nVidia if you're reading AT these days:

A lot of us could care less if Far Cry is rendered only in pink and orange squares. The game is very old, don't waste your time on it, work on games that are upcoming and actually played.

BTW Dug777- there are actually issues with some old games on ATIs "To Do" list as well.
:Q
The valuable lesson? Nothing is perfect and you have to buy the hardware that suits your needs best.

What purpose has a quote like this? I use Nvidia and want my cards to work as they should, isnt that a right i have as a consumer?

 

[SynthDude2001]

Since my good friend Dug is currently on vacation from these forums , he requested that I bump this thread for him before it falls into the abyss of the archives.

So that this isn't a completely useless post, I'm linking a screenshot of FarCry running on my new X1900XT at 1680x1050/6x Quality Adaptive AA/16xHQAF/ECU("AMD64 content"), along with a tweak or two including increased vegetation sprites distance ratio and increased detail texture draw distance.

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/SynthDude2001/FarCry0073.jpg

I was going for the highest possible image quality for screenshots here, so it wasn't playable (~15fps), but it could have been worse. Note the non-blocky shadows. Note the lack of HDR too; I've been having problems with the leaked 1.4 patch and getting HDR+AA to work at the same time (which is strange, because I thought I'd had it working before).

On that front, I've also come across a post supposedly from someone at Crytek claiming that the official 1.4 patch, presumably with final HDR+AA support, is getting pretty close to release (finally). See here. Hopefully it turns out to be true.

 

[BFG10K]

It'll be interesting to see how the 1.4 patch will turn out. According to nVidia's driver notes it should fix the shadow issues as they've done all they can from their side.

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
It'll be interesting to see how the 1.4 patch will turn out. According to nVidia's driver notes it should fix the shadow issues as they've done all they can from their side.

indeed it will

Here's hoping :beer:

 

[Gstanfor]

I ended up with a copy of Oblivion since the Significant Other is quite taken with it (almost enough to make a person buy a console...) having seen it elsewhere.

Anyhow, have been reading up on tweak guides and came across the following

iShadowMapResolution=1024 - This variable determines the resolution of the shadow maps. By lowering this value (always using a multiple of 8), you can gain significant FPS in areas with dynamic shadows in return for much 'rougher' looking shadows. For example, try a value of 128 to see the performance and image quality impact.

I did some experimenting and noticed that setting this value to 512 or below gives shadow results quite similar to what is seen in farcry. So, I suggest people familiar with farcry's variables and parameters find an equivelant command in farcry and you may just find a solution to the ugly shadow problem.

 

[schneiderguy]

Originally posted by: Gstanfor
I ended up with a copy of Oblivion since the Significant Other is quite taken with it (almost enough to make a person buy a console...) having seen it elsewhere.

Anyhow, have been reading up on tweak guides and came across the following

iShadowMapResolution=1024 - This variable determines the resolution of the shadow maps. By lowering this value (always using a multiple of 8), you can gain significant FPS in areas with dynamic shadows in return for much 'rougher' looking shadows. For example, try a value of 128 to see the performance and image quality impact.

I did some experimenting and noticed that setting this value to 512 or below gives shadow results quite similar to what is seen in farcry. So, I suggest people familiar with farcry's variables and parameters find an equivelant command in farcry and you may just find a solution to the ugly shadow problem.

i remember there being a command like that. i tried putting it to this certain value someone reccomended, it fixed the shadow problem but gave me 0-1 FPS in any areas with shadows on my gun/hands

 

[Gstanfor]

Given how Oblivion runs with shadows at full resolution I don't expect the performance difference to be that dramatic, unless there is a bug of elephant size proportions in the nvidia rendering path in farcry.