XyZspineZyX
02-03-2004, 01:19 AM
Since I first noticed that FC appears to support OpenGL I have been very excited. Now if the final release of the product includes full OpenGL support, it will be a godsend to those of us who have the ageing Geforce 4Ti series of cards. Most of us would prefer to keep these cards as long as we can if at all possible. Lets face it. Who wants to put out the money for a new card such as a Radeon 9700+ or an FX 5800+ when its not completely necessary? And on a side note, the Radeon 9600XT and FX 5700's have received alot of hype as mid-range cards and may give a few extra features, as they are dx9 complient. But most of these features are simply being turned off ingame due to the performance hit. And I am not conviced they are worth the upgrade from a geforce 4 Ti card.
The Forceware 53.03 and above drivers have certainly injected new life into the Geforce 4Ti cards. Some of the tweaked Forceware drivers have yielded around 5-10 extra frames in some cases. Moreover, the simple fact that Far Cry seems to be the first game (Doom 3 and HL2 to follow) to fully utilise bump map (polybump in FC language) features that are dx8.1 and fully supported by the Ti4's. There are of course many features to the final release of Far Cry that we have not seen in the demo such as correct shaders 1 (GfTi4 supported) and volumetric lighting and smoke as well as propper use of fog etc (volumetric fog can be very gpu hungry) and several other Dx8.1 flavours. And of course there is the change of day sequences in the final release which may or may not interfere with performance depending on how it has been coded. Nonetheless the FC game code looks like one of the best and most versatle codes yet and making changes (tweaking) the engine looks very easy. Moreover, OpenGL has always run better and looked better on these cards than Direct3d. So if the demo speaks for the final release in this department, I think we can look forward to getting the best out of our cards.
I have posed a few of my own observations regarding OpenGL performance and graphical issues. I am in consultation with the testing team at Ubi, so all your suggestions and feedback will be going straight to the developers. Our intention is to encourage them to put as much effort as possible into the OpenGL code before the game's release.
Graphical Observations on Nvidia Geforce 4 Ti Series cards:
1: Direct3D mode does not render water reflections but renders dynamic shadows.
2 :OpenGL mode by contrast renders water reflections well, but does not render dynamic shadows/or lights propperly such as the swinging lights do not generate light beams and the torch is activated but does not show a light trail. Light beams that do show seem to be washed out.
3 :OpenGL does generates less artifacts than D3d mode.
4 http://ubbxforums.ubi.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gifistant texures seem less blured or torn in OpenGL.
5: Color detail is richer but polybump map surfaces are not as clear in OpenGL.
6: OpenGL polygon count is appears to be somewhat innacurate on some textures
7: Anisotrophy doesn't render propperly in OpenGL
8: OpenGL by default (without r_Glare = "0") is too dark.
9: Nothing is changeable from the main menu in OpenGL.
10:Important: OpenGL renders inconsistant decals. Sometimes they show, sometimes they dont. Bullet wounds never show.
11:Tripple Buffering and Mipmapping rendering needs more clarity
12:Z-Buffering doesnt appear to work at all.
Well there are a few things to start with. And remember this post is for Geforce 4 Ti series card owners only.
Post your feedback and comments/suggestions/observations here.
Cheers
Crymaster
The Forceware 53.03 and above drivers have certainly injected new life into the Geforce 4Ti cards. Some of the tweaked Forceware drivers have yielded around 5-10 extra frames in some cases. Moreover, the simple fact that Far Cry seems to be the first game (Doom 3 and HL2 to follow) to fully utilise bump map (polybump in FC language) features that are dx8.1 and fully supported by the Ti4's. There are of course many features to the final release of Far Cry that we have not seen in the demo such as correct shaders 1 (GfTi4 supported) and volumetric lighting and smoke as well as propper use of fog etc (volumetric fog can be very gpu hungry) and several other Dx8.1 flavours. And of course there is the change of day sequences in the final release which may or may not interfere with performance depending on how it has been coded. Nonetheless the FC game code looks like one of the best and most versatle codes yet and making changes (tweaking) the engine looks very easy. Moreover, OpenGL has always run better and looked better on these cards than Direct3d. So if the demo speaks for the final release in this department, I think we can look forward to getting the best out of our cards.
I have posed a few of my own observations regarding OpenGL performance and graphical issues. I am in consultation with the testing team at Ubi, so all your suggestions and feedback will be going straight to the developers. Our intention is to encourage them to put as much effort as possible into the OpenGL code before the game's release.
Graphical Observations on Nvidia Geforce 4 Ti Series cards:
1: Direct3D mode does not render water reflections but renders dynamic shadows.
2 :OpenGL mode by contrast renders water reflections well, but does not render dynamic shadows/or lights propperly such as the swinging lights do not generate light beams and the torch is activated but does not show a light trail. Light beams that do show seem to be washed out.
3 :OpenGL does generates less artifacts than D3d mode.
4 http://ubbxforums.ubi.com/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gifistant texures seem less blured or torn in OpenGL.
5: Color detail is richer but polybump map surfaces are not as clear in OpenGL.
6: OpenGL polygon count is appears to be somewhat innacurate on some textures
7: Anisotrophy doesn't render propperly in OpenGL
8: OpenGL by default (without r_Glare = "0") is too dark.
9: Nothing is changeable from the main menu in OpenGL.
10:Important: OpenGL renders inconsistant decals. Sometimes they show, sometimes they dont. Bullet wounds never show.
11:Tripple Buffering and Mipmapping rendering needs more clarity
12:Z-Buffering doesnt appear to work at all.
Well there are a few things to start with. And remember this post is for Geforce 4 Ti series card owners only.
Post your feedback and comments/suggestions/observations here.
Cheers
Crymaster