So i pretty much stayed away from using OpenGL because the graphics looked like crap, but now that i have the extra RAM i was hoping to see if i couldn't get more out of the water.
Whats weird is that land and objects increase in detail, but my water continues to stay flat and un altered under DirectX.
So, i've switched over to OpenGL to see if I could improve the water and with out changing anything i get this (vanilla):






I have an Nvidia 7200 with the intel 945 mobile family chipsets. It has 128mb of memory and actually does just fine under DX settings.

There are no drivers or other accelerators for this card.

You probably want to see my config.ini:

Render_DirectX]
TexQual=3
TexMipFilter=2
TexCompress=1
TexFlags.UseDither=1
TexFlags.UseAlpha=0
TexFlags.UseIndex=0
TexFlags.PolygonStipple=1
TexFlags.UseClampedSprites=0
TexFlags.DrawLandByTriangles=1
TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=1
TexFlags.DisableAPIExtensions=0
TexFlags.ARBMultitextureExt=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineExt=1
TexFlags.SecondaryColorExt=1
TexFlags.VertexArrayExt=1
TexFlags.ClipHintExt=1
TexFlags.UsePaletteExt=1
TexFlags.TexAnisotropicExt=0
TexFlags.TexCompressARBExt=0
TexFlags.TexEnvCombine4NV=0
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineDot3=0
TexFlags.DepthClampNV=0
TexFlags.SeparateSpecular=0
TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=0

HardwareShaders=0

Shadows=2
Specular=2
SpecularLight=2
DiffuseLight=2
DynamicalLights=1
MeshDetail=2
VisibilityDistance=3

Sky=1
Forest=2
LandShading=3
LandDetails=2

LandGeom=2
TexLarge=1
TexLandQual=3
TexLandLarge=1

VideoSetupId=15
ForceShaders1x=0
PolygonOffsetFactor=-0.0625
PolygonOffsetUnits=-1.0
Water=2
Effects=1

[Render_OpenGL]
TexQual=3
TexMipFilter=2
TexCompress=1
TexFlags.UseDither=1
TexFlags.UseAlpha=0
TexFlags.UseIndex=0
TexFlags.PolygonStipple=1
TexFlags.UseClampedSprites=0
TexFlags.DrawLandByTriangles=1
TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=1
TexFlags.DisableAPIExtensions=0
TexFlags.ARBMultitextureExt=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineExt=1
TexFlags.SecondaryColorExt=1
TexFlags.VertexArrayExt=1
TexFlags.ClipHintExt=1
TexFlags.UsePaletteExt=1
TexFlags.TexAnisotropicExt=0
TexFlags.TexCompressARBExt=0

TexFlags.TexEnvCombine4NV=0
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineDot3=0
TexFlags.DepthClampNV=0
TexFlags.SeparateSpecular=0
TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=0

HardwareShaders=0

Shadows=2
Specular=2
SpecularLight=2
DiffuseLight=2
DynamicalLights=1
MeshDetail=2
VisibilityDistance=3

Sky=2
Forest=2
LandShading=3
LandDetails=2

LandGeom=2
TexLarge=1
TexLandQual=3
TexLandLarge=1

VideoSetupId=2
Water=2
Effects=1
ForceShaders1x=0

PolygonOffsetFactor=-0.15
PolygonOffsetUnits=-3.0


I'm hoping someone can suggest something to help, but also keep in mind i've played around with the Setup.exe to get what i can out of the Dx settings, so my thinking is that its got to be pretty similar for OpenGL. Am i wrong with that assumption?
Any help would be appreciated.

thanks


Bill

quote:

Originally posted by BillSwagger:
So i pretty much stayed away from using OpenGL because the graphics looked like crap

opengl should give you better grafics than directx, and your system-ram doesn't matter much here, imo.
i am not familiar with your grafic's card - i presume, it is a laptop? however, with 128mb memory, native resolution might be a problem.

anyway, you need to run opengl and 'hardwareshaders01' for 'perfect'-settings.
i have highlighted the settings, which you could try for a change in the 'conf.ini':

quote:

Originally posted by BillSwagger:
[Render_OpenGL]
TexQual=3
TexMipFilter=2 (this is 'bilinear', better is =3 - 'anisotropic', but takes framerate)
TexCompress=1 (1 is worst compression, better would be 2. 0 is uncompressed, which maybe too much for 128mb)
TexFlags.UseDither=1
TexFlags.UseAlpha=0
TexFlags.UseIndex=0
TexFlags.PolygonStipple=1
TexFlags.UseClampedSprites=0
TexFlags.DrawLandByTriangles=1
TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=1
TexFlags.DisableAPIExtensions=0
TexFlags.ARBMultitextureExt=1
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineExt=1
TexFlags.SecondaryColorExt=1
TexFlags.VertexArrayExt=1
TexFlags.ClipHintExt=0 (has something to do with rendering hidden triangles? default is 0, not sure about effect)
TexFlags.UsePaletteExt=1 (uses paletted colours, imo. might be responsible for the bands on water, 0 should be better)
TexFlags.TexAnisotropicExt=0 (is needed for texmipfilter=3, i would put it on =1)
TexFlags.TexCompressARBExt=0 (is needed for texcompress=2, i would put it to =1)

TexFlags.TexEnvCombine4NV=0 (all 'NV' should be =1 for nvidia)
TexFlags.TexEnvCombineDot3=0 (=1)
TexFlags.DepthClampNV=0 (=1)
TexFlags.SeparateSpecular=0 (=1)
TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=0 (=1)

HardwareShaders=0 (for 'Perfect'-settings needs to be =1 . might bring your framerate down)

Shadows=2
Specular=2
SpecularLight=2
DiffuseLight=2
DynamicalLights=1
MeshDetail=2
VisibilityDistance=3

Sky=2
Forest=2
LandShading=3
LandDetails=2

LandGeom=2
TexLarge=1
TexLandQual=3
TexLandLarge=1

VideoSetupId=2 (=17 for custom, but i don't know, if this matters)
Water=2 (this is something, which seems to be depending on grafics-processor. 3 and 4 is possible, but i don't know, how it relates to framerates)
Effects=1
ForceShaders1x=0

PolygonOffsetFactor=-0.15
PolygonOffsetUnits=-3.0

i gave your suggestions a go, but nothing changed. I seem to remember reading that the game was not tested to be compatible with mobile chip sets, however it does work in DX mode. I just can't get better water out of the graphics which i think is kinda strange considering the other changes i make will effect the detail

anyway thanks for the help. there might be nothing i can do about it.

Bill

I had a GeForce 7200GT 256MB (while waiting for my 2 8800GT's to arive) and it doesnt even have the power to run this game with any good graphics.

Only cards like that are good for is to run light graphics aplications like Google Earth etc.

And yes most games do not suport mobile graphics chips.

you happen to know what these do for the game:


PolygonOffsetFactor=


PolygonOffsetUnits=



bill

quote:

Originally posted by BillSwagger:
you happen to know what these do for the game:


PolygonOffsetFactor=


PolygonOffsetUnits=



bill

Its to stop flickering of airfield runways, squares and roads etc. (from a big distance) drawn/projected over an other surface like grass or dirt (only aplies for OpenGL).

Those are best left alone since they should be at the correct value.

The reason the water stays the same in directx is because all the fancy water effects are opengl based.

You said there was no drivers installed for your videocard??!!!?! No wonder you are having problems, please install some driver, then try running opengl, and in il2setup.exe be sure to select nvidia 6600 etc.

As it turns out there is no Nvidia card in my computer. Part of the confusion surrounding the model, being that it was built with several different hardware configurations. So i appologize for the confusion, and hopefully this realization makes it easy to solve my problem, although i'm still of the opinion there is little i can do.

It looks like I actually have an Intel GMA, a 945 mobile integrated chipset.
I've installed various drivers, but the reality is that this Intel series is only Shader 2.0 (Dx 9) compatible, unless there is a driver that will allow it to use 3.0 shaders, i would still need a software emulator for 3.0 shaders (Dx9.1c) if one even exists.

The lack of the 3.0 shaders doesn't account for the picture and graphics anomalies under OpenGL. The banding looks similar to a ghosting problem that happens when there is a missing ( or in this case, non-existent) .dll So i think its just because the game doesn't support mobile graphics cards. I still get a great picture under Dx settings and I can get water = 2 effects, but it doesn't load the coastline or shallow water textures that i see in other people's screen shots. It doesn't do that under OpenGL either, so is there a special trick i can do get those textures in my game?

Post a dxdiag report please.

BillSwagger, I get effects like the water colour banding you show, but only with 16-bit colour. Is your setup 16-bit?

Same problem here, also read my reply there, it also aplies to you.

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/foru...9310655/m/7561050197

Maybe you guys can be of help to each other.

quote:

Originally posted by Urufu_Shinjiro:
Post a dxdiag report please.

which part of the dxdiag box are you wanting?

each tab?

On the first tab should be to save a report or log, click that, the copy/paste the whole thing into your post.

------------------

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BillSwagger,

This could be an issue:

quote:

AGP Status: Not Available

Not sure why it does that though.

Check with HP whether you got the latest Chipset drivers, maybe also check for any BIOS update available?

quote:

Originally posted by FoolTrottel:
This could be an issue:

quote:

AGP Status: Not Available

Not sure why it does that though.

Check with HP whether you got the latest Chipset drivers, maybe also check for any BIOS update available?

Because it doesn't use an AGP card. It is entirely part of the motherboard, and shares system memory across the same bus.

This kind of says it all:
"The GMA 950 is Intel's second-generation graphics core, which was also referred by Intel as 'Gen 3.5 Integrated Graphics Engine' in datasheets. It is used in the Intel 940GML, 945G, 945GU and 945GT system chipsets. The amount of video-decoding hardware has increased; VLD, iDCT, and dual video overlay windows are now handled in hardware[citation needed]. The maximum core clock is up to 400 MHz (on Intel 945G, 945GC, 945GZ, 945GSE), boosting pixel fill-rate to a theoretical 1600 megapixels/s.

The GMA 950 shares the same architectural weakness as the GMA 900: no hardware geometry processing. Neither basic (DX7) hardware transform and lighting,[2] nor more advanced vertex shaders (DX8 and later) are handled in the GMA hardware ."

The above is why these chipsets are not considered strong enough for Forgotten Battles. It's not the fault of the game, it's a lack in the chip's architecture. Unfortunately, no amount of fiddling will alter the results.

B

quote:

Because it doesn't use an AGP card.

Aha, and so it's not using PCIe either I guess...

Thanks Brando, that clears up things.

Too bad...

quote:

Originally posted by x6BL_Brando:

The GMA 950 shares the same architectural weakness as the GMA 900: no hardware geometry processing. Neither basic (DX7) hardware transform and lighting,[2] nor more advanced vertex shaders (DX8 and later) are handled in the GMA hardware ."

B

Not true, I'm running Dx9.1c, and ran tests to show the card is compatible with the latest version. It was good up to 9.1c, but not Dx10 compliant.

Another thing, i downloaded the latest redistribution package of Direct X, which includes all the drivers for Dx7 through Dx10, and all of the latest patches (Aug 2009). This alone, added more lighting depth giving more better shadow detail and better reflections off the water.

It did not fix my problem in OpenGl.

Actually. what has me a bit confused is that the game will load all land textures just fine, but won't load all the water textures, such as the coastline or shallowater textures. This has nothing to do with added lighting or extra animations or shading. It is simple as loading a texture.
I noticed this when i try to load maps in 4.09b, some areas in the water would appear as white patches where normally a shallow water texture should appear. That doesn't make sense to me. I'm not looking for more waves or added detail, its the textures that make the water appear the color that it suppose to. So i'm unsure why i'm not able to get shallow water textures to load in the game.
Maybe i'm wrong. Is added water detail needed just to load the texture?

Bill

Whoever told you the GMA 950 was a gaming 3d rendering chip was wrong.

Its a basic onboard chip designed to run most os applications but not for 3d games.

You can see if there's a driver that's better than the one you have try here > http://downloadcenter.intel.co...eyword=%22GMA+950%22

But the words "dead horse" and "flogging" are coming to mind here.

i know how crappy my card is (supposed to be). Telling me how crappy my card is (supposed to be) doesn't help me answer my next question.
Its the same song and dance i get everytime i have a graphics question, when the truth is it plays many 3d games just fine at moderate resolutions. I might not get 120fps, but i can still maintain 50-60fps in Il2.

Its not my desire to get perfect settings, or see water = 3 or 4. I get water = 2 effects under Dx.

My problem, is getting some of the water textures to load in game. These aren't waves or animations, but intstead the textures used under the animation to simulate water depth, such as deep blue ocean, shallow water, or coastline.

Unless these are tied to water detail, i don't see why i couldn't see the more detailed texture that the animations are overlaid ontop of.

For obvious reasons I'm going to abandon the idea of using OpenGl, as my hardware doesn't seem to support it, and/or the game does not support it.

However i still get significant graphics and effects under DX, and it makes me wonder what i could do with a better system and card
see here:
http://forums.ubi.com/eve/foru...3110283/m/9291076197

so i'm just wondering how i could get water textures in the game like what i see other folks using.