nVidia 6800 lighting and shadows issue | Forums

[johns1234]

Sorry to open this old wound, but I'm working with UBI Customer Support on this problem. I have a Dell Dimension 9100 ( new ) with nVidia 6800 256 pci-e card,
and it is giving me a fit in Far Cry. I not only see the FPS drop ( a lot ) when going from "outside" to "inside" environments, but I also have see-through walls,
black walls and floors, weird artifacts, and the game is unplayable. In the same
levels, I can go back outside, and the game plays fine with no artifacts at all.
"Scoops" said this thread was 19 months old, and so he closed a recent thread on this. I'm asking ( to send this to UBI ) was there ever a resolution to this problem?
Or did everyone just finally decide to lower the nVidia video settings and live with it? I read that dropping Lighting and Shadowing effects to Medium helped. In my
case, if I dare to set a single video setting to Very High, Far Cry corrupts and
the problem remains no matter where I moved the video settings. However, if I totally
remove, and re-install Far Cry ( properly patched ), and I don't even dream of
putting a video setting above High .. and Particle and Details to Medium .., the
game ( so far ) is running fine with no artifacts. I'm past the Bunker level with
no problems. UBI has had me do all the usual updates of everything, and I sent them
a dxdiag and msinfo32 file(s). They are working on it.

[johns1234]

Sorry to open this old wound, but I'm working with UBI Customer Support on this problem. I have a Dell Dimension 9100 ( new ) with nVidia 6800 256 pci-e card,
and it is giving me a fit in Far Cry. I not only see the FPS drop ( a lot ) when going from "outside" to "inside" environments, but I also have see-through walls,
black walls and floors, weird artifacts, and the game is unplayable. In the same
levels, I can go back outside, and the game plays fine with no artifacts at all.
"Scoops" said this thread was 19 months old, and so he closed a recent thread on this. I'm asking ( to send this to UBI ) was there ever a resolution to this problem?
Or did everyone just finally decide to lower the nVidia video settings and live with it? I read that dropping Lighting and Shadowing effects to Medium helped. In my
case, if I dare to set a single video setting to Very High, Far Cry corrupts and
the problem remains no matter where I moved the video settings. However, if I totally
remove, and re-install Far Cry ( properly patched ), and I don't even dream of
putting a video setting above High .. and Particle and Details to Medium .., the
game ( so far ) is running fine with no artifacts. I'm past the Bunker level with
no problems. UBI has had me do all the usual updates of everything, and I sent them
a dxdiag and msinfo32 file(s). They are working on it.

[fabulouscoops]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by johns1234:

"Scoops" said this thread was 19 months old, and so he closed a recent thread on this. I'm asking ( to send this to UBI ) was there ever a resolution to this problem?
</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

What thread are you talking about? Opening 2 year old threads to complain will cause it to be closed every time. A new thread with a link to the old one is a better way to bring up the topic. If the thread was that old it was certainly not about any Nvidia card starting with a 6.

The lighting issue had to do with a memory leak in FC version 1.1 with low end cards like the FX 5200. The card could not be used online with lighting set to low, it had to be medium or higher.

Did you try this?
"-For NVIDIA Users of GeForce Cards up to GeForce 4 whose framerate feed choppy or slow, edit the file system.cfg and change the line r_Driver = “Direct3D9â€Â� to r_Driver = “OpenGLâ€Â� to try the unsupported OpenGL Version. This may run faster in specific cases."

[CuZtds_Lst_Stnd]

Excelent advice Coops re old threads, and I think you will find it was me that locked the 19 month old one, especially as the guy had already posted about it in Tech help.

Unless we both did one?

Hey, there is an idea for a new world rankings.
2 points per edit
5 for a deletion
10 for a lock
x2 multiplier to all of above for coupling it with a suspension,
x5 if you also permaban...

Wrt Johns problem, he shouldnt need to do this, even with it being the lite version of the board... The see through walls is screaming out HDR with AA enabled... I trust this isnt the case?
When you say UBI took you through all the usual steps, is the installation now at 1.33?
What version of the NVIDIAs are you using.
Did you use driver cleaner after uninstalling the old drives but before installing the new ones?

CuZ

[johns1234]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by CuZtds_Lst_Stnd:
Wrt Johns problem, he shouldnt need to do this, even with it being the lite version of the board... The see through walls is screaming out HDR with AA enabled... I trust this isnt the case?
When you say UBI took you through all the usual steps, is the installation now at 1.33?
What version of the NVIDIAs are you using.
Did you use driver cleaner after uninstalling the old drives but before installing the new ones?
CuZ </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

You name it, I did it, and reported to UBI. I'm using the 81.98 driver, and I did
a careful uninstall and reinstall of old drivers ( DriveCleaner ), and updated
Directx to Dec2005 version. I agree with you about HDR and AA. One of those old
threads said that if I used a Very High setting with an nVidia 6800, "something"
would autodetect and run. I know the poster said HDR, but I also found a site
that said Very High would auto-enable the highest setting of a new Shader module
for the nVidia 6800. That is why I'm doing the new run-through with only High
and Medium settings ( to prevent an auto-enable of whatever it is ) .. and it is
working too. I'm getting through the game with no problems. Also, that latest
but closed thread saw something very similar .. a drastic drop in FPS for the
nVidia 6800 whenever he went "inside". I'm seeing something very like that ..
only add in the see-through walls and artifacts. And when I go back outside, it all
cleans right up. Latest thread blamed it on too many lighting and shadow effects
so that the inside game would look as good as the outside game. He said only the
FX nVidia cards had problems with that. He is wrong. My 6800 is a dead duck if
I put the settings too high .. I feel sure this is an nForce driver problem that
was never really fixed ... and the Far Cry Profile in the latest driver, moves
the settings to "performance", probably to get around this problem of the shader
or whatever it is. At least I've got a work-around that works :-)

[johns1234]

Also, on usenet ( alt .. nvidia ), I talked a few unsuspecting gamers into running
the HardWareOC benchmark program for Far Cry. Sure enough, since that benchmark
puts settings to Very High, or even Ultra High, the guys with the nVidia cards
saw Far Cry corrupt with no fix except to uninstall and reinstall and repatch
the game. They had the same see-through walls and artifacts that I'm getting
after Far Cry corrupted. I think there is some kind of write-back going on in
the config files that sacks the game on an nVidia 6800 if the settings are
wrong. I note too that the autodetect always puts the settings to all LOW ..
like the fully patched game has not a clue regards what the card is.

[CuZtds_Lst_Stnd]

For a newer card I would always say ignore the auto detect.
Regardless of the fact you were sold a pup, you should not experiece those sort of problems... the FX5200s were low model first edition DX9 cards that simply couldnt handle the heathaze and shadows of carrier. Your card should have no problems at resonable resolutions providing the AA and AF are set accordingly. U sure they havent rebadged a GF2?

I think the feature u refer to is SM3.0.
HDR does not auto enable, you need to turn it on through the console.
If you use the console command \r_diaplyinfo 1 it will give you feedback on you FPS and some rendering settings, i believe that the SM is displayed.
Regarding those having problems with the benchmark, isnt that the one that Coops has run fine with his 7800GT? What cards do these guys have?

CuZ

[fabulouscoops]

I have run the research and regulator benchmarks with the 7800 GT one indoor and one outdoor. I think the results were 66 fps inside and 122 fps outside. but this was at 1600x1200 with HDR enabled and all settings on high. It does seem that indoor framerates are much lower than outdoor framerates.