The Return of Neriak

[Raliddar]

edited for stupidity, entirely mine.

P.S. Thanks for the sig quote Visions

[Abalieno]

Gah. I have a problem with the graphic that I cannot seem to figure out, and I thought I knew these things rather well...

I have an ATI videocard now and the in-game graphic looks like blurred or scaled up. The effect is similar to when you scale down the render resolution or light resolution but I double and triple checked all the settings and I cannot solve this problem and make the game look as it looked when I had the Nvidia card.

My only suspect now (even if the effect is even crappier for it to be the real problem) is that the game has 2x antialiasing enabled somewhere. The problem is that there's no AA setting in the game and ATI control panel only allows me to set AA to application controlled but not to "off" completely.

So, how the hell can I turn off AA in EQ2. And is this problem just due to the videocard and typical of all ATIs?

Below just an example of two buildings in the line of the horizon. How the hell I can remove that goddamn blur that washes out the textures even on near objects?

[Miele]

Those seem horribly low resolution screenshots: at which resolution are you playing and on what monitor size?
Anyway disable the bloom and atmopsheric effects from in game option panel. AA and bloom are not supported together, they use the same buffer it seems, but Bloom should take precedence if you activate them both.

Now check your eq2.ini file: if there is a line saying: "r_aa_blit 1" (without the quotes), it means you have the possibility to activate AA and AF through the video card control panel. It's not there by default, so you can try to remove it. If it's not there, what you set in the video card cp has no effect at all and "application controlled" will not activate anything in EQ2.

Disable Catalyst A.I. in the ATI control panel, it messes things up and if it's activated, AA and AF will not work, no matter what.

Try to reset the graphic settings to "default" in game, Alt+O -> Default button (on the bottom) -> Accept.
You'll have to set them one by one again (or use on of the presets).

One thing which is quite important, I mention it because I don't know your level of knowledge about drivers and stuff: after uninstalling the nvidia driver, run "Driver cleaner" (you can google for it), reboot and then install the new ATI drivers. I strongly suggest the ATI catalyst version 7.3 or previous ones, the 7.4 sucks badly in EQ2, at least if you have WinXP. With the 7.4 AA and AF were not working at all, no matter the settings.

EDIT: I have an ATI 1950Pro 512 Mb Ram, with and without AA, I never had similar problems. Before this I used a X1300 256Mb Ram.

[The Hiram Key]

200 Unique accounts and still growing. We are like a virus that is slowly but surely taking over the server. Guild chat is like the stock ticker with personal achievements, level ups, loot items, and status rewards.

This is crazy !

[Abalieno]

Originally Posted by Miele

Those seem horribly low resolution screenshots

Those are magnified of 300% to show the problem.

Anyway disable the bloom and atmopsheric effects from in game option panel. AA and bloom are not supported together, they use the same buffer it seems, but Bloom should take precedence if you activate them both.

And yeah, it was the bloom.

It's very odd because it only has an effect if I relaunch the game, so I couldn't figure it out by just turning it on/off.

And it's also odd because I was playing with bloom enabled with my Nvidia card and it wasn't applying that lame image blur, just softening colors the same way of WoW. So there must be something wrong in how SOE or ATI handle that feature.

Btw, it makes a WORLD of difference. The image was pure CRAP before.

Disable Catalyst A.I. in the ATI control panel, it messes things up and if it's activated, AA and AF will not work, no matter what.

AF works, I don't use AA.

The AI gives me better performance and I don't see a difference with it turned off, so I keep it on.

EDIT: I have an ATI 1950Pro 512 Mb Ram

Same here. The only AGP card left on earth.

P.S.
It's amazing how I can run the game by launching it manually and without a hitch even if I'm not even halfway with the patching.

[lumberjack]

Originally Posted by The Hiram Key

200 Unique accounts and still growing. We are like a virus that is slowly but surely taking over the server. Guild chat is like the stock ticker with personal achievements, level ups, loot items, and status rewards.

This is crazy !

hey man, just wanted to send you a shout out, thanks for answering all my stupid questions and helping me with the stuff you sent

[Abalieno]

Originally Posted by Abalieno

And yeah, it was the bloom.

It's very odd because it only has an effect if I relaunch the game, so I couldn't figure it out by just turning it on/off.

And it's also odd because I was playing with bloom enabled with my Nvidia card and it wasn't applying that lame image blur, just softening colors the same way of WoW. So there must be something wrong in how SOE or ATI handle that feature.

Btw, it makes a WORLD of difference. The image was pure CRAP before.

Discard that.

It's not the bloom. It's instead a bug with the letterbox option messing with the screen and applying that fake AA/blur.

And the worst part is that you cannot disable it through the UI. Moving the letterbox slider to zero doesn't work, you have to open the .ini and delete the "cl_letter_box_amount" voice or reset to "default" options so that it is deleted automatically. But as you move the slider the blur gets back.

I guess I'll have to do without the letterbox if SOE doesn't notice the problem and fixes it.

[Caocao]

Does that happen to every body, i didn't see any thing happen when I tried the letter box business. I have had a friend who has had some serious graphic issues and maybe this is what has been happening to him also.

Btw does any body know exactly if there is ever going to be support for dual core procs? This game runs really smooth on my current set up (8800 gtx, 2gig ddr, dual 4200 amd's), but would run even smoother w/ both procs running .

[Miele]

Originally Posted by Caocao

Does that happen to every body, i didn't see any thing happen when I tried the letter box business. I have had a friend who has had some serious graphic issues and maybe this is what has been happening to him also.

Btw does any body know exactly if there is ever going to be support for dual core procs? This game runs really smooth on my current set up (8800 gtx, 2gig ddr, dual 4200 amd's), but would run even smoother w/ both procs running .

My ATI is PCIe, not AGP like the poster above stated, but I don't have issues although I don't use the letterbox feature. I'm failry sure I toyed around with it and had no immediate problem, but I can't honestly say I used it for more than 5 minutes.

EQ2 started to use a single core to prevent exploits made by those with an AMD processor that did NOT install the AMD patch for X2 CPUs. Basically they were speed hacking and all that jazz.
It's sad because I have a 3800+ which on a single core is not that beefy and having the load spread on both cores would help tremendously.
When you activate shadows the load on the CPU increases by quite a lot, giving this and other small tasks like the rendering of the target rings to the 2nd core would be a start. One can only hope.

[Caocao]

Ya, I don't really keep track of the official boards much so I have no idea where they stand on this. If any one else can shed some light, it'd be nice to know that this extra proc I have would be put to good use when playing this game some day. Hell, maybe another feature to add for the Kunark expan?

[Peacecraft]

What classes do you guys need on AB? I just bought the game and after it's only got an hour left to patch.

[Abalieno]

Originally Posted by Miele

My ATI is PCIe, not AGP like the poster above stated, but I don't have issues although I don't use the letterbox feature. I'm failry sure I toyed around with it and had no immediate problem, but I can't honestly say I used it for more than 5 minutes.

The problem is that if I didn't play the game for a few months on the other videocard I would have hardly considered the blur a problem. It's entirely possible that other players have it and yet they aren't even aware about it.

The textures are much crisper and defined when I remove the line right in the .ini and if you log in the game and click on the option while also looking closely to the game graphic you notice that there's a difference. On my Nvidia card I think I could move the slider freely, on this ATI as I click on it the screen freezes for a moment and then that odd rescaling happens. Depending on where you put the bar the blur becomes more or less pronounced.

Almost sure it's an issue with ATI only, maybe even a driver version problem. I'm using 7.4 that is the same version Miele said gave problems with the game.

[...]

Originally Posted by Peacecraft

What classes do you guys need on AB? I just bought the game and after it's only got an hour left to patch.

I'm not on AB yet but I'd say play what you enjoy. players who play crap the guild needs (which will change frequently) may find they don't like the class later and quit.

[namon]

figures, when I finally find a copy of the game and buy it you all close recruitng =P. Ah well I'll kinda lurk your guys' boards and see when you open back up again. Sounded fun being in a guild and all, but such is life =). I'm probably far too low anyway.

[Arrr]

OPEN recruiting is closed. We're still accepting people, they just have to app now. You can do that at our website (see sig).