nVidia and Vsita, can't initialize Direct3d graphics

[GenSplatton]

That's the message I get when I try and run CMBB. I even installed Virtual PC and XP and tried from there. Same error. Any ideas?

[ April 16, 2008, 05:39 PM: Message edited by: GenSplatton ]

[psklenar]

You're lucky. With Vista & ATI I got a hard system lock up. Had to hit the power button and hold it for five seconds to reboot.

Just thought about Virtual PC this morning ... you're saying that doesn't work either? Crap.

[GenSplatton]

Nope, it didn't. In fact I get further under Vista. At least I get it to where it loads screens on top of itself. Under virtual, I get the message box and that's it. I'm out of options I guess.

[psklenar]

Rats.

Oh well, the one saving grace is that Steve says the next major project they are working on is a WWII version of CMx2 ... I'm awaiting for it. <sigh>

[psklenar]

hmmm ... I wonder if it would work under a Virtual Win98SE?

[GenSplatton]

I don't know. In my case, I think the video card just won't run the older Direct X version. So I think I am SOL.

[psklenar]

I'm going digging in the basement this weekend. See if i can find one of my old disks. <fingers crossed>

I'll report back once I've given it a try.

[psklenar]

Set up a Win98SE virtual PC. It's emulating an S3 (are they still in business) video card w/4MB of VRAM. Supposedly I'm supposed to be able to configure it to emulate an 8MB card, but haven't been able to figure out how yet.

CMBB tried to start in 640x480 software mode, but then immediately exits w/o an error message. I vaguely recall that we had to manually install DirectX separately back then, so I'm going to search and see if I can find an old DX5 installer or something like that and see if that can help. Maybe between DX and more VRAM I can get it running? <fingers crossed>

[GenSplatton]

I forgot to mention, that's what the XP emulator shows for my video card while I am in Virtual PC. Unfortunately that means I couldn't run any nVidia XP driver upgrades.

[Schrullenhaft]

Since Virtual PC is 'emulating' video hardware, it will make running anything newer than CMBO impossible since CMBB and CMAK need direct (as in DirectX) access to the video hardware. CMBO supports a 'software rendering mode' which allows it to work (with reduced texture quality, etc.).

So I suspect that Virtual PC is a dead-end unfortunately.

There are some mentions of installing DirectX 9.0c/L in Vista ( DirectX 9.0c/L installer that supports Vista ). Whether this actually does anything different, I don't know. It would be nice if it made DirectX 9 compatible calls for the applications that use it (or need some of its legacy functions). However there's a good chance that it doesn't completely work that way.

[psklenar]

Yea, I tried installing DirectX8.1 in the virtual PC (installed just fine), but it made no difference, CMx1 games just detect 640x480 s/w mode and exit out.

Vista apparently DOES have DirectX9 support built int because games that don't have any DirectX10 support play just fine. And some games (Crysis for example) give you the choice of select DirectX9 or 10. The suspicion is that Vista has dropped the old legacy support for the DirectX5 era stuff that CMx1 was written under.

The last thing I can think of to try would be to DL and install the 20 demo of VMWare and see if it's video emulation is any better than MS's. If it works, then I've got the decision to make - give up on CMx1 or pay $140 (I think it was) for a personal license!

[Schrullenhaft]

I don't think any of the virtual environments are going to work for CMBB and CMAK. Their very nature forces them to 'virtualize' access to hardware, to prevent any single virtual instance from monopolizing the hardware. This is why you get the 'S3 Virge 8Mb' as the emulated hardware in Virtual PC 2007.

The virtualized hardware prevents CM from working the way it needs to in order to access the 3D video hardware rendering. The virtual environments will not provide access to the 3D hardware and thus offer 3D hardware emulations, which are very light on the 3D support.

There might be ways around this, but it would involve a lot of emulation work performed by the CPU. Some 3D calls won't get supported at all or if they do, it will be pretty slow.

Regarding DirectX 9 and Windows Vista - yeah, there's support for DirectX 9 games in Vista, but I'm not sure how it's done. I don't know if there are two instances of DirectX that are installed by default in Vista or if everything runs through DirectX 10, which should provide some measure of backwards compatibility (like previous versions of DirectX). The above linked DirectX 9 installer specifically mentions Vista in its supported OSes. I don't know if it installs additional libraries for DirectX 9 or if it just overwrites files that are already there (essentially making little, if any, changes to DirectX support).

[JasonC]

I have no problem running CMBB under vista using a 7000 series Geforce card. The 8000 series expect Direct 10 and are the ones that fail, the 7000s expect 9 and work.

YMMV, but it has been working for me.

[Ron]

I don't have Vista but it was my understanding that DirectX 9 and 10 are both installed together, and that there should be an option to enable one or the other for the program. Can anyone confirm that?

[Der Alte Fritz]

It does not matter since CMBB is DX 5. VISTA and DX10 GPUs do not support DX5. So you can have VISTA and a DX9 GPU - it works, OR you can have XP and a DX10 GPU - it works. But if you make everything DX10 then DX5 is no longer supported and it will not work.

But why install VISTA in the first place since Microsoft have already announced it will be replaced in 2009! So we are back in the Windows ME situation, a rubbish OS rushed into production to meet sales targets which will be replaced in short order by the OS they should have launched only it was delayed.

Why was VISTA delayed? Because all the staff were put onto XP Service Pack 2 because it had Major security issues which would have shut down all XP machines. So half the new items which should have appeared in VISTA were dropped and will now appear in the next version.

End result you pay twice for the fun of installing VISTA.

CMBB is a great game which I intend to play for as long as possible until something better comes along and CMSF aint it. So if Microsoft wont write software that will support it then LINUX here I come.

[Redwolf]

We don't actually know whether DX10 as designed by Microsoft drops DX5 compatibility.

All this mess could very well be that NVidia (and ATI?) omit implementing the DX5 functionality we need and thereby breaking compliance with DX10. But what's MS going to do about it? NVidia certainly has bigger problem fishes to fry with their Vista drivers even when it comes to DX9-DX10 and DX5 is very low on the radar.

[Panama Red]

Redwolf:

I read several months ago that M$ porposely dropped DX9(-) with the DX10. Their reasoning was that the legacy support would slow down DX10 and they wanted to make a "clean start" with DX10.

Of course the sideline that M$ did not say is that it would "force" everybody to upgade too, but that has not worked because Vista and DX10 has not been the "best thing since sliced bread".

The real ironic thing is that there is a big back lash out there from people who do not want to "upgrade" to Vista and would rather go straight to the next M$ OS (if it is truely better than Vista) in 2010.

[Redwolf]

Link to that claim?

Microsoft has been very eager to never to actually deprecate any past DirectX APIs. Why would they, it's the hardware vendors who have to do all the work, MS just sits there and make decisions about how other people have to spend their time.

[Der Alte Fritz]

The point is that MS releases new OS every other year regardless of whether the product is match fit or not. Vista is a dud and you will have to upgrade yet again to Vista+++ within 12 months, paying more money while GPU manufacturers are still still trying to get to grips with DX10 and original Vista. It will be years if at all for the latest NVIDIA and ATI cards to implement legacy DX.

Result is that I cannot use the programs that I want and paid good money for because the OS manufacturer and GPU manufacturers want to take more money off me for a new product I do not want.

Well this is a market buddy and I am taking my hard earned dollars elsewhere.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Der Alte Fritz:

The point is that MS releases new OS every other year regardless of whether the product is match fit or not. Vista is a dud and you will have to upgrade yet again to Vista+++ within 12 months, paying more money while GPU manufacturers are still still trying to get to grips with DX10 and original Vista. It will be years if at all for the latest NVIDIA and ATI cards to implement legacy DX.

Result is that I cannot use the programs that I want and paid good money for because the OS manufacturer and GPU manufacturers want to take more money off me for a new product I do not want.

Well this is a market buddy and I am taking my hard earned dollars elsewhere.

I'm sorry but this isn't based in any kind of reality.

In fact, backward compatibility in DirectX has been reasonably good over the years, MS did not drop old features from the spec.

The GeForce 8x00 drivers seem to be the first NVidia drivers that cause real problems in this regard.

The official policy you imply above doesn't exist.

[Alain-James]

Do you think we can hope for any return from Nvidia or we can sit on that one too?

Should we open a petition or somethin'?

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Alain-James:

Do you think we can hope for any return from Nvidia or we can sit on that one too?

Should we open a petition or somethin'?

NVidia's development team is just completely crushed under the load of different hardware, different graphics features to support and variety of applications.

Even their Linux drivers, which only need to do OpenGL and non of that half-thought out DX craze and used to be very polished, had their quality plummet in the last year.

I don't think it's a problem of motivation for them, but they just don't have the people to keep up with the requirements.

[GenSplatton]

Oddly enough CMAK runs on this machine. As did CMBO. So it is only CMBB which is an issue. Of course it's the one version I am trying to play. Figures.