Fog Table Emulation

[lt_gouws]

Good day everyone.

Anyway, so I've got this ATI card that doesn't support fog table emulation, which I understand is required to display fog in Combat Mission.

Well, supposedly, you can download some 3rd party programs that allows your card display the fog somehow.

I've tried Rage3D and ATI Tray Tools, and none of them seem to work as they should, though. Has anyone here been able to find one that works, or am I perhaps just doing it wrong?

Thanks

-Lt. Gouws

[Schrullenhaft]

The code to actually display fog tables/particle fog under DirectX doesn't exist in the ATI driver code. Therefore all of the 3rd party tools to 'enable' it actually do nothing; so you're not doing anything wrong. Interestingly ATI decided to support fog tables under OpenGL and QuickDraw 3D (Mac), just not DirectX.

As far as I'm aware there'll be no change to this for the ATI drivers. No driver version in the past nor any future version will support fog tables for DirectX. So none of the CMx1 series (CMBO, CMBB & CMAK) will display fog with your ATI videocard. The CMx2 series (CMSF is the first title) will most likely be programmed using the OpenGL graphics API and therefore fog will be visible (though it may not be programmed with fog tables, but anyway).

[Redwolf]

You can certainly write a DLL which sits between the game and the normal DirectX DLLs and converts the fog table calls into other fog models.

Problem is, all the people capable of such a programming task know enough about graphics cards that they don't buy ATI in first place.

[lt_gouws]

Originally posted by Redwolf:

You can certainly write a DLL which sits between the game and the normal DirectX DLLs and converts the fog table calls into other fog models.

Problem is, all the people capable of such a programming task know enough about graphics cards that they don't buy ATI in first place.

You don't happen to know any of these 'skilled' people by any chance, do you?

[Frenchy]

I found this thread concerning ATI Radeon cards and fog in Thief II. Maybe it will work in Combat Mission?

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=75031

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by lt_gouws:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Redwolf:

You can certainly write a DLL which sits between the game and the normal DirectX DLLs and converts the fog table calls into other fog models.

Problem is, all the people capable of such a programming task know enough about graphics cards that they don't buy ATI in first place.

You don't happen to know any of these 'skilled' people by any chance, do you? </font>

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Frenchy:

I found this thread concerning ATI Radeon cards and fog in Thief II. Maybe it will work in Combat Mission?

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=75031

Better thread here:

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=60992

Of course I don't have an ATI card so I can't try

[lt_gouws]

I gave that Rage3D tweak thing a go, but I couldn't find any of those fog settings on my version, because, well, the ones those guys used in that thread is over 3 years old, and I'm probably running a much newer version :/

-Lt. Gouws

[Schrullenhaft]

The Rage3D Tweak application/plug-in is in a bit of transition right now. With the advent of ATI's Catalyst Control Center, Rage3D had to change their code. Currently the Rage3D Tweak utility only assists with overclocking and testing of overclocking. There doesn't appear to be any registry tweaks available, which is what the original Rage3D Tweak did (version 3.9 was the latest/last of that line).

Currently the 1.1 Rage3D Tweak for Catalyst 5.11 doesn't seem to work with the Catalyst 5.13 drivers in my experience (at the moment). Nor does the Rage3D Tweak 3.9 work with the CCC (the dialog box appears blank an unmanipulatable) and the Catalyst 5.13's.

I've tried the Rage3D Tweaks for fog in the past and didn't have luck with them. However I don't specifically recall disabling the W Fog while enabling the 'Table Fog' and 'Z Fog' as the above linked discussion board mentions for the Thief series. I typically enabled one or all of the 'fogs' to see what effect it would have on CM. None of them helped.

It looks like Catalyst 5.11 is the last version to support the control panel (tabs within the Display control panel). There's also a way to install the last Control Panel with the Catalyst 5.13's. It's possible that a Catalyst with the Control Panel installed instead of the CCC may work with the Rage3D Tweak 3.9 version that actually manipulates the registry to add the fog settings. But depending on the changes that ATI has made, it may eventually require going back to an earlier Catalyst to get Rage3D Tweak 3.9 working.

I'll have to experiment with this later. However I'm still under the impression that table/particle fog is still unavailable under DirectX. I'm not sure what the Thief game is doing, but I recall fixes in the past to ATI drivers mentioning fog effects for some Indiana Jones game and possibly for the Thief series at some point too.

[ January 13, 2006, 05:33 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]