L.Tankersley Posted October 3, 2002 Share Posted October 3, 2002 So I just upgraded to a Radeon 8500 mac edition, and while my texture memory is now happy, I am not because all of the smoke and dust graphics are now opaque instead of transparent, in both CMBB and CMBO. (Yes, I've hit shift-I -- I'm not looking at fast, compatible smoke. In fact, the "high quality" smoke looks like the "fast and compatible" variety now, except it's about twice as big.) My question is, are there any other mac users out there running CMBO or CMBB with a Mac Radeon 8500? And if so, what does your smoke look like? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeffsmith Posted October 3, 2002 Share Posted October 3, 2002 PMUB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L.Tankersley Posted October 3, 2002 Author Share Posted October 3, 2002 Bump. No one? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gyrene Posted October 3, 2002 Share Posted October 3, 2002 Did you try a couple of different drivers? Gyrene Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L.Tankersley Posted October 3, 2002 Author Share Posted October 3, 2002 Yeah. I spent the other day ringing the driver changes. I need to doublecheck tonight, but I'm about 95% certain that, with the same drivers, the OEM Rage Pro card that came with the machine displays the smoke just fine, while the Radeon doesn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyD Posted October 3, 2002 Share Posted October 3, 2002 I seem to recall the Beta board was having trouble with one particular graphics driver for the mac, but I can't for the life of me locate the relevant thread on that topic. They've also been less than satisfied with OSX machines running CMBB in OS9 mode. Try a posting to the tech board. Sorry, I haven't been much of a help with specifics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Carr Posted October 3, 2002 Share Posted October 3, 2002 I just dumped a Radeon card, 7500, and replaced it with a GEFORCE 4600. I'm not using Mac but the Radeon didn't show things that the new card does. Like fog and smoke. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L.Tankersley Posted October 3, 2002 Author Share Posted October 3, 2002 I knew about the ATI issues on the PC side, but having two other ATI mac products that both worked fine with CM except for their limited VRAM, I figured I'd be pretty safe with a Radeon. Who knew. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tha_Field_Marshall Posted October 3, 2002 Share Posted October 3, 2002 Radeon does not support fog tables. At all! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeffsmith Posted October 3, 2002 Share Posted October 3, 2002 Originally posted by Tha_Field_Marshall: Radeon does not support fog tables. At all!On the PC side Fog is quite nice on Mac's with ATI Radeons Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lucero1148 Posted October 4, 2002 Share Posted October 4, 2002 I'm using a Radeon for Mac PCI card (one of the first Radeons to come out for older Macs) and the fog/smoke looks fine and transparent to me. I've a friend who just bought the 8500 card as well and is suffering the same problem as you. Not any help but I sympatize your predicament, All best Patrick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted October 4, 2002 Share Posted October 4, 2002 Does anybody have any experience with the Radeon 9000 on the Mac? I've been pondering moving up to a card with 128MB of VRAM. The GF4Ti looks enticing, but the nearly $400 price tag on the Apple card makes me hesitate. There are several makers for the PC that charge half that or less and I wonder about buying one of those and using it with the Mac drivers. Any thoughts on that? If that is right out, then the high-end Radeon would be the next thing I would want to look at. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LGMB Posted October 4, 2002 Share Posted October 4, 2002 My god! I've been looking for someone with this problem! I got the Radeon 8500 Mac Edition about a month ago, and have been experaincing the same problem. THe issue is NOT about fog. The Radeon 8500 does fog, fine. The issue is the drivers. For some reason the drivers won't support Alpha channeling (fading transparecies). Infact, to be even more specific, the problem is OS9 only. If you run the Radeon in OSX, it works fine, handeling Alpha channeling perfectly (UNLESS: if you have anti aliasing turned ON in an OSX program, the card won't work properally, why I don't know). I've tried just about everything: swapping drivers (the Mac edition 7000, and my old 128 rage), to no effect. The card will either not work at all, or will display the same alpha channeling issues. The issue is not CMBB/BO related either. I've run alpha challening (Myth 2- the distance units are suposed to fade out) on other programs, with the same issue. Its the drivers with out a doubt. None of patches seem to work either. I sent a message to Matt, but he says he's never heard of this before. ALL IN ALL: I'm stumped. (BTW: in desperation I renstalled the CMBB demo (dumping prefs), to see if there was some kind of confliction. This had no effect). I would LOVE to solve this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
busboy Posted October 4, 2002 Share Posted October 4, 2002 All I can suggest is make sure you have the latest versions of Mac OS 9.2.2, and the latest RAVE drivers as well as your card drivers. Other than that, my NVIDIA card doesn't give me any experience to help you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L.Tankersley Posted October 4, 2002 Author Share Posted October 4, 2002 Hmmm. Not encouraging. I've gone back to my PCI Rage Orion card (using the same driver revision as with the Radeon) because, although it only has 16MB and so textures are drastically downsampled, smoke is transparent and framerate is decent. (The OEM Rage Pro that came with the computer has more VRAM, but framerate is abysmal.) I've put a query to ATI but I'm not expecting much to come of that. So, anybody interested in a "good as new" Radeon 8500? I guess the next question is, does any mac user out there have a retail AGP graphics card that (a) has 64MB or more of VRAM and ( DOESN'T suck in some horrible way (e.g. bad smoke, no text display, no fog)? If the fog doesn't work I could live with it - in foggy scenarios I usually turned it off anyway just because it was too hard to find my units. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mchlstrt Posted October 4, 2002 Share Posted October 4, 2002 Bump because I'm interested in the same issue. Best Mac card. I'm also interested in more than one Monitor. Maybe we should start a new Thread w/ a more general ? for the title. Strt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L.Tankersley Posted October 4, 2002 Author Share Posted October 4, 2002 While I wait to hear back, I'm examining other possible options. Has anybody successfully used the Mac Radeon 7000? It only has 32 mb of VRAM, but that's better than the 16 on my Orion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wicky Posted October 5, 2002 Share Posted October 5, 2002 I've got a 'retail' Radeon 32mb agp card fitted in my DP450 G4 which works a treat at everything I throw at it (smoke etc). But I've noticed some down sampling in CMBB (full) on tank textures. I'm interested to know how later ATI card works as I'm considering a machine upgrade to DP 867 with Nvidia 32mb card or another higher performance retail ATI card but am undecided by all that I hear... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndrewTF Posted October 5, 2002 Share Posted October 5, 2002 I've been asking similar downsampling-related questions on the tech support forum. The upshot is that anything with under 64MB in video memory will result in downsampling. My plain 'ol 32MB Mac-edition Radeon does return great framerates and smoke/fog effects but that downsampling does make some textures look pretty icky. Kind of throws a monkey wrench into the works when testing new mods, too, as you can't see any of the cool details you spent hours slaving over a hot keyboard to create. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L.Tankersley Posted October 5, 2002 Author Share Posted October 5, 2002 Update: Mike Breedon at xlr8yourmac.com forwarded info on the Radeon 8500 smoke issue to a contact at ATI; apparently the ATI guy is going to get a copy of Combat Mission and look into it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted October 5, 2002 Share Posted October 5, 2002 Yaaaaayyy! One more copy of CM sold! Anything more we can complain about? If we could just get through to Apple maybe they would buy a copy for everyone on their staff. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LGMB Posted October 5, 2002 Share Posted October 5, 2002 Sounds interesting..... Very interesting. Keep me informed! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ignatious J. Fathead Posted October 5, 2002 Share Posted October 5, 2002 Originally posted by L.Tankersley: Update: Mike Breedon at xlr8yourmac.com forwarded info on the Radeon 8500 smoke issue to a contact at ATI; apparently the ATI guy is going to get a copy of Combat Mission and look into it.I'd be real surprised if ATI showed any enthusiasm for developing new drivers for Mac OS 9. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LGMB Posted October 5, 2002 Share Posted October 5, 2002 Bump Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ignatious J. Fathead Posted October 5, 2002 Share Posted October 5, 2002 Originally posted by Lord General MB: BumpI'm not into the culture of these boards and have no idea what this response means. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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