Oh No! Not the fog issue again

[[MyIS] Buffpuff]

As a gamer who's been basically breast-fed on NVIDIA cards for the past few years I just made the leap to the ATI Radeon path. For all my other games I've seen some improvements. For CMBO and CMBB one thing is missing. Yup it's that fog. Now granted I don't play a whole lot of fog missions but it's still nice to pick random weather and be met with a beautiful thick fogged dawn after you've purchased 88 Flak guns, 155mm Arty spotters and such that are useless in such weather. My question isn't will ATI ever support fog emulation tables. I've done enough searching on the forums that I've seen this topic over and over and over and over and over(I sensed a recurring pattern in reading them). My question is how can I, the average paying customer, contact ATI and ask them why they don't support fog emulation tables for CMBO/CMBB? I don't know about the technicalities involved in this and some people will say one person is not going to change their minds but after browsing the forums it seems to me there's a substantial number of Radeon users out there who don't have their fog. One voice probably will not create waves but if I can get Cox Communications to fix my damn internet connection by calling their headquarters in Atlanta then being a thorn in ATI's side sounds right up my alley. Is there anyone out there who's challenged ATI to support us??

[Schrullenhaft]

BTS/BFC has spoken to their developer contatct at ATI multiple times about this issue. Unfortunately ATI just doesn't want to support fog-table/fog-table emulation under DirectX. Instead they support 'vertex fog' and leave it at that. My only assumption is that fog-tables are performance hogs and ATI would rather that developers use the vertex fog (which may not look as nice - depending on how you implement it and other details).

You can submit driver feedback in the Catalyst Crew program, though I don't know how much weight this receives with ATI's development managers/marketing people. Perhaps if enough unique requests were made for fog-table emulation, it might get implemented one day (ATI has supported fog-table emulation on the Mac under RAVE for the Radeon family, so it isn't a hardware limitation). However, in my cynical view of things, I doubt that this will change ATI's mind on supporting this feature.

[[MyIS] Buffpuff]

Originally posted by Schrullenhaft:

However, in my cynical view of things, I doubt that this will change ATI's mind on supporting this feature.

I had the same feeling in the months that I dealt with Cox Communications in regards to latency issues. High speed internet was a joke in that I was getting quicker downloads off of a 56K modem versus their screwed up routing tables and clogged up network. One person griping I didn't think could change things. Persistance sometimes pays off. I appreciate the link. I'll test the waters and see what kind of response I get.

[TufenHuden]

I put in a request for them to support fog.

[[MyIS] Buffpuff]

Originally posted by Schrullenhaft:

BTS/BFC has spoken to their developer contatct at ATI multiple times about this issue. Unfortunately ATI just doesn't want to support fog-table/fog-table emulation under DirectX.

Well it seems you were correct in this matter(not that I doubted it but had to try anyway). ATI is 100 percent against this issue(thanks Madmatt for endulging my inquiries) so for those who have ATI cards there will never be fog unless the next engine supports their vertex fog. For me, ATI has lost a customer as I never received a reply to any of the emails that I sent to them regarding this issue. I knew I kept that GeForce4 card for a reason!

[Canuck]

Originally posted by WKA Buffpuff:

Now granted I don't play a whole lot of fog missions but it's still nice to pick random weather and be met with a beautiful thick fogged dawn after you've purchased 88 Flak guns, 155mm Arty spotters and such that are useless in such weather.

Don't worry, your Flak and arty will still be useless. It just won't look that way