Jump to content

Blurry foreground graphics


Recommended Posts

I'm seeing terrain features blurry in the foreground up to about halfway down the map. Then the features sharpen up. As I pan around the map, the blurry boundary follows at a constant distance. Please see the attached screenshot.

I am patched up to 1.08; my video card is Nvidia Quadro FX 1500.

Is this a known problem...how can I fix it?

Thanks!

post-7673-14186762066_thumb.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's a known problem that doesn't have a fix to my knowledge. Do you have 'Antialiasing / Multisampling' turned on in the Options menu ? If you do, then perhaps turning it off might help a little. I assume that is it something strange that the graphics engine is doing when it comes to texture memory management (possibly controlled by the Texture Quality setting in the Options menu).

Hopefully Charles will get some time to seriously look at the issue before they move on to the WW2:Normandy game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the reply. I believe I have antialiasing set on. Ill try it off at my next session.

In fact everyhting is set for maximum realism, and the game works fine - except for this glitch.

It really seems liek a programing bug. I could understand it if the disatant ground was starting to blur (as an effect), it seems like something (foreground vs. far away detail level) is set backward.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep, the effect does seem backwards from what you'd normally expect in terms of human focal vision. A foreground that is sharp with a receding background that loses its focus (progressively blurrier).

My assumption is that Charles may have applied some blurring effects to the foreground terrain to make the image smoother and give it a more "natural" effect by reducing the harshness of edges of terrain bitmaps. Another thing to consider is that it probably takes a little more processing power (CPU or most likely GPU) to blur the image than to leave it alone. Reducing the number of bitmaps/objects in the background and not performing (or limiting) the processing of those textures helps performance. Reversing it so that background textures get blurred (or whatever) would take more processing (though a seemingly more natural effect) and would defeat a number of optimizations. Maybe these terrain blur effects could become an option within the texture/object quality settings (an additional feature of "best").

Hopefully Charles will get around to tweaking the way the engine draws/processes some of the textures and objects so the effects are less jarring and probably closer to what was actually intended. This may not happen until CMx2 Normandy title is under way since water terrain has to be tackled for that one (which may be a convenient programming mindset to be in while tackling this particular issue). If we're lucky some of those changes may be included in an updated engine for CMSF (most likely not the water though).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You might try getting a free program called nhancer. It adds a lot of settings to nvidia cards. There's stuff that can make things better. You can use separate settings for each game. For example you might want to add aa/multi at the highest setting while maintaining that in the game. Or at least make sure it's set on "application." Try some anisotropic. Try lod bias clamping. Also try defragging your hard drive. There's a program, a little pricey at $40, called Ultimate Defrag that does a much better job. I'm not experiencing this problem and my rig is far from top of the line.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 weeks later...

This is actually a bug with the Nvidia drivers that occurs with certain cards and we noticed it some time ago. It has to do with how they are handle their mipmaps as i recall. I know Charles has looked into this before but I am not sure if its anything we can yet fix on our end or not. Hopefully Nvidia will address it in a future driver release.

Madmatt

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 years later...

I believe what you're seeing above is normal. Specifically referring to the road graphics, it is a 'blending' of the road and nearby terrain, which is intentional. As you go further out the LODs ('levels of detail', replacement textures that are smaller and lesser quality) kick in. These are NOT 'blended' with the nearby terrain and thus appear sharper, though their quality should making them appear significantly different.

Admittedly I would like the roads to appear a bit more distinct rather than as blended as you see in CMx2 games. The blending seems to be more useful for those less frequently used roads/paths rather than the primary roads throughout Normandy, etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes - I think you are right. The most exaggerated example seems to be the dirt road which looks like it has no pronounced edge close up but appears to have a distinct edge in the distance. I'll try some mods and see if they do a better job in this respect.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...