Weather effects with MSI nVidia Geforce FX5700

[ramagel]

I had a problem with this card where enabling *any* weather effects would give a 'grey screen' where the battlefield is. Text labels would show through, but no other graphics.

I seem to have *partly* solved this problem by using "Riva Tuner" to “Enable Fog Table Emulation” on the ‘Compatibility’ tab of the ‘Direct 3d tweaks’ icon from the ‘Customise Driver settings flyout of the Main tab. (Phew!!)

At least I can now get what I think are ‘partial’ weather and fog effects, but no increment through ‘full’ to ‘extreme’.

I find it difficult sometimes to see more and better than what and how my troops can see, so I’d really like to be in a position to ‘turn up’ the weather effects to replicate actual visibility.

I’ve searched the forum (which is how I found out about fog table emulation) but can’t seem to get any further.

Drivers and bios are up-to-date (93.71 drivers)

Any tips for detailed tweaking would be appreciated.

[Schrullenhaft]

We're pretty much fixed with what the video core manufacturers will program into their drivers. I'm not sure how much of a difference there may be between certain weather effects and their incremental settings within CM (i.e. - there may not be much of a graphic difference with some of them and current drivers). Have you compared 'fog' to 'thick fog', etc. within the game's weather settings ?

I'll have to look at this a bit closer in the future sometime. Every-so-often Nvidia tinkers around with settings/code in their drivers that affect the display of fog and some other effects within CM. RivaTuner offers some chance of changing these settings on occasion, but most of them remain out of reach of the registry-type changes that RivaTuner can adjust for. The only choice at that point is to go back to an early enough driver that supports your videocard that doesn't have the changes.

[ramagel]

That's an interesting suggestion, go back rather than forward! I'll do that! I know from experience with one or two games that they need earlier drivers - I should have thought of that.

Would you have any idea sort of about where to start? In the 40's? 30's?

Anyway, many thanks for a quick and informative response .....

[Schrullenhaft]

I'm not sure how far to go back to get different results. 52.16 seems to be the oldest driver to support the GeForce FX 5700's, so that may be a place to start. Of course the older drivers may have specific problems in other games/programs, but for most 2D programs they'll probably be alright.

If you're going to experiment with different driver versions, I'd highly suggest uninstalling the current driver before going on to the next (for each driver that you try), just to eliminate any potential incompatibilities. I'm not sure how well each uninstaller works, but hopefully they should be thorough enough to remove all the necessary files and registry settings.

Is there anything in particular such as a screenshot, the appearance of CM on another computer, etc. that you're using as a reference against what you're seeing with your current setup ?

[ramagel]

Thanks for the pointer: I'll start there.

No, I'm not using anything else as a reference, only the absence of any (visible) change moving from partial through to extreme weather effects. What I'm expecting (correctly I hope!) is that at some point, in a scenario with dense fog restricting LOS to 80m say, is that I will have a similarly restricted view at say level 1 when selecting a unit.

I hope that's the kind of thing that would happen, if not I think I'll just stay where I am with a kind of 'atmospheric' effect, but no real impact on what I can actually see .....

[Redwolf]

Reinstall DirectX.

[ramagel]

Ta. I think there was an issue with directX (since the install program 'ran', which it wouldn't if all was OK, but it made no difference to the visuals!

Am I expcting too much? Could someone maybe describe the difference between e.g. partial and extreme weather visuals?

(I have a couple of low-spec PCs hanging around, maybe I'll load CM up on them and see what they look like ....I'll have to check the lowest specs CM will run on!)

[Schrullenhaft]

DirectX will install each time it is run (unless you attempt to install an older version).

I finally setup a GeForce FX5700 using the Microsoft supplied 56.73 drivers and eventually the Nvidia 93.71 drivers. Both drivers give the same results...

The density of the fog will not change with the Weather setting. It is either there or it isn't. Rain and snow on the other hand do see differences with the Weather setting, getting denser with each increasing setting. These effects are primarily visible at View Levels 1 & 2. Above that the effect is minimized somewhat and harder to discern (for rain and snow) between each of the weather settings. For Fog the only differences are either Fog (and Fog & Rain) or Thick Fog which is denser and this is set during the scenario or quick battle creation.

Nvidia seems to be one of the few chipsets that supported CM's fog tables properly. A couple of other chipsets such as Matrox, some SiS in the past, some old 3dfx Voodoos supported it to varying degrees. Nvidia was the most consistent in supporting fog tables and I don't think anyone else did it much better (but it may have varied between certain driver versions).

So it seems to come down to possibly expecting more than what was actually programmed (or possible with the drivers).

[Redwolf]

Reinstall (and I mean reinstall, not ask politely to reinstall) DirectX.

If you get a message that DirectX is already at the newest version, use regedit to date back the version number of the installed DirectX so that you force it to reinstall.

I had to do that recently, too.

[ November 22, 2006, 07:21 PM: Message edited by: Redwolf ]

[ramagel]

Wow! Thanks to both you folks, and esp. Schrullenhaft for actually doing it! I will 'backdate' DirectX and take it from there. What a complex world we live in!

Thanks again, both.