51 replies to this topic

[Civi]

Well, today I wanted to try to re-enable the OpenGL rendering in my GPL installation, as every time I had tried to use it the game would crash. And again, it crashed when I tried to use it, I could start the game enter the track, but when I left it my screen went black, the monitor showed "NO SIGNAL" and I had to use the reset button to bring my PC back to life.

Anyway, then I remembered the small "resolutions.dll changer tool" aka GPLPS RASTER CHANGER aka RASTCHANGER and changed the dll to another one, in my case the first in the row with the name JOHN OLIS 1920x1200rastOGL.dll and the crash problem seems to be gone! (*knocks on wood*)

Anyway, the result is awesome, the OPENGL renderer looks so much better, much smoother picture, no flimmering and what is even better: No more small (almost unnoticable) stuttering when going into curves like with the D3D renderer.

Maybe this is of use for someone else, so I thought I'd post this.

This makes me wonder why most modern games seem to use the D3D driver instead? OpenGL looks clearly better and has a better performance, why do I have to bear with the flimmering, low Anti-Aliasing capable D3D instead? oh well. Now I wish I could enable OpenGL for my other games (rFactor and GTL).  

*googles for Opengl and rfactor....*

Edited by Civi, May 21 2010 - 03:00 PM.

[jgf]

My experience has been just the opposite.  I've never gotten good performance from GPL in ogl, in W95, XP, or Vista.  On track the graphics weren't much different (could never say definitely either was better), but menus in ogl were corrupted and the game seemed more unstable.

[Civi]

Yes, I guess instability is the price for using OpenGL. The one I selected now works longer and is more stable than the one i used before, but it still crashes randomly from time to time when i change tracks and enter the track then for example. Still, the improvement of the look and the better performance is more important to me.

Your observations might have to do with the graphic card, I realize that on some better GPUs Direct3D looks much crisper and better than on my old ATI HD3850.

Btw, can anyone help me understanding all the entries in the rasterchanger? I have ~10 dlls to select from and I picked a random one which luckily helped, but I'd prefer to know what I am doing and especially if there are better dlls to select...  

I attached a screenshot of the selection screen.

Attached Files

•  test.jpg   27.58K   64 downloads

[Civi]

A little update: After disabling the DEP to allow GPL*.exes (following an advice found here in the forums SRMZ) the stability improved even further, I can play for hours and switch tracks now, no problem. And even IF the game crashes it only crashes back to the desktop now. No need to restart the whole system with a cold-reset.

The problem with not knowing which DLL to use still exits, though.  

[JohnnyFiama]

I had to switch to OpenGL, I have an old Asus AX300 card in my PC here at work and it decided to crash all the time in D3D.  I find OpenGL absolutely fine, very stable and nice smooth graphics, the only track which I can't run is Targa for some reason.  I guess like most graphics issues on PCs it's just down to your hardware and drivers.

[Civi]

I discovered that the rasterchanger does NOT use the dlls found in the main GPL directory, but those in the repository folder!  I now copied the new v2 dlls into that folder and could select them in the rasterchanger screen.  Gonna test and report back later!

JohnyFiama, the Targa Florio track was the reason why i switched to OpenGL, the D3D performance there was not so good on my PC.

cu

[jgf]

Civi, on May 17 2010 - 10:21 PM, said:

...
Your observations might have to do with the graphic card, I realize that on some better GPUs Direct3D looks much crisper and better than on my old ATI HD3850.
...

In W95 I had a Canopus Total 3D, later a Voodoo3500;  in XP a GeForce 4 Ti4200, later a Radeon X1650, in Vista a GeForce 8500GT.  I noticed no appreciable performance differences between ogl and D3D on any of them;  D3D had a slight edge in on track graphics, solely because some tracks in ogl had lines in the sky (apparently where the different horizon segments met each other and the overhead sky texture, was like driving in a large room with the horizon and sky painted on the walls and ceiling).  In all cases menus were corrupted to one degree or another in ogl, worst case being fonts rendered as black rectangles and the cursor leaving trails.


The numbers in the names of the different dlls are the aspect ratio of the image.

Edited by jgf, May 18 2010 - 02:12 AM.

[Ginetto]

OGL needs the textures of the tracks to be 24bits; actually some track textures are 4 bits and that brings the crash problem
FYI Targa is OGL proof

For most part of the tracks there are OGL fix posted, you might check that you have it or you can do it yourself with a couple of tools.

A bug with OGL is the type5 textures, (which have a 16 color alpha channels) they are rendered partly transparent even in the opaque area of the mask.

The different DLL have different resolutions, you can choose anyone that has the resolution you want with no problem; you can actually build a custom DLL with only your working resolutions if you want
ciao!

Edited by Ginetto, May 18 2010 - 03:41 AM.

[miklkit]

Which one to use is up to your video card and drivers combination.  My GF3 preferred OGL while the GF4 & 6600GT liked D3D.  With the 8800GTS and GTX275 it was a tossup with the V2 rasters and older drivers.  With the latest drivers D3D is very fast while OGL is very slow.  I just went back to the trusty old 186.18 drivers for this reason.  

About the rasthack, pick the one that matches your monitors native resolution. I'm glad you found that on your own.  It's one of the things we forget to mention.

[Civi]

The main problem was the fact that the render-dlls were in the wrong directory by default, now everything works fine with the v2 dlls copied to the repository folder. I even could turn up my Anti-Aliasing as my PC gained a lot of performance, nice!

Ginetto, thanks for the explanation, now this all starts to make sense! About the resolution: I set 1680x1050 in the "custom resolution" options in GEM and it works. Before that the game seemed to reset it each time to 640x480.

jgf: Yes, i remember those lines in  the sky! They totally ruined the immersion, luckily they seem to have disappeared now. I had always used nvidia cards and those seemed to have a softer rendering, the ATI now is really not bad, but sometimes I miss the old look as now I have a bit of flimmering when using D3D. That and the Anti-Aliasing seems to be weaker.

But now with OpenGL I am in heaven  

[Civi]

Ok, I will officially correct my opinion: Do absolutely NOT use OpenGL. Without me having changed one bit on the computer the thing suddenly started to crash again and I had to cold-reset it to get  my PC working again. Now OpenGL does not work in GPL anymore without crashing, I can get into the game but not onto the track. To make it worse, the dll had mixed up my Windows graphic card settings, my screen resolution, my color depth , everything! That and GPL did not even run in D3D mode anymore without removing my cursor and having artifacts. I have restored my Windows settings now and will use D3D from now on. OpenGL is dead for me, may it rest in peace.

[ptmac3]

Civi, on May 18 2010 - 10:40 PM, said:

Ok, I will officially correct my opinion: Do absolutely NOT use OpenGL. Without me having changed one bit on the computer the thing suddenly started to crash again and I had to cold-reset it to get  my PC working again. Now OpenGL does not work in GPL anymore without crashing, I can get into the game but not onto the track. To make it worse, the dll had mixed up my Windows graphic card settings, my screen resolution, my color depth , everything! That and GPL did not even run in D3D mode anymore without removing my cursor and having artifacts. I have restored my Windows settings now and will use D3D from now on. OpenGL is dead for me, may it rest in peace.

First off, the rasterizers you have tried using are not oglv2. The only v2 raterizers are rd3d7v2.dll and roglv2.dll, respectively. They were made by Nigel Pattinson and can be found here. Secondly, it sounds like you might have a driver problem. I had a similar problem last year using opengl. It seemed as if I was crashing to desktop which necessitated re-booting my pc most of the time.  I then discovered I could alt/tab out of it. See here. After upgrading my video card drivers last December the problem disappeared. I upgraded them again about 2 weeks ago with version 10.4 and have not seen the problem return. And I am using opengl so's I can use Pribluda. No problems, definitely no ctd. What drivers are you using?

Edit: I also utilize Anti-Aliasing, 8x, which is probably overkill, but I've got it so why not?

Edited by ptmac3, May 18 2010 - 11:59 PM.

[Civi]

Trust me, I was using the v2 dlls, the screenshot in my first post was before I moved the v2 dlls into the right directory. I am using the 10.3 drivers for my ATI HD3850, they are from March, 26th 2010, but I see that there are already newer ones available. The 10.4 you talked about? I gonna try them.

Anyway, I am back to D3Dv2 with the 60fpsv2newmod and the graphics are 99% as fast and smooth as with the OpenGL ddlls, I no longer want to play russian roulette with my GPU atm.
And I could not alt-tab out of the crash, not even Ctrl+Alt+Del did work.

I will give the OpenGL dlls one last try after I upgraded to the 10.4 drivers, will report back later! Thank you, ptmac3!  

[Civi]

Sigh. Nope, did not work. The game started and I could enter the track itself, then when going to the setup screen and back the game crashed and I had to reboot. Luckily this time the screen/monitor/GPU settings weren't changed.

D3D, here I come  

Btw, they seem to finally have improved the Anti-Aliasing with the 10.4 drivers, very nice!

Edited by Civi, May 19 2010 - 06:36 AM.

[Arturo Pereira]

Well, I have been using OGL_V2 since Nigel released it and never had problems with it. I have an 9800GTX graphics card with Nvidia original drivers #197.45. GPL runs at 1680x1050, full graphics detail, and anisotropic filtering and antialiasing at 16x each. Never had FPS problems even at tracks like Monaco Rocks 2 or Montjuich. The eventual CTDs and screen freezes were due to problems with certain tracks, like Goodwood or the first version of Montjuich.

Of course, as Ginetto said, some tracks need some special files to run under OGL mode, but since it was available, I always got better FPS than with other modes.

Imo, the way graphic drivers are uninstalled and installed is quite important. After uninstalling old drivers, reboot and use a utilitly like Driver Sweeper to clean all traces of old drivers, then install the new drivers and reboot.

Then tweak the new drivers to the desired settings and that´s it.

If somebody want the list of settings I use, let me know and I will post them. I have the spanish version of Windows XP pro, SP3 and so the spanish version of Nvidia drivers, but the translation is not difficult.