33 replies to this topic

[burt]

Been having fun at Brands67 with the F2's but after a while the ****ing sparkly shimmering spangly-ness of the track, particularly as you come on to the bottom straight just hurt my eyes so much that I decided to experiment.

I found that if you apply some fog it softens the effect and makes it much easier on the eyes.

Just paste this into your brands67 track ini (back up your old one first of course).

[ fog ]
type = 1
density = 5.00
fog_r = 198
fog_g = 202
fog_b = 214

If you want to turn it off (you masochist) replace the type 1 with a zero.

I can assure you that living only 8 miles or so up the road from Brands the fog looks very authentic.

Burt

Attached Files

•  b4.jpg   797.81K   403 downloads
•  b3.jpg   738.35K   418 downloads
•  b5.jpg   910.37K   336 downloads
•  b6.jpg   1.03MB   298 downloads
•  b12.jpg   904.79K   264 downloads
•  b1.jpg   891.31K   293 downloads
•  b2.jpg   883.96K   275 downloads

[Bob Simpson]

I'm not sure if this is what you're refering to with "shimmering", but in the core.ini, LODBias can affect what is called "speckle" in the readme.

A high number like 100 makes everything very blurry and a low number like -100 makes textures so sharp that they speckle.  So you have to find a good setting - usually in the -50 range.

[burt]

Hi Bob,

Yeah I'm at -50. I've tried lots of settings and -50 seems to be optimum.
This track seems to be stuck with the shimmer/speckle regardless of the lod bias although  as I said the fog is very apt for brands. Last time I was there it looked just like the screenshots with the fog lingering in Dingle Dell.

Burt

[simmer]

My Brands had the shimmer you speak of.. then http://srmz.net/inde...h=1
  Kenny's addon fixed it for me,     it maybe worth a try for you. Can't hurt.

[burt]

Hello Philo,

I tried Kenny's version when it came out. It still had some shimmer, most notably on the stands. The problem was it wasn't (for me) visually as accurate as the other one.
Brands is my local track so I know the countryside around there really well. That's why I went with the other one even though it was hard on the eyes.

Thanks anyway


Burt

[MECH]

Thx for the fog values they look very realistic

In case you don't know there's a program GPLFog at my site that allows you to change fog values in track.ini's a bit easier

[ginetto]

Thanks for that Burt
You may want to try this horizon specifically modified for your fog values.
It lets you see the blue sky if you look up

Just extract the file in the brands67 folder; deleting it it will go back to the original.
Don't use it without the fog though 'cos is very very low

Attached Files

•  Brands67_FOG HORIZ_GIN.7z   1.2K   121 downloads
•  brands1.jpg   28.15K   230 downloads

[burt]

Hey grazie Ginetto

Nice!


Burt

[paul skingley]

No sparkly shimmering here but I guess you are using d3d7 or d3d7v2 ?

OGL/OGLv2 does not give that sparkly effect.


paul

[JohnnyAck]

paul skingley, on Jan 08 2012 - 05:47 AM, said:

No sparkly shimmering here but I guess you are using d3d7 or d3d7v2 ?

OGL/OGLv2 does not give that sparkly effect.


paul

I got the sparklies at first with ogl/oglv2 at brands so Paul you might be lucky, but theres one nvidia or core setting I found on mine, and eliminated it all. Im sorry Ive forgotten which one it was though. Go through one at a time, its either fairly large negative lod bias or one of the nvidia 3d settings if you have that brand.Im gonna set up a 60fpsv2newmod brands server with f2s at this moment to check it out and have some fun. Ill remember the setting Im sure then.

Edited by JohnnyAck, Jan 08 2012 - 06:02 AM.

[JohnnyAck]

Ok for an nvidia card, Turn the antialiasing transparancy to on, and I chose 8x (supersample) and its a huge improvement. Of course I am pretty sure you have to have antialiasing on too. Usually forced on is the setting to make sure.

Edited by JohnnyAck, Jan 08 2012 - 07:01 AM.

[Bob Simpson]

There's a great thread on nVidia card settings at http://srmz.net/inde...topic=6459&st=0

[rcb]

I think the problem is the large number of mips with 0 or 1 sub-image used on this track.  When I went through and increased the number of sub-images and repacked the dat, my issues with shimmer and texture crawl went away with no loss of quality.  This is with openglV2.

note - after reprocessing 420 mips, my eyes feel like they're going to melt.  

Curt

Edited by rcb, Jan 08 2012 - 11:35 AM.

[ginetto]

I think that too Curt
I think that check and fix the textures with less subimages selected is a batch feature that winmip can do automatically.
Did you try that before to go along with the whole set of mips?

[rcb]

Yes I tried it, but for some reason the mipcheck function kept crashing.  Believe me I didn't want to manually go through them all. Anyway, it's done and seems to work, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

[burt]

Thanks for the input everybody

Paul, yes I was using d3dv2. OGLv2 seems to work, looking fine no shimmer, good call!. It never occurred to me to try that as my old PC hated it. The new one however seems to love it.


Thanks!.


Burt

[Frenchy]

JohnnyAck, on Jan 08 2012 - 06:09 AM, said:

Ok for an nvidia card, Turn the antialiasing transparancy to on, and I chose 8x (supersample) and its a huge improvement. Of course I am pretty sure you have to have antialiasing on too. Usually forced on is the setting to make sure.

Thanks heaps Johnny. I'd come to accept that sparkly textures was just a part of GPL but this worked a treat for me. I remember I tried this before and I was getting stuttering, but now I've got outline fonts for prib and a new i7 PC it works a treat. I went through and made profiles for each GPL executable(gplc67.exe, etc) so I can still leave my application controlled global settings for other games.

Cheers
David

[burt]

As is traditional with GPL, solving one problem inevitably leads to a whole new world of issues

OGLv2 kills the shimmer but I now find that it also kills Digital Dislay Monitor (text/numbers break up and freeze) and also if I alter a setup in game I find it wont save. Trying the fog with OGLv2 also has issues, parts of trees stick out of the fog and Ginetto's horizon also wont work with it so.................I will live with D3Dv2 with the fog.

I don't really want to muck about with this anymore but thought I would point these problems out for future reference.

Thanks all.


Burt

[Frenchy]

Interesting Burt, as I was getting the shimmer with OGLv2, but the transparency antialiasing fixed it. Attached my settings just in case it helps anyone.

 nVidia settings.jpg   206.2K   66 downloads

[burt]

Hello Frenchy,

Yeah your AA settings are exactly the same as mine. When I saw Johnny's post I went to have a look and found mine were already at those settings, must be the default on my new PC.



Burt