twisty on 26/3/2006 at 03:12
Is there any way to enable HDR for the 9800 pro? It's grayed out as an option and is specified in the Oblivion options as being unsupported. However, I had no problem displaying HDR in the Lost Coast demo.
I tried changing the bDoHighDynamicRange value to 1 in the ini file located in My Games, but this made no difference. Any ideas?
Dranyth on 26/3/2006 at 04:41
Unfortunately there's no way.
The only reason HDR works on Lost Coast on ATI cards below the X1xxx series is because Valve went out of their way to create a fake HDR that could work on them.
Oblivion, like Far Cry, uses the true HDR standard implementation, as I understand it, which means the ATI cards that don't support the correct bit depth color precision can't render it.
It has nothing to do with Shader Model 2.0/3.0 however, as some may indicate.
twisty on 26/3/2006 at 07:55
Thanks for this information Dranyth. Saves me from chasing my tail.
Fingernail on 26/3/2006 at 10:13
The bloom is alright though, I have a 9800 AIW Pro too and it runs ok.
I can essentially choose between 800x600 with bloom or 1024x768 without bloom for basically the same framerate.
I'm still undecided as to which I prefer. Bloom makes it look less drab, but the higher res is desirable for clarity.
twisty on 26/3/2006 at 10:43
Yeah, the bloom does look pretty sweet at times. From what I've seen though, HDR looks even sweeter. My machine runs the game very smoothly with some decent enough visual settings though, so I am content for the moment as the gameplay has been very enjoyable thus far.
scumble on 26/3/2006 at 10:56
I haven't compared HDR to Bloom yet. I know that with HDR on everything has a certain glow to it, and it isn't quite as wearing as Bloom on earlier games such as DX:IW...
Ok, tried it and Bloom is pretty dull compared to HDR - the environment comes alive much more with HDR on. Whenever you do get an upgrade you'll definitely notice a big difference.
Live on 26/3/2006 at 11:54
I know this is not exactly 100% relevant, but I bought Half Life 2 fairly recently and was VERY HAPPY that Valve designed it to work with my old laptop graphics card (Geforce 4 GO). While I'm all for pretty graphics, I think it's bad that many games are not 'backwards compatible' now. I'm thinking of three in particular that I would love to play: Deus Ex: IW, Thief DS and of course, Oblivion.
I am sure my version of Half Life 2 looks pitiful compared to full HDR-whatever with spangly reflective surfaces, but I run it in 1024 x 768 with all possible details turned up and in my opinion it looks fine (and it runs at about 40 fps). Great, even. Why can't other game developers at least allow their games to RUN on non-fancy graphics systems?
Fingernail on 26/3/2006 at 12:44
Quote Posted by scumble
I haven't compared HDR to Bloom yet. I know that with HDR on everything has a certain glow to it, and it isn't quite as wearing as Bloom on earlier games such as DX:IW...
Ok, tried it and Bloom is pretty dull compared to HDR - the environment comes alive much more with HDR on. Whenever you do get an upgrade you'll definitely notice a big difference.
Yeah I can't wait for my new PC and this game running on it :D
ignatios on 28/3/2006 at 18:39
Does anyone have better comparison screenshots of HDR vs. tweaked Bloom? It's difficult to tell the real difference when the before/after shots are all different, as in the linked TES thread.
This is awfully tempting to try, but the grass fade-in is really nice.
