Vigil on 26/1/2006 at 05:10
<a href="http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=91820&highlight=9700">The one that bukary linked to earlier</a>, which shows shots of Dwelling Insanity's fog on Radeon, Geforce4, Geforce 6 and Voodoo3.
Interesting that Dwelling Insanity seems to have become the unofficial benchmark for decent fog rendering actually!
I'm also intrigued Pinkdot that you had similarly crappy fog on a Geforce4MX, since the drivers are the same. My motherboard has a GF4MX as onboard video, I could pull my real card and see what it looks like.
PinkDot on 26/1/2006 at 16:32
Vigil - I don't know why. I'm not good at those technical issues... I just use hardware but never understand it... ;)
Thief 2 is the only game I know, in which I encountered such problems with fog. And I don't understand it also because it's hardware supported fog, so it should look the same in all games, shouldn't it? :confused:
ejsmith on 27/1/2006 at 00:45
Quote Posted by Komag
Could you please do the honors of loading up Dwelling Insanity and snapping a screenshot looking up in the tower? That way we can all see and compare, and it might seriously affect my next graphics card decision
I've never played any of the FM's, but I can certainly upload a screenshot or clip from "Life of the Party".
242 on 27/1/2006 at 00:45
T2 uses obsolete mode for for rendering, which is badly supported by Radeon drivers.
Modern (and not so modern) games don't use that type of fog anymore, so ATI programmers aren't going to fix it.
jolynsbass on 27/1/2006 at 04:22
Quote Posted by PinkDot
Thief 2 is the only game I know, in which I encountered such problems with fog. And I don't understand it also because it's hardware supported fog, so it should look the same in all games, shouldn't it? :confused:
It's not that simple. Each card has specific 3D acceleration-hardware which differs significantly from manufacturer to manufacturer (Remember the days of TNT vs Voodoo? Massive differences to be found there.) This is also the same reason that recent Nvidia cards are incapable of rendering a good-looking sky. The hardware "improvements" have rendered them ineffective for this task(yes, pun intended.)
So bottom line is this :
Nvidia : you'll have good fog, but always an ugly sky, with no stars.
ATI : you'll have a pretty sky with stars, and you can at least get some kind of fog, and depending on the mission fog settings, it can range from pretty ugly(Dwelling Insanity) to pretty decent (KOTP comes to mind)...
Voodoo : you get pretty sky and stars... and great fog, too. Unfortunately, you do not get the benefits of antialiasing(unless you have a voodoo5, lucky dog!) or the benefits of anisotropic filtering(just watch how blurry those textures get on a voodoo3 about 20-30 feet in front of Garrett..., unless maybe a voodoo5 has this feature? I don't know there...)
Thief 2 was made during the Voodoo/Nvidia battle, and the fog looked good on both, so ATI was somewhat ignored. So was S3, frankly, but I don't see anyone complaining about how bad the fog looks on their laptop with S3 SavageMX video... (That's what I have on my lappy, and trust me, it's every bit as bad as the ATI fog...)
Actually, I think the LGS team, honored as they are, really just took the lazy out on this one, and now we are all wishing they hadn't.
Komag on 27/1/2006 at 04:42
Actually NVidia did good sky previously, it's only lately with the newer cards/drivers that we have the bad sky problem
GlasWolf on 27/1/2006 at 04:57
Interesting that (nvidia-wise) it depends on the card AND the drivers being used. Sky was fine with my old GF2 and new drivers (though I had invisible NPCs instead). Switch over to the 6800GT and the sky is screwed but the NPCs return.
Ladron De La Noche on 27/1/2006 at 08:23
Quote Posted by jolynsbass
Voodoo : you get pretty sky and stars... and great fog, too. Unfortunately, you do not get the benefits of antialiasing(unless you have a voodoo5, lucky dog!) or the benefits of anisotropic filtering(just watch how blurry those textures get on a voodoo3 about 20-30 feet in front of Garrett..., unless maybe a voodoo5 has this feature? I don't know there...)
AntiAliasing = Yes
Anisotropic Filtering = No
I have a V3, V5 in the house and a ATI9800 in the backyard. :p
btw, that sky in first post looks terrible. :eww:
jermi on 29/1/2006 at 14:16
Quote Posted by PinkDot
I have to say, that my fog looks as crappy as all ATI cards, even with Omega drivers.
First you get my hopes up, then you crush them. May the ATI wall of fog swallow you pranksters!
Yametha on 10/3/2006 at 12:06
Sorry to take a leaf out of Azaran's book here...
/me looks behind her quickly
I notice there's a Geforce card out now that seems to be part of a 7xxx series rather than a 6xxx series. Does it do things okay? I'm just wondering if this is merely a passing phase, or if it will always be like this...
<hr>
Bikerdude has been kind enought to inform me that the 7800 has the same problem.
(posted for those who might be searching for help at some time in the future)
