Radeon - strange behavior with gamma setting

smithpd on 21/1/2007 at 22:55

Quote Posted by Abysmal

I also get the gamma reset when minimizing to the desktop and returning, but again, doing that is not even the official way to exit the game so it's a bit silly to complain about.

Excuse me.... Sometimes I play Thief for hours, and it is very nice to escape for checking email, etc. I like being able to do this without exiting the game. It's not silly to me.

You didn't say how you got the gamma to reset itself when resuming from desktop. Could it be your lower than average setting? With my greater than average setting (old CRT) of 1.75, it aways returns with 1.0 when ATT is installed. I tried cam.cfg setting. It just follows the slider, that is, if you touch the slider in game, your numerical setting is replaced by the last slider value. It does nothing for me regarding restoring gamma when I escape to destop.

Quote:

As for fog and ATT, go to Advanced Tweaks and uncheck W Fog. Fog is only good for FMs anyways, the reason it's disabled by default in Thief 2 is because it sucks so friggin horribly in every mission it's in (stated by a developer even), even with the "nicer" non-ATI fog. In my opinion ATI is still the way to go for Thief.

This isn't completely clear to me. You say that by unckecking W Fog then you get fog? How does that work? I naturally thought that checking an option would enable it. One issue I have with ATT is that I can't find any user documentation, so I don't know what W Fog means or, really, what the check box means. Anyway, all the fog check boxes came checked by default in ATT.

I have heard that ATI fog looks worse than Nvidia fog, and I have seen some screen shots that are not impressive. I am wondering, would you be so kind as to load up Sharga's Swamped mission and tell me how that looks with your fog settings? With ATI on my machine, so far, there is no fog whatsoever. With Nvidia it is a smooth, dense fog when you start in the swamp. You can barely see trees and islands through it. Then, as you get closer to an object, you see it better. It is a very good effect. I can't test the fog setting you describe without reinstalling the ATI hardware and software, and that is an hour or so of fiddling around. Thanks in advance if you do it.

Quote:

Thief on a tweaked LCD looks fab by the way (turn the panel brightness all the way down), it's just as moody and dark and great. Let those insecure about it continue to nitpick blacks and backlighting and fail to realize that the overall contrast & gamma of an image nullifies these minor issues to the human eye for the most part. I'm actually preferring it to CRT due to it retaining darker details far better whenever a light hits the screen, while still keeping it hard as hell to see in pitch black areas.

Thanks for that feedback. I have been debating the LCD issue with myself for a long time, so that helps.

flying_hope on 22/1/2007 at 02:10

I need HELP

see this pic, i have all time daylight and no fog or something, any one know, waht i have to do to play t1/t2 with all ambient?

(http://www.0815x.de/bilder/dump014.jpg)

I have a Asus X1950Pro with CCC7.1, the old one has the same problem.

Abysmal on 22/1/2007 at 04:32

smithpd, sorry about the wording, cause it's a perfectly valid issue to raise...I just feel that you can't always expect or assume smooth operation when doing that minimizing action. As for gamma, I used to use the outside ATI/ATT controls, but found they never stayed respected for long (reading scrolls in T1/T2, zooming in T3, minimizing to desktop all reset it), so now I strictly adhere to ingame controls. With this method the gamma only gets reset when I minimize and restore, but a quick Esc and Continue fixes it. Maybe I don't understand your issue fully enough to give proper feedback.

Yes, unchecking W Fog will allow ATI's fog to show proper, they must have an issue with W Fog. I just downloaded and loaded the Swamped mission you mentioned, and it's a perfect showcase of how godawful the ATI T2 fog is (sharp cutoff instead of gradual), but it still works in the way you described. Thick white fog seems to have the most issue; thin colored layers are still pretty nice. Since I've already played a lot of these FMs I don't care as much, it's good enough, but to an FM fan who goes back to them a lot it may be a problem. For OMs fog is a non-issue since it should be off regardless.

ffox on 22/1/2007 at 10:42

I've just said exactly the same thing in the Eidos forums. To reinforce what Abysmal says, here it is again:

Use ATI Tray tools, which weighs in at 2.52 MB as opposed to the 213MB of Catalyst Control Center. Uncheck W Fog Enable in Advanced Tweaks, leave all the other fog settings checked, and fog will work well.

The gamma business is a bit annoying, but you can hit "O" for objectives or "M" for map before pressing Pause or else hit "Esc" then "Continue" when you return to game.

smithpd on 23/1/2007 at 07:41

Thanks, ffox and Abysmal.:) I finally got the fog to work using that approach, although with testing I see that the ATI fog looks terrible in comparison with Nvidia fog.

This evening, I did a lot of A-B comparisons between my Nvidia card and the ATI card, looking at fog and other things. The following post on the Eidos forum has the details:

(http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?p=610757#post610757)

I apologize for the duplicate posting. I posted at Eidos initially but got no responses, so I tried here as well.

The bottom line is that, all things considered, I have decided that the negative aspects of the ATI card are more bothersome to me than the negative aspects of the Nvidia card, plus I can return the ATI card and get my money back. So that is what I am going to do.

Thanks all for your help. It has been interesting. I have been fortunate in being able to compare Nvidia with ATI side by side.

ffox on 23/1/2007 at 12:02

Have you tried the fog in other FMs? I haven't played Swamped, but the fog in Turn of the Tide looks good to me on my ATI.

Could it be something to do with the way the authors set the fog up?

ZylonBane on 23/1/2007 at 17:53

Quote Posted by smithpd

The bottom line is that, all things considered, I have decided that the negative aspects of the ATI card are more bothersome to me than the negative aspects of the Nvidia card

You decided wrong. Current NVidia drivers screw up transparency rendering far worse than ATI drivers screw up fog rendering. Factor in that current FMs use transparency effects much more than fog effects, and ATI comes out as the clear winner for Thief.

But hey, enjoy your poor judgement.

Muzman on 23/1/2007 at 19:22

Quote Posted by Abysmal

Fog is only good for FMs anyways, the reason it's disabled by default in Thief 2 is because it sucks so friggin horribly in every mission it's in (stated by a developer even), even with the "nicer" non-ATI fog.

I'm pretty sure that only applies to Life of the Party, whose fog is bizarrely broken in horrid ways and was so even back when the game came out. Mostly I believe the fog in Thief 2 works as intended, even if its not that great. Precious Cargo, Casing the Joint (or was it Masks, dunno) have good strong fog. And it's used other places quite subtley.

Good to know about those new ATI fixes though. What my current Nvidia chip does to the sky and other transparencies is bloody awful.

Abysmal on 23/1/2007 at 22:47

Yeah, it works in Cargo and Masks as intended, but as in LotP it blots out the sky entirely in Cargo when it wasn't really supposed to, and it just looks all around pretty funky (the foggy caves and buildings). Masks is the one time it looks proper, where it only shows up in the back yard anyhow.

smithpd on 24/1/2007 at 05:07

Quote Posted by ZylonBane

I said the decision was right for me, not for you. I listed many factors other than fog, including $190 unnecessary expense. You can chose for yourself any way you like. You do not have to get in my face.