Negative lod bias with 28.32-

[Satchel 0]

A while ago i posted a very small guide on how imagine quality can be improved in video games, based on D3D with NVIDIA adapters and a tuning tool called NVMAX in combination with Detonator drivers.

This guide was based on detonator drivers before 23.11, as with 23.11 NVIDIA changed the registry entries, as well as the core of their newest drivers, making the image quality tweaks unfunctional and render tuning tools such as NVMAX almost useless in D3D.

Because of that i sticked to older drivers, such as 21.85 where tuning tools and tweaks were functional.

As NVMAX is no more (the author has discontinued it), i was searching for a new tuning tool, and came across Riva Tuner, that basically works like NVMAX....with 1 important difference, it works also with all drivers since 23.11, negative lod bias settings are also possible.

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For those wondering what this "negative lod Bias" is all about;

LOD stands for Level of Detail- contrary to popular belief will a high LOD bias produce blurry and less detailed graphics, while a low LOD bias increases Texture sharpness.

You can try out Lod Bias even without tuning tools, go into your Display Properties- NVIDIA control Panel- Direct 3D settings- Mipmap Detail level. It´s basically the same as the LOD Bias slider in Tuning Progs, only difference is that there are hardly choices in NVIDIA´s control panel to influence LOD, in addition you can´t choose negative values (thats what we want after all).

By default this option is set to "highest image quality", which is equal to a LOD Bias setting of "0". If you set it to "best performance" the driver will use a high LOD bias setting, making your games virtually unattractive visually, everything is blurry.

By decreasing this value below "0" you can enhance image quality even further, sometimes by a great amount. There is no general rule for this setting, every gameengine looks different and has different optimal settings for LOD Bias, just one thing all have in common, a negative value does look better.

Jedi Knight 2 (Quake III OpenGL engine) for example looks best with a LOD Bias of -1.0, while Flashpoint (Direct3D) works good with negative values between -1.2 and -1.5.

In general negative LOD Bias and Anisotropic Filtering have the greatest impact on visual quality.

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To put it short:

- download Riva Tuner 2.0 Release Candidate RC10.1 here: http://www.guru3d.com/files/rivatuner/

- Extract the NVIDIA 28.32 self installing .exe Detonators into a temporary folder using either Winzip, Winrar or WinXP´s build in zipper.

- Open Riva Tuner, wait till it finished building the registry database, and select the tap "Power User". Go to the icon bar in the lower section of the UI and select "open patch script" (third icon from left).

- Open the directory "patch scripts/NVIDIA/LODBiasFix" in the dialogue, and select the script that suits your system (Win2K/WinXp or Win9x), press "open". Now press the continue button in the dialogue and point to the directory where you extracted the 28.32 detonators, when set press "open", the .dll is going to be patched so that Lod Bias will work.

- Close Riva Tuner and install the 28.32 Detonators you have just patched.

- After the patched Drivers have been installed, open Riva Tuner again and go to "driver settings" on the "main" tab.

Press the little "customize" button on the lower right and select "customize Direct Draw and Direct 3D settings", on the "Mipmapping" tab that opens adjust the "Mipmap Lod bias adjustment" slider to a negative value (-1,2 to -1,5 works pretty well in Flashpoint).

if you have a fast computer and graphics card, go to the "Textures" tab and select "force level 4 " under degree of anisotropy, or higher if it ain´t to slow in games.

With Riva Tuner and 28.32 Detonators you can also use negative LOD bias in OpenGL btw .

I also recommend to use the S3TCFixPack, as well as NvXTInitFix (if you intend to overclock your card under Win2K/WinXP with Riva Tuner).

Riva Tuner in this revision also comes with a working 60Hz fix for Win2k/WinXP.

[Satchel 0]

To illustrate the impact of these settings better, here some screenshots with normal unmodified standard lod and tuned lod:

Hardware specs

----------------

- Geforce 3 TI 200

- 384MB Ram

- Duron 1.2 Ghz

Software settings

-----------------

Drivers: 28.32

LOD Bias : Highest Image Quality (0)

Anisotropy: standard~off (determined by 3d application, means disabled)

Resolution and colordepth: 1024 x 768 x 32bit

OFP detail setting: everything to max image quality

Framerate setting OFP: 20...40FPS

http://home.t-online.de/home/ThomasRautenberg/Normal_lod.jpg

This is what OFP normaly looks like on my computer with everything on standard using the 28.32 Detonators.

Here is what it looks like with the tweaks i have mentioned:

Drivers: 28.32

LOD Bias : custom (-1,5)

Anisotropy: forced 4x Anisotropy

Resolution and colordepth: 1024 x 768 x 32bit

OFP detail setting: everything to max image quality

Framerate setting OFP: 20...40FPS

http://home.t-online.de/home....pic.jpg

http://home.t-online.de/home....icb.jpg

Makes quite a difference , i couldn´t play OFP without these tweaks.

Happy tuning.

[ALDEGA 0]

I'm using NVMax and it's still working.

btw, Mipmap detail levels in the nvidia control panel means the following:

quality=many different mipmap levels (eg 16x16, 32x32, 64x64, 128x128, 256x256).

speed=few detail levels (eg 32x32, 128x128, 256x256).

The quality setting as more mipmap detail levels and thus will make the change from one mipmap detail level (eg 32x32) to another (eg 64x64) less visible.

I have both -0.9 and quality mipmapping enabled.

[Satchel 0]

Well that´s actually strange you´ve got the negative lod setting working with drivers higher than 23.11 on NVMAX, without modifying the drivers themselves.

NVMAX only functions by changing registry entries, it doesn´t modify the core driver. Newer Detonators unlike earlier ones doesn´t support negative LOD Bias by default, changes in the .dll file itself are required to set negative bias ranges, a thing NVMAX as GTU can´t do.

[ALDEGA 0]

Ok, the negative lod isn't working. I think it's a combination of the quality settings for mipmapping and anisotropy. When I set mipmapping to speed settings, it will just use a low res version for all textures.

[SpaceAlex 0]

It seems that riva tuner is a lot better than NVMax. I patched the drivers one week ago. Negative LOD is working just fine.

That RiveTuner patch changes nvdesk32.dll 28.32 back to 21.83. You can do this by yourself. Just download 21.83 drivers and rewrite nvdesk32.dll. It's easier to patch this with RivaTuner afcourse.

[canukausiuka 1]

What kind of tweaks should I use on a 32mb radeon? I am not an advanced user with respect to 3d graphics, so I'd really appreciate some guidance.

[SpaceAlex 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (MSMS_KDXer @ April 06 2002,21:55)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">What kind of tweaks should I use on a 32mb radeon?  I am not an advanced user with respect to 3d graphics, so I'd really appreciate some guidance.<span id='postcolor'>

Well. Your game performance won't be good with 32mb Radeon. You can change LOD bias settings, but you'll have a few problems with pixels and stuff. Trees, buildings and grass will look strange from the distance. Antialiasing needs a very powerfull graphic processor. I don't even know if RivaTuner supports Radeon.

[Greg 0]

I tried negative lod bias and ansiotropic filtering. The lod bias hardly had any effect, but the 8x Ansio looked amazing! However it also caused me a 20% speed hit on a Geforce3ti200 with 28.32 driver. So I'd rather not.

[Satchel 0]

Try 4x anisotropic, it´s sufficent and doesn´t look much worse than 8x.

On a Duron 1200, Geforce 3 TI200, 384MB RAM the Battlefield single player mission runs with ca. ~20 FPS, everything set to max. image quality in 1024x768x32, 4x anisotropy+LOD BIAS -1.2, FSAA turned off.

[SpaceAlex 0]

8x anistropic runs just fine on my system (P4 2.0GhZ, 1Gb DDram, GF3...).

Anyway. try antialiasing not anistropy. Your graphic will look great with antialiasing on. I recomanded 4x antialiasing. Your OFP will look much much better. There's no need for patchig the new drivers because you won't even nothest any difference in your graphic with negative LOD bias and 4x antialiasing. 4x antialiasing is enough.

[SpaceAlex 0]

Ok.

1.) Antialiasing off

- Drivers: 28.32

- anistropy: 8x

- In-game resolution: 1152x864x32

- all ofp detail settings to max

- LOD bias 0.

- antialiasing off.

2.) Antialiasing on (4x), all other settings are the same:

It's hard to nothest anything on the pictures, but try that in the game and you'll never want to go back to normal again.

[SpaceAlex 0]

And here's another picture with antialiasing on, with negative LOd bias (-1.5) and with all other setting from above.

[Lt_Dan_Sweden 0]

Works great. Really beautiful images. Too bad it affects the performance. Have turned down to 16 bit Bpp to be able to keep the negative 1,5 LOD bias, but performance decrease is still noticable from time to time.

p3 1000

Ram 768 MB

Geo 2 Mx

[Mister Frag 0]

With a GeForce3 the FSAA penalty is greatly reduced, and with a GeForce4 (even the MX series), it is almost non-existant.

In fact, the low-end GeForce4 MX boards beat even a GeForce3 Ti500 when FSAA is used, and they cost half of what the Ti500 costs.

[ALDEGA 0]

Yeah, but the GF4 MX don't have pixel shaders and any other newer features. They're cheap and that's it

[Lt_Dan_Sweden 0]

But with a P3 1,0 GHz I won't use a g4 fully, if im correctly informed? So a wast of money, since lifetime for graphicscard is short i will want a newer model by autumn, when changing CPU...

[timmy 0]

under the textures tab, the default setting for anisotrophy were set to "determined by 3d aplication" the highest it would go was "force level 2" i have a geforce 2 mx 400. Which one should i go with

[ale2999 0]

guys I patched to 28.32 awhile ago so how am I suppose to install rivatuner? Also I am on a geforce 2 mx400, is there going to be any improvement? thanks 4 help

[Satchel 0]

timmy,

higher anisotropic filtering levels are only available on geforce3/4.

If You intent to use anisotropic filtering on your G2MX, it may cause quite a performance hit. I had a G2MX too before, and OFP was playable with either anisotropic enabled- or FSAA, but not both as the framerate dropped extremely.

You will have to decide whats more important;

- smooth antialiased lines

- or better texture transitions, that lessen the blurr effect, especially visible on ground that is farther away.

Try to find what suits you best.

[Satchel 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (ale2999 @ April 13 2002,11:16)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">guys I patched to 28.32 awhile ago so how am I suppose to install rivatuner? Also I am on a geforce 2 mx400, is there going to be any improvement? thanks 4 help <span id='postcolor'>

There certainly is going to be an improvement, if you follow the procedure to patch the 28.32 Dets for enabling negative values to the LOD Bias, it should work without problems.

The effect of negative LOD Bias can be observed best on the white aiming aid of the weapon, it´s much finer and less blurry than with normal LOD Bias, and so is the rest of what you see on the screen.

I´ll post 3 small screens later that demonstrate the effect of FSAA, Anisotropic filtering and LODBias to encourage people to use these tweaks with OFP, as it really makes a difference-the more satisfying regarding speed the faster your machine is of course.

I have a Duron 1200, G3TI200, 384MB Ram, i can play the Battlefield mission, which is quite demanding on hardware, with decent framerates using 2x2 FSAA, Level 4 Anisotropic filtering, and -1,2 Lod Bias. Of course it would be faster without these image quality tweaks, but in a game like Flashpoint where you depend on clear visuals (it´s no CS close combat in a sandbox), image quality is more important to me than a little extra fps.

[OldGrandad 0]

Satchel maybe you can help me here. I have just built a system around a ECS K7S5A mobo and an XP1800 and 384mb of PC133 and DirectX 8.1.

My vid card is a generic GeForce2 GTS 32mb currently running 21.81 Dets. My prob is OpFl freezing after a short while and also the colours look all washed out. (My ex-PC was a P3 800EB and it played fine and looked good).

I will try a few tweaks while I wait for replies, i.e. I believe my mobo has AGP set at 4X enabled at the mo, if I disable it will it help?

I don't think it is a heat issue as in normal operation I have left it on for 48 hours and it was still as stable as a rock. The CPU is clear of any wiring and I have a side fan opposite the CPU to aid in extracting warm air (it helps to warm the room up!!.

Also the vid card does not have another card next to it so its fan has a clear space.

[N.o.R.S.u 0]

28.32 wont work for me in OFP, the game just crashes to desktop, so now i'm using 27.30 which works just fine with RivaTuner .

Btw any idea why my OFP wont work with 28.32?

My system specs:

1.3Ghz AMD Athlon

256 MB ram

Geforce 2 GTS 64MB

Windows 98SE

[N.o.R.S.u 0]

OldGrandad I had same problems but by trying different detonators I solved them. Right now i'm using 27.30 with RivaTuner and it works fine for OFP and other games.

[OldGrandad 0]

N.o.R.S.u, can I have a location for those drivers?

Since the last post I got the game to run for an hour before it froze. As it froze I heard what sounded like an electrical discharge throught the speakers. Any ideas? Apart from this the machine is rock solid in normal operation so I guess it can only be a vid problem.

Thx in advance.