Can't fsaa with ofp

[Greg 0]

When I try to enable FSAA in Display Properties, OFP starts fine, but lots of things are blank or missing, such as the writting in the Mission and Campaign books and some of the menu words.

I can't start a game because I can't see what to click on!

Anyone seen this or have solution? After reading the Negative lod posts I want to try some FSAA.

Geforce3ti200, WinXp, 28.32.

[ALDEGA 0]

Have you tweaked your lod, or anything else? (especially regarding textures). FSAA works just fine over here with those drivers.

[Mister Frag 0]

Greg, I have a system with the same setup as yours, and FSAA was working fine. I was using 1024x768x32 with W-buffer disabled, using Quincunx AA and 16-tap Anisotropic filtering.

I did go back to the 23.11 drivers, however, because with the 28.32 drivers, OFP would consistently crash at the end of SP missions -- MP missions worked fine. I still use the same video and FSAA options.

[Tales_From_Topographic_Oceans 0]

...and you have heard it said many times: "make sure you have the latest driver for your graphics card."

I installed 28.32 and the T&L will not work. At night, I see these dark black areas. I run it on Direct 3D, and it works fine.

I may go back to the 23.11 driver and see if the T&L will work.

[Wreck-It 0]

23.11 work out fine for me.

I have even brought up my object LODs to 12, and it still works fine 800x600 32 with shadows and all.

PIII 866 OCed @975Mhz (150 FSB)

512 PC133 @150Mhz (Fan cooled, heat sinks)

Via Apollo proA chipset, MSI mobo

G-f 2 64Mb OCed by 10%

H T&L kinda heavy though, so I don't use it - brings me down on large MPmissions when I host.

Any of you get the same effect on P4s and XP CPUs?

[Mister Frag 0]

That's strange, HW T&L should free up CPU resources to do other things and give you better performance in MP games -- all else being equal, the CPU has more time to perform AI logic.

The only time that HW T&L is going to yield slower graphics performance is if you have a very fast CPU, and not much else going on (no CPU for controlling AI units, for example).

[Greg 0]

Did some checking and more testing, still haven't got it to work.

The problem only occurs with FSAA 3x (quincunx) and 4x. 2x works fine.

All my options including lod bias are default in fact the only tweak is vsync is 'always off'.

The effect is unusual because almost all the game runs fine, just bits of the main menu and the text in the books is gone completely. Eg. I have to click on a blank page to start a mission.

[Mister Frag 0]

Could be that you are running out of texture memory. 3x and 4x FSAA obviously require more memory, which leaves less memory for textures.

Try switching to smaller textures in the Preferences program -- not permanently, just to see if that makes a difference.

[ALDEGA 0]

I doubt it's a lack of memory:

1. He's got an AGP videocard which means that his videocard can use system memory if it runs out of local memory.

2. Why would the small texturefiles for the fonts be too much too load, while he can load all the other textures fine?

Anyway, can't you just stick to 2x or 4x?

[Greg 0]

Got it working! But I an not really sure how. It was repeatedly failing 3x and 4x. I then tried starting the game at 640x480 at 3x and 4x and it worked. So I increased the resolution using the in game menu and it still worked. Tried a few other things and now it doesn't fail at all. I am not sure what particular thing caused to to fail or succeed.

[Tales_From_Topographic_Oceans 0]

I swear... in the olden days (1984-1992), all you had to worry about was RAM, speed, and HD space.

Now, you can tweak this and that until you squeeze that last drop of toothpaste out of your system. 2 months ago, I did a little tweakin' and I went too far and had to reformat my hard-drive and subsequently install windows about 3 times before I was back.

I usually defrag my hard-drive once a week--that helps speed.

[Mister Frag 0]

Yup, not much you could tweak if all you had was CGA, Hercules, or standard VGA adapter. I like today's arrangement MUCH better!

[Wreck-It 0]

Defrag sucks. It can cause some problems. Instead of defragging, I use a separate partition (E:) for swapping, and my temp folder is D:/temp, instead of the usual c:/windows/temp. Since the C: drive won't be written up with any temporary files, it just never frags itself in the first place.

As for installs, I don't go thrue that pain anymore, I use Ghost; it takes an image of your C: drive and stores it on D:.

Should anything happen, I can re-install my 3 gigs of data from ghost in under 25 minutes, it's just like nothing ever happened... Can't beat that...

[ALDEGA 0]

Not really true. Whenever files are written the chances are pretty reasonably that the file that's being written will not be written completely sequential.

[Wreck-It 0]

Well, I use my PC for hours every day, and even went 7 months without a glitch and never got past the 5% fregmentation mark.

Listen, it's you opinion, but mine stands: If you change your temp files, operation and internet, to a another drive, move your swap to an independent drive also, and do not use "online installers", you'll never get fragmented enough to loose noticeable performance.

The thing is that if you don't install and un-install loads of junk on your drives, windows is a stable, viable OS. I run the same software all the time. I already have every thing I need, so I don't "try" everything that comes out.

Thrue, if you install and uninstall software at every chnace you get, you might still end up fragmented a bit, but that's not what hurts the most; in this case, a bloated registry is the major speed hog.