Graphic Resolution Issue

Confuzor · Post by **Confuzor** » Thu May 03, 2007 4:13 am

I've been looking at a few screenshots and started to realize that the way Allegiance displays my graphics in game for me is a little off.

Exhibit A
Exhibit B

For some reason, my environment display makes everything look like ugly blocks. I find the same thing happening with up close explosions as well, and this doesn't seem to occur with the screenshots I see from Shockwave's explosion mod (which I am currently using). Model skins look fine though; I just downloaded the high res rock mod, and the asteroids look great. Even the poster planets look crisp as well, as the screenshot shows. I've tried fiddling with the settings, with little effect: changing the map texture has no effect, and resolution change doesn't do anything either (I play at 800x600, that shot was taken at 1024x768). I'm using an old GeForce 4 Ti4400, and I'm using a widescreen monitor (my default desktop resolution is 1440 x 900).

I'd be greatly appreciate knowing what's causing the pixelation, and what I can do to fix it.

Thank you.

ImmortalZ · Post by **ImmortalZ** » Thu May 03, 2007 6:45 am

Hmm.

Check whether Hardware Acceleration is on in the Graphics settings.

Confuzor · Post by **Confuzor** » Thu May 03, 2007 7:12 am

It's using hardware rendering.

Also downloaded the latest Nvidia drivers, still no avail.

Adaven · Post by **Adaven** » Thu May 03, 2007 8:17 am

Just to make sure we are talking about the same things. The graphics options choice of Software or Hardware rendering just affects the Head's up display, not the real graphics, there is another option to do that.

Next to game resolution there should be a couple options about using a primary or secondary device when needed, make sure those are on as well. Play around with the other options as well.

The naming has always confused me.

Are you using the High res environments?

doofus · Post by **doofus** » Thu May 03, 2007 8:57 am

That looks like a texture sampling issue - it seems to be falling back to point sampling rather than bilinear. Although you have the latest drivers, it's probably still driver related vs old d3d interfaces. Not sure quite why it should fail though, as Alleg only uses basic fixed function pipeline stuff. Do the base textures also look blocky when you get close up?

Confuzor · Post by **Confuzor** » Thu May 03, 2007 9:48 am

I currently have the settings "Use 3D acceleration..." and "Use Secondary Device..." both on. I've tried turning them on and off in different combinations, but it has no effect on environment/explosion pixelation.

I'm using vlad13's highres planets and nebulas, although this blocky pixelation has been exactly the same even before I swapped the original mdls with vlad13's pack.

The base textures on actual models look fine, and pixelate as well as can be expected. One thing I've noted though is this:

Both are meant to be the relatively same image, but with the first image being set to a higher Map Texture Size. The textures on models are effected. The environment texture is not.

doofus · Post by **doofus** » Thu May 03, 2007 10:42 am

Those asteroid textures are also badly pixellated due to point texture sampling, suffering from the same problem as the environment.

ImmortalZ · Post by **ImmortalZ** » Thu May 03, 2007 11:31 am

Hmm.

Check the texture filtering settings in your display drivers' control panel. Make sure you are not forcing anything to point sampling (options are usually Bilinear, Trilinear and Anisotropic). Make sure you have any options that allude to better filtering (like nVidia's "Use high quality filtering"/similar). Also, I see that you are running a really old GF4. The latest drivers are really no use for it. Most of the time, newer drivers break something for older cards and the companies usually don't give a damn. Best option would be to try older driver revisions. You'll most likely lose support for later games though (although you won't really be able to play them since the card itself is too slow).

Since you are saying that flipping hardware and software rendering produces NO visible change, I'm thinking that hardware rendering is not being used at all. Which means, broken drivers OR disabled DX hardware acceleration.

You can check that by going to Start -> Run, "dxdiag" without the quotes, press Enter. Navigate to Display and check that both DirectDraw and Direct3D acceleration is enabled. Also, goto Control Panel -> Display. Navigate to Settings, click Advanced. Navigate to Troubleshoot and make sure the slider is set all the way to the right.

Many things to look for indeed /sad.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":sad:" border="0" alt="sad.gif" />. Let us know how things go.

Avalanche · Post by **Avalanche** » Thu May 03, 2007 2:05 pm

I have the same issue on my laptop. I have simply turned off the graphics that causes the problems to save my eyes. Can you post the full specifications for your computer?

Confuzor · Post by **Confuzor** » Thu May 03, 2007 5:45 pm

Utterly, utterly, frustrating.

But working.

All the settings everyone recommended were set to their highest quality setting. What I eventually decided on trying was to switch back from DirectX 9.0c to 8.1, which was the last DirectX that the GeForce4 series had full support of, if I'm not mistaken. I had to run through a gamut of finding a way to downgrade DirectX, after which Allegiance only started with a black screen.

By chance, I found an installation file for MSI GeForce4 drivers, (the GeForce4 brand card that I'm using). They are of course older, but I installed it anyway, and when I ran Allegiance, the environment finally stopped looking like crap.

UNFORTUNATELY, the MSI drivers don't support a 1440x900 resolution, so now my desktop looks like crap. I reinstalled Nvidia's drivers, which let me switch back to 1440x900, but then Allegiance booted up with black screens again, which means I'm going to have to get PowerStrip to get 1440x900 for my desktop (I would love to get the NVidia's Control Panel back, but see no way of doing this without having it override the MSI drivers and prevent Allegiance from running, short of finding a "medium aged version" of Nvidia's drivers will let me have the best of both worlds).

Anyway, Powerstrip should fix this up.

Thanks for all the help!

edit
A quick question: I know that Allegiance identifies each user based on their computer specifications. Should there be any reason that I will encounter logging problems with all the driver revolution that's been going on with my PC? As of right now, I'm constantly getting stuck at "Logging into lobby..." in Allegiance.