Latest NVIDIA driver problem

[mandru]

I took the plunge and updated the recently released driver for my NVIDIA graphics card and I've had some annoying side effects pop up.

The first thing I noticed was during direct daylight scenes in the game, when viewed at obtuse angles, the fractal faces of rocks and mountain sides are breaking down to their base colors and their wire frame underpinnings are showing through.  If I look directly at the effect it hides but peripheral edges of the screen and under foot are affected.

Secondly the same issue as above and again at the edges of the field of view anything that is made of wood, like the decking of bridges or wooden pallets take on a glossy blue oil slick appearance that I'm used to seeing in places on the ground like near the ammo crate in the sunken area at the rear of the "Belgian's" Chateau ("Private Property" N. E. of Pala).

On closer examination of the board walk and decking in front of Mike's in the 2nd half of the game it became apparent that most of the wood in the game is recycled for the wood grain over and over with any print that would be found on food or beer cases stripped off for larger areas where those markings are unwanted.  The labels for beer food and cigars are still there just hidden and this bug I'm getting allows them to bleed back into the game!

I've gone to both the NVIDIA and game control panels and there's nothing in the settings that I can find to fix this.  Fortunately it just affects shading and is still playable even if distracting.

By the way, I did come across an option for settings in the NVIDIA control panel that says FC2 is excellent for usage with 3D glasses that hook into the computer for the right/left shutter effect once that process is activated.  It even suggests set up settings for specific monitors.  Who Knew?

[PZ]

Sorry to hear about your video difficulties, mandru but I suspect that it is something that is possible to fix.  Art is better versed than I am, so will likely have more specific advice, but here is something to try that can't cause any additional problems.

When in FC2, try setting all video settings to default, exit the video menu and restart the game - see if that has changed anything.  Once back in the game, go back into video and change everything to the highest setting possible - and one thing that I've done is to turn vsync off.  I play with the highest settings and no problems.  Oh, one other thing, there is a check box for using a wide screen monitor - you might also set that one for your specific monitor.

I believe that you and I use the same video card, and the same OS, so we might compare settings if you continue to have problems.

I'm thinking about trying the 3D thing one of these days - there are several games that supposedly use that feature - would add a new and exciting dimension (no pun) to playing.

[Art Blade]

Mandru, my very first thought was "he got a driver that doesn't match his vid card" -- go to nVidia's site and manually check your OS and vid card, then get the appropriate driver (if it is a different one than what you've got already). What you described shouldn't have happened with the correct driver. The nVidia panel allows to manually set up the parameters, for some reason it comes "optimum for multiple monitors" which you should change to "for single monitor." The rest of the default settings should be alright for most stuff.

[PZ]

Good point, Art - I believe you posted the link to the XP version, and shortly thereafter I posted the link to the Vista64 version - mandru, you need the version that I posted if you don't have it.

[Dweller_Benthos]

That is strange, and besides the above advice, make sure the driver install doesn't get interrupted in any way. It really sounds like something didn't install right. The only time I've seen the effects mentioned was in BF1942 a long time ago (demo actually) when you needed the newest vid card in order to even play the game. I didn't have one, so the game loaded, but most of the ground geometry didn't show up - I could see right through it. This was due to the card not having the right shader programming or something. This problem seems similar, but since the card is obviously right, then it must be the drivers. Something is missing or didn't get installed. You might have to go the old style route - uninstall the current video drivers, switch to microsoft standard VGA, reboot. Download the correct drivers for OS and card and install them. You might also try uninstalling the card itself and rebooting. You don't have to physically remove it from the system - just go to device manager and delete it and reboot, it should auto-detect and reinstall from there, but that's a last-ditch effort, I would think.

The other effects mentioned like textures not being painted right or painted on the wrong surface sounds like the game is expecting one thing and the video drivers are showing another. Worst comes to worst, you may have to reinstall the game itself, but I don't see how that could make a difference if it was working before and all that was done was a vid driver change.

I installed the most recent nvidia drivers as well and have had no problems, and I do weird things like use the trainer to teleport around the map, and that's about the most strain that could be put on the game and vid system - it sometimes takes a while for all the new stuff to load.

[mandru]

Thanks for the help guys.  :-X

I did download the vista 64 bit version of the driver that PZ had posted and tried returning all settings to default, shutting down and restarting and returning the settings to optimal. I also noticed in the NVIDIA control panel that the settings were specifically for a single monitor.

Net results of resetting, now the color distortion effect has switched over to the merc's skin and water surfaces instead of the rock and wood I reported in my initial post.    :D

[Art Blade]

Note to self: Maybe my motherboard has got an onboard vid output ("vid card") but I use a different hardware component (a real vid card, hehe) so the OS thinks I might use two monitors.

Mandru, sorry to hear that you are the trouble magnet you thought you were.  ;D

There is only one option no one has mentioned (and I hope it's not what's happening). Your vid card has croaked. But I don't believe that. If I were you, I'd install the old driver again, because it worked.

[TopHat01]

Try a complete uninstall and reinstall of the latest official (make sure it's WHQL signed and not a beta version) driver. I'd start by downloading Driver Sweeper to safely and properly remove the driver and all related registry entries it leaves behind.

I'd also suggest reading over this TweakGuides article that details how to complete a fresh install of the latest drivers, and how to optimize it.

Hope you get it sorted out.

[Art Blade]

indeed sometimes a simple un- and reinstallation helps  :) (as D_B said before, maybe the installation process got interrupted or compromised)

[PZ]

Any resolution to your driver issue, mandru?

[mandru]

Uhh...

I've resolved to live with it rather than take any other risks and really foul up the game.  ;D

Yes I have always been a weirdness magnet and I don't think I've ever owned a piece of machinery that hasn't required some kind of quirky w@&k around to get it to do what I want.

Sometime I'll have to tell you about my 62 International Travelall wagon that had the 3 speed on the column and how the shift stick broke off in my hand leaving a 1 inch stub while maneuvering on a busy street in Seattle during rush hour and how I just happened to have an antique glass doorknob I'd found earlier in the day sitting on the bench seat next to me.

Yeah, I got angels looking over me but I think they are all comedians or cheapskates!  ::)

[Art Blade]

 ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D :-X

[Dweller_Benthos]

Sometime I'll have to tell you about my 62 International Travelall wagon that had the 3 speed on the column and how the shift stick broke off in my hand leaving a 1 inch stub while maneuvering on a busy street in Seattle during rush hour and how I just happened to have an antique glass doorknob I'd found earlier in the day sitting on the bench seat next to me.

Something like that happened to my brother's van way back when. Only something inside broke and it would only do first & reverse (or was it fourth and reverse? Something inconvenient anyway) lukicly he got it home and we disconnected the shift mechanism on the column and ran a steel rod down through the floor and attached it to the transmission there. He just had to remember up was down shift and down was upshift.... hehe

[Art Blade]

He just had to remember up was down shift and down was upshift.... hehe

Reminds me of someone I used to hang out with. He once got bored while driving and then got this stupid idea to cross his legs so he'd have to brake with the gas-foot and hit gas with the brake-foot, so to speak. It certainly was funny until he needed to brake but instead accelerated and jumped full throttle at a car waiting for a traffic light to go green.. and made the insurance of the other car pay for his own car. Incredible hehe

[mandru]

I've been playing with this silly glitch from the new driver and have come across some amusing situations.

It appears that my initially loaded game file has been corrupted so that in certain lighting conditions. among which moonlight has the most influence, the surface textures and skinning of different objects are being mixed up.  Some of the dead mercs are covered with wild tattoos that I suspect reflect the game designer's notes for how a body is shaped and where they should flex to appear lifelike and even my buddies and Jackal are sporting new skin ink.

I think that if I remove and reinstall FC2 now that this driver update is in place it would clear it up but I'm not through playing with it yet.  :P

I need to go back into my notes on IrFanView and figure out yet again how to compress and post some of these screen shots I've made if for no other reason than to get them off my hard drive.  Crud!  My memory is becoming like Swiss cheese. So many holes.  If I don't practice using a techie skill at least once a week I have to go back and relearn it all over again.

I've got an oddly skinned hand held map of Sefapane that will make you bust a gut.  Now where did I leave my brain?  ::)

[Art Blade]

Good read, mandru :)

IrfanView: Hit CTRL-R to resize your picture (especially when larger than 1024*768) and maintain aspect ratio, I prefer to resize to 1024 (from 1900*1200) which decreases the file size already.

Then hit S to save the current picture which will cause a save file dialog. Look down at the bottom of that dialog, there are checkboxes, check: Show options dialog. Check: Details. Now you should see everything important. Before you save, decide which extension (image type) you want, go for JPG. The options dialog is what you're looking for, there is a new small window now that shows the save options for JPEG files, there is a slider at the top of that window which allows you to adjust the quality. I prefer 85% quality, my pics are detailed enough yet small enough (around 100kb). Then save...  :)

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, I'd like to see some of those screenshots, if only to try to figure out what the problem is. Usually that sort of thing only happens when the texture files are missing and it replaces them with whatever it can find. But, since the FC2 game files are one big compressed file, I can't see only part of it going corrupt and the rest still working enough so that the game will even load up.

[Art Blade]

Maybe it's a memory allocation problem, like the file is ok but gets scrambled inside the vid card? That could be a driver problem or a vid card problem.

[Dweller_Benthos]

or a heat problem, I suppose. Hard to say. My first impulse in any "weird" computer situation is to clean it out first thing, make sure all the dust is out and cooling fins are clear, make sure all fans are working. Then, see how it goes and w@&k up from there, do software updates/reinstalls, then, when all else fails, look at the hardware and see if it might be failing physically.

[Art Blade]

good point, heat.. never underestimate overheating  ;) or overclocked? If you set the driver to OC the vid card, that may also cause weird effects.

[mandru]

Thanks Art for the refresh, it helped me zero right in on what I needed in my notes and this time I tried out the feature that compresses and renames entire batches all at once!  My 350 screen shots were converted in a flash!

I also need to give DB a big  :-X for mentioning the batching capabilities of InFranView. Very helpful.
(link to reference)http://openworldgames.org/owg/forums/index.php?topic=79.msg8630#msg8630

On to the slide show.  ;D

[smg id="2417" align=center width=210]

The labels covering the map are all stickers or warning signs somewhere through out the game and I've only seen a couple of them.

That means more times playing through to find them all!   :-X



[smg id="2418" align=center width=210]

A look at some flash skin art


[smg id="2419" align=center width=210]

Here's a rock all cammo'ed up as day glow leaves.


[smg id="2420" align=center width=210]

This decking is skinned with the texture maps for fore arms and hands as well as all those blue ears.  On a merc (where they belong) when this is acting up their ears can be brown through crimson.

[Art Blade]

Very unique screenshots there, mandru  ;D ;D ;D :-X Crazy. Your game has seriously screwed up  ;D

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yes, I don't think this is an overheat problem, though there's a slight chance it could be, but I really think your game files are corrupted.

[PZ]

Very interesting - you mentioned something about a re-install - have you tried just returning all in-game video settings to default and then starting a brand new fresh game rather than a saved game?  I doubt it would make a difference, but you never know.

[Art Blade]

Good point. That is something I'd have done myself, but it hasn't occurred to me to mention it here. Nice, PZ :) :-X