GTA4, my ATI X1950PRO and the Patch

[belinda]

HI FOLKS,

 

since some of us still use a member of ati's x1900 or x1600 gfx card families, i will report my experiences with and without the first patch for gta4 and also ati's new catalyst v8.12. there seems to be a 12 pictures per post limit here on gtaforums so some of the screens are behind clickable (screenshot) links.

 

-> SHADOW FLICKERING

BEFORE: shadows drawn by buildings and other static objects were flickering most of the time.

AFTER: shadow flickering is gone with the patch, they are drawn as intended. still ugly as hell with that pixelation at the edges. the shadow density slider ingame is not improving shadow quality. it specifies how far away the pc-only dynamic shadows are rendered (see below). raBBish posted a way to disable shadows with some heavy drawbacks (e.g. no fps gain, gameworld much darker than before). perfect would be a ingame solution with three settings:

- static shadows on/off (shadows from static objects like buildings and bridges drawn by the sun)

- dynamic shadows on/off (e.g. car, pedestrian shadows drawn by sun and other dynamic lights like car headlights, see below)

- shadow density slider (setting the draw distance of the pc-only dynamic shadows when enabled)

 

-> NO DYNAMIC SHADOWS

BEFORE: dynamic shadows drawn by car headlights or some other light sources are not rendered at all no matter what i do with the shadow density slider ingame. it's no x1xxx cards only problem, there are some other threads about this. i would like to know if any ati x1xxx series card owner is able to see this shadows so please post your experiences.

AFTER: still no dynamic shadows here. not that i really miss them, would be another thing trying to kill my precious fps, but a bug is a bug. since i can't get those shadows to work i needed to get some pictures here and here, i hope swsuk and Wreckless don't mind me using them.

 

-> MISSING VISUAL CAR DAMAGE

BEFORE: only parts of the possible car damage were shown for x1xxx family card owners. the chassis never got any visual damage even from heavy crashes.

AFTER: car damage is rendered as intended, now it's much more fun to crash into jams with high speed (screenshot).

 

-> INTERNET SITES BUG

BEFORE: when going online, all the ingame websites are drawn incorrect, especially the pictures. most of the text is still readable so all mission actions should be possible though.

AFTER: nothing changed, still everything is messed up (screenshot).

 

-> MISSING INDOOR & OUTDOOR LIGHTING (thanks sky4ce for the hint with outdoor lights)

BEFORE: some indoor locations like pool hall, internet cafe and strip club, but outdoor areas as well, have bugged lighting. these areas are way too dark, like some lights are "switched off". occurs by manually going to an bugged indoor location (e.g. internet cafe) or while automatic mission cutscenes are played (e.g. vlad's bar).

AFTER: nothing changed as far as i can tell, still wrong and ugly, and some game elements like playing pool are unplayable.

i had a mission in booth tunnel, blocking the streets with a truck. there are no light sources rendered inside, despite the many neon tubes on the ceiling. can anyone confirm this as a bug, or is it meant to be dark in here.

another interesting find, when entering the triangle strip club in northern gardens, the lights "switch off" when the camera position (not nico's position) enters the main room. so when slowly going from the small entrance room with the arcade game into the main strip hall, the lights suddenly switch off.

 

-> PIXELATED LIGHT BLOOM

BEFORE: lighting looks pixelated ingame on x1xxx cards. screens don't show it's full glory, much worse ingame while moving around. i think it's because the x1xxx cards are not able to do fp16 filtering for modern hdr-rendering effects. i had this issue in some other games too (e.g. the witcher, mass effect). it has nothing to do with the ingame depth-of-field / motion blur feature, which can be enabled / disabled by pressing "P" ingame. i prefer to switch that off too, my eyes hurt when using it for a longer period of time.

AFTER: same story, nothing changed here (screenshot).

 

i disable bloom completely to get rid of that pixelated lighting effects. first you have to make your gamefiles moddable. then navigate to common\data\visualsettings.dat, open it with notepad and look for these entries:

 

misc.BloomIntensityClamp.HD 10misc.BloomIntensityClamp.SD 10.00misc.BloomIntensityClamp.SD.ps3 5.00

 

to deactivate bloom altogether change them to (screenshot):

 

misc.BloomIntensityClamp.HD 0misc.BloomIntensityClamp.SD 0.00misc.BloomIntensityClamp.SD.ps3 0.00

 

to reduce light blooming just enter lower values like (never tried that so far):

 

misc.BloomIntensityClamp.HD 3misc.BloomIntensityClamp.SD 3.00misc.BloomIntensityClamp.SD.ps3 3.00

 

 

-> MYSTERIOUS FOG AROUND NICO (MISSING TEXTURES OR GEOMETRY) (thanks nexus99 & genuf)

BEFORE: sometimes geometry is not completey rendered and the area around niko is covered with a high fog layer. if you move the mouse or walk away, it disappears suddenly. affected gamers can experience it in a safehouses on the second island (the one with the laptop in the kitchen).

AFTER: nothing changed. try monkeymhz's ultimate gta4 performance fix to get rid of that. it's a long post and has some minor side effects (e.g. water reflections get a little more pixelated) but it worked for me.

 

-> CRASHING TO DESKTOP ON GAME LAUNCH FOR GERMAN PLAYERS

BEFORE: after clicking "spielen" on my rssc launcher, the game crashed back to desktop at the credit screens about 4 out of 5 tries. sometimes it took me up to 10 tries to start the game. i suspect the integrated live software for being responsible for the crashes, it happens right in the moment when one of those live popups at the bottom of the screen should come up.

AFTER: game is starting fine since patching, seems like it's fixed.

 

-> PERFORMANCE

BEFORE: playing at 1280x800 (on my 1680x1050 lcd native resolution is not possible -> heavy fps hit) with the ingame settings at medium, medium, 20,20,20,0 gave me a somewhat playable fps. integrated benchmark shows ~24fps at those settings, but because of its short running time and lacking variety it's no good game performance indicator if you ask me. rain is always a big fps killer, i would love to see an option to switch it off. and i experience lower fps at around 7-8am and 7-8pm (ingame of course). seems like while the transition from night to day and vice versa is happening the additional light sources (rendered at night) and the sun shadows (rendered at daytime) are rendered concurrently for about 1-2 ingame hours which is a fps hit on my system.

AFTER: i experience a little bit less fps as before while driving around, so i reduced ingame sliders to 20, 15, 15, 0 to cope with this. no other drawbacks or improvements noticeable.

 

-> NEW BUGS AFTER PATCHING

i read something about camera problems after patching, like the camera going up or down or all around all the time. since i am not affected with this, i can't say anything regarding this. but when i do a benchmark ingame i loose all sound effects after it's done. reloading doesn't help, i have to restart the whole game and load my save to get the sfx back. definitely a bug, but not hard to come by. just restart your game after benchmarking

 

-> ATI CATALYST DRIVER

some will mention now, hey you are using a very dated catalyst driver. but let me explain - i tried the new official v8.12 when it came out and it introduced very heavy stuttering after a few minutes playtime. while driving around fps suddenly dropped to 1-2fps, just like the game constantly loading data but with no heavy hdd activity (regarding to hdd led). it felt like the memory leak bug some people suffer from. since i never had that stuttering before with the old catalyst v8.6 i reverted back and the stuttering was gone. despite the new stuttering i did not notice any changes in visual quality (i was praying for better shadow quality) or performance in cat v8.12. so i will stay with catalyst v8.6 until ati releases a cat with real optimizations for gta4 (cat v8.12 release information does not mention gta4 at all).

 

-> CONCLUSION

for german x1xxx family card owners the patch brings the most important bug fixes. no more shadow flickering, full car damage and no more ctd's at the game starts credit screens. a little less performance ingame maybe (may differs from machine to machine, or depending on ingame setup). so my conclusion is patch the game asap, it's not the big performance boost some people expected, but fixes the mentioned bugs. updating to ati's new driver is another story. i wouldn't recommend updating it if you have no serious graphic issues NOT mentioned here (e.g. nothing being rendered at all). it does not bring a big fps boost for most users, and don't forget there is not even a small note about gta4 in the ati catalyst v8.12 release notes.

 

-> MY SYSTEM

amd athlon x2 6000+

2x 1gb mdt ddr2-800

asrock alivedual-esata2

his x1950pro agp 512mb turbo

soundblaster live 1024 player

windows xp pro sp3

directx nov2008

ati catalyst v8.6

everything else up-to-date

Edited December 26, 2008 by belinda

[genuf]

Hey. Do you have blacked out interiors?

 

I mean, whenever i am inside a building such as safe house, clucking bell, internet cafe, CUTSCENES, everything it's too dark. I mean, the lights do not affect the textures making all atmosphere too hard to see. I cannot play the main story like this cause i cant see caracters faces.

 

Im with an x1900xt, and the patch didn't fix that important issue.

 

It's a game bug or its something i can tweak by my self? I tried everything in CCC.

 

 

[belinda]

hi genuf,

 

yes i had this issue a few times. some indoor places seem to not render all light sources properly. this affects both mission cut-scenes and manual approaches (e.g. going into the internet cafe). but i'm not sure if those places have a permanent lighting bug, or it's related to ingame-time or just random. and i'm not sure if it's related to the x1900 series of cards only, so i didn't include it in my post above. i never read an official post by rockstar acknowledging this bug. if you have any further information please let me know, so i can update my first post when necessary.

[genuf]

Thanks for reply.

 

Well i thought that when rockstar said that x1900xt shadows will be fixed, they mean not also the glitching outdoors but the inexistence of light indoors too.

 

You have an x1xxx vga. Are experience the same problems?

[Reignfire]

Pool hall and internet are still broken here, even after the patch. On the plus side, shadows no longer flicker and vehicles show damage now.

[belinda]

@ genuf

yes. i add them to the above post so anyone interested has all x1900 related issues together. maybe i spice things up with some screens later.

 

@ Reignfire

i've never been in a pool hall so far, but some indoor lights are definitely bugged.

Edited December 14, 2008 by belinda

[Fionbarr]

Very well summarized, Belinda!! I got black interiors as well, in cutscenes AND in the internet-cafe...not to mention the pool billiard bar! I shared the same hope as genuf that Rockstar would fix this REALLY annoying bug...but as we can see, we have to wait a little longer! BTW, i got an ATI x1900xtx!

[Deerro]

another very well written topic about 1900/1950 series problem and not sticked to the top!

how can then people from R* noticed it?? ADMINS please stick this to important or something ... btw:

belinda, thx for the trick with bloom, ill try it .)

[AsC3]

could someone send this post to rockstar????

on steamforuns ?

Thanks!

[kbarber29]

I have a building tearing problem. Buildings in the distance tear up like crazy. x1950 AGP 256 Mb owner.

 

I can testify that there seems to be no difference in the number of shadows one sets it to: 0 vs. 16. I see no difference.

 

 

 

 

[belinda]

@ Fionbarr & Deerro

thanks for your feedback. i found the bloom trick in this thread, described by Delacroix. i think most people missed this so i included the fix in my post.

 

@ AsC3

you can do with this post whatever you like, e.g. post it on the steam forums. you can use my pics as well. i don't have a steam forum account, but keep checking there from time to time too. a user called ramzy made a good troubleshooting thread worth reading:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/show...ad.php?t=762088

 

@ kbarber29

please try to make some screens showing your building tearing problem. if other x1900 users have it too i include it in the main post here. and i can't really tell a difference when changing that shadow slider. just to make sure those ugly shadows don't drain any more performance than necessary i set it to 0.

[Fionbarr]

Hey, maybe you all already know this, but you can "fix" the blacked out interiors by setting the contrast to maximum...at least in the cutscenes and the safehouse you can see almost everything with more or less normal colors...give it a try!

[Deerro]

sorry, but i really dont want to play with my contrast every time i enter a dark place ...

[Fionbarr]

Well, to me its more important to see anything than just stare at a black screen and hear some kind of radio show...just wanted to suggest a little help for all of us here! :-)

[genuf]

Yeah, but even if you max out the contrast, you'll see everything lightless, still dificult to see for me, specially the faces expresions.

 

hope we(cause rockstar it's kind of incompetent), can found a solution for this. May be it's a catalyst issue.

 

Have someone tried the game with earlier drivers, catalyst 7.x for example?

 

 

[Fionbarr]

strange, because with me pushing the contrast to the limit makes cutscenes look almost normal, including all colors, facial expressions and so on...hmm, in the end i agree with genuf in that we probably have to find a solution for this on our own!

[genuf]

I'll post some pics when i've the time. Could you Fionbarr post some of your game to see your contrast tweak?

[genuf]

Hey, somebody figured out some solution to the blacked out interiors?

 

maybe some modder could know wich file we can mod to try solving this issue.

 

Or maybe Rockstar Toronto if you're reading this please give us some feed.

 

 

[Deerro]

i think, that this is a problem, that start from ati 1900/1950 light-rendering process .. its a little bit different from what lightning/shadowing system is used in the game .. so u cant fix that, by modding some files ... my opinion

[sky4ce]

as I said before (in other topic about 1950 problems) the lightning problem - its problem of gta`s render and not an ati 1950 problem, cauze there is no kind of lights that 1950 cant support. And of course ati 1950 has no its own 'light-rendering process' - its nonsense. In my opinion its bug in shaders, i think those lights (which doesnt work on 1950) is light-maps. Lightmaps draws by shaders. Unfortunately Rockstar doesnt put open source shaders to the resources, only linked, its very pity, couze I really knows what shaders is and I can programm them , but there is only linked shaders which no one can modify.

Btw , there is a lot of those lights, not only in pool or cutscenes, there much more places where the light should be but we (owners of 1950) cant see them. Just look some youtubes videos and you will see...especially in night town...

[belinda]

 

And of course ati 1950 has no its own 'light-rendering process' - its nonsense.

it's using a unique set of shader files, sometimes referred to as render path. goto common\shaders in your gta 4 install dir, there are different folders for the most common gfx card families. for the x1xxx series gta 4 is using the win32_30_low_ati folder. inside are precompiled hlsl shader files which makes it hard (impossible?) to tweak or modify certain effects (e.g. deactivate or beautify shadows). maybe the missing lights bug for ati's x1xxx series cards is buried somewhere in there.

 

 

there is a lot of those lights, not only in pool or cutscenes, there much more places where the light should be but we (owners of 1950) cant see them. Just look some youtubes videos and you will see...especially in night town.

yea your're right. i had the chance to play gta 4 on two other computers next to mine on a private lan. many more lights in different locations are missing, not only in certain indoor places.

Edited December 18, 2008 by belinda

[sky4ce]

 

it's using a unique set of shader files, sometimes referred to as render path. goto common\shaders in your gta 4 install dir, there are different folders for the most common gfx card families. for the x1xxx series gta 4 is using the win32_30_low_ati folder. inside are precompiled hlsl shader files which makes it hard (impossible?) to tweak or modify certain effects (e.g. deactivate or beautify shadows). maybe the missing lights bug for ati's x1xxx series cards is buried somewhere in there.

 

you cant modify compiled shaders...the same as you cant modify compiled exe`s (any win32 programm). There is only solution to disassemble those shaders...but in this case first of all its really difficult to fully understand the disassembled code couze of complication of modern many-instructions shaders...and 2nd - you cant know exactly what uniforms and samplers are passed into the current shader...and there exists others things which makes our mission(modify shaders) is impossible...

Btw, if you Rockstar Toronto read this , can`t you please tell me - where in the game I can see the Parallax Occlusion technique ? ...couze I saw the gta_parallax_steep.fxc file in the common\shaders\win32_30_low_ati which contains in my opinion the Steep Parallax (or parallax occlusion) technique

 

[belinda]

 

Btw, if you Rockstar Toronto read this , can`t you please tell me - where in the game I can see the Parallax Occlusion technique ? ...couze I saw the gta_parallax_steep.fxc file in the common\shaders\win32_30_low_ati which contains in my opinion the Steep Parallax (or parallax occlusion) technique

it's used for gunshots in cars, walls and other stuff i think. just empty your pistol clip in some surfaces and watch the holes from different angles.

[sky4ce]

 

it's used for gunshots in cars, walls and other stuff i think. just empty your pistol clip in some surfaces and watch the holes from different angles.

is this true?! thanks belinda ))

..its strange , couze the holes from gunshots its first to what I have been saw ...and Iam did not saw parallax occlusion ...now I will go and try it again

[Zennor]

STICKY THIS POST! (please lol)

 

Great post, you know i've been searching for these answer for DAYS! (only got GTA IV 4/5 days ago after finding there had been a patch). ATI x1950 pro 512MB owner here and omg the dark rooms are such a big problem, i LOVE pool and i can't play also darts for that matter, all these mini games ruined! I start to play GTA then realise when i have to go indoors (except bowling hall) i just switch off the game. No fun when you cant see sh*t!

 

Also why did they make it for PC's that most people wont even own yet? whats with that? i thought AoC was bad but blimey, talk about cutting out half your sales for making the specs to much! Might aswell shoot yourself in the foot

 

Anyways sorry, rant over lol. great post OP, hope they sticky this for ya, cause theres still some of us AGP people around that spent a bomb on a perfectly good card

[sky4ce]

belinda, yes, you`re right , the gunshots holes draws with POM. Also Iam noticed the POM shader on the sand decals:

...but look at those strips . Its because of poor quality of pom-shader algorithm.

 

offtopic: btw, in my own mod for stalker shadow of chernobyl there is a much more better pom shader ))

http://img56.imageshack.us/img56/1230/screen1xv0.jpg

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/6844/screen2vk9.jpg

http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/3177/screen3sv5.jpg

http://img364.imageshack.us/img364/4169/screen4jl2.jpg

[belinda]

i find the effect quite appealing while driving around on sand ingame. your screenshot from this angle don't do it justice

 

now back to topic please.

 

you said you are familiar with shader programming, sky4ce? can you create an empty dummy shader file (has to be in correct syntax, but should do nothing visually and should cost no performance) and compile it with microsofts hlsl shader compiler? i want to start some experiments.

[sky4ce]

 

you said you are familiar with shader programming, sky4ce? can you create an empty dummy shader file (has to be in correct syntax, but should do nothing visually and should cost no performance) and compile it with microsofts hlsl shader compiler? i want to start some experiments.

 

I will try...

[belinda]

@ sky4ce

thanks in advance, with that file i will try if we can bring gta4 to abstain from rendering shadows or other effects

 

@ all

updated some screens and information on the following topics:

-> MISSING INDOOR & OUTDOOR LIGHTING

-> PERFORMANCE

[sky4ce]

belinda, here you go - http://rapidshare.com/files/174871061/dummy.fxc.html

...but I think that it will don`t help you anyway...but you may try...