Did Rockstar do away with rain collision detection

[CJEcstasy]

Im having the same problem on a 4870 1gb 9.4 catalyst drivers, i am using a tweaked rage_postfx shader file but doubt that would be affecting rain etc. Its nothing major, just a little weird. Has anyone here reported this to rockstar?

 

 

[davetheshrew]

i get rain inside the subways and under bridges, also rain isnt like it was before, i used to be able to see drops of rain coming down from the sky, now all i can see is shiny floors and the odd droplet.Its definatly patch 1.04 that has done this, im going to ask the dude who made visualIV mod if he can sort it because im not banking on a patch 1.5.

[CharmingCharlie]

From what I see from the limited amount of posting is this seems to be an ATI issue, I have two machines here both with Nvidia cards and both updated to 1.0.4.0 and I haven't seen any change in the rain.

[CJEcstasy]

 

From what I see from the limited amount of posting is this seems to be an ATI issue

Thats what I think as well, and I also have the same as u dave, shiny ground and the odd drop of rain but then again sometimes it poors down (mostly only when there's lightening). So I put it down to some rain being heavier than others, but the indoor/underneath objects rain shouldn't be normal. We have the same GPU so most likely have a similar experience

[CharmingCharlie]

OK I have added a poll to see just what is going on, I think I covered all the bases. I am really starting to think this is an ATI problem myself but I guess the poll will show us one way or another.

[CJEcstasy]

 

I recently had gone back to the Catalyst 9.1 drivers because I heard that the z fighting issue wasn't there in that version. Well it didn't solve the z fighting issue for me, BUT it did fix the problem with the rain raining while under abridge or inside certain buildings(like playboy Xs apartment.) But the thing is, I get like 15 fps less with those drivers on average according to the benchmark.

I can confirm for ATi users that catalyst drivers 9.1 solves the rain issue, and strangely yes it does lower the benchmark test by >15fps. However I havent noticed any difference when it comes to in game performance?

 

 

[mkey82]

whoops, I miss-voted. I wanted to choose the "I'm an ATI user and DO NOT have the strange rain issue".

[CharmingCharlie]

Ok guys firstly Rockstar do know about this problem, they have been in touch with me and asked me to try and get as much information as I can about the issue.

 

So this is where you guys come in, if you have a problem with the rain then you need to firstly ensure you are running a completely clean vanilla install of GTA 4. That means NO mods whatsoever, no matter how insignificant you may think a mod is. That also includes any trainers you may be running and it also includes the No DVD securom fix.

 

If after reverting back to the retail unmodded GTA (including using the DVD in the drive) you still experience the rain then it is important for you to post as MUCH information as you can. In here post :-

• Your graphics card
• Your CPU
• Your Ram
• The version of the game you are running
• The driver version for your GPU
• A summary of your GTA 4 settings (ie low/medium or medium/high)
• Whether the game is modded or not
• Brief description of what is wrong with the rain.

If you want Rockstar to fix this issue then you need to give them as much information as you can.

 

CJEcstasy = I was wondering is it possible for you to revert your GTA 4 back to the vanilla unmodified version of the game. I can appreciate you don't consider a "tweaked rage_postfx shader file" might effect things, however we have to eliminate all possible "additional" reasons why this might be happening.

[CJEcstasy]

Yeah thats fine man I will install the catalyst drivers I originally had the problem on, restore the original files I have "tweaked" which is only the visualsettings, rage_postfx + coronas file(in pc/textures folder) and report back using your criteria. Im not home atm but will update u soon

[davetheshrew]

ok rig is in my sig.

cat version 9.7 WHQL

high textures, everything else high exept for water on medium.

reverted back to normal, no MoDs

Again shiny floors with no rain, i can be in a subway or pretty much under anything and i see light rain, never see heavy rain unless in a storm. when outside there is defo no rain, just the odd droplet. is that cool Charlie? im happy to provide any info to sort this for ati users

[CharmingCharlie]

Yep that is just the kind of info we want, we need to give Rockstar some information to go on. I know it's tempting to just post "oi the rain is f*cked, fix it" but that doesn't help anyone, least of all you. So by giving as much information as you can we can show Rockstar it isn't a modding issue and we can help them narrow down just what the problem is.

 

We also need more people to post that have this problem, so if there is anyone reading this and suffering the strange rain then please post and vote so we can get an idea of how wide spread the issue is. I will keep bumping this topic every day (don't think it would help to have it pinned since people tend to ignore pinned topics).

[Hydro_PT]

My rain is absolutely fine, no matter what patch I use. In fact I think that the different types of rain Rockstar put in the game are quite beautiful.

 

I see rain where it is supposed to be visible and I don't see rain where it isn't supposed to be visible (like in a tunnel, under a bridge, inside the safehouse, etc).

 

There's one thing I shall complain about though. You know that when it's raining, the road is wet (dunno what's the right word in English, but I'm sure you understood what I mean) and the car handles differently, and you also see water coming from the tires and leaving a mark on the asphalt.

 

Now the above is perfectly fine when you're on an open road, but it makes no sense when you're in a tunnel. If you ever drove in the Booth Tunnel while raining, you'll see that the road behaves exactly like if it was raining on it. Pretty weird, considering that I don't see any rain.

 

PS: I'm a NVIDIA user btw.

 

EDIT: Hmm correction lol. The road isn't wet and you see smoke out of the tires, not water. But the sound of the rain and the car's "rain handling" is present. Not the water effects though, I got that wrong. This is when you're on a tunnel, of course, out of it everything is normal.

Edited July 27, 2009 by Hydro_PT

[CJEcstasy]

Im not sure this is something R* should be dealing with? Could it not be down to ATI drivers? nVidia users have normal rain and I now have normal rain with Catalyst 9.1 drivers. Dave could u install Catalyst 9.1 and see if that fixes anything for u, theres no performance drop at all and if anything may be a little smoother.

Edited July 27, 2009 by CJEcstasy

[jeff69dini]

I have bad rain in most buildings, like safehouses, weird to see the rain in buildings, lol, using Catalyst 9.7 drivers, the newest, but also had same problem on 9.6 as well

 

Your graphics card Sapphire Radeon HD 4650 512 meg

Your CPU AMD Athlon 64x2 2.10 Ghz

Your Ram 2 GB

The version of the game you are running latest with patch 1.0.4 no mods of any kind

The driver version for your GPU Catalyst 9.7

A summary of your GTA 4 settings (ie low/medium or medium/high) Default settings upon install, no changes

Whether the game is modded or not Nope

Brief description of what is wrong with the rain. Usually safehouses, only seemed to appear with latest patch, I never had any trouble on older patches though

Edited July 28, 2009 by jeff69dini

[kingddd]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7U4PlNiJVs

 

view it in HD mode. I run a 9800GTX+ with 186.18 nvidia driver no rain problem.

[truehighroller]

I too am a victim of the weird rain issue and I have an ATI setup as well. I am on 9.7 now and can't, go back to 9.1, I think. I am running Windows 7.

[BKwegoharder]

I'm thinking about permanently going back to the 9.1 drivers until this issue is fixed.

 

And to contribute my FULL info for Rockstar and ATI to help fix.

 

I have an

 

Intel core i7 920 stock clocked

ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB version on Catalyst 9.7 drivers. The longest I could remember having the issue was back to 9.4, but I could have had it for longer. 9.1 drivers solve the issue completely for me. It gives me 15 fps less though in the benchmark.

4GB DDR3 RAM

Western Digital Caviar 640GB HDD 7200RPM.

 

The system is a Dell Studio XPS 435MT

 

I played with the vanilla GTA 4 and I got the problems. It's been happening on patch 1.0.4 and 1.0.3. I can't remember anything with 1.0.2. I might have had it back then, or I might not. This really seems like a driver issue though.

 

I normally play the game with Medium Textures, High Reflections, Very High Water Quality, High Shadow Quality, Highest Texture Filtering, 22 view distance, 10 Detail Distance, 33 Vehicle Density, 0 Shadow Density. All at a 1600 x 900 60Hz resolution. But I get the issues on all settings, from 848 x 480 resolution with all settings at the lowest, or with medium settings at 1280 x 720.

 

Right now my game is modded with Simples Trainer(That trainer makes no changes to the graphics or any of the games files), but I have gotten the problem for a very long time before I made any changes to the game. I got the problems with a fresh game with even no commandline.txt file.

 

 

The problem is that when the weather changes and it starts to rain, the rain falls while I'm under bridges or even inside houses. Like Playboy X's apartment. It also rains while I'm in the tunnel that leads to Alderney from Algonquin.

Edited July 31, 2009 by BKwegoharder

[CJEcstasy]

It gives me 15 fps less though in the benchmark.

Yes it does for some reason Catalyst 9.1 and the benchmark tool dont work well together, but in game performance should be the same so it doesnt really matter.

[davetheshrew]

so whats going to happen about this. are our posts going to be submitted to R* charlie? If not im making a description of fault for R* and ATI because im not sure if this happened because of patch 1.3 or if its an ati driver issue.

[CharmingCharlie]

All I can tell you is Rockstar are aware of the issue and erm added it to the list I guess . They can see what you post here and I have seen them in this thread several times. So don't worry that the issue isn't known to Rockstar. The problem is what to do about it ? I think we have shown it isn't "modding" related, it seems to be ATI users suffering from this problem and the impression I am getting it is Catalyst driver 9.7 that is causing the problem.

 

Now if this is a driver issue it falls squarely in ATI's camp to sort it out. It is possible they did something with their drivers between 9.1 and 9.7 that gives people a boost in fps but erm "cuts corners" in the rendering. It is possible now that the issue is known ATI will fix it in their next driver release (the likely solution in my books). However for now you just have to be patient I am afraid, if I hear anything more about this issue I will post here.

 

All I can say for now is keep posting as much information as you can and get as many people as you can posting their experiences about this issue.

[BKwegoharder]

I wouldn't say that it is Catalyst driver 9.7 that started the problem. I know for sure I got this problem with 9.6 and 9.5. There is also a video with someone using 9.4 and he had the same problem as well. I have the Catalyst driver 9.3 installation on my pc, I'm thinking about switching up to that to see if I still have the problem. Then I'll try to download 9.2 and see if I have the problem. That way we can pinpoint the exact driver version that caused this issue. If I don't have the problem with 9.3 then we know that it was something done with the transition to 9.4 that caused the issue, if I do have the problem, then we know that it is either 9.2 or 9.3 that caused the issue.

 

UPDATE: I just checked catalyst 9.3 and I still have the problem. So it was either the jump to 9.2 from 9.1 that caused the issue, or the jump from 9.2 to 9.3 that caused the issue.

 

UPDATE 2: I just checked catalyst 9.2 and my rain is perfectly normal. I am also noticing that I hear the noise that the rain drops make when falling on the trashcans and dumpters. I am also noticing that I see the individual drops that the rain makes on the ground. I don't think that I had those effects before. but they are really really small things that don't matter. i just noticed it when seeing how the rain reacts. I'm also noticing that it seems like the rain fall doesn't come down as much as it seemed like it did with 9.3-9.7.

 

so yeah it seems like driver number 9.3 started the issue. I don't think that it was done to gain fps though since I get lower fps in the benchmark, and it is not raining in the benchmark. In game I barely notice a difference in performance, but I barely notice frame rate differences to begin with.

Edited August 1, 2009 by BKwegoharder

[truehighroller]

I can concur with the CCC 9.3 point he makes. I installed 9.3 because I have Windows 7 and it is the lowest I can go certified driver wise and I still have the issues.

[CJEcstasy]

UPDATE 2: I just checked catalyst 9.2 and my rain is perfectly normal. I am also noticing that I hear the noise that the rain drops make when falling on the trashcans and dumpters. I am also noticing that I see the individual drops that the rain makes on the ground. I don't think that I had those effects before. but they are really really small things that don't matter. i just noticed it when seeing how the rain reacts. I'm also noticing that it seems like the rain fall doesn't come down as much as it seemed like it did with 9.3-9.7.

Im still on Catalyst 9.1 and I have similar/same effects to those u described..

 

 

[truehighroller]

I can see the rain but, I can't see it hitting the ground like yours is and I can faintly see it coming down in side buildings as well.

[mkey82]

Finally got around to it.

 

 

 

 

You can't see it ultra well, but it's visible there is some rain indoors.

[chrisblake]

hi people! was there ever a real fix found for this? i use nvidia gtx250 x2 sli and i have same problem! rains indoors and has no collision on ground! using the latest nvidia graphics drivers downloaded just last week but i still had this problem before i updated my drivers! im using patch 1070. windows 7 32bit. dose anyone know how to fix this? thx

[iTRiP]

...

Edited August 18, 2012 by iTRiP

[chrisblake]

so no rain fix for patch 1070 then?

[ikt]

Patch 3 works perfectly.

[jnzooger]

If you want to complain about Rain going though buildings, play LA Noire and get a hidden car during the rain. It will be clearly pouring inside the garage.