i may be **completely insane** by now after messing with this proggie and all it's settings but i would ALMOST swear this are subtle differences in just HOW BAD the banding gets when i switch between all the "present changer" options for forcing color...for example, i THINK the banding looks even WORSE when i select to force a2r10g10b10 instead of a8r8g8b8 (which looks very bad itself)....but i could be wrong....then reading iam's post i am getting more convinced the program doesn't seem to even affect the things it "ought" to, outside of the color banding issue i mean.....

received no email yet from the german author of the program.

on another note, there seems to be a "supersampling" check box as well which might have some impact for those lucky ATI users...???

i'm feeling a little bit like getting out my soldering iron and just messing with the chips on my geforce 6800. it would probably really be *bad* for the card....but would make me feel soooo much better right about now.....

Not likely, either this program is compatible with JFA-18 or it's not, on my machine it's not.
The subtle changes you detect are probably result of different weather, clouds position, etc.

If you want to be sure if this program effect JFA-18 or not:
Set some different option in the program, something you can't miss (like the wireframe view option). If you see no change, use the program on some other DX8 game so you could see what effect it should have had.

I agree with elix... or you're victim of a placebo effect

Don't forget DX7 support is experimental...

I wish EA would put a couple guys to work on a DX update for this game...

DOH!

It helps to test this program with F-18 when you actually check the "DX7 Support" plugin... it wasn't checked on my end!

But now, F-18 crash at startup, something to do with skunkctl.dll

I get that crash too...

the german author of the DirectX Tweaker program emailed me back tonight...this is what he had to say...his entire message is quoted here:


From : Ralf Kornmann
Reply-To : "Ralf Kornmann"
Sent : Friday, September 30, 2005 1:37 AM
To :
Subject : Re: banding issue

| | | Inbox


Hi Lowboy,


Somebody else reported this problem some time ago to us. But as we don't own this game I am not able to run any tests. The first problem with older games like this is the used API. As you already know it use DX7. The DirectX Tweaker is build around DX9. This makes it necessary to translate all DX7 calls to DX9 calls. The Tweaker contains a plugin for this job but it is still at a very basic state and does not work well with all games. Because of this before we can do anything about your special problem we need to make sure the DX7 to DX9 translator works for your game. If this do not work it will be hard to fix as we don't have the game to find the showstopper. After we have make sure that it can be run even with the Tweaker in the background we need to know the graphics feature that is cause the banding. From the screenshots I see there I am know and the difference between a GF 6XXX and older cards it looks like that the game used indexed textures for the banding parts. GF 6XXX doesn't support this anymore. In this case it looks like that the game don't use a 32 Bit texture it use only a 16 Bit texture. The index texture use a palette with 8 bits (or 256 gradations) for each colorchannel (red, green, blue). If you use a 16 Bit Texture you will get only 5 or 6 bits (32 or 64 gradations). This will cause the banding you can see. To easiest way to fix this would be changing the game code to use 32 Bit textures. This are supported from DX7. But as we don't have the code and the developer seems not willing to do this we have a big problem. The only way I can see at the moment is the emulation of index textures for the GF 6800 series. This is not easy but is possible. But as we don't own this game I need some support from someone who have a copy of it to run some tests for me. This is the only way we will have a possibility to find a working solution.


Best regards,
Ralf Kornmann
Lead developer
nonatainment

*************

Well...i will email him and inform him that i am not the guy to do any tests but that i really appreciate his input....i will remind him i am part of this community (i gave him this board address and address of iam's screenshots of banding) and that it was POSSIBLE someone with technical knowledge would contact him......and that i posted his email here. i think it was a cool thing of him to return my email in any case and it seems like we have some more info from another expert fellow to use.....

lowboy.

oh...and iam is right....it probably is THE PLACEBO EFFECT...i was soooo hoping the tweaker worked i fooled myself into it.....different cloud layers etc...sorry to get any hopes up....but on the crash issue....only the first posted (early) version even loads on my machine...the second one posted won't load due to a DLL error too....but the first one works well...even if it doesn't do a darn thing.

(and in case anyone was wondering why "i am not the guy to do any tests" it is because i have no real computer experience except pushing the "on" button and playing around with unfamiliar proggies like "tweaker" until i break things that my friendly neighborhood computer repair shop must then fix....the guy behind the counter knows my name....really. i am a nurse. i would volunteer to do more to fix this issue, but cannot do it in any meaningful or helpful way...)

i don't know what time it is in germany (130 am here in the hills of WV) but our new friend Ralf emailed me again.....read his message:

**************

The publication of my email is fine for me. But if it is possible can you please change my email addresse with the official address for the tweaker: dxtweaker@nonatainment.de ? I will get the emails from this account too but it will make it easier to sort for me.

I am try to get a copy of this game at the moment from a friend. But it is hard for games that are a littele bit dated. Because of this I can not make any promise.

Ralf Kornmann
nonatainment.


*****************

i will email him that if he should not be able to find a copy of the game, i will purchase one for him and send it to him. i suppose it is the least i can do.....i realize i am getting crazy now, but for me it would cost several hundred bucks to buy a new PCI Express Radeon card to make ONE GAME work...and if i can contribute to our community knowledge base at the same time as i shell out a few bucks on a used copy of jf18 on this issue it would be worth it for me....the pessimist in me says he can't fix it anyways...but i was always a gamblin' man.....


i guess at this point anyone willing to help him with the technical details or further testing should email him at the NEW email he provided.....if anyone is still interested.

lowboy.

I'm glad to see that someone think that it is not a lost cause.

I mailed him that I would be glad to help.