I have a 3970x OC'ed, MSI GTX 780 Ti, NOT using SWEET FX, and still using your original d3d8.ini file with your new beta rendering, and it has IMPROVED my FPS by 5 to 15 FPS depending on Internal or External view versus non-rendering . Also I have not gotten the strange front Camel reflection (yet), nore do I have any strange colors other people are complaining about.
As a side note: It did up my GPU temperatures from 45 degrees C, to 65 degrees C and it upped my D3D usage from 60% to 100% using the shadow render. So there is a price to pay for the additional "goodies" even on my PC.
Last edited by Panama Red; 02/01/1410:38 PM.
CPU = i9 11900K GPU = RTX 3080 Ti Monitor = ASUS ROG Swift PG32UQX 2160p G-sync
#3905639 - 02/01/1411:18 PMRe: DirectX 8 to 9 converter (January 1st) - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK
[Re: AnKor]
I don't get much stick time lately, but here's a quick campaign video showing what it looks like using AnKors Shadows. Great stuff AnKor. Thanks a ton for this!
AnKors Shadows (beta) + Vanilla WOFF (except for Aris's Cloud Mod) 720P) No SweetFX
Yes, the double cockpit was in the original OFF, and not WOFF (I know you warned us not to try it but I'm just a tinkerer at heart ).
I'm not sure if the reflective prop circle is a problem that should be fixed or is actually more true to life. I wish one of us had a real Camel to go check it out with.
I can confirm that the FPS hit drops to 4 from 10 if I turn off Nvidia's Ambient Occlusion.
The label off trick works to prevent the double cockpit issue in OFF but if you hit Tab to assign the next target the problem comes back even with the labels turned off.
Service To The Line, On The Line, On Time
US Army Ordnance Corps.
#3905687 - 02/02/1401:59 AMRe: DirectX 8 to 9 converter (January 1st) - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK
[Re: AnKor]
After further testing, I do see the "yellow" bridges and hanger tents with the render on, but they turn the correct colors when the render is turned off (this is without using SWEET FX).
CPU = i9 11900K GPU = RTX 3080 Ti Monitor = ASUS ROG Swift PG32UQX 2160p G-sync
#3905690 - 02/02/1402:08 AMRe: DirectX 8 to 9 converter (January 1st) - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK
[Re: AnKor]
I think the shadow on the prop is probably not too far off. A propeller will reflect light into the pilots eyes (which is why most are painted flat black on the face nowadays), so it doesn't seem unreasonable to see shadows cast on it.
In regards to testing, I've only had time for a little and confirm about a 50% drop in fps whenever I'm in the cockpit, little to none in external view. Also tested in CFS3, where it also worked (though the reflective planes are messed up as expected). It did seem to crash the game a lot, particularly when sweetfx was enabled. More details as I have time.
#3905698 - 02/02/1402:19 AMRe: DirectX 8 to 9 converter (January 1st) - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK
[Re: gecko]
Is this what you mean by the double cockpit? The image below alternates with the normal cockpit image as I turn my head with TrackIR. BTW, using an ATI 7870 with Catalyst 13.12 drivers.
There are no accidents and no fatal flaws in the machines; there are only pilots with the wrong stuff.
— Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff,1979.
#3905719 - 02/02/1403:50 AMRe: DirectX 8 to 9 converter (January 1st) - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK
[Re: AnKor]
My problem with a shadow being cast upon the prop isnt with if it could happen or not, its how its rendered in game. The shadow, to me at least, appears to be drawn as if the prop surface is horizontally flat like the lower wing, not vertical like the gauge panel in the cockpit. It also looks like its rendered just beyond the cockpit glass and not the few feet in front where the prop is located.. Maybe it's just me though...
Madmatt
I used to make computer games for a living so you didn't have to!
My Rig: CPU: i7 7700K o/c to 5Ghz GPU: EVGA FTW3 RTX 3080 RAM: 32GB G.SKILL RGB DDR4 (3600MHz) OS: Win10 x64 Storage: 2 x Samsung 960 Pro M.2 1TB SSD's, Samsung 870 QVO 2TB SATA SSD, 1 WD Passport 2TB USB HDD Display: ASUS 34" PG348Q, ASUS 27" VG278HE Thrustmaster A-10 Warthog HOTAS, MFG Crossfire Rudder Pedals, CH Pro Throttle TrackIR, Oculus Quest 2
#3905725 - 02/02/1404:22 AMRe: DirectX 8 to 9 converter (January 1st) - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK
[Re: AnKor]
So I tested it out and while it does have the odd rendering gltch,(when zoomed away from the plane, it sometimes does not render the shadow right next to the fuselage on my E.1, zoom it in and its fine) seems to work quite well! I get the prop shadows as well. I do not have the oddly colored bridges and hangars, I am running sweetFX.
#3905743 - 02/02/1405:16 AMRe: DirectX 8 to 9 converter (January 1st) - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK
[Re: AnKor]
2nd Batch of pics. All are done during campaign play (test pilot).
Notice also that there is a slight discoloration on the underside of the wings.
With the sun at my 2 c'clock, there is no shadow above the windscreen
Still going counterclockwise, with the sun at my 3 o'clock the shadow starts to appear.
Still turning the plane to show the shadow
Now, the sun is directly behind me and the full shadow of my cockpit view is there.
Another thing that I noticed was the shadow on wings anomaly. Here it is normally.
When I lower my head slightly down, parts of the shadow are missing. Almost seems similar to the instrument shadow anomaly I noticed in my previous post.
These pics as well as the previous ones were all taken with SweetFX enabled. The FPS drop and variability with it disabled was too noticeable.
#3905757 - 02/02/1406:20 AMRe: DirectX 8 to 9 converter (January 1st) - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK
[Re: AnKor]
Thanks for your work on this, just tried it out and it's pretty great! Only issue is the way certain bridges and buildings stick out now with that brown/yellowish color that's been reported by others.
Not running any mods besides aris cloud mod.
#3905810 - 02/02/1410:13 AMRe: DirectX 8 to 9 converter (January 1st) - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK
[Re: AnKor]
Just downloaded your beta and here is what I've got:
As you can see, most detail has been lost on my plane but the outside world looks fine other than the clouds. The white rectangles are the Aris cloud mod clouds. FPS looking back over my left shoulder is normally mid 50's and is showing mid 30's. Other 2 views are low 50's FPS which is just 3 or 4 FPS low (if at all). My normal FPS is mid 50's most of the time unless very close to ground or other high load conditions. Also, the center message display stopped working. Double checked that it is on, as it notifies you of that, but then as you switch views or labels no message displays.
My system:
AMD Radeon 7850 2 GB i5 2320 3.0GHz 12 GB RAM
Edit: Just to make sure that something else hadn't gone wrong with my WOFF installation unrelated to this Shaders beta test I removed the Shaders30 folder and replaced the d3d8.dll file with your original d3d8.dll file from your DirectX 8 to 9 Converter package and everything worked perfectly again.
Last edited by Bucksnort; 02/02/1411:43 AM.
Dogfighting is what you do "after" you drop your bombs and blow something up! Can you say "JABO!"
#3905851 - 02/02/1412:50 PMRe: DirectX 8 to 9 converter (January 1st) - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK
[Re: AnKor]
Thanks for such detailed reports! I will try to publish updates for the converter as I will be making progress in improvements and bugfixes. Now I'll try to briefly explain all issues and what I'm going to do about them.
1. Hangars and distant objects appearing yellow-red. Long-standing and annoying issue, but I finally found the cause which had been even more trivial than expected: I just messed the order of color components - RGB vs BGR, so instead of blueish tint the fogged objects were getting reddish one
2. "the strange meshy shadow on the side of my Camel's hump" (Rover_27) - good catch, I believed it was fixed already. It is a matter of fine-tuning some coefficients. Too much and shadows become disconnected from objects, too less and you get this. The former is generally more acceptable than the latter.
3. "some strange shadow on the Camel's wing that I believe to be an upper wind cutout shadow, although inverted." (Rover_27 and yaan98) - the game tries to avoid drawing objects which are completely out of sight, and when you look down the central section of upper wing is not fully drawn and thus it can't cast correct shadow. Very noticeable in some planes at certain angles. Will work with devs to fix this.
4. FPS drop in the cockpit, especially when looking at the instruments. This one bothers me, good thing that disabling AO helps, but there is definitely something wrong. Good chance that my shaders are not optimal, but I can also tell that CFS3 engine is awful when it comes to drawing the cockpit (no blame on OBD here), and it may require some serious rework to improve the performance.
5. Shadow on the propeller. I agree it looks weird and I'm not sure whether it is correctly projected, but there is a problem: it not easy to get rid of. Will get back to it later.
6. "Red Area shows no shadow in corner of cockpit... shadow in same area when turning head slightly to right". Yep, quite annoying clipping issue, there are more weird issues of the same nature when zooming in/out. Looks like something is wrong in my math, but can't yet figure out what.
7. Increased GPU temps/usage. Obviously improved graphics doesn't come for free and additionally I streamlined the rendering to utilize GPU more efficiently (previously it was too limited by CPU). However as I said there is a very good chance that my shaders can be optimized further to reduce the load - 100% on GTX 780 is too much.
8. "Double cockpit" in OFF/CFS3. Will look into it a bit later, but I'm going to solve it even if it doesn't happen in WOFF.
9. "Notice also that there is a slight discoloration on the underside of the wings." (yaan98) - will look into it, I've seen it before, not sure about the cause (might be fog related). Though I might have seen it without my renderer as well.
10. BirdDogICT, Bucksnort. Hmmm, this is something new and very unusual. Apparently AMD related (their drivers are generally more strict and don't forgive mistakes as NVidia ones do) and obviously I will have to find a way to solve it. I think I should even make it my current priority.
#3905858 - 02/02/1401:12 PMRe: DirectX 8 to 9 converter (January 1st) - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK
[Re: AnKor]
First, it has correct fog color and second, more important, it might fix AMD rendering issue. Or not. I have no way to test it here and that's why I need your help
Forgot to mention: chrispdm1, shadow distance is not properly tuned yet. I have to find balance between quality and maximum distance. If you see any obvious issues like that - post a screenshot.
yaan98, I think it may be better if you put large groups of screenshots into spoiler tags: [ spoiler][ /spoiler] Otherwise it becomes more difficult to find other information
#3905931 - 02/02/1404:01 PMRe: DirectX 8 to 9 converter (January 1st) - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK
[Re: AnKor]
Bucksnort's issue looks like it could be a GPU that can't keep up. I've had it happen before in CFS3 quite a bit when I was playing from a laptop with just an intell chip. If there was too much going on, the texture sheets stopped being displayed on different objects and produced results similar to those. Adding the shadows may have been too much. Try removing the aris clouds or turn down some settings and see if that changes anything.
#3905961 - 02/02/1405:30 PMRe: DirectX 8 to 9 converter (January 1st) - USE AT YOUR OWN RISK
[Re: AnKor]
Since installing the beta I am getting pretty consistent runtime crashes in CFS3 a few minutes into every flight. I turned on your internal debug logging but in a 60 second flight it created a whopping 800 meg log file (and also killed the framerate). I can't open the log since most editors have a 512 meg file size limit. Here is the Windows APPCRASH log in case it may help.
Problem signature: Problem Event Name: APPCRASH Application Name: CFS3.exe Application Version: 3.1.0.30203 Application Timestamp: 3e3ebe85 Fault Module Name: d3d9.dll Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0 Fault Module Timestamp: 4ee53333 Exception Code: c0000005 Exception Offset: 0000781d OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.28 Locale ID: 1033 Additional Information 1: 0a9e Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789 Additional Information 3: 0a9e Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Sorry, didn't make a difference with AMD rendering. It's worse when tagential to the sun, disappears when sun is directly behind. Different AA, terrain/scenery slider, label settings don't help.
There are no accidents and no fatal flaws in the machines; there are only pilots with the wrong stuff.