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Nigel's New Rasterizers


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#1 dangermouse

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Posted Feb 08 2009 - 05:34 PM

Seeing as RSC is down again you can now find the files here:

Nigel Pattinson said:

Replacement Rasterizers
Here are a pair of replacements for the D3D and OpenGL rasterizers. The main aim was to fix the bugs that exist in the current rasterizers, principally for D3D:

Not all polygons being drawn at high loads, resulting in cars being incompletely drawn on the starting grid.

Text corruption.

Menu flickering.

Driving screen showing as small box in top left corner or similar with recent NVidia drivers.


and for OpenGL:

Visible polygon lines in the sky with some drivers.


While I've done my best to make the rasterizers perform well, there's no particularly good reason why they should be quicker than the originals - they may be, but it's also possible they might be slower. It's worth trying both, and it's also worth fiddling around with the settings, particularly the ones that relate to draw method and Z buffer. A brief rundown of all the options is included in the readme.

To get it looking optimal the most important thing is the LODBias option, you may need a different setting to what you've used in the past.

The main limitations compared to the originals are that windowed mode isn't currently supported, and they aren't compatible with either version of Pribluda. Hopefully AK will be able to provide a version of Pribluda that works with these at some stage in the future.

I've concentrated on making them work with recent video drivers, if you have older drivers it's possible you might need to update them. If you're using OpenGL and Nvidia you need to disable triple buffering in the Nvidia control panel otherwise you'll get screen flickering.

The installer - many thanks are due to Bernd Nowak for the installer and for support and suggestions - should create backup versions of your app.ini and core.ini, but it wouldn't hurt to make a manual backup just in case. Unfortunately the options settings are incompatible with the originals, and the original '[ Int Profile Values ]' section needs to be either removed or commented out. My two rasterizers do however share the same options, although not all settings are applicable to both. In GPL the new rasterizers show up with 'V2' in their names, and the originals are still available to be chosen as they're not overwritten.

Paul Thurston has also added support for the new rasterizers into GEM - GPU205026.zip contains the updated GEM executable which you'll need to copy to your GEM installation directory.

Nigel

gplrast_v2.5.rar

GPU205026.zip


Attached File  readmeRasterisers.txt   9.92K   2516 downloads


:wave:

#2 mikeyt

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Posted Feb 22 2009 - 05:39 AM

These rasterisers are awesome! I've been trying for ages to get my GPL installation to work with my screens native resolution (1680x1050) but didn't have any success. It wasn't until I downloaded these rasterizes that I could get this to work and it makes a HUGE difference to the quality. Thanks heaps,
Mike.

#3 voda1

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    Posted Mar 09 2009 - 07:18 AM

    When installing the GEM update (downloaded from link) a  'Select Language' dialog box appears with nothing available in the drop down list. Clicking 'OK' button and nothing appears to happen and it just sits there. My GEM version from top left corner says 2.5.9. Is that latest version?

    #4 dbell84

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    Posted Mar 09 2009 - 12:04 PM

    View Postvoda1, on Mar 9 2009, 08:18 AM, said:

    When installing the GEM update (downloaded from link) a  'Select Language' dialog box appears with nothing available in the drop down list. Clicking 'OK' button and nothing appears to happen and it just sits there. My GEM version from top left corner says 2.5.9. Is that latest version?

      I believe that GEM 2.5.26 is the latest version.

    #5 voda1

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      Posted Mar 09 2009 - 12:34 PM

      Got it to work by dropping it into the C:\Program Files\GPLSecrets\GEM+ folder.

      #6 Paul W.

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      Posted Mar 18 2009 - 02:26 PM

      I have a problem running them under ATI4870, I am not able to run the menu in d3d mode because it flickers (it was the same with the previous version)

      That's true that the new OPENGL rasterizer got rid of horizontal lines in the sky but.. I don't know what makes my track go into a shade of blue? It happens at random....  every so often the track seems to be affected, this is how it looks

      Posted Image

      Edited by Paul W., Mar 18 2009 - 04:40 PM.


      #7 Bob Simpson

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      Posted Mar 19 2009 - 05:38 AM

      The flickering happens in the old version if you use higher antialiasing settings, so you might try knocking it down a notch..  I didn't think it happened with the newer version though.

      I don't know about the blue track, but it's probably something to do with the newer graphics card drivers being incompatible with Direct7 or else the 16 bit colours in GPL.  For a test, try running your desktop in 16 bit.

      #8 Paul W.

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      Posted Mar 19 2009 - 07:07 AM

      Sure, My AA was activated but I had managed to sort it out myself yesterday evening. The game now even works under the old d3d rasterizer.


      As for the openGL, with the old one I have no issues apart from the fact that the menu bitmap is corrupt. (pribluda does not work of course)

      Under the new openGL everything works OK, the menu is nice, fully AA compatible expect these blueish stuff.
      I doubt it is a driver related problem since I did not get any blue tint using the previous rasterizer (I used the one from GPLPS pack)  I tried switching the palette to 16bit but it did not help.

      I could live with d3d but I really miss AA, is there any way to have it on together with a stable menu? Even low AA settings bring flickering back.

      By the way, which rasterizer is better in terms of graphics? I can't notice any particular difference...


      PS. I have just downloaded the newest ATI 9-3 driver, the game stopped working under OPENGL

      Edited by Paul W., Mar 19 2009 - 07:40 AM.


      #9 Bob Simpson

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      Posted Mar 19 2009 - 09:36 AM

      I don't have any more to add, I'm afraid.  I use an ATi X1900XT, the old D3D rasterizer and when I use AA, I get flickering Pribluda.

      #10 Ralonso

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      Posted Mar 26 2009 - 03:08 PM

      Hello, there!

      I do have a simular effect when running GPL with the new opengl rasterizer: it happens randomly, but if it happens, the full screen in-game pictures become disturbed by weird grafics and instable images. This si not taking place in the manues of the game, and only after the switching into the session or race mode of GPL.

      I use an ATI 9600 with the new mobility radeon 9.3 drivers. If it wasn't for that, the new rast would be a great innovation for me, as it offers a smooth fps at all details and full bias with up to 7 fps more than the also new d3d rasterizer.

      I tried several settings on the desktop and on the driver of my grafic device, as installed the last directx components (from March 09) but non of them seems to have any influence on this problem.

      Any idea what could cause this inconvenience?

      I use 2GB of RAM, running a 1,5 GHz-Pentium M on a (very clean and stable Asus-Notebook)

      By the way: Dear Mr. Simpson THANK YOU VERY VERY VERY MUCH INDEED FOR YOUR MAGNIFICANT WORK ON YOUR NEW RASTERIZERS!!!

      Sincerely yours,

      Ralonso

      #11 Bernd Nowak

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      Posted Mar 26 2009 - 03:49 PM

      I have attached the readme. Maybe dangermouse could attach it to the original post.
      Have you both tried with 32 bit on/off ?

      It has to be changed in the core.ini file after installation.

      Attached Files


      Edited by Bernd Nowak, Mar 26 2009 - 03:50 PM.


      #12 dangermouse

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      Posted Mar 26 2009 - 03:55 PM

      View PostRalonso, on Mar 26 2009, 09:08 PM, said:

      By the way: Dear Mr. Simpson THANK YOU VERY VERY VERY MUCH INDEED FOR YOUR MAGNIFICANT WORK ON YOUR NEW RASTERIZERS!!!

      Sincerely yours,

      Ralonso
      You mean Mr Pattinson ;)

      #13 Ralonso

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      Posted Mar 26 2009 - 11:59 PM

      View Postdangermouse, on Mar 26 2009, 10:55 PM, said:

      View PostRalonso, on Mar 26 2009, 09:08 PM, said:

      By the way: Dear Mr. Simpson THANK YOU VERY VERY VERY MUCH INDEED FOR YOUR MAGNIFICANT WORK ON YOUR NEW RASTERIZERS!!!

      Sincerely yours,

      Ralonso
      You mean Mr Pattinson ;)


      SURE..!! :lol:  :oops:  :punish:  :shrug:  :iconcur:  Sorry! Hahahaha..

      #14 Steffen W - guest

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      Posted Mar 31 2009 - 02:56 PM

      Gents,

      i am late. yes. but better late than never in appreciating and using Nigels pearls.


      rsc being down i have no access to any longer threads with maybe a solution to my problem. short story, while d3d rasterizer works fine the opengl one doesnt.

      when i set it to 32bit=0 it loads gpl but the main menu texts are blue and all other menu texts are missing entirely.
      i mean entirely, no replay shown, no racemodes, no ... well no anything.

      i  have an ati card 9800 on that xp system. even with radlinker the lowest thing i can set anti aliasing to is 2x or standard. i tried all available gfx card settings (well, not in all combinations though obviously) and have no real clue what to do.

      basically no real problem since the old rasterizers do work and the new d3d one too. just asking in case i am missing the more or less obvious to get that done.

      long time ago since i went through trouble setting gpl things up, but here we go again :).


      Steffen

      #15 npattinson - guest

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      Posted Apr 01 2009 - 06:55 PM

      View PostSteffen W, on Apr 1 2009, 09:56 AM, said:

      when i set it to 32bit=0 it loads gpl but the main menu texts are blue and all other menu texts are missing entirely.
      I don't know about the rest, but while I was developing the rasterizers my menu texts were coming out blue on a machine with an ATI card. I had a workaround for it, but discovered that when I upgraded the ATI drivers the problem went away, so I pulled the workaround out before the rasterizers were released. So new drivers may fix this problem, but I can't say for the others.

      Nigel

      #16 Steffen W - guest

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      Posted Apr 02 2009 - 04:03 PM

      View Postnpattinson, on Apr 2 2009, 02:55 AM, said:

      View PostSteffen W, on Apr 1 2009, 09:56 AM, said:

      when i set it to 32bit=0 it loads gpl but the main menu texts are blue and all other menu texts are missing entirely.
      I don't know about the rest, but while I was developing the rasterizers my menu texts were coming out blue on a machine with an ATI card. I had a workaround for it, but discovered that when I upgraded the ATI drivers the problem went away, so I pulled the workaround out before the rasterizers were released. So new drivers may fix this problem, but I can't say for the others.

      Nigel

      Thanks Nigel,

      since its not only the blueishness but also all other menu entries missung, it may well be a driver thing. mine are very old.

      Steffen

      #17 Bernd Nowak

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      Posted Apr 03 2009 - 01:51 AM

      Nigel,
      may it be related to the new drivers ? Since 9.1 ATI has implemented full OpenGL 3.0 support. Maybe they have left out/crippled older openGL specifications ?

      #18 npattinson - guest

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      Posted Apr 03 2009 - 04:43 AM

      View PostBernd Nowak, on Apr 3 2009, 08:51 PM, said:

      may it be related to the new drivers ? Since 9.1 ATI has implemented full OpenGL 3.0 support. Maybe they have left out/crippled older openGL specifications ?
      I'd be surprised if it's to do with supporting OGL 3.0, I would imagine they aim for backward compatability. More likely random reintroduction of bugs. I do use a slightly obscure part of the OGL spec which happens to be very convenient, but may not get much testing.

      Nigel

      #19 aviator

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      Posted Apr 26 2009 - 10:54 PM

      I just switched to a new 26" monitor and installed the new rasterizers (OGL, 1900x1200). It is amazing how my feeling has changed now when i am driving! I feel so close to the wheels, it is like i can touch them, so close to the instruments, everything is now crystal clear. Thank you very much Nigel Pattinson for this. Excellent work!

      #20 orville944

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      Posted May 02 2009 - 09:38 AM

      I really like the new rasterizers! Awesome work Nigel. It means I can run the later ATI drivers which think GPL is a 2D application unless in OpenGL mode... which used to look crappy... not any more!

      Am I the only person who appreciates the new Fog option? A fog=4 at Spa adds a lovely feel to the circuit... maybe better simulating what those crazy drivers who raced in the rain might have seen. Makes me ponder... Could a different "type" of fog be used to appear like a semi-realistic rain?

      Many many thanks! Mind-blowing achievements are still being released for this game! :D




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