85 replies to this topic

[DavidG]

I’ve had major issues with the quality of anti-aliasing on all my games since fitting a GTX460 a few months ago.  Gigabyte told me that this was due to the games being too old.  Recently I was pointed towards a program called nVidia Inspector, which opens up a greater range of settings.  Using the ‘sparse grid supersampling’ option, I've managed to improve the look of the gMotor based games to a more or less acceptable level.  However, GPL seems totally resistant to every option I've tried so far and is still beset with ‘jaggies’.  I was wondering if anyone had any settings for the latest nVidia cards which would improve the AA within GPL (and other old games).  I’m running GPL using the v2 OpenGL rasterizer.

Thanks

[simmer]

David, This may or may not be of help. I have a 9800 GT card in Win 7 32 bit using NVIDIA 260.99 drivers.
   GPL runs fine here. These are global settings in the Nvidia control panel, at least thats how I run mine.

  The setting that don't show in my screen shot are:  Texture filtering optimization____off
                                                      Threaded optimization____Auto
                                                      Triple Buffering_____off
                                                      V sync______use the 3D application settings ( this because of other games)

  Although, because of my NVIDIA card, I use the V2 rasterizers and Open GL in the game, better frame rates for me.

Attached Files

•  ScreenHunter_03 Dec. 28 09.16.jpg   119.48K   563 downloads

Edited by Philo, Dec 28 2010 - 08:36 AM.

[Tato]

I have a 9600 GT, no idea about Latest Nvidia Cards or drivers, so I can't help too much I think.
Anyway, I can remember that when I moved from a DirectX 9.0 7900 GT to the 9600 GT I've noticed that AA have some issues with many programs; no idea if could be related to DX10 card itself, or to the newer Nvidia drivers, but in my case AA set to 8xQ and AF at 16x give a good result for GPL imo.
For Richard Burns Rally i.e. I have even more problems; in that case, enabling AA supersampling using nHancer utility give some help and improve a lot the visual quality, maybe you can give it a try for GPL too.

P.S.: as Philo wrote, OpenGL V2 rasterizer seems to give better fps, for DX10 Nvidia cards at least.

Edited by Tato, Dec 28 2010 - 10:43 AM.

[Stefan Roess]

Hi David,

I had the same problems with my Nvidia GTX 480 card and it got solved with the latest (at that time ) nVidia drivers (256 Version 258.96 Windows 7 64-bit).
With older drivers it was not possible to activate AA and AF for GPL (but any other sims worked fine).

Thread: https://srmz.racesimcentral.net/inde...t=24#entry49716

Which Nvidia Inspector settings do you use?

Cheers
Stefan

Edited by Stefan Roess, Dec 29 2010 - 12:52 PM.

[DavidG]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I did something this morning that I should have done much earlier, run GPL in D3D.  The AA looked a lot better, at what I would call acceptable levels, so the issue is obviously with OGL.  Unfortunately, GPL runs much better for me in OGL, with better fps and image quality.  Also, under D3D I get flickering menu buttons and in game messages.

I’m also using 260.99 Philo.  With previous drivers I was getting no performance out of GPL at all, about 10fps at the start of a race.  After updating to 260.89, performance improved immensely, particularly in OGL, which wasn’t really working at all previously.  Prior to this the game was almost unplayable.  So I’m pretty much stuck with 260.89 as the earliest driver I can use, which is a shame, as I believe I get more gMotor stutter with the latest drivers.  I should mention btw, that I’m running Win7 64.

It seems that there must be a big difference in the way that the GTX460 works compared to your 9800 (and your 9600 Tato), as I’d tried all the standard settings within the nVidia control panel with no real difference in AA quality at all.  Just selecting 8xQ and multisampling, or using supersampling, didn’t work for me with any game.

I’ve got some RBR image quality issues as well Tato, although I haven’t spent too much time trying to sort them out as yet.  RBR looked great when I first upgraded, it’s only since installing the latest drivers that I’ve had any bother.  My understanding is that RBR must have AA and AF turned off, to prevent the lines between the road textures, so I’m not sure why the other AA/AF related settings should have any effect.  Supersampling seems to give me speckling issues though.

The only setting I’ve used nVidia Inspector to change Stefan is Transparancy Supersampling, which is set to 8x Sparse Grid Supersampling (see screenshot below).  This gives decent results in GTR2 & rFactor (although I still feel my old X1950XT looked better) and better AA in Race On, although, for some reason, this doesn’t look as good as the other 2.  Incidentally, I noticed a message on the nVidia support site that said they’d released a small tool that would enable sparse grid supersampling in games, as a number of people had asked for this.  There are an awful lot of other settings within nVidia Inspector that I haven’t played with yet (many just seem to make GPL’s menus flicker!), so I’m still hoping I can find something that works with OGL.

I think the main problem here is just trying to run really old software on modern DX11 cards.  If I had the space, I might have built up another PC, with the old components, just to run GPL.  This is impractical though, so I think I’ll just have to accept that some compromise is needed.  It’s D3D with reasonable AA, flickering and lower FPS, or OGL with poor AA, no flickering and better fps.  As the AA issue is very much track dependant (some look OK), I’ll probably just stick with OGL and put up with the ‘jaggies’.  I’m pleased that I’ve realised that it’s mainly an OGL problem though.  I’ve been considering buying a new laptop, and the only real viable option I’ve found is one with a GT 445M.   But I was reluctant to go ahead with the purchase, because I run a lot of old games on my laptop and was worried about how they would look on the new one.  If I can get decent result in D3D games, then this isn’t as much of a problem as I thought.  It seems GPL though, will always be a problem.  It has been for the last 12 years or so, so I don’t see why it should stop now!

Attached Files

•  aa settings.jpg   144.22K   286 downloads

[Stefan Roess]

Hi David,

thx for your detailed reply.

Here are my settings for GPL and GTR2 and a screenshot of both sims.
As you can see on the GTR2 screenshot there is still space for improvement. But I didn`t have time yet to play with the graphic settings.


Btw: About RBR you are right, you must have AA and AF turned off, to prevent the lines between the road textures.
I set anything to default with RBR. But haven`t raced the sim for some time.

Attached Files

•  Dwm 2010-12-29 20-27-26-20.jpg   134.65K   411 downloads
•  GTR2 2010-12-29 20-41-28-76.jpg   249.17K   661 downloads
•  Dwm 2010-12-29 20-27-48-45.jpg   132.4K   720 downloads
•  gplc65 2010-12-29 20-32-45-43.jpg   238.02K   638 downloads

Edited by Stefan Roess, Jan 01 2011 - 11:29 AM.

[M Needforspeed]

Stefan, Philo, Tato,

  I have the 197.13 N Vidia drivers installed, and I am very satisfied by those drivers for GPL, with the AA management as well the FPS usable with 32 bits version of Windows.This driver give quite the same results with rast D3D V2 and OGL V 2.
   36 fps at the back of the grid ( 1920X1080 ) with both rasterizers V2 and the N Vidia control panel gpl.exe profiles settings attached below.
   Moreover, they are sensitive to any changes in the AA and AF settings, that I set for Max quality.
   The advantage here is that GPL has the absolute priority for maximized settings, no compromise with others games.
   GFX is a GTX 285 and after checking with DXDiag, DX 11 is installed.
  
  If you are a 32 bits OS user,as Philo or Tato, perhaps you should try them.  (I guess they can't be used for 64 bits OS ? )

  Like Philo, I am not using N Vidia inspector to create a game profile, but N Vidia control panel . Attached the program settings I use for alls GPL.exe .

   ( Philo, can you capture and post your gpl.exe program setting for GPL, what you show  in your capture is the global setting )

  I downloaded N Vidia inspector 1.9.4, but I can 't see any option to create a profile.
  David and Stefan, how did you manage to display the profile settings page ?? Thanks .

Attached Files

•  Nvidia control panel settings.JPG   50.61K   218 downloads
•  Nvidia control pannel settings for GPL.JPG   26.72K   172 downloads

Edited by M Needforspeed, Dec 29 2010 - 04:52 PM.

[Stefan Roess]

M Needforspeed, on Dec 29 2010 - 04:18 PM, said:

  I downloaded N Vidia inspector 1.9.4, but I can 't see any option to create a profile.
  David and Stefan, how did you manage to display the profile settings page ?? Thanks .

Click on the tool symbol and you will get to the profile / settings page -> see screenshot

Attached Files

•  Dwm 2010-12-30 11-56-31-44.jpg   66.5K   211 downloads

[M Needforspeed]

Stefan Roess, on Dec 30 2010 - 04:59 AM, said:

M Needforspeed, on Dec 29 2010 - 04:18 PM, said:

  I downloaded N Vidia inspector 1.9.4, but I can 't see any option to create a profile.
  David and Stefan, how did you manage to display the profile settings page ?? Thanks .

Click on the tool symbol and you will get to the profile / settings page -> see screenshot

  

thks Stefan .

But as you can see the button is greyed , and that's because of the N vidia driver that I am using .The maker state on his site he implemented it only for 260.XX drivers and later.After looking at your capture, I understand why you can use it.

Do you think this profile features add settings of interest for GPL, compared with N vidia factory control panel ?

  thanks

Attached Files

•  N Vidia inspector check .JPG   55.65K   80 downloads

Edited by M Needforspeed, Dec 30 2010 - 08:44 AM.

[Tato]

Warning: OT here - sorry

Stefan Roess, on Dec 29 2010 - 01:49 PM, said:

Btw: About RBR you are right, you must have AA and AF turned off, to prevent the lines between the road textures.
I set anything to default with RBR. But haven`t raced for some time.

Right, infact RBR engine don't support AA or AF. But enabling AA supersampling using nHancer tool (instead of default multisampling via Nvidia Contol Panel) do the trick; moreover, for me it solves a couple of other graphics issues, but again no idea about newer cards and drivers.  

[lotus78]

Stefan Roess, on Dec 30 2010 - 04:59 AM, said:

M Needforspeed, on Dec 29 2010 - 04:18 PM, said:

  I downloaded N Vidia inspector 1.9.4, but I can 't see any option to create a profile.
  David and Stefan, how did you manage to display the profile settings page ?? Thanks .

Click on the tool symbol and you will get to the profile / settings page -> see screenshot

Stefan,

Thanks for the settings.  I just installed a new GTX 460 card and with these settings in OpenGLV2 / 60FPSV2 everything looks great.  I am having 2 problems though:

1.  With 60 FPS enabled the AI take off from the grid as if they have launch control (does not happen in 36 FPS)
2.  After about 7 laps at Monza my screen fades to black.  As soon as I hit ESC, it comes back.  Last time, I was leading   

I have not invested the time to see if I get the blackscreen in Direct3D7.  It does happen at 36 FPS with OpenGLV2.

Any ideas?  I am running Windows 7 with 2GB of RAM and a 3Ghz Duo Core processor; 1680 x 1050 reso;ution.    The graphics card does not even seem to be getting warm at 60FPS.

Thanks,

lotus78

[Bernd Nowak]

Energy saving?
You find the energy settings via this Microsoft article: https://windows.micro...wer-plan-scheme

[M Needforspeed]

lotus78, on Jan 02 2011 - 04:45 PM, said:

Stefan,

Thanks for the settings.  I just installed a new GTX 460 card and with these settings in OpenGLV2 / 60FPSV2 everything looks great.  I am having 2 problems though:

1.  With 60 FPS enabled the AI take off from the grid as if they have launch control (does not happen in 36 FPS)




lotus78

  this is normal on some tracks, because with the 60 fps patch, AI won't have the same behaviour than with the 36 fps.

   Don't say everything looks great, as if you look at the AI , you should notice something....

   What you should do, is installing in the option folder the 60fpsaiV1patch.You should get decent AI' s for manys track, even if they need some tweakings, like their speed.

  Get the patch here , and put it in your GEM + /OPTIONS folder https://srmz.racesimcentral.net/inde...=60fpsaiV1&st=0

Edited by M Needforspeed, Jan 03 2011 - 06:38 AM.

[DavidG]

My GTR2 used to look just like yours Stefan, but with sparse grid supersampling enabled it now looks like the screenshot below.

My GPL shot of the startline at Rouen doesn’t look a lot different to yours; you can see some degradation on the lines at the side of the track and the pit boxes though.  The effect is much more obvious at other parts of the circuit (shot 2).  Actually, you never get the true effect from a screenshot, as you probably know from GTR2, it’s the movement of the lines (they sort of 'ripple'), where the anti-aliasing breaks down, that really grabs your attention and is most off-putting.  The problem varies greatly from track to track as well; thinner lines certainly seem to cause more of a problem (see the Le Mans shot).  Rather disturbingly, I tried D3D at Le Mans and saw no real difference, though it definitely showed a big improvement at another track the other day (I forget which, may have been Moulin65).  I say ‘disturbingly’, because I've just ordered the new laptop I mentioned previously, under the belief that I’d pretty much resolved the AA problem as far as D3D was concerned.

I did try your GPL settings though Stefan and perceived a marginal improvement.  So I’ll stick with these as a basis and see if I can find some further enhancement from the other options.

I also feel that I’ve made some small progress with RBR, but there’s still far too much shimmering going on for my liking.

So far the additional nVidia Inspector settings haven’t really helped much with GPL  M, though I’m continuing to experiment with them.  It’s the gMotor titles where it’s really made a big difference.  So, if you have no issues with these, or don’t play them, I wouldn’t worry too much about not being able to access the elevated settings page.

Thanks again everyone for your comments.

Attached Files

•  gpl rouen1.jpg   240.02K   240 downloads
•  gpl rouen2.jpg   237.65K   302 downloads
•  gpl sarthe.jpg   233.34K   258 downloads
•  GTR2.jpg   173.26K   232 downloads

[lotus78]

Bernd Nowak, on Jan 03 2011 - 05:29 AM, said:

Energy saving?
You find the energy settings via this Microsoft article: https://windows.micro...wer-plan-scheme

Hmmmm.  Setting was 10 minutes.  7 x 1.5 (ish) = 10.5 (guess my avg is a little less, like 1:27).  Never had that problem with XP but who knows?  I will try it this weekend.  
Thanks!!!

lotus78

[lotus78]

M Needforspeed, on Jan 03 2011 - 06:33 AM, said:

lotus78, on Jan 02 2011 - 04:45 PM, said:

Stefan,

Thanks for the settings.  I just installed a new GTX 460 card and with these settings in OpenGLV2 / 60FPSV2 everything looks great.  I am having 2 problems though:

1.  With 60 FPS enabled the AI take off from the grid as if they have launch control (does not happen in 36 FPS)




lotus78

  this is normal on some tracks, because with the 60 fps patch, AI won't have the same behaviour than with the 36 fps.

   Don't say everything looks great, as if you look at the AI , you should notice something....

   What you should do, is installing in the option folder the 60fpsaiV1patch.You should get decent AI' s for manys track, even if they need some tweakings, like their speed.

  Get the patch here , and put it in your GEM + /OPTIONS folder https://srmz.racesimcentral.net/inde...=60fpsaiV1&st=0

Other than the launch, I can deal with AI at 60 FPS.  I actually do not mind starting at the back of the grid and working my way up.  Good passing practice.  I will check out the patch though.

Thanks!!!

lotus78

[lotus78]

lotus78, on Jan 06 2011 - 07:14 PM, said:

M Needforspeed, on Jan 03 2011 - 06:33 AM, said:

lotus78, on Jan 02 2011 - 04:45 PM, said:

Stefan,

Thanks for the settings.  I just installed a new GTX 460 card and with these settings in OpenGLV2 / 60FPSV2 everything looks great.  I am having 2 problems though:

1.  With 60 FPS enabled the AI take off from the grid as if they have launch control (does not happen in 36 FPS)




lotus78

  this is normal on some tracks, because with the 60 fps patch, AI won't have the same behaviour than with the 36 fps.

   Don't say everything looks great, as if you look at the AI , you should notice something....

   What you should do, is installing in the option folder the 60fpsaiV1patch.You should get decent AI' s for manys track, even if they need some tweakings, like their speed.

  Get the patch here , and put it in your GEM + /OPTIONS folder https://srmz.racesimcentral.net/inde...=60fpsaiV1&st=0

Other than the launch, I can deal with AI at 60 FPS.  I actually do not mind starting at the back of the grid and working my way up.  Good passing practice.  I will check out the patch though.

Thanks!!!

lotus78

Looking a little deeper, I see the other problems with AI in 60 FPS.  I guess I will wait for the AI fixes and use 36 FPS for now.  I really do like how the 60 FPS graphics look in OpenGLV2.  Never seen GPL looking better!

Kudos to all the folks working on this.  Looking forward to posts on AI tweaks.

lotus78

[M Needforspeed]

lotus78, on Jan 07 2011 - 08:53 AM, said:

lotus78, on Jan 06 2011 - 07:14 PM, said:

M Needforspeed, on Jan 03 2011 - 06:33 AM, said:

lotus78, on Jan 02 2011 - 04:45 PM, said:

Stefan,

Thanks for the settings.  I just installed a new GTX 460 card and with these settings in OpenGLV2 / 60FPSV2 everything looks great.  I am having 2 problems though:

1.  With 60 FPS enabled the AI take off from the grid as if they have launch control (does not happen in 36 FPS)




lotus78

  this is normal on some tracks, because with the 60 fps patch, AI won't have the same behaviour than with the 36 fps.

   Don't say everything looks great, as if you look at the AI , you should notice something....

   What you should do, is installing in the option folder the 60fpsaiV1patch.You should get decent AI' s for manys track, even if they need some tweakings, like their speed.

  Get the patch here , and put it in your GEM + /OPTIONS folder https://srmz.racesimcentral.net/inde...=60fpsaiV1&st=0

Other than the launch, I can deal with AI at 60 FPS.  I actually do not mind starting at the back of the grid and working my way up.  Good passing practice.  I will check out the patch though.

Thanks!!!

lotus78

Looking a little deeper, I see the other problems with AI in 60 FPS.  I guess I will wait for the AI fixes and use 36 FPS for now.  I really do like how the 60 FPS graphics look in OpenGLV2.  Never seen GPL looking better!

Kudos to all the folks working on this.  Looking forward to posts on AI tweaks.

lotus78

  Meanwhile, you can have decent results already for some tracks :

  Install Solitude track, if possible with the Thomas Lachaele beautiful add ons.
  In you Solitude folder, make a back up of your track.ini .Replace it with the one one attached.
  Then go for a ride, with the 60fpsaiV1 enabled, and you 'll see that you can have a great race against them, with a minimum of bugs

  

Attached Files

•  track.ini   5.97K   17 downloads

Edited by M Needforspeed, Jan 07 2011 - 09:08 AM.

[Stefan Roess]

DavidG, on Jan 03 2011 - 09:25 AM, said:

My GTR2 used to look just like yours Stefan, but with sparse grid supersampling enabled it now looks like the screenshot below.

My GPL shot of the startline at Rouen doesn’t look a lot different to yours; you can see some degradation on the lines at the side of the track and the pit boxes though.  The effect is much more obvious at other parts of the circuit (shot 2).  Actually, you never get the true effect from a screenshot, as you probably know from GTR2, it’s the movement of the lines (they sort of 'ripple'), where the anti-aliasing breaks down, that really grabs your attention and is most off-putting.  The problem varies greatly from track to track as well; thinner lines certainly seem to cause more of a problem (see the Le Mans shot).  Rather disturbingly, I tried D3D at Le Mans and saw no real difference, though it definitely showed a big improvement at another track the other day (I forget which, may have been Moulin65).  I say ‘disturbingly’, because I've just ordered the new laptop I mentioned previously, under the belief that I’d pretty much resolved the AA problem as far as D3D was concerned.

I did try your GPL settings though Stefan and perceived a marginal improvement.  So I’ll stick with these as a basis and see if I can find some further enhancement from the other options.

I also feel that I’ve made some small progress with RBR, but there’s still far too much shimmering going on for my liking.

So far the additional nVidia Inspector settings haven’t really helped much with GPL  M, though I’m continuing to experiment with them.  It’s the gMotor titles where it’s really made a big difference.  So, if you have no issues with these, or don’t play them, I wouldn’t worry too much about not being able to access the elevated settings page.

Thanks again everyone for your comments.

I updated to the latest 260.99 driver, which is pretty easy with the new nvidia installer routine, without having to uninstall the old nvidia drivers before. You can use express installation that updates your graphic drivers but will keep your profiles you set for the games.
I also enabled "sparse grid supersampling" now for all sims (I use 8x).
GTR2, GTL, ... look much better now! No more "ripple" lines in the distance. The other sims (rFactor, netKar, LFS, ...) I haven`t tested yet, but I guess it has also improved.

I also activated it for all of my GPL graphic profiles "gpl.exe, gplc65, gplc66, and there is an improvement!
As you noticed the "ripple" effect varies from track to track, but even on the Bikernikie track the "ripples" now are gone.

Thx David!

Edited by Stefan Roess, Jun 19 2012 - 04:04 PM.

[DavidG]

Glad to hear that you’re sorted Stefan.  I know what a great relief it was when I eventually saw a proper anti-aliased screen for the first time.  I was actually seriously considering ditching the GTX460 and buying a top end ATi replacement until then.

I’ve received my new laptop at the weekend and suffered the same AA problems with its GT 445M.  A quick tweak with nVidia Inspector and all was well though (after a short period of panic when things didn’t seem to be improving).  I have learnt a few things through this though.

Firstly, sparse grid supersampling does work with OpenGl, or at least it works fine on IL2 in OGL mode.  So there must be some issue with GPL’s OGL rasterizer that’s preventing it making any difference (in fact, I still can’t get GPL to look any better in D3D than OGL, I think that when I tested it a few weeks ago, the improvement I thought I saw was just down to the track).  You say that you’ve found some improvement with GPL; what settings are you using?

Secondly, SGS only functions when Transparency Multisampling is enabled.  This is the cause of the panic mentioned earlier, as initially turning on SGS didn’t seem to make any difference.  You also appear to have to set ‘Overide any application setting’ for SGS to work.

Enabling SGS can be quite a performance hit.  When I first turned it on, the images looked fabulous, but the frame rate dropped to unacceptable levels.  So I tried reducing the level of SGS, to see if the performance would rise, whilst still providing adequate visual improvement.  This is actually what I found, the frame rate did go up to much more useable levels and the image quality worsened only slightly.  In fact, I'm running the laptop with only 2x SGS and it’s going well and looking good.  If anyone is interested, I tested the performance by getting Fraps to record the average fps for the first 60 seconds of an IL2 track file (1945.trk – 2 P-47s downing 2 Me262s).  The results were: 8x SGS – 42 fps, 4x SGS – 68 fps, 2x SGS – 79 fps and no SGS – 83 fps.  I don’t expect that there’s this level of difference between the settings on the more powerful cards, but it may explain why I have felt the performance has reduced since installing the 260 drivers (which was when I first enabled SGS).  OGL gives relatively poor performance, with average frame rates of around 40 on nearly all settings (and yes, I did disable vsync).  Strangely, I ran the same tests on my new desktop system and the opposite happened; OGL comfortably outperformed D3D, which is how it’s supposed to be with IL2.  I'm wondering if this is a driver issue, as GPL performance in OGL was abysmal prior to installing 260.89, after it, it runs much better than D3D.  So I may try installing newer drivers on the laptop, to see if can get more out of IL2 in OGL, though I'm always reluctant to do this once I've got everything working properly.

Incidentally, I've realised that I attached the wrong image in post #5.  This is one that I saved off another forum when I was trying to resolve my issues.  My apologies for the confusion, particularly for the English speakers!