Graphics effect performance question ??

[oneway]

What causes this effect on the clouds?

I am running a high end machine with the latest tech and a top of the line ATI card with tons of ram...

The game settings are all cranked to max...but I still get this tearing effect on the edges of clouds, especially when panning around in an F3 gun view...

[oneway]

Skuzzy,

Do you have any thoughts on this?

As mentioned I am running pretty strong machine:

Win 7
i7 930 @ 2.8
ATI 5800 on X2.0 @ 16 1024mb of VRam
12 Gigs of Ram
Raptor 10k HD 150 GB

I have got all the bells and whistles turned on in the game at 1024 textures...and pumps steady frames at my max refresh of 60hz...so the machine is up to the task...

I am sure its a setting in the Catalyst Center...just not sure which one it is...

Any help appreciated...

Oneway

[morfiend]

 Whats your AA setting?


 could be an easy fix with increase in AA..... tho I could be wrong...easy to test.



   

   

[oneway]

Whats your AA setting?


 could be an easy fix with increase in AA..... tho I could be wrong...easy to test.



   

   

Help me a little more...

When I open up the AA setting in the CCS it was set on "use application settings"...

Un-checking that it opens up the custom features levels 2X to 8X...and I will set it on 4X for now...

But I have a filter drop down box that lists: Box, Narrow-Tent, Wide-Tent and Edge Detect...

I have no clue about those...

Oneway

[1Boner]

I think you can adjust the AA settings in the game.

I think it will take care of serated edges, not sure about the ones in your shot though.

[morfiend]

Oneway,

  I'm unfamiliar with catalyst center and ATI cards in general but there's 2 place you can adjust the AA.

 First on the opening page where you select online/offline play,goto video settings,you'll see an AA slider there,move this all the way to the right.

 Then in your graphic card settings,I assume in the catalyst center,try 4x and see how things run,if you still hold 60FPS and that doesnt get rid of the jagged edges,try 8x.

 Be warned this will put a strain on the vidcard but from the specs you've listed it shouldn't be an issue.

  Hope that helps,keep us informed of your progress.


      

[Skuzzy]

Those are not going to be taken care with AA settings.  Those are complete polys being drawn without any alpha being applied.

Not sure what video card settings would impact that rendering.

[maddafinga]

I get that too, with a pretty strong machine of my own.  Always wondered about it since no setting I changed ever seemed to make a difference.  If anyone can come up with an answer I'd love to hear it.

[Wraith_TMS]

I get that too, with a pretty strong machine of my own.  Always wondered about it since no setting I changed ever seemed to make a difference.  If anyone can come up with an answer I'd love to hear it.

I also have this issue, Madda.  (Win XP sp3, 2 gb ram, ATI HD 4890 card.)  I use 1024 textures and AH-managed full AA.  I run hi-rez terrain and water textures, but not reflective water or extensive shadow effects.  Btw, I also do not get a true horizon, but rather what appears to be a broken horizon line (sorry, no image of that) that doesn't go out to the vanishing point even when I have full visual distance turned on.

Game performance doesn't seem to suffer as a result of this; it just doesn't look very attractive.

FWIW,

[1Boner]

  it just doesn't look very attractive.

Yeah, but its got a GREAT personality!

[ImADot]

What is Z-Fighting?  Heard that one from Hitech once, but don't remember if it was something related to this or to flickering polys.

[morfiend]

Those are not going to be taken care with AA settings.  Those are complete polys being drawn without any alpha being applied.

Not sure what video card settings would impact that rendering.

 I bow to your superior knowledge,I was getting a similar rendering with the self shadows and cranking up the AA made a huge improvement but taxed my vidcard so much that I turned the selfshadows off.


     

[maddafinga]

 I bow to your superior knowledge,I was getting a similar rendering with the self shadows and cranking up the AA made a huge improvement but taxed my vidcard so much that I turned the selfshadows off.


     

I run it with everything turned up to the absolute max.  I used to run with self shadows on, it looks neat, but I found that they were distracting to me.  I ran them with the smoothing set at whatever the 4k setting was and didn't see even a tiny hitch.  It's beautiful for sure, but I just like it better with them off somehow.  I do have that jagged polygon issue with my Win7 Phenom 2 4 x 3.2 ghz, 4 gigs of ram, ATI 5850 factory overclock 1gig vid card.  I'd love to find a setting to tweak to solve it.

[morfiend]

 Interesting,you both use ATI cards,I wonder if it's exclusive to ATI or are Gforce users having this issue aswell.

  I run an E8400 with 4 gigs of ram and Gforce 8800GTS card.


   

[oneway]

I think this parallel thread I posted in the bug forum is related...

http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,301175.msg3861291.html#msg3861291

I have tweaked my ATI CCC settings as follows and things are working much better...

I messed with my settings in ATI CCC and so far not seeing it any more...at least for now...

This still lets me run at 60hz refresh and frames...**the Mipmap setting (3) carved into my frame rates and dropped them to 50 so I backed that off...the Mipmap thing seems to effect how distant textures are blended...

Here are my settings:

AA - Narrow Tent 4x (the edge detect thing had a huge frame hit...went with narrow tent)
AF - 8x
Catalyst AI - disabled
Mipmap - (setting 2) Performance**
Wait for vertical refresh - Off, unless application specifies
AAMode - Adaptive Multi Sample AA
OpenGL Triple Buff - disabled

In game settings are basically all maxed out with the exception that textures are 1024 and I leave building shadows disabled

So far so good...and I am not seeing the cloud tearing or or jagged edges either...