Author Topic: Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12  (Read 2752 times)

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Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
By some issue of stupidity (and the fact that I haven't played FS2 for three months due to RL issues), I upgraded my ATI drivers from 4.12 to 5.6 (and I was wondering why my drivers were SO out of date).....

I have been getting issues where any ATI drivers newer than 4.12 completely screw up the game due to the fact that FS2 open does not recognize Open GL drivers >2.0 for some reason.  I was wondering if that has been fixed and if someone can point me to the build that has this fix.  Thanks.

 

Offline karajorma

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Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
Any build from the last couple of months should have fixed this one.
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Offline Fineus

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Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
On the subject of drivers, I take it that Spec-mapping still doesn't work with the latest ATI driver releases? Is there no way around this?

I don't especially want to keep swapping back and forth between old and new driver revisions just to take advantage of FS's SCP eye candy :)

 

Offline Fury

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Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
I've been led to believe that OpenGL should be up to Direct3D in terms or performance and eye-candiness. Not that I've had the time to compare those in the latest builds...

 

Offline taylor

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Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
Or you could just get used to using OGL rather than D3D.  The newest ATI drivers have the extension that I'm using for envmapping in OGL so after it propagates a little (next version, into Omega drivers, etc.), and when I get the time, I'll commit the OGL env code and it will have all of the features working.  Then you won't have to swap driver versions and you'll get all of the eye candy.

Bobboau may have specs fixed in D3D by the time that actually happens though. :D

 

Offline karajorma

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Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
I swapped to OpenGL a month or so ago and now I only play in D3D when I want to play TBP (which crashes with OGL but works with D3D for me).

I'm starting to prefer the way OGL looks to be honest :)
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Offline taylor

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Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
Yeah, what's the OGL/TBP problem?  I keep seeing it mentioned but don't have any details.  Guess I've missed reading a post somewhere.  I've been playing TBP for the past week and have played every mission.  There were problems, but none of them were OGL related.  None of them were graphics related period for that matter.

 

Offline karajorma

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Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
I thought you were aware of the problems :)

I'll get a full report to you in a bit :)
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Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
Open GL has a lot of eye candy as well as a lot of realism in their builds.  Which is why I have been using it since.

 
Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
OpenGL's always been a bit slower for me on my 9800 than D3D, have there been any performance increases lately?

 

Offline CP5670

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Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
I always used to use D3D but the interface graphics and text are messed up in recent builds. OGL doesn't have these problems. Performance and image quality appear to be about the same with both.

The only issue with OGL at the moment is that the Launcher doesn't support all the custom resolutions that D3D does and resets it to 1024x768 if you change it manually in the registry. This isn't a big deal, since I can set all the flags in the Launcher once, set the resolution and then just open the game exe directly every time.

Quote
OpenGL's always been a bit slower for me on my 9800 than D3D, have there been any performance increases lately?


ATI cards are known to be generally faster in D3D than OGL. I think the latest drivers provide some gains in OGL though.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2005, 11:03:34 am by 296 »

 

Offline Falcon

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Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
*does love OpenGL more than D3D* :D

 
Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
Any build in particular?  There are a lot of them but it appears that each has its own problems.  Which one would be considered the most "stable"?

 

Offline Carl

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Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
I don't like playing FS2 in OpenGL because the explosions look muted and crappy.
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Offline Fineus

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Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
Um... I'm having a big big problem with OGL. It runs alright - but the mapping looks even worse than under D3D. There's definitely no specular and though there is Env mapping, the lighting all ships looks very basic indeed. Textures are also poor quality. Is there some setting that goes with OGL that I'm missing?

 

Offline taylor

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Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
There is no env mapping for OGL, at least not in any public builds, so that's not what you're seeing.  Got screenshots?  What video card and driver version are you using?

 

Offline Fineus

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Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
Give me a sec to set it up, I'll edit this post when I've got something to show :)

Edit:

Ok here we go, I took a shot of the same ship in game using OGL and D3D, the results are like so:

OGL:
http://www.zen8740.zen.co.uk/pics/fs2ogl.jpg

D3D:
http://www.zen8740.zen.co.uk/pics/fs2d3d.jpg

Strangely the OGL edition looks better in the shot than it does in game. In game it looks incredibly bright... almost as if it was under a bright spotlight.

Am I just using the wrong gamma settings or something? (Excuse the lack of knowledge, haven't fiddled around with FS2 in some time!).

  

Offline karajorma

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Using FS2 Open with ATI Catalyst >4.12
Have you tried pressing F2 and adjusting your brightness? I find that D3D and OpenGL aren't exactly the same when it comes to that.

Then again the gamma on my PC is all f**ked up thanks to my crappy monitor.
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