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[FIXED] Weird water/cloud glitch with an 8000 series [FIXED]

Posted: 11 Feb 2008, 15:35
by Eversmile
I get a weird, randomly fluctuating distortion on the water when I have dynamic water enabled. If I look in a certain direction, it looks quite good with those awesome ripples.

Image

If I set to reflective and refractive, it is ok, but I love the cool ripples and want them back :(

I have an 8800 GTX with the January 10th beta drivers installed. I am using XP.

Can anyone help, please?

Please post if you have any information that might help or if you are experiencing this issue. Any new side effects will be added here.

Just in: Apparently this also effects dynamic clouds as well. I haven't even seen any since I got my 8800 GTX come to think of it.

8000 series possibly causes a rare crash during a startup of a match. Only work around is to restart the computer. Mine used to do this, but I got SetAffinity from here which auto sets the amount of cores to a program. This seems to have fixed it, so maybe not related to 8000 series, but dual core systems.

HOW TO FIX
LordMatt wrote:Works for me now that I rooted out all copies of dwgroundrefract.vp and updated them. In fact, you don't need to wait until the next release for this bugfix, just make a folder "shaders" in your spring directory with the attached file (change extension to .vp from .txt).

On a related note. I wish someone could fix refractive water so that you can see submerged units on 8 series cards: http://spring.clan-sy.com/mantis/view.php?id=650
Bless you, Kloot! It seems to work perfectly well for me, and i'm on vista now!

(Thank you very much for editing my post so that it thanks the right guy. Thanks [person who edited my post] :wink: )

Re: Weird water glitch with dynamic water

Posted: 11 Feb 2008, 16:28
by LardLad3545
I know EXACTLY what you mean and I get the exact same problem. Spring's water is the best I've ever seen. But, I've done a lot of looking around and it looks like all 8800 graphics cards have this issue. I could be wrong though, so, I'd also really like to know because, while reflective+refractive looks okay, it's sadly nothing special.

Re: Weird water glitch with dynamic water

Posted: 11 Feb 2008, 19:01
by Eversmile
Oh yeah, I should've said! I have an 8800 GTX. Thank you for your support on this issue, the more peeps who have this problem, the more likely it'll get solved quicker! :D I am using XP, and the latest (Jan 10th) Nvidia beta drivers.

Re: Weird water glitch with dynamic water

Posted: 12 Feb 2008, 00:35
by Noruas
I notice the streaky lines start in the direction of the sun. So its like this...


[WATER WITH LINES]------ [LAND] [SUN LIGHT, ETC]

Re: Weird water glitch with dynamic water

Posted: 12 Feb 2008, 00:39
by Smiff
this needs sticky or something..
yeah actually that shot looks cool, normally its a mess of course.

Re: Weird water glitch with dynamic water

Posted: 12 Feb 2008, 02:28
by Noruas
I guess when the water goes above normal waterline, the texture smears onto the water, making the streaks, if that makes sense.

Re: Weird water glitch with dynamic water

Posted: 12 Feb 2008, 02:50
by LordMatt
It doesn't work for anyone with 8 series cards. It would be great if someone fixed this, I agree (and made the 8 series cards run better with spring in general too).

Re: Weird water glitch with dynamic water

Posted: 12 Feb 2008, 12:43
by Crayfish
I get this with both dynamic water and dynamic clouds. I have an 8800 GT.

Also get another problem where my framerate drops to unplayable levels (around 1 per second) on starting the game, maybe one time in twenty, and it won't work again until I restart the computer. Don't know if that's GFX card related or something else.

Re: Weird water glitch with dynamic water

Posted: 12 Feb 2008, 13:03
by Eversmile
I've had the slow down problem too. I recently got the SetAffinity program, so that it auto sets 1 core instead of 2 to Spring. The problem hasn't happened to me since

link

Here you go, almost forgot a link to it. Its very straight forward and easy to use. And I don't think I even get dynamic clouds. It was on when I took that screen shot.

Re: Weird water/cloud glitch with an 8000 series

Posted: 12 Feb 2008, 14:02
by Crayfish
Oo, thanks! I'll get that going when I get home.

Other than the dynamic stuff, Spring runs really nicely for me with all other settings on maximum (at 1280x1024). I haven't ever tried a 7 series to compare but on the new set up Spring looks infinitely better than it did on my old computer (with 5 series card).

It really took me by surprise that the engine can look as refined as it does now. Beats most commercial RTS graphics imo (including supreme commander which only looks any good at impractically close zoom levels). Well done to the developers for that :) Keep it up ;)

Re: Weird water/cloud glitch with an 8000 series

Posted: 12 Feb 2008, 15:03
by Eversmile
Crayfish wrote:Oo, thanks! I'll get that going when I get home.

Other than the dynamic stuff, Spring runs really nicely for me with all other settings on maximum (at 1280x1024). I haven't ever tried a 7 series to compare but on the new set up Spring looks infinitely better than it did on my old computer (with 5 series card).

It really took me by surprise that the engine can look as refined as it does now. Beats most commercial RTS graphics imo (including supreme commander which only looks any good at impractically close zoom levels). Well done to the developers for that :) Keep it up ;)
You're welcome, and I fully agree :)

Re: Weird water/cloud glitch with an 8000 series

Posted: 12 Feb 2008, 17:02
by rattle
The lines come from the top left corner from TA view usually. Would be cool if someone fixed all the shaders, including the refractive shader which isn't working correctly either since it overdraws and spews errors when you try to activate it when the borders are visible. I think that got reported twice now.

I haven't had any issues with clouds though, I could see the highres clouds as well as see them moving.

Re: Weird water glitch with dynamic water

Posted: 12 Feb 2008, 17:28
by Peet
Crayfish wrote:I get this with both dynamic water and dynamic clouds. I have an 8800 GT.

Also get another problem where my framerate drops to unplayable levels (around 1 per second) on starting the game, maybe one time in twenty, and it won't work again until I restart the computer. Don't know if that's GFX card related or something else.
Is the whole map in shadow when that happens? If that's the case, you have shadowmaps set too high and your mere 512MB of video ram cannot take it....8192 doesn't really look any different from 4096 except for extremely close up anyway.

Re: Weird water/cloud glitch with an 8000 series

Posted: 12 Feb 2008, 17:30
by LardLad3545
Ever since I got my 8800 and AMD dual-core processor, I've had a lot of issues with the graphics in Spring. I've obviously read that Spring does not like dual-cores but I've had strange things happen.

Most of the time, I need to shut off my first core and have it run on the second to get a 40FPS boost. But, oddly enough, the last time I played, it ran TERRIBLE when I did that. I turn both cores back on, and it ran "fairly" smooth after that. Strange. :?

Also, is anyone else having trouble with 3D trees? I get terrible graphical artifacts or something on them. It looks like several extra polygons on the trees with a hideous grey and multi-colored texture. It also runs terrible with it on.

One last thing, which was mentioned above. The performance has dropped dramatically since I got this new hardware, which is sad because my 7800GT ran Spring twice as well as the 8800GTS... or maybe I should blame the processor... Any ideas?

Re: Weird water/cloud glitch with an 8000 series

Posted: 12 Feb 2008, 17:34
by Peet
LardLad3545 wrote:Also, is anyone else having trouble with 3D trees? I get terrible graphical artifacts or something on them. It looks like several extra polygons on the trees with a hideous grey and multi-colored texture. It also runs terrible with it on.
Don't load spring with it minimized. If you're running it in a window, make sure the whole window is on the screen...IIRC the tree texture is procedurally generated using the window's frame buffer so if it is not in a rendering state, the tree texture is fed garbage.

Re: Weird water/cloud glitch with an 8000 series

Posted: 12 Feb 2008, 17:45
by LardLad3545
Hey, thanks, that totally worked. Now... about my other problems? :P

Re: Weird water glitch with dynamic water

Posted: 13 Feb 2008, 14:27
by Crayfish
Peet wrote:
Crayfish wrote:I get this with both dynamic water and dynamic clouds. I have an 8800 GT.

Also get another problem where my framerate drops to unplayable levels (around 1 per second) on starting the game, maybe one time in twenty, and it won't work again until I restart the computer. Don't know if that's GFX card related or something else.
Is the whole map in shadow when that happens? If that's the case, you have shadowmaps set too high and your mere 512MB of video ram cannot take it....8192 doesn't really look any different from 4096 except for extremely close up anyway.
That'd be it. I'll drop the shadowmaps thing and see if I can get some clouds - although I'm pretty much used to not having them by now! I didn't know what most of the options do so just whacked the sliders right to the top in the hope they'd make it look prettier.

Re: Weird water/cloud glitch with an 8000 series

Posted: 27 Feb 2008, 15:19
by submarine
Is anyone going to fix the water renderer for 8800 cards? (I would do it myself if I could)? Its really frustrating to have a graphics card with enough power to play with > 30 fps with dynamic water and not being able to use it :(

Re: Weird water/cloud glitch with an 8000 series

Posted: 28 Feb 2008, 00:48
by LordMatt
I think the fastest way to get it fixed is to kidnap jc and force him to maek patch. :P

Re: Weird water/cloud glitch with an 8000 series

Posted: 28 Feb 2008, 01:14
by [Krogoth86]
LordMatt wrote:I think the fastest way to get it fixed is to kidnap jc and force him to maek patch. :P
And especially make him create an effect ATI users can have too... :wink: