NFS5 Woes: Blurred Textures

[Chrno]

So I happened to stumble upon my NFS5 cd and installed it. After running around the usually fixes to get it to run on XP nicely, it worked. No more messy memory leak.

Basically I have upgraded to 3.5, including the enhanced. The problem I have encountered is that I have set all options within the game to high and maxed out. However, once in the game, the quality is all low. Really ugly looking. As if the game is running in software(probably is). So I fiddled around with various settings and configs such as: AA on and AF on. AA and AF both off. Resolution changing. Downgrading back to the default 3.5s. Reinstalling. Vsync on or off. Nothing. I even went to the registry and checked around those settings and sure enough, Hardware Acceleration is at a value of 1. But somehow, the game ends up faulting back to 0 or something when you actually start a race since in the menus, the cars look totally fine.

Basically nothing I could think of worked. The only last means would be to rollback to an early driver but there is no way I really want to do that since all my games currently play fine.

Here's the specs:
WinXP Pro SP2
Athlon XP 2500+ @ 3200+
MSI K7N2 Delta-L
MSI RX9800 Pro Plus (XT core) @ 430/390(780) but i defaulted it back to(380/380(680)).
SB Live! 5.1s

Drivers and Updates:
O/S: Service Pack 2. Obviously very new. I haven't come across any updates yet.

Motherboard: Currently, running the latest Nforce 2 drivers for the mobo. Basically a mix of different ones but using the latest, including the 2.6 IDE. The official one on the Nvidia site isn't exactly new if you go around and check the actual driver vers itsself. For XP anyways.

Video Card: The Radeon 9800 is running the latest Catylists 4.8. Work quite fine. Haven't had a single problem with any other game. I was debating on installing Omegas but again, I have no problems running another other game.

Sound Card: SB Live is using the KX Project drivers, 3536 I believe. No problems either. I prefer this actually than Creative's own. I simply have more other pretty functions to poke around with.

I have googled around and came upon this site. Scanning some threads, apparently some other people have these problems as well. It's quite frustrating really, especially since the support for this game dropped.

So what i'm looking at here is the game doesn't like new video cards, or the game doesn't like the drivers, or a combination of both. However, I was able to run the game perfectly maxed out, normal looking on my old Radeon 9500 Pro about a year and a half ago. So it kind of troubles me what went wrong, since there is not that much of a difference between the R300 core and R360. Well, various fixes and improvements(R350/RV360) and XT Shaders(r360). However, that shouldn't be the problem.

Also, running my cpu @ default wouldn't do anything either. This is clearly something related with the videocard-drivers-game.

The final solution i'm looking at would be to downgrade drivers. Problem with that is I can only go so far down before the support of the new video cards is cut. Plus the fact that my performance would probably drop in every other game.

I'm out of my ideas, but is this the only solution I have left?

[chris]

Anisotropic filtering might solve the blurred textures.

Edit: I see that didn't change it for you.. Might be just a video driver issue. NFS Porsche doesn't like the new video drivers.

[OBF]

HiYa Chrno
I know this is a lame question, but, did you run the PU video setup? :eek:
btw, vsync is better left off... Always. :blush:

Note to self: SELF, install XP for testing! &(

[Chrno]

Yes, of course. Ran 3dsetup before I started the game the first time. Detected the only thing available, Radeon 9800 XT. Checked Triple Buffering on and went into game.

But again, the game seems to force to default the setting on game launch. I was talking to Matt about it(Phatmatt, MATT) and he did the same testing on his Radeon 9800/P4 rig and results showed the same. Running even a slightly older set...well, 4.8s do provide fixes and some performance increases over 4.7s.

Anyways, i also tried downgrading drivers. The lowest before XT support because disabled is I believe 4.2 or 4.3. I later went down to 3.2s and grabbed the .ini files from the latest to add support. Nothing either.

So I have no clue what to do. Another idea I came was to use a glide wrapper and somehow use glide instead of D3D. Unfortunately I was not able to get the game to recognize the glide driver anywhere, let alone force it to do so.

Basically i've run out of ideas. It's kind of sad how support for older games becomes broken with newer drivers. Another thing I noticed was the game seems to also default down to 16bit too when actual race even though I did set it to 32bpp.

Again, talking to MATT, he says the problem is right there with the fe_out.txt, which I guess shows the output of the current settings. Clearly some settings have been changed prior to what it's set in the menu. Such as the car texturing detail has been kicked to 0. Some other things have also defaulted to a setting of 0(lowest/off).

But that's about it. Yes, I always run vsync off. I only run it on when I enable TAA(Temporal Anti-Aliasing) since it's required to do so but otherwise it's off.

Perhaps some coders or something could whip up some kind of hack or solution to make the game force the settings or something. Kinda sucks knowing that an old ATi Rage 3d lying around could play the game @ max detail than last generations top of the line hardware.

[Bage]

Hi
I noticed one thing with my 3d setup
The ini-file had the wrong registry key
It ended with "Porsche Unleashed" instead of "Porsche 2000"
It has always been like that on all my PC's
Think it's the 3.5 upgrade that alters the ini-file.
Anyway, tnx for the topic - it made me go through my setup and
at least i found that error.

On your problem Chrno - sorry can't think of anything that might help.
It seems as if either PU or the gfx-driver detects some kind of error and defaults to a lower setting

Good luck!
/Bage

[DC_Targa]

2.53 GHz P4, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, SB Live 5.1. Using the Catalyst 3.4 drivers that came on the CD with the card.

I'm running XP home with all the recommended upgrades but WITHOUT either SP1 or 2. PU displays fine for me and the settings stay as I selected them. I run the box stock game, no "enhancements" (CD in the drive) and the 3.5 update was done thru the game right off the EA update servers.

Here is my fe_out.txt info. I see that triple buffering is 0. Don't know if this helps but have a look.

carchrome = 0
cardetail = 2
detailedshadows = 0
gammacorrection = 104
headlights = 0
lensflare = 0
reflections = 0
width = 1280
height = 1024
depth = 16
shadowmapping = 0
skyrendering = 1
specialfx = 3
texturedetail = 2
textureddamage = 0
triplebuffer = 0
adjustableviewdistance = 3
widescreen = 0

Good Luck,

DC_Targa

[Chrno]

Bage: I noticed that too that it would point to Unleashed instead of 2000. So I modified it to point to the proper name but it didn't help that much either.

DC_Targa: Thanks for the info. Upon inspecting your fe_out, I noticed texturedetail is @ 2. Mine is @ 0.

carchrome = 2
cardetail = 2
detailedshadows = 0
gammacorrection = 106
headlights = 0
lensflare = 1
reflections = 0
width = 1152
height = 864
depth = 32
shadowmapping = 0
skyrendering = 2
specialfx = 3
texturedetail = 0
textureddamage = 0
triplebuffer = 0
adjustableviewdistance = 3
widescreen = 1

Apparently that seems to the real problem. Maybe somebody could create an updated vers of the dx7z.dll file or something. Or somehow make the game force to run highres.

I also came close to letting the game run in Glide via Glide Wrapper. I modified the registry value to point to the voodoo.dll instead of the normal dx one. However, the game would start and show a blank screen for 2 secs before returning back to the desktop. No dice either.

I'm out of options quite frankly. I've tried everything I could think of getting this to run but nothing. If I knew what file exactly was ATi's D3D, I could try dropping an older driver version, such as 3.4s and dropping it in and seeing if it will fix it. Unfortunately, extremely a lot of files. Though I think I have narrowed the file down being called "Ati3duag.dll" since it's the next biggest file to ATioglxx.dll <-OpenGL. So I'll do some more testing.

If anyone has any info or suggestions, let me know. I'm going insane here trying to get this thing to work on modern cards and drivers.

[chris]

Apparently that seems to the real problem. Maybe somebody could create an updated vers of the dx7z.dll file or something.

Woah, I wouldn't suggest that. It would likely meet with the same violently hostile reception as other mods..

[VQ]

but it's a lot more technical then putting new cars in.

[ZZSix]

I regret to say that the problem is not as simple as a conflict with the newer ATI cards or drivers. I am having the same problem with NFS5, and I'm using a Geforce FX 5200. I'm currently stumped as to how to solve the problem, though I have an educated guess at the source:

Chrno - the only thing your machine and mine seem to have in common is XP Pro SP1/2. FYI, I'm running (with all current drivers):
XP Pro SP1 + SP2 on
VIA P4X400-8235
Intel Celeron 1.7
VIA integrated audio
eVGA/nVidia Geforce FX 5200 (8x)

Another odd thing happened earlier today, which may be related: I was playing around with Freelancer, and whenever it started up, it gave me a warning that it couldn't detect my 3D accelerator. As much as microsoft sucks, products published by them usually have no problem interfacing with their O/S, so I thought it odd. The in-game graphics were fine, so I didn't think anything more of it. Unfortunately, this is my first time messing around with Freelancer, so I don't know if it would have had this same problem on an older setup. You said you had heard of other people having this problem... how recently has this problem emerged? Could it be a bug in SP2? SP1? DirectX <whatever version we're on now>? (FYI, dxdiag has no problems). DC Targa has no problem, and hasn't installed SP1 or SP2. I'd bet on one of the service packs as the culprit, the only question is which one, and why/how?

Has anybody had an experience that contradicts this theory?

- ZZSix

[[XR]M12]

the Freelancer - ATi problem is a known one, a few ppl I know that are playing it came across the same thing
although Freelancer gives you this error message, it`ll run anyways - the GFX card just might change the 3D mode from "hardware" to "software" which will cause a game freeze - this mysterious fault will happen on fast & slow machines, at least I`ve been told so

the blurred textures on PU: I`ve heared of this problem now in these cases:
AMD CPU (like the 1st post indicates)
INTEL CPU
ATi cards
Nvidia cards

this even more mysterious error seems to appear on fast machins (like 2 GHz+ CPUs & lateset GFX cards) -> so I`d never blame the individuals hardware then rather PUs program code which is now several years old

[Hammer]

I've found most recomend the 40.72 drivers. and the fuzzy text turn AAA of and AFS to 2

[Hammer]

I also beleive the game was made for 800x600 16 bit colour. Try setting ur desktop to this before starting the game.

[Icekid84]

I too am having this problem. I personally dont think this is a fixable problem. It t's me off that I cant enjoy my favorite NFS game. I look at it and all I see are blurry, low res bad graphics. The headlights, wheels, sky,door lines, you name it are just plain crappy. I'm not a person who has to update his 3d card every year or whatever, but maybe nvidia might be the way to go for a change. I mean I love my ATI All in WOnder 9600 128mb but it sucks that companies forget about the past and only focus on the future or present games.

[chris]

A solution might be for a programmer to go through and rebuild the dx7z.dll file, and make the required fixes to make sure it works properly with current standards. That is the only solution for this trouble I fear. :(

@Icekid84: Nice to see you visiting here. :)

[Icekid84]

hehe hey CPD, yeah I came by, Venom told me to check here for answers and I found this topic that was exactly my problem. Too bad I'm not a programer hehe...

[Bage]

Hi all

I know that Rick (FR2) has probs with his framerate and lagging in online races
after installing SP2, i wonder if this isn't the prob here to.
I have no idea about Ricks config but ill ask next time we meet racing.

I have a dualboot setup to make sure that i can try out these kind of things
without destroying my racing system.

Good luck!

/bage

[[XR]M12]

got SP2 as well..PU runs as it should be...only with the NVidia related font problem...but thats ok with me...

[webdog]

I've got exactally the same issue.

It appears to be caused by the 7 Series Nvidia cards.
I had a 6900SLI setup with no issues.

No setting or tweaking seems to get this problem fixed. It MAY be driver dependant, but the problem is the latest Nvidia cards are reliant on a new set of drivers, these appear to be interfering.

DX8 DDLs don't make any change. If you could force the game into software mode perhaps that could do the trick.