Problem With FULL Shadows.

[Cosmonaut]

Hi, :v:

 

When ever I set shadows to full I get a dark skin appearance when viewing an aircraft in F2 view. The pic below demonstrates this at its most extreme, which is when I have over cast clouds set but even if it’s clear the skin still takes on a slightly darker color.

 

Anyone ever heard of this or know of a solution?

 

Thx for any info.

 

Specs; AMD 3GHz / 1GB ram / NVIDIA 7600GT.

[SuperKungFu]

yea this is a very well known problem and i complained about it in the past but there's no real solution. Its a bug created from advance haze and full shadows. I got rid of it by turning down full shadows to the second stage (i think it was active shadows). That got rid of it but you don't get full shadows anymore. I just hope BS fixed this.

[Cosmonaut]

Ah Thx for the info.. looks like full shadows is a no go area until this is fixed .. oh well no big deal.

[Disso]

yea this is a very well known problem and i complained about it in the past but there's no real solution. Its a bug created from advance haze and full shadows. I got rid of it by turning down full shadows to the second stage (i think it was active shadows). That got rid of it but you don't get full shadows anymore. I just hope BS fixed this.

 

But its not a universal bug. The majority of us don't have this bug...I myself enjoy full shadows with advance haze and lights on full.

 

Try new drivers, drivers usually can cause and fix these type of graphical glitches.

[Cosmonaut]

I guess I’ll have to use an older driver or just live with out full shadows :surrender: . I usually like to keep up to date seeing as I also play FS9, PFM and occasionally Americas Army. .. I doubt I’d see a loss in performance in any of those games even if I used a slightly older driver but what pain in the ass .. :crazy:

 

Thx All. :thumbup:

[504MrWolf]

I was told shadows are per person as in only your plane has them ?

 

If thats the case whats the point of having them on at all ? We dont get close enough to the ground (unless hotdogging in a cold area) to see shadows, great for movies pointless FPS hugger when doing battle.

[Cosmonaut]

I was told shadows are per person as in only your plane has them ?

 

If thats the case whats the point of having them on at all ? We dont get close enough to the ground (unless hotdogging in a cold area) to see shadows, great for movies pointless FPS hugger when doing battle.

 

With "All Planar" shadows everything except trees has shadows e.g. buildings, vehicles, aircraft etc and it looks great when flying A2G missions. However with shadows set to "Full" then you can also see shadows from your own aircraft and weapons being cast on other objects. This really does look good while looking around in cockpit even though the shadows have jagged edges.

 

Here you can see a shadow of the wing on the missiles and a shadow of the missile on the fuel tanks.

 

[GunSlingerAUS]

As the owner of a brand new NVIDIA 8800GTX, which only has 2 publicly released drivers, this issue is a major problem - I get the full black appearance with both sets of drivers. It's not possible for me to use an older set of drivers, as these won't work with the new 8800GTX. The drivers sets are:

 

97.02

97.44

 

Is there anyway around this issue other than waiting for NVIDIA to fix the problem in their drivers?

[Shaman]

Even in day mission, without clouds, when I set fullshadows and pan out camera a little, the entire plane is dark greyish. Yuck!

Anyway full-self-shadows work only for 1 active object, not for anything in vicinity. When you fly from the cockpit there's no big deal. I don't use full shadows until ED changes it so it supports more then 1 active object.

ED it's time to update LockOn engine to DirectX 9.0 at least!

[GunSlingerAUS]

But I don't want to stop using shadows - when I pay AU$1100 I want ALL the eye candy!

[mikoriad]

I've also had this bug forever, no matter what driver version I use. Do we know for sure if this is a ED issue or driver issue?

[TrollDude]

This is an Nvidia driver issue with the 9X.XX series drivers. I believe all 8800 series GPU's are having this problem atm. I have been playing this sim for a while now, and with different cards. 5900 ultra, 6800GT, 7950, and most recently an 8800GTX. I had NO problems with shadows until the 8800GTX and the new 9x.xx series drivers. Folks are having problems with falcon as well. So if you would like this issue addressed, i would strongly suggest posting at the http://forums.nvidia.com/. You will have to register , but this is an OFFICIAL NVIDIA forum. Hopefully they can help us out. Also keep in mind that 8800gtx and its series of drivers are new, and that sooner or later mature drivers are bound to show up.

[Shaman]

Ok so someone start a serious thread about this driver issue and LockOn on NVIDIA forums, and post a link, so we all can sign under it :)

Don't count on me on that one, I'm too lazy.

[LawnDart]

Same issue here. Been turning the shadows down a notch or for movie making plugging in Forceware drivers 84.21 (last set that worked great for me) with the 7800. I'll second what's been said in this thread about the shadow problem people have mentioned for the greater part of this year or since the "new interface" Forceware drivers (9x.xx).

[TrollDude]

Ok, here is the official thread at the NVIDIA forums started by Chokwok.

If you can, please post a screen shot of the bug as well.http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=23479. Also, do not depend on just 2 or 3 posters to count for much, as newer titles are usually the priority. So if you are having the same issues please post it there.

[Cosmonaut]

Thanks for the heads up TrollDude. :thumbup:

 

As the owner of a brand new NVIDIA 8800GTX, which only has 2 publicly released drivers, this issue is a major problem.

 

Yep same here, only a couple of drivers for the 7600GT.. Ill have a look at NVIDIA thread hopefully we can get this fixed.

[Prophet]

It definately seems a per basis, and per driver issue.

 

Honestly, given those facts, I am not quite sure what ED can do.

 

I have a 7900GTX and currently using ForceWare 93.81, and no issue that I can tell. But then again, I usually dont use external views either.

[Cosmonaut]

Are you getting the banding around the coastlines when view distance is set to less than 30 miles? Everyone who is having issues please stop by and post, even if you don't post a picture. Just verify what we're talking about so nVidia will get on the stick. This is a driver problem with nVidia.

 

I get the banding sometimes but I'll have to check that its when the View distance is set to less than 30.. I think I only get it in cockpit though but I'll have to have a closer look at the prob.

[zaelu]

I get all the "features", banding and dark shadow on aircraft when in overcast or when Carrier is moving.

 

Nvidia should fix it. I have a 6800 GT.

[Shaman]

Everyone who has an nVidia card should drop by and register there and post once in that thread.

Absolutely. Everyone who wants to see these fixed, don't let that thread die on NVIDIA forums. And reply/post your bug report there!

 

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=23479

[Kuky]

If you have that white line on the ground or missing part of the air intake (like on the F-15) edit graphics.cfg file like this:

 

near_clip = 0.1;

middle_clip = 1;

[Rhen]

If you have an 8800

 

Have you guys with 8800s tried turning up your settings and making sure you use at least 4x AA and 4x aniso? I had blinking water, shimmering mountains, a blinking canopy, and shadow texture problems on the aircraft as well as terrain. Turning water up to max, believe it or not, along with 8x AA and anisotropic filtering solved my shimmering, tiling, shadow, and flashing canopy problems. :thumbup:

[GunSlingerAUS]

Rhen - thanks for the suggestion, but it didn't fix my problem.

 

Guys, I've made a new post in a more used section of the NVIDIA forums - please post your issues here http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=25040

[f-18hornet]

I've the same problem with my 7600GT(91.47) and I'll send my issue to the Nvidia forum too.

 

Has anyone tried newest drivers? 97.xx

[Squid]

this seems to be a very widespread and old bug. Majority are various generations nvidia cards and various generations forceware drivers. My eye caught an ATI case or two have been reported as well though (and could there be more out there that just didnt post) . Both vista and XP as well.

 

Lots of threads around about it (eg http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=23479&st=0&p=138101&)

 

Myself only now have this issue, with my new system (Q6600, 8800GT).

Didnt had it before with any card (ati or nvdia) i owned or any drivers i used (i was on AMD though with all these till now).

 

I believe this should be something fixable, actually i'd suspect ED would be the very well alternative one after nvidia to maybe fix this somehow. Seems pretty much something maybe traceable given the number of people having it. Some dll? some cfg adjsutment? DX related issue? Should be traceable by someone having some related technical knowledge and the will to find out. ( i wonder for example if all people having this issue run on Intel or AMD. could be lets say for example an SSE and related software something related? )

 

Maybe gathering more hardware and software information about our own systems and setup

would help anyone interested to dig in this. Starting maybe from this thread.

 

So here are my own specs

 

Lockon version: FC 1.12b

OS: XP SP2

VGA drivers: Forceware 169.09

DX: DX 9.0c August 07

VGA: 8800GT 512mb

CPU: Intel C2D Q6600