Gfx cards problems

Hello everyone,

Here's a quick update on a few of the issues you've posted about:

About builds
Sometimes the Phase 2 Beta will be patched with full downloads similar to this first one, which basicly means that the level-data also needs to be updated. Other times we will be able to provide you with single igi2.exe files which are 3MB for you to replace. However, not all bugs can be fixed like this.

System performance
First of all: IGI2 is a very demanding game. An average weapon you're holding in your hand in IGI2 has half the polygons of a Counter-Strike level. Since it's using massive amounts of data for models/terrain and a lot of texture memory, it can be seriously affected by problems in your setup. It can therefore expose these problems in ways not seen in other games.

Here's a few tricks:

1. Turn your graphics-settings to Custom. Then switch Disable Texture Compression to NO. This shouldn't affect the quality of your gaming experience significantly, but it helps your graphics card a lot. This reduces the texture memory-footprint which will also enhance rendering speed and minimize texture-swapping.
2. The Terrain Detail slider directly correlates with CPU power, but also on the amount of morphing on the terrain. If you have a slow CPU you can turn this further down, and thus lighten the burden for your CPU. It will however cause more morphing. If you have a really strong CPU (for instance a 2GHz P4) then you can actually increase this setting and get more accurate terrain rendering.
3. Model detail and LOD bias will cut down the amount of polygons being thrown at your graphics card. If you have a GF2 for instance, this could be a good idea for improving framerate. However, it reduces the graphical quality of your experience and makes models "pop" more significantly.

If you're having serious problems, then you should check with different drivers. Some sound-drivers can be very CPU-demanding. Some drivers from graphics-chip manufacturers are sometimes flawed and can cause problems. We have tested with latest drivers for all major cards, so this shouldn't really be a problem. It might also be a good idea to verify that your AGP settings are set right, as this can become a bottleneck when the drivers swap textures on 32 MB cards.

Falling into stone-crusher at top of objective 3 - player doesn't die
This will be working in the next full download.

Metal sound when walking over tree-stumps
This has been fixed and will be included in the next full download.

Whilst searching for servers the Join Game Menu freezes for a long time
After loading the map and getting onto the server, the server won't let you spawn
This is a known bug, and has been fixed. Will be working in the next executable. If you wait for the round to end, the problem will end and you'll be able to spawn.

This can be caused by the game having problems with your firewall. We will in the future try to make this process quicker, avoiding the lock-up.

Fatal Error (memory allocation)
We would like more information from people with this problem.

I suggest that those of you with the Memory allocation error tests you RAM for errors. go to www.google.com and search for a program called "memtest 86" (it's free). Make a bootable disk (the program will help you) and let the test run through one pass. If you get errors: Get you RAM replaced. I Also experienced that some Asus Mobo's can cause a memory error (which will also be reported in memtest 86) especially the Asus A7V133(-C). I work as a technician in a web store who sells hardware in Denmark. shg.dk A/S.

First, thank you all guys for reporting problems with different hardware. It is a very difficult task to test a pc game on all possible hw configurations which can not be accomplished without your help.

Now some thoughts on reported problems, as usual it's absolutely unofficial
- Radeon 8500, 9000 with xxx.6200 drivers.
It is a driver problem. For a temporary fix, please use "Force software vertex shaders" option in the graphics options. It could lead to a slight performance decrease because the true directX 8 features of these videoboards will not be used. Although if you have a powerful CPU it won't hurt you (note that it by no means affects the picture quality).
Alternatrive solution is to roll back to 6166 and wait for new driver releases. (We will contact ATI and get them to look into this problem)

- Whole Radeon 7500 family (including mobile ones), Nvidia GForce4 MX
Here it's a constant problem, but the solution is the same. It seems that these gpu's simply don't provide enough shader support. Use "Force SW shaders"(must be the default) and you're unlikely to lose performance here anyway.

- Voodoo5
I tried this one with the latest drivers (3dhq 1.09 beta7, released in November this year) and I had no z-fighting problems (when a texture from the ground pass seeping through the front layer, you posted the sreenshots) so I recommend doing the same.
I also found that the texture management implemented in these drivers is terrible and if textures don't fit video memory it chugs badly.
So you could try to use texture compression (set "Disable texture compression" to "no") and may be texture quality slider.
Unfortunately this board is not very S3TextureCompression friendly, so I've seen some visual glitches when it's on.

- Kyro/KyroII (incl. 3d prophet 4500)
I tried these and I didn't see any problems other than small glitches (bright triangles) on distant mountains. This problem is due to the Kyro's way of making z-test. It seems to fail with igi's huge view distances. So if you have any other problems I recommend installing the very latest drivers. If it doesn't help, please post it with description and preferably a screen shot.

- Presario 7462 and alike.
I regret to say that the Trident cards used in these machines are not supported in igi2. Simply because they don't have features vital for this game. Sorry about that.

- Occasional crashes on gf2,3 hardware.
So far we didn't have any issues with these gpu's here. I can only say that I don't recommend the 40.72 drivers to anybody. Anyways post your issues here with full specs (includeing OS and driver version) and description of what you were doing when it crashed and what were its last words (error message boxes) if any We will try to reproduce it here.

Some general notes.
- People walking in the air / moving ground effects.
Pull the Terrain detail slider in the graphics options menu to the rightmost position(accessible only from the main menu, not in game).
I believe if you have >1GHz CPU it won't hurt your fps much.
- Access to advanced graphics options.
From the main menu choose configuration then graphics then change the "graphics detail" thing to "custom". At this point the advanced options should become accessible for fine tuning.
- The game doesn't start at all, so you cant' get even to the main menu.
If I had this problem, I would try the folloing (sorted by priority):
1) Download that video codec(see the corresponding thread)
2) Download and install the appropriate drivers for the monitor.
3) Change desktop resolution / refresh rate.
4) Remove intro movies in /screens/intro/
5) If all of the above fails post here specifying what error box was exactly shown (if any)

Hmmm... that was not very quick
Sorry if I missed something, what if you use this topic for new gfx related bug reports?

Why don't you recommend the Det. 40.72 drivers to anybody and which drivers do you recommend?

[SAS]

as someone who uses the new 40 series I can see why they aren't recommended they have alot of compatibility problems, after Install you need to run a 3rd party utility to fix the files as they leave old driver files on the system that affect performance ect.

NVIDIA claim they improve perormance upto 25% maybe 2% on a good day

They also aren't as stable as say the 28 series of drivers.

I really dont see the point in them unless you have a GF4 in which case they seem to provide some minor improvements in games (SOF2 in conjunction with there last patch) FPS went from <10 to 40-80FPS constantly.

Hope this helps

I am a bit sceptical about 40.71 because I know that they have bugs that can be reproduced using our game
However I know nothing about them that could prevent you from playing igi2.
The thing is hardware vendors try to fix the bugs and problems in drivers with each new driver release, but sometimes their new fixes unfix the old ones (a good example is ATI's 6200)
So I don't really recommend installing new drivers unless you have problems with your current ones.

Neither does ATI btw.
Have the guys who installed 6200 drivers read this (on the download page):
Download this driver bundle if you are having issues with your ATI product, including those mentioned above. ATI does not recommend unnecessary driver updates, when your graphics card is functioning properly.

[isophage]

Well, I did what you said and changed the Forced software vertex shaders thing, and sure enough, it let the game play, and yep, you were right, there was a big performance hit (although I don't know if this is the norm, since I haven't played without this on), but one thing happened, and I don't know if its supposed to, but I am getting massive amounts of Z-Fighting.
Almost every terrain texture has something fighting under it, and its making the terrain flicker alot (nothing is wrong indoors, just outdoors, in the terrain)

[Becool]

GF3 with 40.72 here, and I seem to have no compatibility problems. Not with IGI2 nor with any of the games I have running - which are quite a few.

Becool aka Cameosis

Main probs i have had are the screen going funny colours and white dots

[lenchmob]

I'm using the 40.72 drivers with a GeForce4 ti4600. Besides running the IGI2 beta, I have MOH Spearhead, BF1942, and NOLF 2 on my system. To add I've pretty much maxed out the graphic settings for all the games and haven't experienced any glitches, or problems...