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Flickering Bomb Craters

starbage1

starbage1

Members +
I have always had this problem of flickering craters, sometimes they never show. Anyone found a fix?

If I player other older pc games from the mid to late 90's they do the game thing..

Could this be the game using direct draw problem? Something that newer cards don't support?
 
If you are using Ankor's shaders, that is one of the bugs. Otherwise they should be working fine.
 
gecko said:
If you are using Ankor's shaders, that is one of the bugs. Otherwise they should be working fine.
Click to expand...

I've always had that problem with CFS2 as well. There may be a solution. Since I've started working with Gmax I've found that the ground polys made by it don't have this problem. It could be the that we add this to the material "ZBIAS_9_DAMAGE" and the polys sit just a wisker above the ground. It may be worth redoing them in this manor. Just a thought.
 
Blood_Hawk23 said:
I've always had that problem with CFS2 as well. There may be a solution. Since I've started working with Gmax I've found that the ground polys made by it don't have this problem. It could be the that we add this to the material "ZBIAS_9_DAMAGE" and the polys sit just a wisker above the ground. It may be worth redoing them in this manor. Just a thought.
Click to expand...

Wow now there's a thought :applause:. I love learning new stuff.

I had big problems with craters in one install. There were heavy straight lines emanating radially from each crater, looked ugly. The possible explanation was that I had tinkered with the effects.xml. I had set things up so that crater_25 was embedded in the effect group "groundexpl_m". This to me was a simple solution so that with aircraft crashes, and all the other medium explosions in the CFS3 world, there would be a crater.

Trouble is I did not entirely eliminate duplicate events that triggered craters. For example all the shells have a crater of some sort in their weapon xdp file. Hence I think the wierd artifacts were due to a duplicate triggering of the crater decal.

Hope I've stayed on topic,
 
looks on topic to me...

Are the craters part of the model? Or are they called in the xdp? If its the latter then my idea would work. Other wise without the source files it wouldn't.

Starbage1,

Now that I've re-read your post, It could be a draw issue. What texture format are the craters in?
 
I recall my shaders have been causing flickering craters in WOFF, but I fixed it some time ago (and the fixed version was definitely released in one of the WOFF 2.x patches, maybe even in the initial WOFF 2.0).
However I don't remember what exactly was the problem and what was the fix. All I can say is that z-bias in CFS3 works in quite weird way, for me it would have been easier if it wasn't there at all.
 
It happens without using ankor shader as well.. As I stated before, it happens in other older pc games and believe it is a direct draw problem which cards don't support anymore. The fix may be a graphics tweak.
 
Blood_Hawk23 said:
Are the craters part of the model? Or are they called in the xdp? If its the latter then my idea would work. Other wise without the source files it wouldn't.

Starbage1,

Now that I've re-read your post, It could be a draw issue. What texture format are the craters in?
Click to expand...

I'd be willing to bet the crater dds texture is DXT1. In the objects folder I don't recall if craters have an m3d or if they only have and xdp file and a texture. I seem to remember searching for an xdp entry I could use to make the craters "rough". For example, runways can have various entries for ground surfaces so I thought I could add a surface texture descriptor to the crater xdp. Somthing like "long grass" might do the trick. The idea is to make aircraft and vehicles treat craters like rougher terrain not a billiard smooth surface.

Starbage1, have you tried tweaking zbias in the config after what Ankor had to say? You are probably right about it needing some sort of graphics tweak.
 
No but I will now Z Bias has a ton of options, and no legend like the rest of the config program.. no this does that..
 
starbage1 said:
No but I will now Z Bias has a ton of options, and no legend like the rest of the config program.. no this does that..
Click to expand...

IIRC there was a post in a WOFF forum that included some zbias settings that I really liked. When I am on my CFS3 rig I will try to remember to dig it up.... otherwise some diligent searching might come up trumps...
 
Daiwilletti, I'd be interested in seeing those settings too. Ankor, I am using the latest version of the WOFF shaders and the crater is still flickering. Perhaps it's a settings issue on my end?
 
gecko said:
Daiwilletti, I'd be interested in seeing those settings too. Ankor, I am using the latest version of the WOFF shaders and the crater is still flickering. Perhaps it's a settings issue on my end?
Click to expand...

I've only recently started to modify the zbias settings in cfsconfig. The first time I did it I remember being surprised how good the improvement was. I will definitely dig up a couple of different sources for you to compare. I am not confident that my current zbias settings are the WOFF ones so I will go back to the source material.
 
I tried messing with Z bias a while ago and here's where I ended up:

<ZBiasBitsResolution val="15"/>
<ZBiasTerrainDecal val="0"/>
<ZBiasWaterPolyNear val="1"/>
<ZBiasWaterPolyFar val="0"/>
<ZBiasWaterLineNear val="1"/>
<ZBiasWaterLineFar val="0"/>
<ZBiasFlatEffects val="1"/>
<ZBiasShadow val="0"/>
<ZBiasTerrainAlphaNear val="0"/>
<ZBiasTerrainAlphaFar val="0"/>
<ZBiasObject val="0"/>
<ZBiasObjectFar val="0"/>
<ZBiasEffects val="1"/>
<ZBiasClouds val="1"/>

If I took the bits resolution above 15 bad things started to happen.
 
Thanks, Major will give it a try.

Here is a z-bias config from January 2005 *cough* <over 10 years ago> mumble

<ZBiasBitsResolution val="15"/>
<ZBiasTerrainDecal val="0"/>
<ZBiasWaterPolyNear val="1"/>
<ZBiasWaterPolyFar val="28"/>
<ZBiasWaterLineNear val="1"/>
<ZBiasWaterLineFar val="32"/>
<ZBiasFlatEffects val="25"/>
<ZBiasShadow val="0"/>
<ZBiasTerrainAlphaNear val="0"/>
<ZBiasTerrainAlphaFar val="12"/>
<ZBiasObject val="0"/>
<ZBiasObjectFar val="18"/>
<ZBiasEffects val="1"/>
<ZBiasClouds val="1"/>

I don't recall the origin of this set. But IIRC it works quite well.
 
Setting ZBiasTerrainDecal to 1 fixed it for me, and still using the the WOFF 2.0 shaders.
 
Here's an interesting bit from an earlier post by Ankor:

From Ankor in bump mapping thread 1-2-15


Bomb craters flicker


"Try changing ZBiasFlatEffects. For WOFF we set it to 1.
By the way, I feel that ZBiasBitsResolution set to 15 is not correct since we are using high resolution z buffer (even if it is not selected in cfs3config, my shaders force it). I think it should be set to 23 or 24 ."
 
High Resolution Z Buffer

The Z buffer is a setting right on the first page of cfs3config. Don't know how it relates to the z-bias settings, but here is a thread from 2007:

":*Sent:* Tuesday, 13 November 2007 10:26 a.m.

*Subject:* Hi Res z buffer


High Resolution Z Buffer


------------------------------------------------------------------------


Most people turn off either the Dual Pass Render, or the High Resolution
Z-Buffer; for a time I had both ON, but now I turn off Dual Pass, and
leave on High Res Z-Buffer. But, if you play the game in 32 bit
resolution, why have the default Z-Buffer to be set at 15 bits? You
might as welll set it the same as the screen resolution. So, turn the
Z-Bias up to 1 bit less than your screen resolution colour depth (31
bits for 32 Bit colour).


In CFSConfig, open custom settings, and open Texture Info tab, and
change the Index Buffer and Vertex buffer sizes to maximum (65536), and
index cache size to 64. I have a 3.0 GHz, dual core processor, with 2 GB
of DDR 400 RAM, and a Radeon 9550, 256 MB card. It helped my game
performance immensely.


by /MOG Meaty/"

Obviously things have changed a lot in terms of technology since then. Majormagee has already reported that he has problems with the gauges showing with a z-buffer set at over 15 bits. So its horses for courses, something to experiment with.
 
Z-bias a la Groundcrew Design

Back to examples of z-bias settings, I've just remembered the Groundcrew display settings guide has on its final page an image of their recommended z-bias settings. Mrjmaint's website is kindly hosting the Groundcrew stuff.

Just quickly, their numbers are 22,0,1,0,1,0,25,0,0,0,0,0,1,1 (final one being zbias clouds).
 
Thanks, this is helping. While we're talking about z bias things, does anyone know how to fix this issue on the horizon? Happens in CFS3 and WOFF.
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