Nvidia tweaks again please!

[Guest]

With all the messing around I've done trying to get the Meridian fairly smooth I've since lost my graphic mojo. I installed DX9 and the latest NVidia drivers but things didn't look so good so I reinstalled slightly older drivers. I took their advice and uninstalled the drivers before reinstalling. Well, I don't know if that was necessary or not but it turned out to be a big pain in the buttocks (wonder if that will get bleeped on this forum?). All my tweaking is gone and the blurry textures are back. You guys got me through this last time but that post seems to be long gone here. Would someone be kind enough to repost those tweaks please? I'm using Rivatuner unless someone has a better recommendation. Thanks!David

[Guest]

I'm beggin' here! ;-)David

[Guest ha5mvo]

lokk for paul01 posts any post will do since he adds the setting adjustment references to all his posts.his suggestions work very well for me//mike

[Cruachan 705]

Hi David,Sorry you've been kept hanging around. I'll give it a shot based on my 'successful' results under DX9. By successful I simply mean that you are unlikely to see much change in FS2k2 by updating from, say, DX 8.1. DX9 does not break anything in my experience nor does it improve performance/framerates. I am assuming you have a GeForce card (256 or above)I have no experience of nVidia driver sets above 30.82 as these seem very stable and reliable and I have yet to be convinced that it is worth changing. DX9 is backwards compatible with games optimized to run under earlier versions of DirectX so FS2k2 runs just fine. Unlike the 40+.xx driver series the 30.82s were not optimized with DX9 in mind. However, as yet, there is very little software out there to exploit the new API. This, of course, will change.There are 2 settings worth changing:--> Degree of Anisotropic Filtering--> MipMapping LODBoth can be adjusted using RivaTuner (I use Version 2.0 Release Candidate 12).First, in order to get the LOD 'tweak' to work properly you need to apply a so-called 'patch script' to your selected driver. What follows was guidance kindly provided by Paul Leatzaw (PaulL01), the Avsim Guru of all things driver related:"Go into your windows/system or windows/system32 folder and find this file "nvdd32.dll" (WIN98se) or "Nv4_disp.dll" (WinXP) now copy it into a temp folder.Now go into RivaTuner and under the power users tab, look at the bottom where you will see an icon that looks like a folder with a gear on it, click it, next choose "patch scripts" then "lodbiasfix" now choose according to your OS and when prompted point the program towards the temp folder where you put the nvdd32.dll (or Nv4_disp.dll), RivaTuner will let you know that it was patched, now simply reboot windows into SAFE mode and replace the orginal nvdd32.dll (or Nv4_disp.dll) that resides in the windows/system folder with the patched version (name the original nvdd32.bak first), now reboot Windows and you can now make adjustments to LOD in negative values (not much is needed)."Paul is absolutely correct when he states that "not much is needed"In fact an LOD setting of -0.1 works very well in my case.So, fire up RivaTuner and on the main page click on the small arrow just to the right of 'customize' which appears above your driver listing. Select the DirectX icon (2nd one along)and you will see you are in the MipMapping page. Adjust the slider to the left just a tad until you see the value -0.1 appear.Now select the 'Textures' tab at the top of the window and at the bottom of that window you will see 'Texture filtering settings'. The setting you choose here will depend largely on the capabilities of your CPU/GPU as there is a modest but significant performance hit the higher the setting (You will note this especially if you run 3Dmark 2001SE). However, there is no harm experimenting. My card, a GeForce4 Ti4400 128MB, supports up to level 8 and currently I have 'force level 8' selected here and I am quite happy with the results (P4 2.2GHz). Levels 2, 4 or 8 will all produce improvements in texture clarity and it may be you will be perfectly happy chosing, say, level 4.Once done, don't forget to click on the 'Apply' button before exiting RivaTuner.It may not be strictly necessary but it's worth rebooting to ensure these 'tweaks' are applied correctly.Hope this is helpful.Mike :-wave