a fix-it pod for ATI cards

Wint · Post by **Wint** » Wed Apr 02, 2003 2:05 pm

<center>Fix-it pod for ATI cards with visual glitches
(beta version one) - <a href=http://mtm2.com/~trackville/fixes/atifix.zip>download</a></center>

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<center><img src=http://mtm2.com/~trackville/fixes/ati1.jpg hspace=10 alt="Before"><img src=http://mtm2.com/~trackville/fixes/ati2.jpg alt="After"></center>

<blockquote>Before and After: On the left you can see what headlights look like when "headlights" is selected under "hardware options" ; solid! Because of this visual glitch most ATI card owners were forced to leave the "headlights" option unselected, which resulted in illumination without the "solid light beams", but this also completely removed all headlights and taillights! On the right, using the fix-it pod, the "headlights" option is selected, but the solid beams are gone and the taillights and all other lights are restored!</blockquote>

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<center><img src=http://mtm2.com/~trackville/fixes/ati3.jpg hspace=10 alt="Before"><img src=http://mtm2.com/~trackville/fixes/ati4.jpg alt="After"></center>

<blockquote>Before and After: On the left you can see how dull and completely unreflective the water appears with some ATI cards. On the right, the water surface has been turned into a flawless mirror with the fix-it pod! While this may seem odd, it is far better than no reflection, and best of all it fixes what is depicted below. One oddity is that that terrain and groundboxes in the reflection are rendered in "flat shading", meaning that you see only a single solid color instead of the textures (you can see this effect over the entire terrain if you change the "flatShadeFlag" in "monster.ini" from "0" to "1").</blockquote>

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<center><img src=http://mtm2.com/~trackville/fixes/ati5.jpg hspace=10 alt="Before"><img src=http://mtm2.com/~trackville/fixes/ati6.jpg alt="After"></center>

<blockquote>Before and After: The two views shown are from a nearly identical perspective. On the left is what an underwater view looks like using hardware rendering on some ATI cards, one is struck totally blind, unable to see anything at all underwater, thus making tracks that require driving underwater unusable in hardware mode! On the right you can see how the fix-it pod has restored under water visibility! As a bonus, the surface level is invisible and you can see clear through the surface and onto the shoreline!</blockquote>

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<blockquote> The "fix" consists only of replacing all water and light beam textures with solid black textures (palette color 0,0,0), this pure black color is rendered as transparent, thus fixing some very serious problems that ATI graphics card owners experience.</blockquote>

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<blockquote> Phineus old bean, your slick "oil" slick water replacement is to blame for this discovery! Having had dull water for some time now I was testing your new track and was shocked to notice that bits of the water were reflecting what was above it, I realized that I must be looking at pure black bits being rendered as transparent, so I quickly swapped all of the water textures for pure black and ended up with the "mirror" effect, and was quite pleased to discover that I could see under water again. At that point it was an easy guess to realize I could fix the light beams too. Now I only wish I had messed around with light beam replacements <a href=http://rhinoseros.com/~forum/pages/Forum12/HTML/000038.html>everyone was working on a few months ago</a>, I might have gotten a clue then. At this point I'm calling this fix-it a beta, since there might be more that can be done, such as experimenting with water textures that aren't totally transparent. Does anyone know of anyone with the problem I've described?</blockquote>

Edited by Winterkill (03-04-2003)

Alpine · Post by **Alpine** » Thu Apr 03, 2003 2:01 pm

Yeah, or old comp has the above mentioned graphic flaws... dull water, headlight beams aren't transparent, no viewing underwater. But I think it may have been fixed with a few driver dloads. Of course, that old puter gets formatted quite often so it's possible it still has the ugly graphic effects. I'll check on that stuff later.

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Car down low! Car down low... Clear low!
- Alpine #23

ch_2005 · Post by **ch_2005** » Mon Apr 14, 2003 8:25 am

I have an ati card in this comp.
The way i fixed if:
Switched a few jumpers on my motherboard and put in a new card

heh

this is great

ati cards make pure black invisable no maer what - this leads to being able to see through lots of stuff like the hockypuck and most of the overpass model in c98.
Thats a glitch that was usefull for somthing i c

I love this thread here - shows how mtm2 is still evolving

i love it.
2003-1998 = half a decade!

I love this game.

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Wint · Post by **Wint** » Wed Apr 16, 2003 2:49 pm

>> Switched a few jumpers on my motherboard and put in a new card

I figured someone would say "get a new card", and I was prepared to try to lash back with sarcasm, but you delivered your punch line too well for any of that.

>> ati cards make pure black invisible no matter what - this leads to being able to see through lots of stuff...

Reading this, it occurs to me this transparency problem you describe might well have been a prime inspiration for <a href=../../Forum16/HTML/000094.html>untransparatize</a>. However, I've never had that problem (Rage 128), so it's definately not universal. It seems ATI cards mixed with MTM2 delivers a wide range of results, from some problems to no problems. I was careful to say "some ati cards" when describing the problems up above. As for driver updates, my card is as updated as possible, but I've never tried using drivers not designed for my specific card, which might very well work.

> mtm2 is still evolving

i love it.

Yep. Me too.

Now as for the fix-it, the look of the "flawless mirror" water, while 'necessary', turns out to be less than desirable. I've been thinking of trying a pattern of lilypads, or an animated series of wave-lines as an alternate, leaving enough black to see through when under water. Who knows. Who cares. ;)

Edited by Winterkill (17-04-2003)