1. #1

    Image blurry and messed up (forced antialiasing) [SOLVED]

    I'm only running the demo at the moment but the screen on ultra settings is just a big blur. Normal settings are fine. Is this just due to the demo or something else?

    my pc is

    Quad core q6600
    Nvidia 8800 gts
    4gb ram
    Vista 64 bit
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  2. #2
    sebastianaalton's Avatar Trials Developer
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    You system specs seem fine. Trials 2 Second Edition ultra high graphics mode should run smoothly on your computer. Our lead programmer has almost identical system than you (and 64bit Vista too), and the game runs very well on his computer.

    Have you upgraded your display drivers (http://www.nvidia.com)? The default Geforce Vista drivers are very slow and unstable. The framerate on one of our 64bit Vista test computers improved 300% when we installed newest drivers.
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  3. #3
    Yeah I've got all the latest drivers but the problem is still present. Strange that it's only when I try to play on Ultra settings.
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  4. #4
    One thing I've noticed is that when I go to Help then About it says on the right that I'm runnng Version 1.04 build 1028 surely that should be Version 1.05?

    I've tried re-installing it and such but no luck.

    Still even without fancy graphics it's great fun.
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  5. #5
    Hi i'm in exactly the same position

    Q6600
    nvidia xfx 8600 gts
    2gb ram
    vista 32
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  6. #6
    sebastianaalton's Avatar Trials Developer
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    The overblurred screen is most likely is caused by motion blur. Usually this happens when your framerate is very low. Go to settings screen (from main menu) and disable motion blur. If this does not help, try to disable all other post process effects also.

    Some things to check:
    - If you are playing in windowed mode, please switch to fullscreen mode. Graphics card has to share resources with OS and other applications in windowed mode, and this often causes slowdowns (this especially true on Vista when you run hardware accelerated Aero Glass UI).
    - If you have forced antialiasing on from your graphics card control panel, please disable it. Trials 2 graphics engine is a deferred renderer, so it's not compatible with MSAA antialiasing.
    - Is your computer setup anyway out of ordinary? For example you have integrated graphics + add on graphics card (both active at the same time), double graphics cards, double monitors, etc? We have tested the game with double monitors, but there might be some special combinations that do work properly.

    Also there is one known slowdown issue, that has been reported by 3 users. This issue most likely happens when some UI extenders or instant messenger programs try to render popups on top of the game. For some reason the code that handles our window focus doesn't like this and, the program rendering is skipped for long periods of times. This could also cause the issue you explain (as motion blur is calculated from frame to frame, and big differences in frames cause the whole screen to be heavily blurred). We have a new test build with a quick fix for this issue. I ask our support to contact you, and send you the test version.

    Originally Posted by Rumux
    One thing I've noticed is that when I go to Help then About it says on the right that I'm runnng Version 1.04 build 1028 surely that should be Version 1.05?
    It's a known issue, we forgot to change the version number from the help screen. v1.05 shows 1.04 in the help screen. However if you check the exe version (with Windows explorer) it properly shows v1.05.
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  7. #7
    It was the forced anti-ail that was making the screen blurry. I changed it to apllication controlled and now it works fine.
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  8. #8
    sebastianaalton's Avatar Trials Developer
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    Nice to hear that disabling forced control panel anti-aliasing solved the problem. I will add a note in our technical problems FAQ about this issue (http://www.redlynxtrials.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=61).

    For others having this same problem: Always select "Application Controlled" in your graphics card antialiasing settings.
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  9. #9
    sebastianaalton's Avatar Trials Developer
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    Technical explanation why forcing antialiasing messes up the Trials 2 Second Edition graphics rendering on Geforce cards:

    I request DirectX to create the frontbuffer, backbuffer and z-buffer chain when I create the d3d device. I specify the format of these buffers and disable multisampling. Best available 24/32 bit color buffer format is selected (8888 usually) and a depth buffer format is selected with at least 8 bits of stencil (usually 24 bits z and 8 bits stencil). Engine also checks that the selected depth buffer format and color buffer format are compatible. Device creation goes fine (even when MSAA is forced on).

    Then I create the g-buffer rendertargets for deferred rendering. These rendertargets are created with exactly the same parameters as the backbuffers (same size, same format and multisampling disabled). However in reality these formats do not match, as the driver has forced the backbuffer and z-buffer to be multisampled (even if I requested no multisampling), and the g-buffers are not multisampled. When the engine tries to render to the g-buffers, the driver sees that the z-buffer is multisampled while the color buffer is not, and this causes the driver to disable z-buffering completely on Geforce cards. On ATI cards everything works as it should be.

    This is actually a driver bug, as all parameters given to DirectX are correct. The MSAA force just modifies the parameters in one occasion, causing the buffers to be mismatched. There are several ways to deal with this issue. One is to create all g-buffers as multisample buffers if the software detects the z-buffer has been created as a multisample buffer (wasting 2-4 times more memory and up to 30% performance). And one is to create the whole display swap chain by hand, and hoping that the driver does not force the buffers to be multisampled this way (but I doubt this works). With all these potential issues unsolved, I think that it's just best to add a warning to the software launch stating:

    Trials 2 Second Edition detected that you have forced multisample antialiasing enabled from your graphics control panel. Please disable forced MSAA by selecting "Application Controlled" from your antialiasing settings

    This warning dialog will be added to the newest patch.
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