Holy smoke!

[GoDeep]

Upon electing a new pope, it is tradition for the cardinals to pass white smoke through the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, so the crowd outside will know a decision was made. World War 2 era ships however, have no such tradition and certainly do not emit white smoke on any occasion that I am aware of.

However, mine do, in SH3 that is. See for yourself:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/--3wlX9-PnHM/Tk4LD0NIwzI/AAAAAAAAAKE/58wdlnDE3PA/s800/SH3Img%25254018-8-2011_23.26.22_301.jpg

I am given to understand that this white smoke has something to do with Nvidia cards and/or drivers. In order to resolve this problem, I have been fiddling with antialiasing settings, anisotropic filtering, etc. Neither of those improves or makes worse the condition. I have researched this problem online and also here on the forum but all I have found are people with the same problem but nothing that points me to a solution, other than buying myself an ATI card.

The card is an Nvidia 8600 GT with 256MB RAM, which should be sufficient for a game like SH3, even with GWX installed. My driver version is 280.13.

I'd be grateful for any suggestion that helps improve things because I don't want a new pope elected, I want my burning ships billowing black smoke. :arrgh!:

[PapaKilo]

Is driver version 280.13 is the latest for your card ?

[gt_magnus]

I've heard that there are some bugs in sh3 when using Nvidia cards and there is a thread about it (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom//showthread.php?t=91915&page=1). The tip Ubisoft gave was to press Ctrl+P, but that just disables particle rendering.:hmmm: You can try it, but I don't think it'll work. I tried to google the white smoke bug, but didn't find anything.

Anyway, hope you get it fixed soon :arrgh!:

[PapaKilo]

Had Nvidia 6600 GT, now 9500 GT, never saw any white funnel smoke at all..

[GoDeep]

@PapaKilo
Yes, 280.13 is the latest for my card from Nvidia, checked this evening. There may be a newer one for Windows, but I am on Linux and this is it, or I have to go beta, with all the problems that may bring. I am given to understand that the 6000+ and 9000+ series don't have problems with particle rendering, so that may be the reason you never saw it...

@gt_magnus
Yes, I found that thread too and I knew about the Ctrl+P combination, just never occured to me to actually try it. I did just now, but I see absolutely no difference in the image at all. The smoke stays white but what else should I see?

[gt_magnus]

You should see that the sea spray from other ships disappear, because Ctrl+P disables particle rendering. But back to the white smoke bug. I don't know of any other things to try than to reinstall the game or to buy a new graphics card.

[GoDeep]

Thanks gt_magnus. I was afraid that might be the answer, because I did not see any other answer anywhere else. Interestingly, Ctrl+P changes nothing on my set-up. Spray does not disappear, for instance. That's why I asked what to look for. I'll have to see if that is a hotkey captured for something else, so that it doesn't work for SH3...

Buying a new GPU is out of the question for now, but perhaps in the future... :hmmm: