Nvidia tweaks to SH3/SH4
 

Hi folks,

After some days in tests and with the help of our mates Periscope and mikaelanderlund, I finally finish my concise guide to enhance the image quality in SH3/4 using nHancer and nVidia cards.
I tested these tweaks using a C2D E6850, Gigabyte P35, 2Gb, 8800GT 512, WinXp, Forceware 169.21 WHQL and nHancer 2.3.2
These tips probably will be also useful for owners of others Nvidia cards, and perhaps, also for others sims.
Sorry, no pics at this moment, I´m really short in time, busy RL ;(
I will try to add them later.

Let's start:

The problems:
- nVidia hardware is really good but the image quality "out of box" really don´t mach the one of the ATI cards. The main motive is that nVidia uses another type of AntiAliasing (MultiSampling - more FPS, worse AA result, more shimmering texture in general) that isn't so good as the one of the Ati cards (SuperSampling). IMHO, this is really a cheat that nVidia uses to show more FPS on the bench sites...

- nVidia drivers have some specific problems with some games and Silent Hunter 3/4 aren't an exception: the sun halo isn't visible if we use anything more than 4x Multisample AA or Gama correction, the AA isn't entirely applied to the entire scene (this is very noticiable for any game that renders objects at high distance like the flight sims, etc) and the smoke in general is also affected by the AA type.
- these issues are more or less evident through the drives, but always present in some degree. Also nVidia choose to have specific hidden adjusts for each game what frequently makes the quest for a good image quality really a problem in the player hands.

The Solution:
- nVidia stock drivers are really very limited on AA types (image quality) but others AA types and others options are hidden on the drivers.

- nHancer - www.nhancer.com - shows to player (almost) all the hidden nVidia driver settings. The SuperSampling AA (SSAA) modes 4x4, 16xS or 32xS really shows the best image quality, the same of ATI out of box...but also brings a huge FPS hit and others small problems like the long dated sun halo absence and also making the smoke too tin. So, unfortunately this isn´t a choice for nVidia; the same ATI image quality will be never a true option for nVidia owners, because it isn´t completely bug free.

- to avoid the sun halo problem no more than 4x MultiSampling (MSAA) can be used and also the Gama correction can´t be used. To avoid smoke problems we need also to not use so much AA.

To finish - nHancer best settings for good image quality without any noticeable problem in SH3/4:
-in the main page at your right check Global, then in

- Enhancements page:
check MultiSampling 4x
check Super- Transparency AA
check AF 16x or 8x
check Vertical Sync Applicaion,

- Optimizations page:
check Texture filtering High Quality
check Tril. opt. Off
check Aniso sample opt. Off
check Neg LOd Bias Clamp
leave all the others settings unchanged

- Compatibility page:
choose AA Compatibility 20000000: EA Strategy Games (this is what makes a huge difference in image quality, forcing the AA to be applyed to the entire scene. This is probably also the best solution for Flight sims)
leave all the others settings unchanged.
Then just close nHancer and you are ready to go (no "Ok" or "Apply" button on nHancer).

Last comments:
-nHancer have a very good manual on line http://www.nhancer.com/?dat=d_start which will teach you also on how to make profiles for each game. It´s very simple and powerful!

-But be warned that the last Nvidia drivers don´t allow to use profiles automatically. Anyhow nHancer provides the possibility to activate profiles manually what is also very useful and enough if you don´t want to adjust the global settings for each game each time that you play them. I hope that the next forceware driver will fix this annoying limitation.

-If you have any comment or any other tip to enhance the SH3/4 experience when using nVidia hardware please share it with us!

Good Hunting!:up:

Rubini.

Great find Rubini! Thanks for this:up:

Excellent! :up:
Having just replaced my ATI 1950XT with an Asus 8800GTX and found the nVidea card must use far more "aggressive" settings to reach the same image quality. I'm sure this will help - and that nHancer thingy looks promising.

Thanks for the heads up! :up:

Thanks for the heads-up with this Rubini;) can't wait to give this a try and see some improvements hopefully:up:

Great advice...
 

I tried this out and it has been well worth it thank you Rubini for sharing it :up:

I have had trouble with nvidai drivers ever since ive had an nvidia card, bought last year, its taken them several forceware drivers to correct several issues.

With these settings now I have smoke from the ships the like ive never seen!!! Wow! And the fires!!

There has been a framerate hit but nothing serious, before I was getting average 170 now 140 depending on what was happening in game but there is no problem. I could play around with the setting slightly and improve things slightly for my particular card, a GX2 7950 superclocked, which would trade quality for better frame rates but there is no need.

So thanks very much again for your good advice. :up: :rock:

Thanks for the reply mate!
I'm happy to help!:up:

Excellent, thanks for the heads up Rubini.:up:

Hmm. I have an XP2 with a GeForce 6600 card, driver version 9.1.4.7. Oh, my monitor is a Seanix slim.
I find that my night scenes are slightly too dark. Should I dare try your enhancer on my nvidia card?

I had an terrible time getting SH3 to run on my machine, until the computer technician updated it with the proper driver. (I had installed the wrong update drive) :damn:

Rob

Edit: I just took some snaps of my night attack during 15 m/s winds heavy fog and rain. You can't see a thing. I'll see if I can upload them to Image shack and put in a link to them. First one is Oct 3 - 43 0459 at 100 m, second is surfacing at 0547, third is running course 090° at 0600 and last is during the atttack, what I saw through my periscope. (Hope I can get them all in.

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/8...0459nd0.th.jpg

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/4...0547xx7.th.jpg

http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/9...0600vy7.th.jpg

http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/4...copeha2.th.jpg

thanx for the tips ive tried it and i noticed the difference right away horizon lines are much cleaner, the lines on the conning tower are clean, ship lines are clean now as well where before you could see a lot more jagged lines in all the textures,water looks better as well.

Rubini, thanks again for the tips and tricks.

On top of these setting with which I also experimented I can advice everybody to use the res fix to experiment with resolutions as well.
I use 1280 x 1024 and it just looks great! Besides I can adjust gamma slightly to make the night less dark (and of course for SH-III only), a complain I often read in the forums. :up:

What GeForce card are you using?
See My note above.
Rob

Cheers for the tweak hints mate

Super clean high res now

:up:

Sadly not what I was hoping for,tried the settings you suggested rubini and the jaggies were awful,worse than before,tried different settings and removed them but the game ran like it was in slow motion so I removed nhancer,problem is now my nvidia control panel won't let me do ay changes,it keeps freezing:nope: looks like I'll have to redownload my graphics card drivers all over again to get rid of this problem,damn nhancer has screwed everything:down:

AHGGGGGG:damn: Redownloaded my graphics drivers and its still freezing on me.can't make any changes to my nvidia control panel at all,not only is the game running like crap but I can't even do any changes to rectify it,now what:nope:

Can I ask what nvidia vard you have. I have a GeForce 6600. Driver version 9.1.4.7
Did you use the enhancer on SH3 or a GWX?
Rob