Problems with water surface animation graphics
 

Hi everybody,

I just installed Silent Hunter 4 gold, played it some and noticed a strange graphics problem concerning the water surface graphic when moving. When I start a mission and go to tower, the water seems to be just ok when the submarine is in no motion. However, if I move mouse around or give speed to boat, water surface starts to move strangely, maybe I would call it 'stuttering'. It is a bit hard to explain but think of holding a transparent piece of plastic with a bit inconsistent and bumpy surface in front of you, and then moving it in different directions and looking at water thru it. So it is like having some strange filter applied to the water graphics when in movement. Effect is most notable at water near to sub/camera, and faster the boat travels, the bigger effect it has.

here are some facts about my conf. and what I have tried:
Win XP SP2 32-bit, Core duo 3.0Ghz, 4G Ram, Geforce 8800GTS 640MB

- I am using SH4 1.5 vanilla with no mods installed
- I have tried to change all of the in-game graphical settings, first having all of them on and then off, and also something in-between. No effect...
- I have tried Nhancer and used settings recommended in another thread at this forum, and also other custom settings. No help

I will check if I can make a video out of this since it is bit hard to explain and because a screenshot wouldn't show anything strange as the problem can be seen only in motion.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Few things to add:
- I have updated my Nvidia driver to the latest but it didn't help
- I am aware of the "texture flickering" problem which is common with Nvidia 8800 cards when playing SH3/SH4, however this is not like it(so anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering won't help with this...)

SH3 doesn't have this strange effect

Might I suggest a environment mod that address the water? I suspect this is what you need. Look up top at the download section (has yellow now open button).

Enviornment mod!
 

Jugger,

AVG WARHAWK is right. I think that you need an enviornment mod. I installed a supermod, trigger Maru and the water graphics seemed pretty dull. So I added the Pacific Enviornment 4 and now my water is beautiful. I cannot guarantee that this is the best environment mod for the TRIGGER MARU or FLEETBOAT (both supermods are awesome) as well as Enviornment mods (the other is Real Environment, I was told it is a newer environment) but no matter what it improved my graphics.

I am running on a Quad core 2, Q6600 2.4 ghz and a GeForce Nvidia 8800 GT 512 mg with 4 g of ram. My graphics are beautiful.

Hope you are using the mod installer (A MUST) for ease of installation and removal.

Allows you to try different options easily. I plan to add 1.5 tomorrow the graphics seem to really pop. Will upgrade the REAL FLEETBOAT and the TRIGGER MARU files to the 1.5 as well.

Hope that helps.

IRISH4life

Just watch your mods. RFB 2.0 and TMO stand alone. Do not mix and match them. Then, if you use Run Silent Run Deep (RSRD) for traffic make sure you use the correct mod file for RFB and TMO. Read the first post of each mod. Pick the one you like and stick with it as far as what will work that that mod and what will not. You can always run two installs of SH4 thus running both mods. You have two careers going though. Up to you. Most important is each mod does not conflict with other mod.

Yes, use JSGME for mod installation. Just the greatest tool for mods in the world. :rock:

Thanks for your tips, I installed Trigger Maru, but still the same strange effect. It is less noticeable now thanks to a darker color of the new water graphics(looks very good in other respects). I actually have a dual boot system so I installed SH4 v1.3(without U-boat missions) for Vista which also has different Nvidia drivers but again, same effect...

I don't know, have to think about this some more...

I am sure that AVGWARHAWK is completely correct. But with that said my it worked beautifully for me. I went from a flat (looking) dull sea to a beautiful blue wave environment. It was a night and day change. Again AVGWARHAWK is correct but I intstalled the Trigger 1st and the added the Pacific environment 4 1-6 (or whatever, I am not at home with that computer to make sure) It i am sure took overwrote some of Triggers files but it was for the better on the environment side. ??

AVGWARHAWK is one of the experts his info has helped me and maybe I just stumbled on the ability to use the mod together by accident (ignorance). but it worked.

Thanks,

IRISH4life

i am downloading Pacific Environments 4 now. I will first uninstall Maru and then try PE4 to see if it has any effect. However i am being afraid that this is related to my Nvidia card having some incompatibility issues or something... I will report back when I have tried PE4.

Thanks again for everybody.

No luck, still the same effect... Oh well, have to get some sleep now. I'll check tomorrow if I can put video on Youtube about this.

Try the things posted in
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=128517

I played the game with max AA/AF set from the nvidia settings. And i do remember some water "stutter" It looks almost like if the texture is sliding around, this also seemed to effect the hazy steam coming off the water sometimes, it just warped around in the sky looking really wierd. Using the above settings made my game look ALOT better.. So give it a go, might just be the thing.

Running GTX 295 with 191.07 drivers

Hope it helps

Also, you must go into My Documents and find the SH4 folder. Inside is the saves. There are rich saved games and saved games folders. You will need to delete these. Sorry but your career is gone and you have to start over. About 2 years ago Leovampire who started working over the environment/water mods found that deleteing these two files with in the Sh4 folder makes the mods work better. Once you have done this the mods should work as designed. The flashing of the water has been a bug since the game came out but it was reduced quite a bit with the environment mods. Some say the water looks like jello. I have not experience this. I have experience the lower left and right hand corners of the screen as you are looking straight ahead at the bow the water has a strange look. That is a camera issue if I'm not mistake. But again, some of the mods tinker with the camera and reduced that issue for me. Now, we see Irish has the 8800 and a lot of folks have the 8800. The graphics look good for them. So, we just need to find what yours is up to. A screenshot would be great. Also, at the top of the forums is a thread for tweaking you card. Check that out and see if there is an answer there. What I find strange is TMO you say the environment does not look right. Ducimus worked the environment in TMO and looks good on my rig.

Before you do anything else. Deactivate all your mods. Go to MY Documents and find the SH4 folder. Open and find Rich Saved Games and Saved Games folder. Delete both. Do not worry, the game will make new ones. Now, go activate TMO and start your game. See how it looks. If still the same we will look elsewhere for the answer.

Make sure your resolutions and hz are the same for the monitor and in the game..

Thanks for your answers.

I have managed to put up video on Youtube of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j9qhTJ5fRY

Quality is not the best but it clearly shows you what is going on, "driving on a jelly".

- I tried disabling mods, then deleted those two save-folders, enabled Trigger Maru but no difference

- Refresh rate is same in game setting and in windows settings (60Hz)

- I tried the setting suggested in that other forum thread with NHancer, no notable difference. But I will play some more with those settings if I could make something out from them

This is bit strange, I am not sure if changing settings from Nvidia panel OR from NHancer has any effect to graphics at all. Right now I'm running SH4 in windowed mode so I can change the settings at same time as I see the graphics, but not seeing any notable effects. Also tried to close and restart SH4 after changing settings but no notable effect. Same goes for SH3 too.

From NHancer I'm editing global settings since that should be the surest way to affect the game graphics. For AA I use "Override any application setting", also have tried that "enhance" setting.

My NVidia driver version is 196.21

One more thing, when boat is halted and if I pan camera with mouse left or right, there is not that strange effect. However if I pan it up/down, then the effect jumps in. Now if I have vsync disabled, I also get strange "line" which can be seen in sky graphics, but when I enable it, that line disapperars but the water effect doesn't. So I guess that vsync is working as supposed and I don't know if this problem has anything to do with vsync, but it definetely relates to camera movement when panning up/down. Now is that vertical or horizontal, I can't remember. I thing my head is gonna explode in a moment...