Problems with water surface animation graphics

[Lognoreng]

I am using the profile way of applying Nhancer settings. Maybe as a last resort you could try to roll back the nvidia driver to an older version. Many of the new drivers is clearly not compatible with certain slighty older games. I cannot use anything newer than the driver i use, or empire total war doesnt work for instance. Also set att the AA/AF options in the NVIDIA panel to "application setting" or i think they will override Nhancer's settings. That's all i can think of

[jugger]

Lognoreng, could you tell which driver version you are using with your NVIDIA card? I might try to find that particular driver.

First I had a driver maybe about one year old, then I updated it but no change.

Link to the video that shows the problem:

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by jugger

Thanks for your answers.

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



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

I watched the video. To be sure my rig renders the water the same way...sometimes. Not all the time. I run a 9800. What does the water look like without your card having to handle all the vessels, aircraft and islands in that training school? My thinking is you card is having a time of it with animating the vessels, plane, clouds and water. The game is very graphic intensive. However, it would seem eveyone experiences this strange water every now and then. Sometimes I come out of high TC and my water is going the other direction. See, the water moves, not the sub. It gives the illusion that you, the sub, is making headway. See what your water looks like in the open ocean.

[jugger]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

I watched the video. To be sure my rig renders the water the same way...sometimes. Not all the time. I run a 9800. What does the water look like without your card having to handle all the vessels, aircraft and islands in that training school? My thinking is you card is having a time of it with animating the vessels, plane, clouds and water. The game is very graphic intensive. However, it would seem eveyone experiences this strange water every now and then. Sometimes I come out of high TC and my water is going the other direction. See, the water moves, not the sub. It gives the illusion that you, the sub, is making headway. See what your water looks like in the open ocean.

I took my sub to the outer seas and lowered some detail. I'm getting 60+ fps now but this "jelly"-effect just remains the same. I actually rolled down my Nvidia drivers down to 173 or something, so they are pretty old. Anyhow now the NVIDIA panel settings seems to affect the games and SH3 looks much smoother with AA and AF added. However, as I suspected, it doesn't affect to this jelly-effect. Not positively, not negatively. Also the framerate doesn't seem to have any impact on this effect.

Well, the game is still definitely playable. I think I continue using Trigger Maru(or Environmental only) since it makes the effect harder to notice, thanks to the more detailed water effects.

[vickers03]

ATI cards are generally much more compatible
with older games than NVidia.
my ATI5850 has the well known infamous jelly water too, but only when moving the camera.

[Nisgeis]

It's a stock bug. It's because the normal map (the fine detail) for the waves isn't matched up to the wave geometry, so the fine details slides accross the coarse detail if the camera is moving. Going sideways is fine, forwards/backwards (up down if the camera is moving) isn't. I don't know of any fix. If you haven't noticed this - for God's sake don't look for it, because once you've seen it, you can't un-notice it!

[AVGWarhawk]

I remember that darn flashing being a nasty bug. Greaty reduced by some mods. The shakey water like we have here, yes I get it. But not all the time. Toying with TC helps if I recall. I had thought the camera moving reduced or increased this happening. You are right though, forget about it or you will focus all your time attempting to fix it or playing only to sit there looking at this water shake!


SH4 is a great game. The mods make it so much better. What SH4 could have been if the developers had 6 more months with it!

[jugger]

i hear ya, no point of paying any extra attention to it if there isn't any way to fix it. I didn't actually notice it at first, but after I did that's all I've been thinking about when playing the game. But not anymore, I hope. I will play around a bit with time compression and see if it has any effect.

Thanks for everybody helping me out with this, now gotta go and sink some ships. Or trying to learn to do so

[Jan Kyster]

Leovampire (rip) found the jelly water mostly appeared when you came out of (higher) TC. His tip was to use backspace (TC=1) and then press "-" to pause game for some seconds. That should enable the graphics engine to have a breather and thereby reduce/eliminate the jelly motion.

Personally haven't seen it in ages - using TMO 1.9 here btw.

[Armistead]

Doe's resetting the screen in game work...Be at a cam screen so you can see the water and hit Control-N...keeping in mind it resets the weather.

Are you near a port, as I see a tanker...That can happen a lot near port with lots of contacts, morese your docking base.

Try to head for open sea and hit cntl N. Overall it shouldn't happen much once you get out to sea, usually when that happens to me, it's the other ships and not me, but was they get in my range it's normal...gets bad I just reset the screen...being very careful for what weather effects I change.

I run a 295 and crank up the video card settings and it happens more, cut them back a tad, NP. Alt Tab out a lot can also cause it.

[AVGWarhawk]

I went and did a quick test. Coming out of high TC I get the water shimmy deal but not for long and I suspect the volumetric fog creates some of the issue as well. I'm running TMO only.