really bad dithering....

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by kv29

we are not talkin about the grainy effect. The second pic of Jmack shows EXACTLY what Im talking about.

The gradient transition is not smooth, it looks blocky as hell.

Exactly, this phenomenon is called banding not dithering.

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by panthercules

Tried again last night - results below (still doesn't really show the problems very well though):

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y96...efectsshot.jpg

What you see is banding, there is no smooth transition in the color palette.
See you have different bands of blue, light blue, dark blue instead of having a nice smooth transition between dark blue and light blue ?

[panthercules]

Originally Posted by goldorak

What you see is banding, there is no smooth transition in the color palette.
See you have different bands of blue, light blue, dark blue instead of having a nice smooth transition between dark blue and light blue ?

Yeah - that banding thing is discernable in the screenshot, though not as bad looking as it was in game. The polygon/artifact thing didn't really come out at all though as best I can tell.

So, now that we seem to have established that it is banding and not dithering, does anybody have a solution???

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by panthercules

So, now that we seem to have established that it is banding and not dithering, does anybody have a solution???

If you have an Nivida card 78xx, 79xx or newer you're out of luck.

[Seeadler]

SHIII/IV use for sky color a tga file like this

You see one sky color tile is 128x128, and this 128x128 tile is mapped on the big sky model and stretched over the whole model surface. Small not smooth color transitions in this 128x128 tile became big while mapping this texture.

[kv29]

Originally Posted by Seeadler

SHIII/IV use for sky color a tga file like this
You see one sky color tile is 128x128, and this 128x128 tile is mapped on the big sky model and stretched over the whole model surface. Small not smooth color transitions in this 128x128 tile became big while mapping this texture.

interestin. So what you are saying is that those "blocks" we are seeing come from pixels being expanded to cover the whole sky?

[kv29]

His res texture is 256x256, NOT big enough for a good quality gradient. But I suppose we cant change that.

[LukeFF]

Originally Posted by Seeadler

You see one sky color tile is 128x128, and this 128x128 tile is mapped on the big sky model and stretched over the whole model surface. Small not smooth color transitions in this 128x128 tile became big while mapping this texture.

In that case, is it possible to use a larger size file? Something like 1024x1024 should help fix, or at the least, reduce this awful banding problem.

[Jmack]

ok ... so the problem is the nvidia cards ?
so why dont i have that in shIII ?

for what i understand its the same method in both games ?

[Ark]

Originally Posted by goldorak

If you have an Nivida card 78xx, 79xx or newer you're out of luck.

Doesn't seem to happen in any other games. In fact, I don't notice it in SIV either. lol

Best videocard I have ever owned.

[kv29]

I believe resolution plays a key role here.
Using a high resolution like 1440 x 900 (my rig), and combined with a low resolution texture like 256x256 all makes a good recipe for a mediocre sky quality

[Jmack]

im using that resolution ... can the original texture be of a higher resolution ? like 1024 ?

would it help ?

[LukeFF]

Originally Posted by Jmack

im using that resolution ... can the original texture be of a higher resolution ? like 1024 ?

would it help ?

I asked that back one page. Hopefully the answer is "yes."

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by LukeFF

I asked that back one page. Hopefully the answer is "yes."

You're right.
Since the hardware can't smooth the color palette the only way to go is to use more detailed textures.

[Seeadler]

Originally Posted by Jmack

im using that resolution ... can the original texture be of a higher resolution ? like 1024 ?

There there was a similar discussion here in the SHIII board, when we made the 16km Atmosphere Mod for SHIII. During the work on that mod I had tried to change the texture to 512x512 tiles, improve the transitions and import this texture into the environment Dat's.

The result was actually a much softer transition between the colors, but with the day/night cycle there came graphical distortions on the sky and it looked like as if the sky falls on your head. There must be more values in the Dat files and probably also hardcoded values which influences the rendering of the sky, but however in lack of time, I did not further pursued investigation on this.