x800 texture shimmering: FarCry video

[davepermen]

bether have videos that are NOT scaled at all. every scaling means filtering, the 9700 one has two filterings applied, one a non-power-of-two. that leads to more blurriness (not really visible), and thus reduction of flimmering.

then, get the same fps, as the higher rate flimmering on the x800 is simply due to the higher rate fps.

bether just cut out the wall part, than reduce the whole image size.

never seen any such flimmering. not on the 9700, too.

 

[Grestorn]

then, get the same fps, as the higher rate flimmering on the x800 is simply due to the higher rate fps.

Are you telling me that the shimmering is just due to the video?

That would mean you're calling me a liar.

It's rather stupid to assume that I created the video and THEN recognized that there is shimmering. Obviously, it's the other way around. And you just can believe me, the shimmering is there, visible while playing the game. On the x800 much more pronounced than on the 9700Pro.

Not believing me is calling me a liar (since it's just not subjective enough to be a mistake).

I will recreate the videos as soon as I got the time (maybe this evening, maybe tomorrow), but that won't change anything at all.

Again, I offer anyone interested to send him the original uncompressed videos.

 

[davepermen]

i just say the videos have a lot of differences that can mess up the expirience you had. get the videos equal so we see what you saw.

all i say is, due to those differences to the original data, the quality difference can look different than it was in your eyes.

never stated you are a liar.

 

[tEd]

déjà vu

 

[Jabbah]

That would mean you're calling me a liar.

It's rather stupid to assume that I created the video and THEN recognized that there is shimmering.

Im sure hes not calling you a liar.

However, the evidence you are using to backup the claim is quite poor. The videos are of different sizes, different frame rates and the direction of movement is also different. You have offered to upload uncompressed videos which will remove some of the problems such as compression artifacts, but they wont remove the differing directions of movement or that they are shot at such a low res. Even if i set my old gf4 to 400x300 in Q3A i get texture swimming effects at the first mip boundry (using trilinear). It really would not be so difficult to load up a save game and point at a small object that you could easily point at again to move in the same direction.

 

[radar1200gs]

Is it possible to record and playback demos in farcry? if so, record a demo at the area in question and make it available for download.

Then capture the motion with fraps at a resolution like 640x480 (so you don't have to resize the output) and encode with HuffYUV.

If the effect is noticable 10 to 20 frames will be sufficient to show it and you only need to encode that part with HuffYUV, the entire capture can be encoded with something like XVID so people can see the movie captured really is the demo.

 

[grecco_julio]

If you turn off the X800 optimizations in the ATi Control Panel, these shimmerings are gone? And the FPS goes down how much withowd them?

 

[Althornin]

would be nice if the videos were the same size....
make for a more even comparison

What do you mean, same size? The resolution is the same (they were created using FRAPS, half size, original resolution was 800x600, so the result is 400x300).

Evidently I moved by hand, so the captures aren't 100% identical. But I don't think that this changes anything at all.

You might want to make sure that you use a replay tool which is capable of zooming the video. It doesn't make much sense to use Win Media Player, where you can see just a tiny picture on a screen with high resolution.

the two vidoes i downloaded arent the same size.
One is 400x300, the other is 512x384.
edit: i see this has already been addressed, sorry.

 

[Ailuros]

I'll send you a save game this evening local time. (in about 6-8 hours).

But remember that I have the german version. I have no idea if that save game will work with the US version of FC.

Maybe someone else with an US version would like to send him that save game?

someone just sent me a cheat. which will let me pick lvls so if the fort is the same thing i might be able to get there on my own. I will let u know though

Create a shortcut of the initializing exe and add to the command line:

-devmode

It should unlock all levels

 

[ram]

Texture aliasing/shimmering is a problem on the R300 too. It seems it is even more aggressive on the R420 now.

Taking less samples than you would have to for a certain LOD / aniso-degree is very hard to detect with theoretical tools or screenshots, but should give a similar speed benefit to brilinear-like optimizations, may be even more.
Up to now, almost all aniso. test tools / interpretations assumed that LoD changes that are farer away prove that a higher level anisotropic filter is being applied. But this is just the necessary condition, not the commensurate condition. In order to "prove" what kind of anisotropic filter is really being applied, I guess you would have to use a tool that is able to calculate the number of different texels read. I don't know if this is possible for an OGL/D3D application at all.

 

[Grestorn]

Ok, I've just recreated the videos. Now both videos use 800x600 full size with 25 fps. I've also removed any gamma enhancement.

I encoded the videos myself using DIVX 5.1.1 with 2.500 kbits/s. The resulting videos are about 2 MB each.

Please review the videos again, for your convenience I also repost the changed links here:
Video FarCry X800Pro: FarCryx800ProHiRes_Divx.avi
Video FarCry 9700Pro: FarCry9700ProHiRes_Divx.avi

I hope that this removes any remaining doubt anyone might have had.

 

[Grestorn]

If you turn off the X800 optimizations in the ATi Control Panel, these shimmerings are gone? And the FPS goes down how much withowd them?

How could I turn off any optimizations in the ATI control panel? There is no such option unfortunately.

 

[cthellis42]

Offhand, I'm just not sure FarCry is the best application to test this on. I've seen similar effect from my friend's 5700U as well (before he switched to an X800), though of course not slowed down and examined diligently to examine what magnitude. (One can see it on the 9700 Pro as well, just not as pronounced.)

I'd first check games that are much more common, have been worked on longer by the developer to get out the kinks, and have the most mature IHV drivers as well. UT2003 would be a good bet (and would be interesting to see if differences can be spotted between it and UT2004 on the same scenes), and from there I would spiral outwards--both to very old games, and to very new.

 

[Evildeus]

Well, there's clearly quite a difference between the 9700 and X800. As for the 5700, isn't brilinear the cause? As for X800?

 

[Pojo]

Another Mirror - Hope You Dont Mind

Video FarCry X800Pro: FarCryx800ProHiRes_Divx.avi
Video FarCry 9700Pro: FarCry9700ProHiRes_Divx.avi

Just in case they are needed, when my bandwidth runs out I will have to take them down. Hope you dont mind the mirrors Grestorn.

I saw a pretty big difference in the videos and as someone that has Radeon X800 XT Platinum pre ordered I am somewhat concerned. Assuming this is indeed the result of these optimizations I would want a way to turn them off. This way I could enjoy the extra speed in games where it doesnt show and choose slower but higher quality option in games where it does show.

 

[Ruined]

I've seen similar effect from my friend's 5700U as well (before he switched to an X800), though of course not slowed down and examined diligently to examine what magnitude.

The 5700U also has a forced brilinear filter like the x800. I'm not surprised you saw a similar effect.

 

[Grestorn]

Re: Another Mirror - Hope You Dont Mind

Video FarCry X800Pro: FarCryx800ProHiRes_Divx.avi
Video FarCry 9700Pro: FarCry9700ProHiRes_Divx.avi

Just in case they are needed, when my bandwidth runs out I will have to take them down. Hope you dont mind the mirrors Grestorn.

Not at all, thanks Pojo!

 

[Ruined]

Re: Another Mirror - Hope You Dont Mind

Video FarCry X800Pro: FarCryx800ProHiRes_Divx.avi
Video FarCry 9700Pro: FarCry9700ProHiRes_Divx.avi

Just in case they are needed, when my bandwidth runs out I will have to take them down. Hope you dont mind the mirrors Grestorn.

Not at all, thanks Pojo!

Mirrored here as well btw:

X800
http://www.reflectonreality.com/images/r420/FarCryx800ProHiRes_Divx.avi

9700PRO
http://www.reflectonreality.com/images/r420/FarCry9700ProHiRes_Divx.avi

 

[MuFu]

...

Finally, ATI takes image quality extremely seriously and we are confident that we set the bar for the whole industry. We don't undertake changes to our filtering algorithms lightly, and perform considerable on-line and off-line image analysis before implementing changes. This algorithm has been in public use for over a year in our RADEON 9600 series products, and we have not received any adverse comments on image quality in that time. If anyone does find any quality degradation as a result of this algorithm, they are invited to report it to ATI. If there is a problem, we will fix it.

Can someone with an RV3x0-based card try and reproduce this?

 

[Evildeus]

I think Marko did it in the 50+ long thread (p.58 AFAIR)