Crimson Skies - Incompatible w/ Newer VidCards. Requesting Tech Info - So I Can Fix!
- Thread starter bigsilly
- Start date
Hi Vazel. I've sent a support email to NVIDIA. I'll let you know what comes of it.
Yeah, Crimson Skies is a brilliant game, wonderful atmosphere - and its sequels are still making money for Microsoft, so they really ought to do something to support it.
I played Red Baron 3D a bit too, but couldn't solve a final frustrating technical issue (the game randomly speeds up for me), so I've since switched to "Over Flanders Fields", which by all accounts is an improvement over RB3D. Give it a try!
Yeah, Crimson Skies is a brilliant game, wonderful atmosphere - and its sequels are still making money for Microsoft, so they really ought to do something to support it.
I played Red Baron 3D a bit too, but couldn't solve a final frustrating technical issue (the game randomly speeds up for me), so I've since switched to "Over Flanders Fields", which by all accounts is an improvement over RB3D. Give it a try!
Anyway, what I'm trying to do now is run "WINE", a Windows shell for Linux distributables. I've not used Linux before, and haven't got an installation, but I'm making slow progress on it. If anyone else has a Linux setup already, maybe they can try running the game's demo through WINE and see how it goes.
Yes, I did check, and yes it was disabled.
I don't mean to seem ungrateful, but I get the feeling that many who are posting in reply to this thread are not grasping the essential problem. This is not a generic "this don't work, help me!" thread. The causes are clear already and I'm attempting to examine my options for finding a workaround.
I don't mean to seem ungrateful, but I get the feeling that many who are posting in reply to this thread are not grasping the essential problem. This is not a generic "this don't work, help me!" thread. The causes are clear already and I'm attempting to examine my options for finding a workaround.
ok im grasping at straws now but
3d analyse has a feature - force reference ratseriser
http://www.tommti-systems.de/go.html?http://www.tommti-systems.com/main-Dateien/files.html
3d analyse has a feature - force reference ratseriser
http://www.tommti-systems.de/go.html?http://www.tommti-systems.com/main-Dateien/files.html
Odd, I played through Crimson Skies last year on my x1900 / A64 4200+ X2 and it worked flawlessly. I was using 6xAA an 16xHQAF. No strange text issues, or any issues for that matter. I've yet to test it on my 2900xt but I suspect i'll see the same results.
As an addition, my brother also played this probably January this year on his system (6600gt AGP, 3200+ AXP, XP Pro) and I never saw any problems with it. Perhaps it's a driver issue? There's also the possibility that your mipmap LOD bias is set incorrectly... I've seen funky text in games before because that was set one notch too low (or too high!). Rivatuner can help there.
As an addition, my brother also played this probably January this year on his system (6600gt AGP, 3200+ AXP, XP Pro) and I never saw any problems with it. Perhaps it's a driver issue? There's also the possibility that your mipmap LOD bias is set incorrectly... I've seen funky text in games before because that was set one notch too low (or too high!). Rivatuner can help there.
Hi everybody,
I still haven't made any progress on the WINE idea.
But I have found that the game will work fine in Direct3D accelerated mode with newer NVIDIA hardware if you use the version 61 ForceWare drivers. To illustrate how old these drivers are, the current ForceWare version is 162. After speaking with a few players on GameSpy who have been playing Crimson Skies for the past few years, apparently what happened is that the game worked fine on all NVIDIA hardware UNTIL a certain version just after 61 (67 I think), and then all of a sudden there was no means of playing it except for playing in Software mode.
I was also told by these same people that ATI/AMD cards can play the game just fine, and whenever there is some problem with the graphics they can easily be fixed by setting the "Alternate Pixel Centre" option in ATI's control panel.
So it would seem that, contrary to NVIDIA's claims, support for the game was broken by a fundamental change made in one of their Forceware updates, and they never saw fit to include a tweak or fix for the issue.
Unfortunately, you know, if you switch to drivers THAT old, you're going to break performance/compatibility with a huge range of the newer games - so sticking to the old drivers is not a viable option, and I think that as a customer of NVIDIA's I'm owed a better solution than "install new drivers depending upon which game you want to play," which is pretty ridiculous and could possibly destabilize/bog down my system.
So anyway, there's the basic workaround for now - but I'm going to keep in touch with NVIDIA, and keep on the lookout for information about the ZBD archive files, and keep trying this WINE route -- because honestly it would be easier for me to boot into Linux to play a game than it would be for me to reinstall/uninstall drivers on WinXP whenever I want to play.
Just the same, it's ridiculous that the game should be broken by NVIDIA's drivers. The fact that it works fine on ATI cards makes it clear whose responsibility it is. The fact that I own an NVIDIA card is preventing me from playing this game without a lot of trouble. That's not how a company should conduct itself, especially considering how expensive these darn cards are, so I'm not settling with this as my final solution. However, it is valuable information in figuring out what went wrong here.
Anyway, thanks again for your responses guys.
I still haven't made any progress on the WINE idea.
But I have found that the game will work fine in Direct3D accelerated mode with newer NVIDIA hardware if you use the version 61 ForceWare drivers. To illustrate how old these drivers are, the current ForceWare version is 162. After speaking with a few players on GameSpy who have been playing Crimson Skies for the past few years, apparently what happened is that the game worked fine on all NVIDIA hardware UNTIL a certain version just after 61 (67 I think), and then all of a sudden there was no means of playing it except for playing in Software mode.
I was also told by these same people that ATI/AMD cards can play the game just fine, and whenever there is some problem with the graphics they can easily be fixed by setting the "Alternate Pixel Centre" option in ATI's control panel.
So it would seem that, contrary to NVIDIA's claims, support for the game was broken by a fundamental change made in one of their Forceware updates, and they never saw fit to include a tweak or fix for the issue.
Unfortunately, you know, if you switch to drivers THAT old, you're going to break performance/compatibility with a huge range of the newer games - so sticking to the old drivers is not a viable option, and I think that as a customer of NVIDIA's I'm owed a better solution than "install new drivers depending upon which game you want to play," which is pretty ridiculous and could possibly destabilize/bog down my system.
So anyway, there's the basic workaround for now - but I'm going to keep in touch with NVIDIA, and keep on the lookout for information about the ZBD archive files, and keep trying this WINE route -- because honestly it would be easier for me to boot into Linux to play a game than it would be for me to reinstall/uninstall drivers on WinXP whenever I want to play.
Just the same, it's ridiculous that the game should be broken by NVIDIA's drivers. The fact that it works fine on ATI cards makes it clear whose responsibility it is. The fact that I own an NVIDIA card is preventing me from playing this game without a lot of trouble. That's not how a company should conduct itself, especially considering how expensive these darn cards are, so I'm not settling with this as my final solution. However, it is valuable information in figuring out what went wrong here.
Anyway, thanks again for your responses guys.
Hi NRP,
That's terribly charitable of you, thank you!
I can't quite seem to figure out how to send a private message, though - I'm looking everywhere for the button on your Profile screen and not finding it.
Hi Davros,
I downloaded the 3dAnalyzerTool you recommended, and the program fails to start when the "RUN" button is pressed in 3dAnalyzer.
That's terribly charitable of you, thank you!
I can't quite seem to figure out how to send a private message, though - I'm looking everywhere for the button on your Profile screen and not finding it.Hi Davros,
I downloaded the 3dAnalyzerTool you recommended, and the program fails to start when the "RUN" button is pressed in 3dAnalyzer.
i remember you could play a game using earlier opengl drivers just by putting the opengl .dll in the game folder well you could on ati hardware for example if you had cat 6 installed and you put the atiogl.dll from cat 4 in the game folder the game would use that version if you could do the same with nvidia nvoglnt.dll im not sure never had a problem with nvidia and ogl
anyway is it possible to do something similar with the d3d dll file ? by putting nv4_disp.dll from earlier drivers into the game folder ????
anyway is it possible to do something similar with the d3d dll file ? by putting nv4_disp.dll from earlier drivers into the game folder ????
Hi Davros,
Well, I think DirectX is rather a bit more convoluted than OpenGL and a result the prospects for an idea like that are kind of iffy, but if I can figure out how to extract the contents of the 61.77 drivers without actually installing them, I'll give your idea a try - there's certainly nothing to lose. Thanks for your suggestion.
Also, could somebody let NRP know I'm interested in his offer, since I can't leave PM's? lol
Well, I think DirectX is rather a bit more convoluted than OpenGL and a result the prospects for an idea like that are kind of iffy, but if I can figure out how to extract the contents of the 61.77 drivers without actually installing them, I'll give your idea a try - there's certainly nothing to lose. Thanks for your suggestion.
Also, could somebody let NRP know I'm interested in his offer, since I can't leave PM's? lol
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