HL2 reflections

OK, I'll try it. Can never have enough reflections. And I'll be sure to try it in my mirrors room

 

You have a mirrors room?

I know i'll be killed for asking this, but can anyone please give me a quicko linko to "how to force DX9 on NV3x's" cause there are just so many threads on HL2 here it gives me a headache. And the search ain't helping.

 

Well, almost a mirrors room. One huge wardrobe with a frontside being one huge mirror. And a huge round bed in front of it

Of course, I won't test it there. I'll test it outside on a sunny day, so I get all the reflections ever possible!!!

 

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Riiight.... You do know that it won't reflect.. reality... right? Like, as close to the monitor as you get, you won't see yourself there........

It is misleading though, it says Reflect All and i'd expect it to... Reflect All I think we have grounds to take Valve to court for misleading the public.

 

NOOOO! Bastards!

 

I'm not sure, try this... :?

 

Ehm...and so?

 

So... it doesn't work properly...?

 

So...it doesn't work properly with "mat_dxlevel 90", but does work properly with "-dxlevel 90"...
You have to read the whole article: there's some nice screenshots also (DX7 vs. DX8 vs. DX8.1 vs DX9)...

 

Compatable cards

Nvidia Geforce 4 Ti and up
ATi 9200,9500

Which card have you?

 

Sorry, there's nothing i can do: you only have to extract the patch files to the hl2/materials folder (create it if it doesn't exist) and select "reflect all" (graphics options, advanced, water)...you'd also better to upgrade to Catalyst 4.12...

 

All this does is implement DX8 level shaders for the reflectivity which doesn't cost performance, unlike the result of enabling DX9 on NV3x hardware.

 

Is there a particular reason this wasn't enabled in the game for DX8 to begin with? I suppose it could be to emphasize the difference between DX9 and DX8 (since shiny water reflections is probably the most noticeable thing), possibly even at the request of ATI. But if it appears to work, I don't see why Valve wouldn't choose to enable it. I was always under the impression that shiny water wasn't possible on DX8 cards.

 

Conspiracy theories aside, I think the reason is because at one time Valve was developing a Mixed Mode for FX cards. After reviewing how many of their customers had what cards and the fact development was delayed and delayed and delayed and each addition tweak they did took more time and more testing they decided to just assign cards specific DX modes and be done with it. Abvisouly FX cards suck at DX9 for the most part (which is sad, I feel bad for their owners) so they are stuck with DX 8.1. Kind of a stinky situation: FX cards are screamers at DX8 and slow at DX9. Could have Valve spent the time trying to figure out, "Ok, this card line is not fast enough for DX 9, but does fine at DX8.1, what else can we do?" I just do not think they had the time or desire to do this.

If nVidia had sponsored or paid Valve (like ATi did) there may have been extra customizations. But Valve is on record stating they spent more time fine tuning and optimizing for nVidia cards than ATi. Since ATi is paying the bills (figuratively) it makes sense they would not go back to mixed mode type stuff when they had already spent a lot of time working on nVidia cards. It was a design decision and time issue. Could Valve had done it? Yeah, but considering all the other troubles the FX line introduced why would they?

 

But thats exactly what they did do.
You said it already:

 

Maybe I did not explain this well enough. They could either (a) Designate cards along party lines; e.g. DX7, DX8, DX8.1, DX9 or (b) try to specialize the game so an FX card would run in a hybred DX8.1/DX9 mode.

After spending some time on (b) they dropped it because of numerous issues, one being that they were already spending more time optimizing for nVidia cards than ATi cards. (a) is just an easy solution. If a card sucks at (or is unable to do) DX9 you roll it back to DX8.1. And that is ultimately what Valve did.

While I feel bad for nVidia users, I do not blame Valve in the least. The FX series sucks at DX9. Putting the onus of blame on Valve for not spending more time/money and deviating from their design scheme to cater to nVidia's FX line is unfair. Obviously ATi and nVidia have some backdoor issues and arguments (e.g. right now unified shader architectures seems to be a hot item). But the fact is DX has done a lot of good for the PC gaming industry and it is important that ATi and nVidia provide quality support and performance for DX features. Basically nVidia got caught with their pants down when ATi pushed out a high performance first generation DX9 part (traditionally it takes a 2nd generation part to get good performance on a new API). This is a good thing: users now expect their $400 cards to do cutting edge stuff well, they do not want to be investors in future technology that their card will never be able to accomplish. nVidia made a mistake with the FX series; but I do not feel too bad for them because (a) made the market more competitive (b) it could have been avoided by pushing out a higher performing product (c) the 6800 series is pretty good and (d) nVidia does a lot of work getting developers to cater to their HW to begin with. Because of their marketshare and connection I think in some ways I think they blunted the effect of the FX series under performing in certain areas by getting their partners to cater to their HW strengths. e.g. a developer would use 16bit fp percision instead of 24bit.

But in the end if Valve wants to cater their product to hardware that performs well using the DX specs, and if a piece of HW does not meet the performance goals with this featureset knocking it down a level to get proper performance, then I would not blame Valve. Goes both ways though (I owned a Radeon 9700, I now own a 6800GT). I just want the best card that support the current API best.

Btw, while the reflective water seems to work, I remember seeing people trying to run HL2 with 16bit fp percision (instead of 24bit that DX requires as the minimum for full percision) and there were artifacts. While people are free to try this stuff out I can understand why Valve would not offer it as an option--who wants artifacts in their game? Better to go with the safe and compatible route.

 

just a thought... when Valve was going thru the whole make the FX cards not suck at HL2/ source, what NVDA official driver that was WHQL, did they use?
Now how many official NVDA WHQL drivers have been released for the "FX" line of cards since the comments made at ATI shaderdays (august 2003?)?
Did the beta/buggy "goldstandturd" release by NVDA at that time that gave a improvement EVER become a official NVDA driver and WHQL?
Because Valve doesnt have to use and should not use/base there effort on drivers that will not be WHQL, and or never even be official NVDA drivers. There is a point where a dev closes the door on effort that doesnt pay.