Just Cause 2

Ah I wish I had a brother like you!

 

Pft, what else am I gonna do with all that 'old' hardware?

 

Spend your Saturday cursing trying to get a bunch of old parts to work together to build another charity gaming rig for a geek in need? (Yeah, another one of my kid's friends needs a better PC....)

 

This not ringing a bell with anyone? Got it on the GTX480 too.

 

Answered by Humus

 

Yup. Upgraded to a 5870 and thus had enough power to run at least 4x MSAA. Problem gone.

 

Thanks but I'm not sure if this is the same issue. If I'm not mistaken, the alpha-to-coverage issue applies to intersecting transparent textures like tree leaves and grass. But I'm getting these dittered patterns on flat ground (and they're very noticeable even with 4x MSAA).

 

If I'm flying fast and low along the ground, I can occasionally see a repeating pattern in the grass texture right before it 'loads' in the proper topiary / grass / plant coverage. But otherwise, I don't think I'm seeing the same thing...

 

Are you talking about shadows?

 

Not shadows, it's just something hovering in the distance like mipmap banding. Here's a screenshot:



Is that the alpha-to-coverage or something else?

 

One thing I don't like is when you are at the right distance up in the air from the ground, the trees rotate as you move and it looks really weird. It must be when you are right at the lod distance, or something.

 

Florin, now that I know what you're looking at, I'll see if I can find it... Thanks for the pic

 

Just FYI, I see what Florin sees too with my GTX285.

 

Ok, so I drove around in the snow for the last few in-game days, and really couldn't find a case where that 'pattern' emerges on my machine. I looked at sunrise, daybreak, sunset, and even at night. I tried moving around to a few different 'slopes' of the land, but I really couldn't anything like it.

The shadows occasionally look a little ragged under certain situations, but even then they didn't look quite like that...

 

That was bugging me too Florin on my 5850 ( I found it distracting and not at all subtle ), seems to show up well on planes and cars that have smooth curves as well. Turning off SSAO got rid of it for me. Just a rough algorithm or a bit broken?

 

Ah interesting, I'll play around with the SSAO setting when I get home. I don't think I've ever turned that off yet.

 

I'm definitely using SSAO, but didn't look at anything other than snowy ground areas. I'll go steal a few planes tonight and see if I can find it

 

It's particularly noticeable on high speed ground travel, as it will hover at a fixed point in front of your vehicle like a bow wave. But it also shows up when you're just standing around. The screenie above was taken just outside the front exit of the Reapers mountain base during daytime. Walk out onto the road for a couple of yards, turn left and look towards the cliff edge, then slowly nudge backwards until you see the dithering pattern creeping up over the cliff.

Then again, if it is there on your box and you hadn't noticed it so far, I'm not sure if I really want to encourage you to look for it. It's quite distracting actually

 

I still want to check it out, if for no other reason than to validate that it's not something oddly machine or OS specific. Not that I really imagine that it is...

 

Well, it was definitely the SSAO. I played with a few other graphics settings but it doesn't seem to be caused by interaction with any other effect, just SSAO.

The issue is instantly visible regardless of low/medium/high SSAO setting, and gone when SSAO is switched off.