Hello,

I did a complete re-install of Windows last weekend, as I just got myself some new hardware (yummi).

My new gfx board: GeForce 8800GTS (Yummi).
Installed latest driver - tweaked the settings for best image quality (as I have been doing it for the past 1-2 years), and off I went in LFS.

Imidiately noticed some differences in the gfx (see attached).

1. Notice the white pixels surrounding the shadow up ahead - doesn't really look good. Can be seen from further distance, and makes the shadow looks like its floating - it's worse when in motion.

When I get closer, the dots dissapear.

2. The right side "wall" and the cerbs flickers when in motion (image obviously doesn't illustrate this) - looks like interference(?).

Also, overall It seems the imagequality is more soft now.

3. Attached image is from Aston - Drove on Blackwood recently and noticed track texture patches (you can see where one texture ends and the next begins) - although It's less obvious than the white pixels around the shadow, they are obvious enough for me to notice them without look for it... and actually looks worse than the white pixels, as the texture seem occurs more often.

Didn't notice this on Aston.
Didn't notice any pixels surrounding shadows on Blackwood.

Can this be tweaked so I get a better imagequality? I was pretty happy with it before the upgrade.

Edit: Attached a screendump from Blackwood - it shows the texture seams.
Overall the gfx flickers allot - especially shadows when observing them from a distance.

There's an option in the drivers called "Negative LOD Bias". Make sure it's set to Allow. Also, set "Anisotropic Filtering" to 16x, and "Antialiasing" to 4x (you can tweak this to a higher setting later, but 4x will do for now). Then, go into LFS and set the "Texture Mip Bias" to 0.

EDIT: Looks like you already at least have AA on, but try the other tweaks I mentioned too.

Hi Forbin,

Thanks for the tips.

Negative LOD Bias @ Allow looks aweful. Every texture with some amount of contrast flickers (markings on road, cerbs) and the fences alongside the road looks like they done have any FSAA on the at all.

I never understood Mip bias, as I can't see any difference - It has been on -4 for a long time, and while experimenting now, I couldn't see any difference.... other than a very slight fps gain with the setting at -4.

I'm going to change driver settings to high performance/worst possiple image quality settings, and then tweak one setting at the time.

A small reason for this is when I first started LFS (with the new GFX board), every texture looked awefull - without having FSAA and AF turned on - I don't recall LFS look this bad.. ever.

Edit: Ooooooooh.. Mip Bias @ 0 truly shows its power, when everything in driver soft is set to crappy settings No seams at all now, but also no FSAA and AF.. meh.. I'll do some more tweaks

Setting "Negative LOD Bias" to Clamp pretty much causes all textures to be blurred to hell such that not even Anisotropic Filtering can fix it. Also, with it set to Clamp, the "Texture Mip Bias" setting in LFS does nothing. With it set to Allow, the "Mip Bias" setting actually does something, but as you've already seen, -4 sharpens everything up so much that you get tons of artifacts. The best setting is obviously 0.

Why don't Clamp and Allow (with Mip Bias 0) produce the same image? Hell if I know.

This was actually the subject of a very heated debate a few months ago.

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=11025

See post #21 for some comparison screenshots.

Thanks for the link, Forbin - made me understand a thing or two... or did it? :P

And yeah.. Clamp and Allow (with Mip Bias @ 0) is an odd one. I prefer Clamp as the cerbs looks better.

But other than that.. kinda frustrating that the options to improve quality is so limited - running at highest possiple resolutions doesn't help at all :|

i guess i might have the same problem as you - and ive noticed this only since ive had new gfx card - nvidia 7600GT (before that i had radeon 9800)

it looks like there was no AA and the whole "flickering" of the armco is annoying (mainly noticeable on the armco along pit road on the left). But the AA is actually at 8x and AF 16x

any idea?

Yeah, it's exactly the same with my 8800GS - 16xFSAA + 16xAF + 2048x1536 resolution still doesn't eleminate this - thats pretty dissapointing IMO

I agree. All details set to max, 1920x1080 and the screen still looks like it had no AA at some places.

How do I add AA to the white lines in LFS?



In the above image you will see that no matter how much AA and AF I give it, all the lines are sharp.

That screenshot was taken at:

16x CSAA (8 color + 16 cv samples)
Gamma Correction
Super Transpanrency AA
16x AF
High Quality texture filtering
Trilinear optimization = On
Aniso. sample optimization = On
Negative LOD Bias = Allow
Mip Bias in LFS = 0

Is there a option in nHancer that'll help me strighten the lines out? It's really doing my nut in.

Turn off anything that says "optimization" in the driver.

As for the white lines, there's really nothing you can do besides buying a video card that does Supersampling AA for all surfaces rather than just transparancies. The method of AA that is most commonly used these days is Multisampling, which mostly works on the edges of polygons, not textures. Supersampling the entire scene has a much greater performance hit than Multisampling and that's the primary reason it's typically not used.

lol he has an 8800. people say that ati has better IQ. i dont know about nvidia's settings.

ati has stuff like adaptive antialiasting. and there's a newer one, but i cant remember the name.

it could just be the way the tracks are made. people have similar issues with RBR>

It's just the lines which are a pain in the butt. I use nHancer instead of the Nvidia control panel because it's easier to use. I would also love to get some AA on the mirror to make it overall look better.

How much FPS u getting raptor? Just curious, mine gives 220 on 1280-1024-32 bitts.