I just can't work this game out, I got it looking unreal, with all the bells on full 16QAA 16x AF etc and great performance, but I seem to have lost it, and no settings get rid of the distance breakup, its like the shadows and fences in the distance look horrible.

I'm max settings, the AA is working, the AF is working, it looks nice, but in the far distance it looks smashed up.

Driving me round the bend.

Is there a way of defaulting the settings back to default in the game, like a cfg file, if I lower settings ingame the frames go down.

Latest nvidia driver
8800gtx sli
QX6700 @3.4ghz
2gb ram

1280x1024 .....lods up full
dynamic lod 0
AA 16Q working
AF 16x working

Its not performance, its the distance graphics, I will post some screens later.

They are not default but things look fine to me, running 1280x960. Not changed any else yet, it's a fresh copy just getting back up and running tweaks.

Nvidia control panel for LFS, just the ones I changed:

AF - 16
AA - 4
AA Transparicy - Supersampling
Force mitmaps - Trillinear
Texture Filtering Negative lod bias - Clamp
Texture Filtering Quality - High Quality
Vsnyc - Force On

Just for you to test out and see whats what.

As for going back to default, maybe just installing the game somewhere else and copying the default config file over?

Thanks for the reply
I did extract to a new folder and replace the default file and im well on the way back.

I have all lods set to max and the lod in MISC set to 0.00

All ingame settings are max and Im forcing 16xAF and 16xQ AA

AF - x16
AA - x16Q
AA Transparicy - Supersampling
Force mitmaps - Trillinear <-- never had this on
Texture Filtering Negative lod bias - Clamp
Texture Filtering Quality - High Quality
Vsnyc - Force On <----why are you using this?

I get around 45- 50fps on full A.I grid

But in the distance the track still looks a bit smashed up.?

screenshot might help

It's most likely you mip bias setting.

Quote from KROM :

Vsnyc - Force On <----why are you using this?

This was my thought too. Not sure what you mean by "smashing" but LFS is the first game I notice "tearing" in. Turning on V-sync eliminates this phenomenon. 60FPS is fine anyway (If you have LCD, that's the framerate you'll be limited to with V-sync).

"60FPS is fine anyway (If you have LCD, that's the framerate you'll be limited to with V-sync)."

Nope my LCD has a refresh rate of 75mhz

So the v sync locks @ that.

Guys, theres a well-publicised bug in the latest driver for these cards. It means that any settings in nHancer or the nVidia Control panel DO NOT WORK.

I think the only option is to either wait for an updated driver or roll back to a previous version. Sucks really for a £200 card, but there you go.

Nvidia control panel yes, but Nhancer works for me, and seems to work for many others, newest Nvidia driver here.

Tryed turning your res up if your monitor is able to? 1280x1024 is quite small nowadays.

Quote from DHRammstein :

Nvidia control panel yes, but Nhancer works for me, and seems to work for many others, newest Nvidia driver here.

Which version please? I'm trying to decide on which one to use.

Well I did see the bug in the AA and AF from the control panel, but mine works fine from setting the nvidia control for LFS.exe, all the settings work fine.

I can see AA working, and also AF, if I turn them off theres a clear difference, the game looks sweet, its just for some reason theres this like ugly graphics in the distance. on the track fences etc.

I followed all the settings to remove moire patterns like some people said. clamping the textures etc, but still have the ugly distance thing, I'll post some pics when I get home.

Quote from Nathan_French_14 :

Tryed turning your res up if your monitor is able to? 1280x1024 is quite small nowadays.

Not for people with a normal monitor it isnt considering most 17" users use 1024x768...

Quote from horrgakx :

Which version please? I'm trying to decide on which one to use.

If you mean the Video driver it's the 169.25 driver, nHancer is newest version also. This driver has a bug that doesn't allow the nvidia control panel to set options for LFS, but as far as I know, its' only LFS, I have nHancer istalled "only" for LFS, works exactly the same as the Nv one does, and man it's great getting the graphics absolutely maxed out in this game!

Since I changed from the 7800 GT to 8800 GT some graphics in LFS tend to flicker especially fences and posts in the distance.
This is even more strange as the 8800 GT offers an unbelievable image quality in all other games. I tried a bunch of drivers, no change.
I returned to WHQL 169.21, which gives the best image quality IMHO.


BTW, 8800 GTX SLI running at 1280x1024 is really a shame. When you can afford such a setup, you should be able to get a 22 " TFT at least. Even at 1680x1050 your setup isn´t really challenged. You should run 1920x1080 or 1920x1200.

Guys, I sorted my issues last night thanks to this thread;
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=40550

Basically the new Beta drivers (174.53) don't have this issue, but I had to 'tweak' the installation to get it to work with my 8800GTS. By tweak I mean unpack the drivers, copy over a .INF file, then run the setup. It is all explained in the thread above.

Unfortunately the nVidia control panel is obviously meant for higher cards than mine so I kept getting an error message. However the new nHancer beta version (2.4.0.5) works.

Thats how I got my 8800GTS to display lovely smooth graphics again.
YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE TO MESS ABOUT WITH THIS, it really is bad.

Quote from NikLaw :

Since I changed from the 7800 GT to 8800 GT some graphics in LFS tend to flicker especially fences and posts in the distance.
This is even more strange as the 8800 GT offers an unbelievable image quality in all other games. I tried a bunch of drivers, no change.
I returned to WHQL 169.21, which gives the best image quality IMHO.


BTW, 8800 GTX SLI running at 1280x1024 is really a shame. When you can afford such a setup, you should be able to get a 22 " TFT at least. Even at 1680x1050 your setup isn´t really challenged. You should run 1920x1080 or 1920x1200.

Yeah you have it in a nutshell the fences and some textures flicker while moving, its a horrible looking thing.


As for the using a 19inch 1280x1024, I get on fine with these monitors, I also have a 21.3 @1600x1200

the main reason the setups on that res is I play a lot of crysis and found the 1280x1024 to be just fine.

Infact a 19 inch looks the same as a 21.3 @1600x1200, it just looks smaller. thats all.

Just installed the high res texture packs and its looking very sweet (shame about the distance graphics, im going to try that beta.

It is inexcusable for nVidia to let this happen really. I think some of the onus should be with the LFS developers, it would help tremendously if 'advanced' options such as these were in the game setup screens.

Quote from horrgakx :

It is inexcusable for nVidia to let this happen really. I think some of the onus should be with the LFS developers, it would help tremendously if 'advanced' options such as these were in the game setup screens.

They have been added in a test patch, and I'd suspect we'll see them in the next official patch.

I'm finding it hard to take a screen shot that shows it, as its mainly when you are driving along, that it breaks up shimmering all over the place in the distance. (great news about the patch.)

If you're using an nvidia card you need to be aware that AA is broken in some of the driver revisions. There are a couple of threads and posts explaining it in various parts of the forum.

On the secondary topic, I have to agree with some of the other posters. You have an expensive and nice SLI GPU setup and a fast CPU, yet you went cheap on the monitor. You see everything through the monitor, its almost the most important part. You should really be running a nice 24" widescreen even if you have to turn some Crysis settings down. Its still going to look better than the <19"!

Another thing, at that resolution, a SLI config is probably not even necessary, I'd bet one 8800GTS could handle any game you throw at it, even crysis in vista using shader model 4.0. I mean, I can run crysis on medium settings so I can't imagine having 4 times the shaders to work with, even on high settings it's still playable. But the anomolies you speak of, in the graphics, I think it has a lot to do with aliasing, so I'd adjust the secondary AA settings, there should be one or two you can change around.