Mac Radeon Issues

[HanD_of_DarKNesS]

I've been having some odd render problems trying to tweak my Mac ATI Radeon 32MB DDR AGP card for best visual quality (using the Advance Preferences available through the "preferences" console command, or the UT Mac menu).

For reference my system is a PowerMac G4/400MHz (Sawtooth motherboard), with 640MB RAM, with INF 2.85.3 running on top of UT 436 in Rave mode. I also have my UT cache set to 40 MB, and use the "flush" console command to ensure everything is reset after changing video preferences.

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The first issue relates to turning on the "Detail Texture" setting within the Rave driver settings. The textures do get a better quality when approached, but go from being normal 32-bit textures to "Detailed" textures very abruptly, and sometimes cause odd artifacts within the detailed texture (as can be seen in the first image).

[HanD_of_DarKNesS]

As I move along, the detailed textures move with me, jumping across polygons.

[HanD_of_DarKNesS]

These are not isolated instances. The are constantly occuring as I move, but are very abrupt in doing so.

[HanD_of_DarKNesS]

As a second problem, if I turn on "32-bit Textures" within the advanced preferences (I always play with 32-bit Texture Detail selected withing the INF Video settings), everything runs normally, yet the skybox is no longer seemless, and instead can plainly be seen as a box textured on each face.

[HanD_of_DarKNesS]

And as a final issue, I have been unable to get liquids (water, etc.) to display properly when I'm submerged. Instead of getting a ambient lighting effect as if I were in the liquid, I simply see the texture surface of the water. As far as I know, this should be a part of the "Volumetric Lighting" setting which I have enabled.

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Anywone with knowledge and/or advice on any of these problem, please let me know. The game runs beautifully, but I'd like to get all the visual quality I can out of my video card, since it doesn't seem to effect gameplay much.

[Mac_Fodder]

Jeez HoD,

I wish I had your problems. I'm running a Rage 128 in a Biege 266 that I upped to a 400. It sounds like it may be an engine issue more than anything else. Have you tired Open GL and if so are the results that same. I know that a lot of folks have all sorts of issuses with UT on a Mac, more often than not because of Rave. UT was really written when Glide was king on the PC and while Westlake did an incredible job of getting Rave up and running incredibly well I still think that there are some issues.

I know that both I and BA have had the problem of snow showing up with Pink shadows. He tried GL but I think it was too slow for his tastes. Though with a Radeon in an AGP, even if it is slower it may still be fast enough to not notice the differene.

Hope this at least get you started in a new direction.

[BA Baracus]

yeah, on my system(B&W G3 400/Yosemite, 256MB, INF 2.85.3, retail PCI Radeon 32MB DDR, 1.1 drivers) i get the same problems HoD mentions. one thing i noticed is the skybox only looks like that if you start a map on 32bit textures. if i start a map, then go to advanced options and enable 32 bit, skybox stays normal. although i must say, i think there are much more prominent problems with 32bit textures than that, see pics:

[BA Baracus]

look at those trees

[BA Baracus]

more trees

[BA Baracus]

things are a little different under OpenGL, first off, it is a little slower, the difference isn't nearly as bad with my Radeon as it was with the stock Rage128, but it's still there. everything looks much much better under openGL, and like Mac_Fodder mentioned, the "pink white shadows" are nearly eliminated(see pic). switching to windowed mode is tricky, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. made it a little hard to set preferences, detail textures worked properly under OpenGL, howerver 32bit textures weren't even an option(well, they were in the .ini, but didn't show up in advanced preferences)

[BA Baracus]

that doesn't mean OpenGL rendering is by any means perfect though..

[BA Baracus]

sorry about the resolution on these images, but this last one only happened in 1024*768, this is the problem that keeps me from running in OpenGL mode all the time(my opinion is that INF looks pretty bad at less than that, not just the menu, but in game too, everything gets very jaggy) what happens in polygons are frequently and randomly? simply blacked out, take a gander:

[BA Baracus]

notice how the sun still showed up in that last one? here's another example

[BA Baracus]

last one. If you wanna try it on your own, i can give you directions on setting up OpenGL, Darkness.

[BA Baracus]

OpenGL allowed me to precache too, but i don't have enough RAM :(

[Elite_Soldier]

I had the exact same problem you did, and it affects gameplay alot. It drops your FPS massively, and I figured out how to fix it! But by that same damn token, I lose all my bullet holes too. I am still fiddling with some things in the Infiltration ini file to improve my FPS, because I average about 13fps with 640X480, medium skin detail and world, 16 bit low sound quality.

I will just pate my ini file, and try this and see if anything gets better.

[RaveDrv.RaveRenderDevice]
Translucency=True
VolumetricLighting=False
ShinySurfaces=True
Coronas=True
HighDetailActors=False
NonATI=False
LightModify=0.000000
TextureComposite=True
VertexLighting=False
DisableVSync=True
PageFlip=False
DetailBias=1.000000
MipMapping=True
DetailTextures=False
Use32BitTextures=False
DescFlags=0
Description=

BTW, I am on an iMac DV SE, 400 Mhz G3 processor, with 256 MB RAM (upgraded frim 128) with a plain ol' RAVE 128.