Has anyone found a loophole for new nVidia-based issues?

[nintendo_nerd]

And what I meant was for Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow. I've searched both nVidia and Ubisoft forums thoroughly for this issue, and all lead back to the same thing: newer nVidia cards will not display dynamic lighting and shadows properly (making Jerusalem and the TV station near impossible to complete). This due to it being more or less a direct Xbox port. However, this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_To ... ws_version leads states that forcing lighting is quite feasible on newer cards, but can cause instability. Forums have stated that chaging "32bitVolumetricLighting" in pandora.ini to "True" fixes this issues. I've made various combinations of "True" and "false" in the configuration file, and the issue is not resolved. Oddly enough certain camera angles show correct lighting, but you need to be far away from the source. Do any of you guys have insight on this?

[Neo Kaiser]

I don't know what is happening to Nvidia this generation.

[sweener2001]

older drivers are also a possible fix. going back to at least ~97.

other reports just say to get a beater computer with a dx9 card.

[Deathlike2]

WTF? You want a fix or a workaround, not a loophole.

Some braincells were lost in this thread.

Edit: Most likely it is a bug in the coding, not as much the hardware itself.

[Squall_Leonhart]

recent ubisoft titles have been shit.

PoP has fog issues (can be alleviated by forcing Vertex Shaders)
Splinter Cell has this issue..... ugh.

so glad i've joined the ubisoft boycott now because of there new drm crap.

[Rashidi]

i always hates intrusive, rootkit-like drm crap.
that stuff caused so much of system un-stabilty...

[franpa]

older drivers are also a possible fix. going back to at least ~97.

other reports just say to get a beater computer with a dx9 card.

Most people would say to get an older direct x 9 video card that can actually work with the ~97 drivers before telling the person to try the ~97.

[Deathlike2]

older drivers are also a possible fix. going back to at least ~97.

other reports just say to get a beater computer with a dx9 card.

Most people would say to get an older direct x 9 video card that can actually work with the ~97 drivers before telling the person to try the ~97.

Say what?

Why would you want to get older hardware? That makes no sense.

Getting older drivers makes a lot more sense. It is likely that the older drivers featured some workaround or optimization (or even feature) that was removed in later drivers, thus "exposing" this behavior.

On the other hand, newer hardware render stuff a tad differently in a sense (using the shader core to do certain work that would have been done in older hardware's fixed hardware), but it's all made to be backwards compatible with all the older versions/features of DX (in the worst case, it would be software emulated). It still seems to me that it's an issue with the software implementation.

It seems to me that the feature was specific to particular older hardware, thus poorly/incorrectly dealt with in newer hardware because "it's missing".

[franpa]

older drivers are also a possible fix. going back to at least ~97.

other reports just say to get a beater computer with a dx9 card.

Most people would say to get an older direct x 9 video card that can actually work with the ~97 drivers before telling the person to try the ~97.

Say what?

Why would you want to get older hardware? That makes no sense.

Getting older drivers makes a lot more sense. It is likely that the older drivers featured some workaround or optimization (or even feature) that was removed in later drivers, thus "exposing" this behavior.

On the other hand, newer hardware render stuff a tad differently in a sense (using the shader core to do certain work that would have been done in older hardware's fixed hardware), but it's all made to be backwards compatible with all the older versions/features of DX (in the worst case, it would be software emulated). It still seems to me that it's an issue with the software implementation.

It seems to me that the feature was specific to particular older hardware, thus poorly/incorrectly dealt with in newer hardware because "it's missing".

Yes everyone should get the unified driver sets that lack support for the 8000 series or newer cards, will solve all there video problems with there 8000 or newer cards!

[Deathlike2]

older drivers are also a possible fix. going back to at least ~97.

other reports just say to get a beater computer with a dx9 card.

Most people would say to get an older direct x 9 video card that can actually work with the ~97 drivers before telling the person to try the ~97.

Say what?

Why would you want to get older hardware? That makes no sense.

Getting older drivers makes a lot more sense. It is likely that the older drivers featured some workaround or optimization (or even feature) that was removed in later drivers, thus "exposing" this behavior.

On the other hand, newer hardware render stuff a tad differently in a sense (using the shader core to do certain work that would have been done in older hardware's fixed hardware), but it's all made to be backwards compatible with all the older versions/features of DX (in the worst case, it would be software emulated). It still seems to me that it's an issue with the software implementation.

It seems to me that the feature was specific to particular older hardware, thus poorly/incorrectly dealt with in newer hardware because "it's missing".

Yes everyone should get the unified driver sets that lack support for the 8000 series or newer cards, will solve all there video problems with there 8000 or newer cards!

That's not my point you goof.

Anyways, it's very much a specific feature for that specific hardware that was removed from earlier driver revisions. It's a terrible feature, period.

[nintendo_nerd]

nVidia's GTS 250 drivers don't go back that far for Windows 7 (March 2, 2009 is the farthest they go back). Maybe I should just buy the Xbox version instead, since those lazy, asinine Ubisoft programmers don't want to give people who care about this game legacy support. Oddly enough, I can change some settings to show proper lighting effects in the first SC game. Pandora Tomorrow's screwed up dynamic lighting makes gameplay nearly impossible. Like I said before, changing the pandora.ini video card settings doesn't do anything to correct the dynamic/volumetric lighting issues. There are some lighting effects, but they disappear when you approach them.

[franpa]

You can use Vista drivers fine and dandy under Windows 7, you won't have WDDM 1.1 (instead you'll have WDDM 1.0) but I don't know of anything that strictly requires that yet.

[odditude]

nVidia's GTS 250 drivers don't go back that far for Windows 7 (March 2, 2009 is the farthest they go back).

i wonder if *gasp* that's because the card was introduced in march?

[Deathlike2]

Back to my original point... it's a two-sided affair. The software dev used an NVidia specific feature... a feature that was later removed in the drivers because it wouldn't be useful going forward (and was most likely limited to this game and hardware). I don't see why there are idiots trying to figure out "ways to make it work".

Edit: Links for moronic op just in case of google fail

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=87498

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthr ... 609&page=4

[Squall_Leonhart]

the feature isn't missing, the game isn't reading the latest drivers properly and setting the correct settings. (atleast in pop's case)

[sweener2001]

there was the other suggestion i had.

although if you have an original xbox, the trilogy can be had for the cheap.