Too much shading on objects

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edc2005

Type: Member
Posts: 10
Joined: 3/13/2010

Posted by edc2005 at 3/13/2010 9:57:32 AM

Hello,

I have only discovered RetroCopy today, but it is looking very nice. My only problem is that when I run it on my main computer, the objects in the Game Room have too much shading on them. If I look at the posters or the sofa from a distance, they appear to be black. Moving closer to them causes part of the texture to become visible while the rest of it is still obscured by very dark shading. moving from side to side shifts the area of the object that is clearly visible.

Also, I use 1280x1024 as my desktop res, and the text sharpness in RetroCopy is poor to unreadable. Any advise?

Thanks

RetroRalph

Type: Administrator
Posts: 781
Joined: 7/19/2009

Posted by RetroRalph at 3/13/2010 10:34:10 AM

Could you take a few screenshots to show the issues? You can put it into windowed mode, then press print screen to copy what you are looking at. Then in a paint program you can paste it and save it as an image.

Waxonator

Type: Member
Posts: 91
Joined: 3/13/2010

Posted by Waxonator at 3/13/2010 2:53:53 PM

What is your video card? You may need to update your drivers.

Sasha

Type: Member
Posts: 174
Joined: 2/19/2010

Posted by Sasha at 3/13/2010 7:01:58 PM

Monitor can cause these issues, on my LCD 19' monitor ASUS with 1280x1024 res all displays perfectly.

edc2005

Type: Member
Posts: 10
Joined: 3/13/2010

Posted by edc2005 at 3/13/2010 11:22:41 PM

I'll get some screenshots later today. I have a Radeon X1650 and the graphics drivers are up to date.

edc2005

Type: Member
Posts: 10
Joined: 3/13/2010

Posted by edc2005 at 3/14/2010 4:45:07 AM

I have the screenshots ready to send to you. How would you like me to do that?

Also, The TV screens sometimes appear blank when I load a game on them. I can hear the audio from the game, and if I go to fullscreen mode I can see the game, although it's poorly rendered

. Any ideas what I can do about that?

Sasha

Type: Member
Posts: 174
Joined: 2/19/2010

Posted by Sasha at 3/14/2010 4:58:08 AM

edc2005 wrote:

Also, The TV screens sometimes appear blank when I load a game on them. I can hear the audio from the game, and if I go to fullscreen mode I can see the game, although it's poorly rendered

. Any ideas what I can do about that?

It really something wrong with Video Card

edc2005

Type: Member
Posts: 10
Joined: 3/13/2010

Posted by edc2005 at 3/14/2010 6:22:23 AM

It's perfectly fine with all my OpenGL 3D games.

Waxonator

Type: Member
Posts: 91
Joined: 3/13/2010

Posted by Waxonator at 3/14/2010 8:34:28 AM

Uninstall the drivers, then reinstall them.

edc2005

Type: Member
Posts: 10
Joined: 3/13/2010

Posted by edc2005 at 3/14/2010 9:00:25 AM

#10

Still the same.

RetroRalph

Type: Administrator
Posts: 781
Joined: 7/19/2009

Posted by RetroRalph at 3/16/2010 4:27:20 PM

#11

Upload the images to something like imageshack.us .

Have you tried playing with the settings in the graphics menu? It looks like that card supports DX9 and OGL2 so it should be working in theory. It's possible the shader code might be a bit too complicated for your card though seeing as it was released almost 4 years ago, however usually if there are issues you would get error messages from RC. A screenshot would help.

Things to try in graphics menu :- anisotropic filtering, emulator 3d filter, anti aliasing.

You could be forcing certain options in your global graphics card settings that make it weird too, make sure you haven't global enabled AA,AF and have texture options set to QUALITY instead of PERFORMANCE. What OS and CPU do you have?

edc2005

Type: Member
Posts: 10
Joined: 3/13/2010

Posted by edc2005 at 3/17/2010 5:26:13 AM

#12

Here is the link to my pics.

http://img26.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=14179797.png

My computer is an Athlon 64 3400+ 3Gb RAM running Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit.

As for my graphics options, I left everything on default (i.e let applications manage anti-alias and antisotropic). I have left it on balanced between Quality and Performance, so maybe I'll try changing it to Quality and see if that makes a difference.

Just out of interest I tried RetroCopy on my work computer as well, which has a Radeon X1550 in it. It did exactly the same in terms of blocky looking menus and failing to show games on the tv screens, except this card couldn't handle the shader properly at all. Came up with glitchy textures over the objects.

Thanks.

edc2005

Type: Member
Posts: 10
Joined: 3/13/2010

Posted by edc2005 at 3/17/2010 6:42:50 AM

#13

A small update for you.

I changed my graphics settings to Quality rather than balanced, and it fixed the shading problem. TV screens still not showing anything, so I tried changing some of the settings in RetroCopy. Turning the lighting to Low fixed the TV screens, although the shading started being too dark again. The Fullscreen mode and menus still look like crap no matter what I change the settings to. I've uploaded some more pics so you can see what I am seeing.

http://img519.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=95611579.png

Sasha

Type: Member
Posts: 174
Joined: 2/19/2010

Posted by Sasha at 3/17/2010 8:21:24 AM

#14

Looks like video card problem, you have AGP or PCI-E video card?

RetroRalph

Type: Administrator
Posts: 781
Joined: 7/19/2009

Posted by RetroRalph at 3/17/2010 10:06:07 AM

#15

Thanks for the screenshots, it helps. It looks like maybe the pixel scaling is broken in those drivers, pixel scaling is used by default in the GUI (as the images are 1:1 and don't require any scaling) and in the emulator by default.

Press F5 in fullscreen mode to switch to the bilinear filter and it will likely fix the game fullscreen issues.

Someone on another forum had the exact same issue on ATI hardware with one of the earlier versions but I thought it was fixed. I may put an option in which allows you to always have a filter on as it may fix the issues you are seeing if pixel scaling is broken, unless....

Are you forcing mipmapping in the global options? MIPMAP should be set to quality, and if there is an option to "always enable" or "force on" it should be turned off. MIPMAPs are basically textures that are smaller than the original. Why would a driver allow you to show textures that are less size than originals? They are shown when it's appropriate for speed and quality reasons. In RetroCopy there is never a need to have this as I turn off mipmaps manually for textures that shouldn't have it and enable it for those that should.

I believe forcing MIPMAPs is only possible through other apps like ATITools. Another thing to look at is LOD BIAS, if you've been playing with something like ATITools it's likely what is causing the issues.

It looks to me like it's using the half size mipmap version of the GUI textures then scaling it to full size. Either that or the ATI drivers for that series of video cards is broken when using GL_NEAREST. If it's the latter I can offer a fix. If pressing F5 in fullscreen mode increases the quality (take another screenshot) I guess it is the latter issue. Make sure you look at the MIPMAP stuff in your control panel first though to see if that fixes the issue.

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