Newer video cards?

[player5]

I've installed a 280GTX and actually had better framerate than 7800GTX in firefights. This is odd, I suppose, because I understand that BZ2 is CPU intensive and doesn't use all that much GPU power.

But then the polygons in the game start flickering, and the screen went blue (I could see minimap, and shoot/more/ hear sounds, but my view is blue. This happened half hour into game.

I'm assuming this has to do with drivers? I've got 1.3pb4a and 182 drivers.

[VSMIT]

Yep, it's a problem with the drivers.  Newer Nvidia drivers seem to have dropped DX6 from their list of necessary driversets.  Either roll back your drivers to one that works, (The number eludes me at the moment) or set your sky to "None" in the graphics options.

VSMIT.

[Nielk1]

Newer Nvidia drivers seem to have dropped DX6 from their list of necessary driversets.

DX7 I thought.

[VSMIT]

How about any DX version before 9?

VSMIT.

[Vid]

177.35 is the oldest driver listed for GTX 280

Hope that works.
Newer video cards will require even newer drivers, so anything from this point on, driverwise, will die on BZ2 because all new drivers won't have DX6?

[Commando]

I doubt you will be able to get any drivers for that card that work with bz2.  Not even the stock 9800 GTX drivers, for my card work with bz2.

[player5]

Well, game hasn't crashed like that again. Some texture mix-ups (3D cockpit orange and recycler ground gray texture can only be seen from sat-bunker view), but sky and everything was working in the next few missions and instant maps.

Mean 60 fps though, and nothing below 46.

[TheJamsh]

the orange cockpit youre refering too is because of EBPM bumpmapping. turn if off and restart, i had that same issue when i installed pb4a for the first time.

[player5]

What is EBPM bumpmapping?

[TheJamsh]

essentially i think it puts another texture on top of the existing one but dont quote me on that.

either way, many cards don't support it, and end up just screwing up the textures already on vehicles. theres an option to turn it off in the graphics menu.

[Nielk1]

Its a gray scale map for a slight 3Dimensional effect applied to textures. In modern games, like source engine games, multicolored normal maps are used for more control and options. A lot still uses bump mapping though.

[GSH]

EMBM was Matrox (a video card maker)'s attempt at bumpmapping technology. It didn't really catch on. 'DOT3' was popularized by ATI and/or nVidia, and has been far more popular before normalmaps came around.

-- GSH

[player5]

So EBPM wouldn't work with any nvidia cards?

[Kalshion]

The drivers for my 260 card work just fine for BZ2, though there is issues when it comes to the water flickering in and out other than that everything is crystal.

[player5]

I get orange cockpit in the sabre, and flickering in some places. Your using the new 185 drivers?