2.0 Pixel Shaders are blindingly bright

Hello
Let's get some basic details out of the way:

With Allow 2.0 Pixel Shaders on:




With allow 2.0 pixel shaders off:


Obviously something is not right.

Now, the quick, dirty, and effective solution of course is to just simply uncheck 2.0 pixel shaders. But I want to use the 2.0 pixel shaders.

Does anyone know what is causing this?

I am using an nvidia 1080gtx and my display drivers were updated a few days ago. When I noticed this was a problem, I scrubbed them and did a fresh install as a means of trying to fix it. But there was no change.

Does anyone know what's causing this and how to fix it?

As I understand it from other posts that I have seen the "Faerune" vision ability is a big part of these over-bright graphics.

Also "advanced lighting" can be blessing or curse - I would love a toggle switch to turn them on and off, try switching that off in decently lit areas and only using it in dark places.

I really hope we do get a graphics engine upgrade someday soon along with a 64-bit client.

I only rarely ever switch off 2.0 shaders, GMM and some Velious (SoV/ToV/CoV) zones I do so or they burn my retinas & give me a headache.

I am playing on Mischief, so I don't have faerune. I have tried unequipping all of my equipment, and it does not change how it appears. Another guildmate on the server sent me a screen shot of what theirs looks like with 2.0 pixel shaders enabled, and it is as you would expect...a subtle, but better looking appearance than without it.

I have use advanced lighting turned off. The same thing happens to me when I toggle allow 2.0 pixel shaders regardless of what setting is placed there. I have most things turned off in advanced options, and have tried every possible combination I can think of in that section. It's always about the 2.0 pixel shaders. If I turn them off, it's bland looking, but normal. With them on, it's super insanely bright, even in shaders that are NOT excessive, such as specter pets.

Could be a peculiarity of your card, I have a Radeon HD6870 & don't see this with 2.0 shaders., has to be blindingly white or bright areas before i need to switch them off.

Is your character the same race as your guildmate that sent the screenshot?

Some races have innate 'vision' effects.

It is not a problem of the character or their race, the things look the same, no race in the game would cause that level of disparity from how something looked. It is a technical problem of some kind, not a "your character is a difference race and that's how things look to that race problem."

Yes we are.

And I should have mentioned this before, but I have been playing with this same graphics card for years. Something was changed that is causing this. This is completely abnormal behavior. I have uninstalled/reinstalled my drivers, deleted all of my .ini files and the issue is still present.

I appreciate and am thankful for the replies, but what I am trying to make clear is that there is something causing an issue with the shaders, and it is not what race my character is, and in every other application including everquest my graphics card has worked great for years, and continues to do so, except for this particular problem that I have posted about.

I re-read my first post, and I had the description backwards. It's likely obvious to anyone, but the top screenshot is with 2.0 pixel shaders OFF, and the bottom screenshot is with 2.0 pixel shaders ON.

There are two lighting "options" in the advanced tab. One should be advanced lighting (or something similar) and one should be environmental or bloom? Toggle those both off, then see if everything appears properly, then turn each one on individually, checking your display. I'm pretty positive having both on causes this effect more frequently than the others.

I'd list my settings from the game, but obviously can't atm.

What are these set to in you EQclient.ini?

TextureQuality=1
VertexShaders=TRUE
20PixelShaders=1
MultiPassLighting=0
PostEffects=1
UseLitBatches=TRUE

Edit: Mine is definitely Advanced Lighting off and Bloom Lighting on. I recall some issue where I had both set to ON, in some zones, and it would nearly blank out the screen with the brightness.

Before today, I have tried every possible combination of the buttons within the advanced section of display, with no change. Whenever 2.0 pixel shaders is selected...it looks like the second photo in my original post. (ie: like hot garbage)

Before I loaded the game, I set my .ini files manually to exactly how yours were listed. I logged in.

Bright. Piercing. Blinding light, just like before, on all areas of the specter.

I sighed.

I clicked off enable post effects and I noticed there was a slightly less blinding bright light from the specter. Still really horrible, no one would ever play like that. To be clear, I have tried all possible potions with those buttons in the display settings previously. I do not know why I encountered a slightly different result when I logged in after manually editing the .ini, and I have previously tried deleting the .ini entirely and patching. It was always hot garbage once this issue started, and it is still hot garbage on the axe of the specter. It's just thankfully not hot garbage on the entire body of the specter anymore.

But I clicked through all possible options again, and unlike before, I noticed the bright...piercing, blinding light, was now only showing from the axe that the specter weilds, and only from certain angles. (ie, only if your character is in front of the axe, not if it's behind it. Which is sortof how you would expect the shaders to work.

Keeping enable post effects turned off reduces the jarring brightness a bit, but it is still disgusting, and obviously NOT how it is intended to look.

It still looks like hot garbage, and it is still in my opinion unusable....but at least the entire specter is not absolute hot garbage.

Did you try moving the specter around to different locations/angles?

Maybe turn off 2.0 shaders, exit the game (normal camp to desktop) relaunch and re-enable them?

I completely recall this issue back in OoW/DoN days, when my GFX couldn't manage the 2.0 shaders and lightning warriors + all the new shiny swords/shields were just blinding "white" and turning them off made everything a dull grey.

I honestly don't know what changed from then to now (I took a hiatus way back when).

I think knowing what brand of video card might help? It might be an additional setting on the driver itself rather than just EQ.

I also know that things went wonky with W10 and gamma for windowed/non-windowed modes during one of the MS updates. So there might be something there as well if you recently installed an update?

Got a tell from someone a little while ago. Turning off antialiasing gamma correction was the fix . It was set to auto (on). Turning it off set me up. It's in the nvidia control panel, you can toggle the setting for everquest specifically.


Thanks for the replies everyone!

And thank you for coming back and letting everyone know in case others have this issue.

It's going to be appreciated by someone years from now for sure! Many people don't come back to let us know what fixed the issue, but when they do, everyone wins.

Cheers for sharing the solution, added that fix to my growing list of copy-pasta fixes as:

Over-bright graphics with 2.0 shaders on:
NVidia Cards - Turn off antialiasing gamma correction from the NVidia Control Panel.

I'm not entirely certain it's a one-size-fits-all fix.

What I have discovered since then is without ultravision, is that everything looks so incredibly dark in many zones. I mean really dark. Freeport at 8am for example, looks dark as night. I was blind as a bat.

I don't know what is going on, but it's really getting on my nerves.

I just wanted to add, I have the same thing. I have an AMD 5700XT running Windows 10 19042.1237 version 20H2. Running the latest driver it has done it on this current build as well as my old 290x from 2013.

I have the same thing. It gives certain NPCs (new Coldain and Drakkin this weird, shiny waxy skin). If I turn off pixel shading 2.0 it goes away completely. As does the glow everyone has. It's like everyone and everything is self-emitting light for some reason. It's really weird and I wish there was a solution besides turning pixel shading 2.0 off. My friend with a GTX 1070 also has the same issue.

Could it maybe be with the build of the game? Could people who have had it installed for years and years perhaps have a different file compared to those who installed their version more recent? Just a thought.

It's something funky with newer cards, I have an old card & not having this issue at all, so check the cards special features & switch them off one at a time & try

It's a real problem. I've had precisely the same experience and turned the feature back off. It's particularly bad in some indoor areas like the Bazaar.

You might, but you'd be wrong. A shader doesn't have anything to do with shade or shadow. A shader is simply a small program that tells the video card how to draw each pixel.

Why did you even reply? You obviously didn't look at the screenshots in this thread.