Post-ToV zones look weird. (Pics included)

I can run the game at maximum graphical settings with no issue. I think I see a slight framerate dip during the heavy dragon raid encounters, but otherwise everything is fine.

All zones and content up through Tears of Veeshan look great. The water is reflective, the foliage and spell effects look great. Then comes the Altar of Malice expansion, which added Tranquil and Phantom Sea. I'm flying around the zones and I'm seeing that water, grass, and spell effects are rendering weird. They're directly proportional to my own camera angle and vertical height.





Notice how the sea creatures have a 2nd shadow and the sea floor is completely exposed?



What's up with the double sea surface?





Look at the purple flasks "sitting" on the table. They move up and down depending on how close I approach them, and they're still not right even when I'm standing directly on top of them in first person view.

It's not just Phantom and Tranquil Seas. It's Thalaumbra, the Obulous Frontier in Kunark Ascending, the planes in PoP and CD, and I'm absolutely certain it will be Blood of Luclin as well.







Is there a reason for why these zones look so radically different from the Vesspyr Isles in Tears of Veeshan?
This is clearly a technical issue that was changed in the game at some point, because all the old-world zones look just the same now as they did back when I played before I left the game in 2011.

Here's pics from Thalumbra. I'd really like to know why everything looks so off.

I need to know if anyone else is experiencing these zones the same way. Maybe it's a graphics card issue, but why would it be if all the older content looks great?

Looking for answers, please help.

They did change some of their world building tools and the way they built outdoor zones from ToV to AoM. I'd wager that it's not a coincidence that this is where your issues begin.

The Thalumbra pics you posted look okay to me. The other stuff depends on camera angle, distance, and your exact graphics settings.

There are a bunch of graphics settings that don't add any visual "bang for the buck", and which you can safely turn down to get better visuals. Check the Graphics Optimization Guide for explanations of what each of the Display settings is doing and whether it's worthwhile to turn it up. Rendering distance, particle quality, and particle number are responsible for some of the best visuals. You might work through that guide and see if it improves things any.

Also, are you streaming (the little running dragon icon pops up when this is happening) or have you got the files downloaded locally? If you are streaming, close the game, start the Launchpad, click the Advanced Tools button (crossed hammer and wrench icon) and tell it to download... you will get better performance in general).

It looks normal to you for the glowing spells effects to be phased out of alignment with the physical structure they represent? Look at the leaves and especially the mushroom. It looks like there's a ghost mushroom growing directly beneath the physical body.

Here's another example: I'm just hovering above the Phantom Sea, with my camera angle pointed slightly upward.




I fiddled with my graphical settings, but nothing changed. However, when I zoned back to Qeynos...



Same issue. But in this case, I discovered that it was caused by having GPU Shadow Maps turned on. Whether it's turned on or off doesn't affect how the Malice, Thalumbra, Kunark Ascending, Planes, and Chaos content looks.

Try testing some settings: GPU Shadows, Reflections, Ambient Occlusion, Sun Rays. These four can create similar issues, and combinations of them...

Tested them all. None of them have any effect at all.


All old-world content from base game to Tears of Veeshan looks great. Altar of Malice to Chaos Descending looks wierd. Library of Myrist... looks normal. Why would that be?

The pics you posted are all outdoor zones and PoK is indoors, that might be why. It looks like a lot of your issues have to do with water.

I zoned into Clackwinge's Cellar yesterday. The spell effects of the equipment inside was phased out of alignment like what is shown in the screenshots with the mushrooms and all that. That's an indoor zone. I zoned over to Maldura, also an indoor zone, and everything persisted.

I toyed around with my water settings and nothing changes. I can make the old-world zones look like the problem I'm having in AoM by turning GPU Shadows on, but whether that feature is activated or not doesn't change the affected zones.

Stuff in the vicinity of the shattered tower there are supposed to be wonky in some places. Inside the cellar though should be normal. I was in there three or four times on errands for the gnome today and I didn't see any of what you are seeing.

you've never told us which gpu you have

I knew I was forgetting something.

Intel Core i7-6700k @ 4.00GHz 4.01GHz with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 6 GB video card.

Everything I've done in the graphics settings have no change on how these zones look. I noticed I can turn off complex shaders entirely to remove the phased-out spell effects of the environments to a small degree.

I wonder if it's a Direct X thing? I just ran the game launcher's inspection of direct x drivers and found no issues. I'm using the recommended version for the game.

I'll try to record a video later to show everything in motion.

maybe it's a driver thing
try latest drivers or downgrade or something?
or maybe try a clean install of the drivers so any weird settings you have gets removed

I know a recent Windows Update made it so I had to go find my graphics card's manufacturer's website and download the drivers and install them. Don't know why Microsoft thought it needed to whack something that had been working previously

The version of DirectX you need is DirectX 9.0c, even if you have later versions of DX installed, because EQ2 is picky about that.

Now, at certain visual angles, there has always been a glitch where water becomes invisible and all you see is the sea bed. We used to get tons of weird things going on in Cazic-Thule because of all the water effects in the front of the Temple. I want clear underwater vision, so I always turn off the water distortion effects and such, myself, but that affects what you see when swimming underwater. I do allow some splash and reflections on water because it's pretty and (usually) doesn't cause a performance hit.

I did ask Santa Glug for a new motherboard with a newer, faster, better CPU, however

I've never seen nor heard of that particular issue Cusashorn. In many of the shots, the waterplanes should be reflecting a mirrored version of the geometry - why it looks offset instead is, well, trippy, to say the least. And the glowing geometry in Thalumbra being duplicated and offset is even weirder because that's done through shaders yet it's offsetting as if geometry. We run a wide range of cards/setups here (including the 1070 you have) and nobody has run into similar issues...

My only suggestion is to try toggling 'reflections' in the Performance section of Display (slim chance this matters tho). Otherwise, it does seem as if it's interpreting shaders incorrectly - why though? I've zero clue. Drivers/DX/etc are also where I'd suggest to start given that though.

Huh. It won't work on Windows 10.

In that case, you probably need http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8109

Yeah.. I've flipped through all manner of graphical settings, and nothing works. Here's a video showing everything off.

Huh. Curious. The Brokenskull Bay zones don't look unusual like the overland zones do, but Clackwinge's Cellar did.