Shader 3.0 before & After

Atan@Unrest wrote:

Ah - gotcha. So it crashes a lot in the guild hall and not 'more than Vanguard beta' (which I was in and crashed a ton) as previously stated.
I know it was probably a purposeful hyperbole but it doesn't help the discussion to skew what you are experiencing. Maybe I just haven't run in to the zones where it is unplayable yet - I only spent about 4 hours total with it one last night.

Shader 3.0 has major issues. It really wasn't ready to go live. Colors and textures are wrong and thats just to start. I won't be using it until they finish it.

Loendar@Unrest wrote:

I crashed more than every 5 minutes with shaders 3.0 on and outside of Halas. I was pleased with both an increase in performance (fps) and quality rolling a new toon when I first tested it.
Then I zoned to the guild hall and lasted on average 90s between crashes. I then proceeded to crash repeatedly (more than early VG beta) moving from guild hall to 1st raid target and disabled s3.0 in order to continue playing the game.
In the 2 hours I had it on, I saw shoddy graphics blends I would most commonly associate with early beta testing. My guild hall for example had no floors. Other areas entire walls that should have been textured were black or grey.
It was so bad, I assumed I had bad drivers or setup, but verified my setup was correct, non-beta drivers, no video OCing, etc.
I might have expected the results I got running a 6-7 series card, but not anything more recent.

Atan@Unrest wrote:

Like I said earlier... that's odd. We have the same graphics card (though I suspect not the same machine build) and I haven't crashed once since turning it on. Beyond that - I have had no issues with textures or graphic anomolies beyond the extra darkness I mentioned previously.
If you are crashing as much as you say then yes - I can see why you would loathe the Shader 3.0 and consider it a 'fail'. I guess my only observation was that it wasn't a fail for everyone - not even people using the same grahpics hardware as you.

Only major problem so far came when trying to climb ladder to light signal fire in new training area. Ladder black against black cliff at night - couldn't find the ladder even when right on top of it. Had to cancel Shader 3.0 and reboot.

I really don't get much of a performance hit; however, everything looks coated in plastic ... which I'm thinking wasn't what was intended. I couldn't run 3.0 on test previous to the update, so this was kind of new for me here. Some of the bumb maps seem to be turned up really high, and, while it's great to have texture, it looks really busy when the everything is covered with shadowy bumps. I don't know if you can adjust the rate of refraction on different items or not, but it seems to be set very high throughout somehow.
A lot of the guild hall pictures and anything yellow seems to glow like a neon sign, including hair. Most of the hair is weirdly glossy on the characters, too. And, yes, it's really really really dark everywhere you go.
I had to turn it off b/c I couldn't keep squinting at things and messing with the gamma/bright settings didn't help at all.

Right now? I prefer the old graphics with the GPU shadows, though I really think the Shader 3.0 can look AWESOME eventually, right now it's not really as nice to look at.

Instead of turning them off, we really should start a thread somewhere around here to report graphical changes, things that are too dark, or bugged. Imago was soliciting tons of feedback daily on test and fixing things like that prior to it going live.
I'm glad they pushed it live even with these issue, it was delayed too long anyways. If people can't stand the current bugs they can turn it off, but I'd plead with my fellow players to at least /bug it or post in the forums somewhere so with some additional work nobody will want to turn them off.
P.S. Some of thing things that look different or worse now is that there is higher precision being taken into account. So items that got by because of 'low rez' rendering but had flaws, now have those flaws on display. Remember that SM3.0 was really done to allow future expansions to have a MUCH greater toolset and capability to use new varried effects and designs. The retroactive refit of the existing zones was just something that got done in adding the capability to the engine (and to not provide such a stark contrast after these new zones and tools are put into use compared to the SM1.0 zones)
So some work still has to be redone but at least the engine isn't using shaders from the late 90s anymore, and I think everyone will be surprised by some of the things this allows artists to do with new models, effects, and zone designs looking forward.

Need to work on shadows and ambient lighting. Shadows do not seem to be working correctly with 3.0 shaders, they are often not displayed when you're inside guild hall buildings and such.
Also, no anti-aliasing? Oh God, why? This is a must, give it back...

I turned it off... the oceans looks like the BP oil spill was teleported to Norrath. Night time is considerably darker. Characters are darker or lighter randomly... I will wait til the rest of the game catches up to 3.0.
SOE should have known graphics cards and technology wasnt going to stagnate for several years...

Everyone on my server was complaining that it made everything too dark, and completely changed the color of their armors. How does Black suddenly become Red and vice versa?

For me, running with the latest nvidia drivers on an 9600 GT it looked like my personal torch was working in inverse. I had a moving area of darkness with me, as though I had my own personal cloud blocking the sun. No matter where... I too have turned it off.

I belive that in order for the designer team to see what the problem is and currect it , its better to let the pictures talk.
here are some SM3 VS SM1 comparrison.
while the backround/enviroment looks good - the actual models (characters/ armor) colurs are off - to contrasted/ too bright or too dark or both at the same time (yes - armor is very contrasted while the body is too dark).
screenshots :
Shader model 3.0 Armor : (too much glow, weird contrast, and weird colours)

Shader model 1.0 armor : (the way it should be. note: the helm is brighter becouse its not part of this spacific armor set, it is the right colour of its appropriate set)


Shader model 3.0 (warg is grey ! , it should be white - its the ALBINO lon warg)


Shader model 1.0 (now this is how the Warg should look like - ALBINO) :



Shader model 3.0 (armor is TOOO Dark, cant see the fine detail and the real armor colour) :



Shader model 1.0 (armor is metal grey with brown/green ornaments - the way it should look ) :



Shader model 3.0 - look at the NPC - his armor is plain dark grey :


Shader model 1.0 : (now look at the NPC, his armor is white with green/blue fine detail ornaments as it should be )


So... to some it up -
there is clearly a character and armor fixing required.
contrast is waay off.
there seem to be a problem desplaying white colour grades (it turns to grey/ drak grey)

my system :
Core i7 920
6gb dd3 memory
Nvidia Geforce GTX 295
Running the game on max quality + shadows + AA @ 1900X1200 (avrg FPS 35-65)
(latest official Nvidia drivers , not using beta drivers)

Everything is WAY TOO DARK. My guild hall looks like crap cause we had black tiling everywhere so it just looks like i'm walking around on nothing.
I went to raid today in palace of rhoen theer and it was too dark there too. I can't see any of the detail due to how dark places look. I tried maxing out ambient light and messing with gamma some, but increasing gamma by much just makes it look worse.
Outdoor zones looks okay i guess.
I'm definitely not using 3.0 though.

It has some improvements but I can't stand using it due to the crazy lighting problems and aliasing, is there any way to antialias with shader 3?

I prefer shader 1.0 to be honest I don't like the hard shinyness of 3.0, (sometimes things look very plastic) 1.0 is far more pleasing to the eyes in that regard. And as many others have mentioned 3.0 is makes everything FAR too dark! I had to crank up brightness so much that everything looked washed out in the end. Don't get me started on my arasai =/ They all look real real bad in 3.0. I for one have changed back to 1.0

Sadly I am running an old Nvidia GeForce 8800 video card. (WinXP, 2gb ram, Intel Core 2 Duo, GeForce 8800)
The game instantly crashes when I load up with Shader 3.0 turned on.
Woohoo... Fun times! -_-

Trepan wrote:

This was actually happening to me on Live prior to this GU being pushed (and continues to happen after the GU). I don't think it is related to Shader 3.0... well, actually I know it isn't related to Shader 3.0 since that didn't exist on Live prior to this week.

Shader 3.0 makes the enviroment way to dark. You have to turn gamma and contrast way up just to see where your going, but then your windows look like they glow in the dark. After 30 minutes of playing with it on I turned it back to Shader 1.0. Far as I'm concerned shader 3 isn't ready yet.
This is on a 9800 gtx graphics card btw.

the armor I like. even in the pics above comparing I much like the 3.0 armor. my issues were in Housing items.
The Cloudy Squares from Moonlight Enchantments lots thier moving texture.
the Venril Sathir paining's 'fog' effect only covered half the painting and was so bright you couldn't actually see venril under it.
the preserved bloom from Shard of Love item the globe around it woudl disappear.
many of the snowglobes had white squares that showed up/cut through the globe where the objext in the globe was.
the fog from halloween rendered always on the other side of the room from me, rather then in the center of the room.
the void portal looked like a shiny black floating disk, with lightning running through it ( a bug, but actually better looking imo ;p )
the Bayle Tapestry colors got too dark to distinguish them. the brown background turned black and the tusks turned dark grey.
the parrot from the Golden Path, became pixilated dayglow colors
the mounted staff of Fyr became solid black

The one, and only, EQ2 Shader 3.0 developer here,
What I'm hearing from most of you is things are too dark, wrong colors, too shiny, blacked out, too slow, and crashing for some of you. These are exactly the things I am working on right now to make Shader 3 your preferred choice. The more of you I can make happy, the happier I am.
Right now I'm cleaning up the armor sets and environments that we missed in the months of testing (the game is HUGE). That means fixing the colors, the darkness, and the shininess on hundreds of objects and armor sets.
Based on all this feedback I'll be sure to adjust the overall brightness of Shader 3 so you can see your game more clearly without adjusting the gamma and brightness (which in my opinion bleeds out the vibrancy I worked so hard to add).
I'm also working on a performance enhancement for Shader 3 that is looking nicely so far but it has to pass QA and run on Test for a bit before we are confident enough to ship it to Live.
For those of you who are getting crashes, please /bug your issue. We need to know your zone and location (/loc), hardware setup, game settings, character name and server so we can reproduce and fix these crashes. Right now I have ZERO crash bugs listed in my queue to fix, so send those in!
In addition to these updates I'm working on a fix for the driver forced AA feature using the r_aa_blit command. A fix is running through QA right now. Hopefully it passes and we can send it out to you Live shortly.
Please give Shader 3.0 a chance to mature just a little while longer. The game is massively huge and running it for months through our QA team and the Test servers just wasn't enough to expose a few hundred corner cases out of hundreds of thousands of complex scenes full of differing weather conditions, armor sets, skins, visual settings, special effects, materials, and lighting effects throughout the game.
We are working hard to bring you a better experience and a continually improving game. Thank you all for your support.