Shader 3.0 before & After

Sweet, thats pretty much what we all wanted to hear, thanks! Thanks for saying something to us.

I haven't had any issues with 3.0 shaders. Its beautiful, its not dark, and i love the crisp new feel. Even my fps hasn't been affected. I was able to raid all night in higher settings than I have for all of SF. Not sure why others are having issues, but I did want to say that I am very happy with them!
[edit to add: LOL just found a really bad lighting issue, the statues you get from Ykesha's Outer Stronghold zone (the gold Trolls holding their hand out with glowy green stuff in them) shine sooooo brightly they come out bright white. I kinda chuckled, but definitely needs adjusting.]

Imago-Quem wrote:

Honestly, Imago: I know of a few people who LIKE things darker. When I was running around Freeport during the daytime, things were plenty bright. During the night? Of course they were dark.
Here are some of my suggestions:
~Minimum ambient lighting seems to change the darkness issue, as you auto turned it down. For those who like it dark, I would recommend that you perhaps set a default that is brighter and let us adjust it so that it was the same as it was before. Or, add a box that lets us select "Brighter" or "Darker"
~The problem isn't always that things are too DARK. It's that things are too BRIGHT. Imago, go check out the Vasty Deep: Conservatory zone. It's crazy bright. We're talking blinding.
~Armor and scales shininess (Diamond Back Iksar pattern for example) Could use a tone-down in particular lighting settings. This is mostly an issue ONLY in BRIGHT LIGHT settings. In the more natural brightness settings it isn't an issue at all.
~There are some dungeons that are just too dark regardless of the minimum ambient light setting: Such as the Mistmoore TSO dungeons. However, there are some dungeons that look wonderful with the new shader effects EVEN while darker than they originally were (See: Scion of Ice.)
Overall, the response from my guild mates has been very positive. Keep up the good work. We have been filing bug reports like crazy to get them to QA and make life easier. Most of the issues we see are particles, and every particle effect that we saw got an individual bug report.
Keep it up.

Imago-Quem wrote:

Don't take all our feedback too negatively. For most of us, the purpose of our posts and screenshots here wasn't to reject the work you've done on such a massive project (and we're aware how resource-limited this project is, unfortunately), but to point out areas where we feel things could be improved, what scenarios are looking wrong visually, etc... In the end, we both (you and us the players) want to get things as nice as possible. It will take the time it takes, no problem.

Imago-Quem wrote:

Just Shader 3 related crashes or any graphical related crashes? There's been a persistent bug for quite awhile now that causes a Unhandled exception EXCEPTION_INT_OVERFLOW when you try to run at an aspect ratio wider than 12:3 (eg eyefinity 5040x1050 will constantly crash). Another dev said it was 'an overflow in a divide calculation in the culling library.' Maybe you could bug Umbra to fix the bug?

Kain-UK wrote:

I lost 20 fps...(HD 5850) , then I installed the ATI 10.5 drivers....and gained 22 fps back.

Before 3.0


With 3.0 the helm (dirge helm from KoS vaults zone) became one solid color and the wings turned grey

I will try and get a better shot of the helm in 3.0

Loendar@Unrest wrote:

Right...because the thing he should /have to do/ is fiddle with his gamma and ambient light settings after toggling on an "improvement"? No...he shouldn't.
I had the same problem. Waaaaaay too dark. I mean freaky dark. So, I switched my settings to get a non "fail" setup as you would say. You know what I was gifted with for the effort? Shiny grass and dirt...seriously?
Some of the visuals provided with shader 3.0 are amazing...but the problem is that they are counter balanced by the ludicrous appearance of other things. It is like living in a plastic world...were everything was sprayed with water...and someone turned off the lights.

Imago-Quem wrote:

Thank you for doing a great job.
If all the fixes you mentioned make their way into the game it will surely improve graphics and overall experience by a lot.

Wullail@Splitpaw wrote:

My HD4850 also lost nearly 20 fps where I tested it, using the April drivers.
I upgraded to the May drivers last night, I'll give it another shot as well to see if they make such a difference for my setup. You probably got a boost because they are gradually optimizing the drivers for the HD5xxx family, but who knows.
I'll post my findings.

Imago, would that help you if people posted the exact name of the items they are wearing that don't look right under Shaders 3.0?

Imago: One thing that i'm noticing is that lighting effects INDOORS are not dramatic enough. If you go into like the Bloodhaze inn, for example, and look around, the candles cast light along the stone wall, but not really on the characters. They do not illuminate the room really at all. Could this be the cause of the "Darkness"?
Outdoor lighting seems fine, but probably falls into the same problem when it's night out.
Edit: Just tested it... I had to put my character RIGHT UP to the candle/torch light in order to get it to show any illumination on my character.

Performance needs huge work here. I don't understand it. I have an AMD Phenom II x4 3.40 ghz cpu, 4gb ddr2 ram, and an Nvidia GTX 470 that has 1.2 gb of vram. I have yet to find a zone that performs as good as shader 1. All zones in the game in shader 3.0 run poorly, some down right abysmally. Performance is my biggest gripe right now. I hope this can get turned around, since shader 3.0 should, in theory, perform better with my video card then with shader 1.

Are we supposed to post issues here? I've been looking forward to Shader 3.0 since it was announced. I can't use it; the game crashes after about 60 seconds. Also, the T3 Guild Hall turns completely black after 3 seconds.
Here's a pic of the Guild Hall issue--you can see the names above NPC's heads, but nothing else:


I'm using an Nvidia GTX8800 with the most recent drivers (197.45) for Windows 7 64-bit. I have two GTX8800's installed but I'm not using them in SLI mode for EQ2 (for obvious reasons). System is a 3.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale overclocked to 4.0 GHz on an XFX MB-N780-ISH9 motherboard (which uses the nvidia 780i SLI chipset).

I'm having the crash issue too. Whenever I turn on Shader 3.0, I will be ok for a few minutes then I crash to the desktop, and when I try and relog, it says I am currently logged in.

If I log back on, and camp to desktop normally, I'll get a Windows 7 error about EQ2 ending abnormally, and the option to report it to Microsoft. When Shader 1.0 is turned on, this doesn't happen.

Also, I have to post a screenshot of how the icy dividers look with Shader 3.0 turned on! It's quite trippy, as they are a whole lot more reflective all of a sudden!

I made a video of my gameplay with shader version 3 enabled and disabled. i have my computer specs and settings listed in the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAKsxB9Cz0M

and a movie with screenshots with shader 3.0 enabled and disabled.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0vj3JYqeTU


-Viix

Strobe Lights !!! - Youtube

yikes lol
I really like the work you did on that room! It's different and well designed! As for the strobe lights... excellent idea.

Yes I am a newb to EQII. I am a EQ vet. I turned to EQ2 because it utilizes my pc better and I am very happy I made the switch. This Shader 3.0 put the icing on the cake. imago, awesome work. Things like this keep happening you'll have me as a life time subscriber. I like the look at most angles. Now with all that being said. Here is some negative things I concur with a lot of players about. I don't know what causes it to happen but my FPS definitely went down an avg of 30%. I am still tweaking my settings and gaining FPS a little at a time but at a cost. I am sacrificing the overall look of the game I have grown to love. I can only think that now the game is taking advantage of a lot more of my graphics card potential. I don't see it as a bottle neck. I will continue to examine my resources.

On another note (the whole reasoning behind this topic) I will try and attempt to post my pics that I have problems with for right now. If I can't get it this time I will figure it out. LOL

First pic is right off the docks of Nektulos. I don't have the correct terms but I will try to explain what I am seeing to the best of my abilities. Notice the smoothness and the ripples in the before and notice the digital lines in the Shader 3.0.
Shader 1.0

Shader 3.0

These next couple pics are of the Nektulos Wizard Spires. I noticed right away the flaws of the spell effects on the after image. Looks like boxes of or pieces of tape around some of the effects in 3.0. But on a positive note the Shader 3.0 version is not black like most say but actually a lot brighter and probably more colorful.

Shader 1.0

Shader 3.0

I will continue my examples as I see them. Otherwise I will commit to Shader 3.0 and just anticipate the fixes as they come along.

Those look slightly better than mine, in ways. I had to post these here because youtube quality is poor.
Notice the Green Numbers my FPS improved a bit with this disabled.
Here is a screenshot of barrensky with shader 3 enabled. All these were taken on max quality using FRAPS program.


And now, here is with shader 3 disabled.

Here is Lavastorm, on the docks, with Shader 3 Enabled.

And again with Shader 3 disabled.