This is a collaboration of some new issues and some very old issues that I have had: (1) Invisible particles: Only when I run low graphics quality, all particles are nearly invisible and colorless. For instance, the grav-lifts are very hard to see and appear as a faint grey, med tool and repair tool effects are very faint, tracers and sparks are almost invisible, etc etc. Running the game in medium GQ or high GQ is fine though. This started with the recent patch, and none of the hotfixes seemed to touch these issues. (2) "Black" Smoke: Also with the recent patch, smoke now appears very black. I don't know what else to call it. My IRNV scope also can't see through it, and I just see a wall of black. Resetting my Useroptions.ini fixed the smoke for a bit, but as I was resetting my settings, the black smoke came back at one point. I'm unsure what setting is causing the black smoke. (3) Easy to spot infiltrators: Also with the new patch, again, is particles, and smoke especially, doesn't render behind the infiltrator's cloak effect. So if there's a fair amount of smoke around, be it from smoke launchers or dust storms, etc, you can very easily see the outline of a cloaked infiltrator. (4) Old Graphics Quality and Texture Issue: I've had this issue for as long as I can remember and it's kind of hard to explain so: On low graphics quality, textures look nice and smooth and the color is nice and pronounced. But on medium and high, it gets bleached. Also, if you look closely at medium and high, the textures have small squares all over it. You can see this best by looking at the groin :V I don't know anyone else who also gets this issue, But I get it and here it is. How do I fix this? My computer: ACPI x64 windows 7 (64 bit) AMD Radeon HD 5800 Intel i5-2500k CPU @ 3.30GHz (4 cores) 8 gigs RAM UserOptions.ini: http://pastebin.com/wRJHVFBh Would love to get some help on any of these issues.
Here's a picture that shows the infil cloak and smoke: As you can clearly see, smoke isn't rendered behind the cloak effect. Also, I forgot to screencap, The squad beacon's effect doesn't render behind infils as well. The list keeps growing. And here's another set showing Black smoke + IRNV scope issue: In both these images, I didn't move from this spot. Second image shows just how useful UBSL + IRNV combo is now. As I was taking these pictures, I noticed that launching the smoke out in the sun (no shadows) seems to sort of fix the black smoke issue and lets me see throguh it with IRNV. So I suppose that fog shadows has something to do with it? But I have that turned off so now I'm stumped.
i guess the problem smoke-cloack effect is the same problem that will make the shield render clear at far distance while everything around is foggy. problem with the shader and the particles probably.
Discovered what was causing the near-invisible particles: Graphics Quality: low Particles: Ultra These 2 settings together cause particles to be rendered just barely. And without color. Also about the black smoke, turning off shadows completely kind-of helps fix it a little. For whatever reason, shadows want to be rendered on smoke really hard. SOE please fix this game. Please? I'm being a good bug reporter see?
