TeddyTheBear wrote on 2021-09-17, 20:51:

The GOG version of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 seems to have no effect with dgvoodoo wip80.1 Videocard ATI Radeon 8500 and setting its registry setting for Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Crystal Dynamics\Soul Reaver 2\1.00.000\UseNPatches = 1.
GOG version of Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen 2 has its own registry setting UseNPatches as well, also no effect.
GOG version of Legacy of Kain: Defiance no longer has registry setting UseNPatches.

It may have just been user error last time I tried this but Soul Reaver 2 absolutely works.

shamino wrote on 2023-10-11, 05:03:

It's been ~15 years, but I think Catalyst 5.8 was what I used when I tried TruForm in Morrowind on a 9800 Pro. The smoothness made the trees look great to me but I was in the eastern part of the map at the time, so I might not have seen those type of trees. I don't know if the ends of the branches really bulge out like that on the real TruForm or not. If they do, the lack of quick A/B comparison must have kept me from noticing.

I gave up on it only because it was so slow. So swaaye's comment about 5.8 being slower than normal is interesting - I should have experimented with other versions back then but I don't think I did.

Yeah I had a thread about it years ago. Someone else discovered that some older drivers are much faster at the Truform emulation. I can't seem to find the details anymore.

Cat 5.8 runs it ok if you have at least a high-end Athlon 64 or Core 2 CPU. AGP 8x minimum too.

Tried TruForm for the first time today on my Radeon X800 GTO under WinME using Catalyst 6.2. Here's a screenshot from Neverwinter Nights:

With TruForm turned on, the pot in the left corner of the room is a bit rounder, and the player character's features are slightly less angular. All in all, the changes are pretty subtle.

And here's a screenshot from C&C Renegade:

With TruForm turned on, the soldier's helmet is a bit rounder and his clothes are more baggy. Not much difference in the environment.

P.S.

For Neverwinter Nights, TruForm is turned on by editing nwn.ini and setting Enable Truform=1. For C&C Renegade, it's necessary to edit the registry and set both NPatches and NPatches_Gap_Filling_Mode to 2. Of course, TruForm needs to also be enabled in the ATi Catalyst driver panel.

I just tried Return to Castle Wolfenstein (GOG version) and TruForm worked there as well. Screenshots below:

Again, the effect is subtle, and you pretty much need to look at the images side-by-side to spot the differences. According to the game's readme.txt, TruForm support was added in patch 1.32.

On first glance looks like one could reach similar effect by bumping model detail level by maybe ~30-50%. Im not sure its even a performance win, sure you dont have to send more geometry to GPU, but TruForm added triangles are still triangles rendered out. No wonder TruForm went nowhere.

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-11-14, 04:36:

On first glance looks like one could reach similar effect by bumping model detail level by maybe ~30-50%. Im not sure its even a performance win, sure you dont have to send more geometry to GPU, but TruForm added triangles are still triangles rendered out. No wonder TruForm went nowhere.

Yeah, as someone who's trying out TruForm for the first time, I was kinda expecting something more impactful I guess? It's still a neat feature, and I will be using it during some of my playthroughs, but it just doesn't look that amazing.

Back in the day, I was much more impressed with how programmable pixel shaders improved the water rendering in Morrowind.