"clear" screenshot of the problem? So I can check it and the autogen'd mipmaps

lowenz wrote on 2025-01-14, 10:16:

"clear" screenshot of the problem? So I can check it and the autogen'd mipmaps

P1 = no mipmapping
P2 = mipmapping

https://ibb.co/album/nBZLFK

it's much more noticeable when moving, e.g. have a look at Sams googles, he's always moving a bit, so the bloom is always going on and off (because the bloom resolution is very low, meaning the googles are often smaller than 1 pixel), or have a look at the chains of lights in the first mission (the one after the training) in splinter cell 1, if you just move a bit through the area, you should notice all the lights are flickering a lot, going on and of as well.

Thanks!

Auro mipmapping unfortunately doesn't fix the problem in night vision or thermal vision, maybe someone knows how to open/edit texture packs? I tried UnrealEd3 comming with unreal tournament 2004, but it crashes when opening splinter cell texture files.

Btw. i also had problems with crashing videos in SP2, following this thread: https://github.com/ThirteenAG/WidescreenFixesPack/issues/943

I think using fast vsync in nvidia control panel fixes the problem entirely.

Etroxamin wrote on 2025-01-14, 08:24:

Found an easy Bloom Fix for Splinter Cell 1 & 2 using dgvoodoo (latest version), in dgvoodoo control panel, under DirectX, set Mipmapping: Auto-gen with billinear filtering

Fixes the problem entirely without any tradeoffs, perhaps a mipmapping problem in the engine.

Hope to find solution for Splinter Cell 3 too (and maybe SP4), but doesnt run any good with dgvoodoo, I've asked ThirteenAG on github to implement it into the d3d9 wrapper coming with the Widescreenfix for SP3.

Absolutely Brilliant! It actually fixes that pixelated light flickering. I also turned off Mipmapping completely in the ini files and let dgvoodoo handle it fully and it makes it even better. The only thing remaining is the missing shadows on some surfaces "eg: the wooden planks behind pipes in the training level YT Video: Building a retro gaming PC for Splinter Cell! " and the Sun bloom effect. Its completely missing in the "defense ministry" and "oil refinery" stages and probably in more. I tried adding "Bloom=2; Bloom=True; BloomQuality=3" parameters but they don't seem to work. I wonder if there's any other parameter for Bloom in UE2. Also yeah, I can extract and edit the textures & shaders but I've no idea how to implement it back into the game. If that can be figured I can fix missing shadows & even the PS3 textures

Edit: Ok so turning off Mipmapping in the ini doesn't make things good, but making it On and Mipfactor to 2 along with dgvoodoo mipmapping makes lights a lot smoother

So what's the point of forcing it in dvg2? 😐 It seems impossible to me that either things are needed together

Forcing in dgvoodoo applies bilinear filtering to the mipmaps which in this case by default looks unfiltered/pixelated. Apply any AA from NVCP and it look perfect. Even with FXAA Its definitely an improvement for both SC1&SC2. I've also found how to make the game load edited textures so I'll try upscaling the textures to see it it helps but if its from the shader I doubt editing textures would make any difference

No, I'm saying either "forcing through dgv2" AND "make the setting on+factor 2" in the ini. 2 is really high value, maybe too much, why not just force the BF with the default ini settings?

Hello,

I think I’ve found a bug in Splinter Cell related to some "volumetric" lighting effects. It seems that when two of these effects are supposed to appear at the same time, one of them gets cut off.

For example, in the Defense Ministry mission, when you have to interrogate the driver, there's a car that projects two spotlights, each supposed to produce a volumetric effect. However, when using dgVoodoo2, only one effect is displayed. Interestingly, if I destroy the light that does show its effect, the other one starts to work (see the screenshots I’ve attached).

I’m not sure this is a bug in the game itself, as I saw both effects working properly in this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/HDXgCL52HZw?t=1523

I’ve also attached a save file close to the car with both lights for easier testing.

Thanks!
Kevin

Mzartek wrote on 2025-04-05, 09:43:

Hello, […]
Show full quote

Hello,

I think I’ve found a bug in Splinter Cell related to some "volumetric" lighting effects. It seems that when two of these effects are supposed to appear at the same time, one of them gets cut off.

For example, in the Defense Ministry mission, when you have to interrogate the driver, there's a car that projects two spotlights, each supposed to produce a volumetric effect. However, when using dgVoodoo2, only one effect is displayed. Interestingly, if I destroy the light that does show its effect, the other one starts to work (see the screenshots I’ve attached).

I’m not sure this is a bug in the game itself, as I saw both effects working properly in this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/HDXgCL52HZw?t=1523

I’ve also attached a save file close to the car with both lights for easier testing.

Thanks!
Kevin

Hi,
Interesting rendering situation. I improved the GF4 emulation a bit in the latest dgv release, now both headlights are working.

Hello,

Thank you very much, you've made a Splinter Cell fan very happy !

Gratefully,

Good to know this game is still living breathing on PC thanks to the hard work of Dege and good folks here at vogons. I'm curious what files have been edited to remove the tiles shine in the CIA & Defense level fix by daniel_u ? Maybe if the specular that properly works on modern PC like on doors and wall tiles in CIA level could be applied to floors in these levels and that would make it look better.
Also I found one weird issue in the PC version compared to xbox in the CIA level. In the laser hallway in xbox, they cast a light and shadow on the wall and when you pass through it a nice effect is produced. In the PC version that shadow and light on wall is completely missing and the effect when you pass through it is partially produced at certain very close angles only.

PimPom(SFG) wrote on 2025-04-23, 08:32:

Good to know this game is still living breathing on PC thanks to the hard work of Dege and good folks here at vogons. I'm curious what files have been edited to remove the tiles shine in the CIA & Defense level fix by daniel_u ? Maybe if the specular that properly works on modern PC like on doors and wall tiles in CIA level could be applied to floors in these levels and that would make it look better.
Also I found one weird issue in the PC version compared to xbox in the CIA level. In the laser hallway in xbox, they cast a light and shadow on the wall and when you pass through it a nice effect is produced. In the PC version that shadow and light on wall is completely missing and the effect when you pass through it is partially produced at certain very close angles only.

I'm working on a small patch on this game and been trying to get the PC version closer to the Xbox, many of the downgrades are related to the developers updating the PC map file. I'll be including several Xbox map files in the patch but CIA HQ in particular is currently having issues with its textures on PC, so hopefully I can fix that.

I'm assuming this is what you are talking about?

There is still some stuff that either the PC version is missing entirely (like depth of field) or 640x480 might be necessary to get the proper effect.

I also fixed the PS3 HD textures so that they don't break shadow rendering through alpha textures for both games. I still prefer the original, but atleast they don't ruin the shadows now.

SC1 PS3 HD Textures (fixed)

SCPT PS3 HD Textures (fixed)

Example of when PS3 textures were broken:

Fixed PS3 package:

Oh my god! Yes! exactly this. You've managed to fix it and even fixed the PS3 textures. It looks absolutely beautiful. I personally tried fixing the ps3 character textures for Sam and other characters and simply removing alpha textures seem to fix the weird shadows but couldn't do it for everything. So thank you so much and Godspeed on your work. I can't wait for the patch. And yeah playing on 640x480 does fixes a lot of lighting mipmapping issues so hopefully your patch will also fix depth of field in nightvision.
Maybe too much but I've also tried increasing the LOD for characters as they seem to loose detail right in front of you, but adding these parameters doesn't really help much. I wonder what setting UE2 uses for character mesh lods.

PimPom(SFG) wrote on 2025-04-23, 17:59:

Oh my god! Yes! exactly this. You've managed to fix it and even fixed the PS3 textures. It looks absolutely beautiful. I personally tried fixing the ps3 character textures for Sam and other characters and simply removing alpha textures seem to fix the weird shadows but couldn't do it for everything. So thank you so much and Godspeed on your work. I can't wait for the patch. And yeah playing on 640x480 does fixes a lot of lighting mipmapping issues so hopefully your patch will also fix depth of field in nightvision.
Maybe too much but I've also tried increasing the LOD for characters as they seem to loose detail right in front of you, but adding these parameters doesn't really help much. I wonder what setting UE2 uses for character mesh lods.

I won't be able to restore the depth of field effects from Xbox, that would probably require access to native code and reverse engineering. I would like to increase the LOD on this game as well, but I haven't found a way either. Right now, specular materials are acting strange when using the Xbox version of CIA HQ. It's the same type of texture mentioned earlier in this thread where they purposely disabled the specular. Technically, you can fix the map by using that method, but ideally I want to try fixing the specular.

I just released that small patch I was working on here.

You can give it a try, and most of the maps will look much closer to their original Xbox version. I also added full Xbox controller support if interested in that. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to include the Xbox CIA HQ yet because the specular materials aren’t rendering correctly. I didn’t think it was polished enough to add. Police Station (part 3) would have been nice to include for Xbox as well, but I couldn’t because of the same specular issue. I’ll attach the CIA HQ Xbox map file below so you can try it yourself, but I’m leaving it out of the patch for now.

Joshhhuaaa wrote on Yesterday, 09:34:

I just released that small patch I was working on here.

You can give it a try, and most of the maps will look much closer to their original Xbox version. I also added full Xbox controller support if interested in that. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to include the Xbox CIA HQ yet because the specular materials aren’t rendering correctly. I didn’t think it was polished enough to add. Police Station (part 3) would have been nice to include for Xbox as well, but I couldn’t because of the same specular issue. I’ll attach the CIA HQ Xbox map file below so you can try it yourself, but I’m leaving it out of the patch for now.

Man that was blazing fast! Thank you so much. I'm going to test it right now as I have saves for each area of each stage. And yeah about that specular issue, I noticed it is buggy even on the Xbox one enhanced version as well. So the best thing I could think of is replacing that shader (In the Defense ministry on the metal wall fence in the corridor, then in CIA floors and CIA main hall one) with a properly working shader ( the wall tiles in CIA HQ) and that would preserve the illusion without messing with the original specular shader. I'm attaching screens for reference here. Again brilliant work and thanks a ton for saving this beautiful game.

Took a few comparison shots and I'm extremely happy. Right from the very start the difference is clearly visible. Never ever I knew in my playthroughs how much of a detail was missing in the PC version. No wonder why guards detected me, because the shadows were small and I thought how I'm visible. Definitely AI was tailored to match the xbox shadows and lighting. The stage saves aren't compatible but good thing is levels are unlocked from my saves so testing is easier. One more thing I noticed that in graphics options shadow detail is visible which isn't in my original version. Wonder why. All in all absolutely phenomenal work. This is definitely a must have patch. I'll do more testing in the meantime. Thanks again for everything.

Full Comparison Screenshots
https://imgur.com/a/m5HuGoh