Kahenraz wrote on 2022-10-21, 06:18:

For Intel, it seems that the early GMA hardware was capable of table fog, but only in later driver versions. For my i845G, the latest driver version for Windows 9x is 4.14, and Intel says that this feature was not available until 6.4.

Good find.

Can you test your i845G for palleted texture support using the Final Fantasy 8 demo? Testing instructions and download links can be found here.

That is why I wrote i815e for TableFog/8BitPaltex, i845 has S3TC as a nice feature instead.

Here are photos form my i845G.

Final Fantasy 8, Thief 2, and Incoming.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-10-21, 19:54:

Here are photos form my i845G.

Final Fantasy 8, Thief 2, and Incoming.

Cheers! Judging by those screens, there's no table fog nor paletted texture support on the i845G.

Would someone with an i815e check to see if the texture filtering in Incoming makes the interface unreadable?

See here for how it's supposed to look:

Mipmap settings that fix Incoming (DirectX 5) on the GeForce FX

Sorry, i815e is only VertexFog and no TableFog.

Does that mean it doesn't show any fog in Thief? Does it render Final Fantasy 8 correctly?

After trying slave zero on an ati and then switching to my fx5900xt, I get it now. It's a good feature to have so I'll be working to geforce for 98 build

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-10-22, 21:24:

Does that mean it doesn't show any fog in Thief? Does it render Final Fantasy 8 correctly?

I have to test, but it's very strange. In SOTE test it shows fog and the real game not.

I finally got my hands on the retail CD version of Final Fantasy 8. So I installed it to see if there were any differences to the demo with regards to paletted textures.

Graphics cards tested:

• 3DFX Voodoo3 2000, using 3DFX reference drivers version 1.07.00
• Nvidia GeForce FX 5900XT using Nvidia reference drivers version 45.23
• ATi Radeon 9250 using ATi Catalyst reference drivers version 6.2

Games tested:

• Final Fantasy VIII - retail CD version + latest official patch version 1.02

As expected, the menu is still washed out on cards which lack paletted texture support, but I noticed something else as well. Take a look at this screenshot from the very start of the game:

Notice the glass in front of the girl. Looks like it's missing a transparent layer on the ATi card while rendering correctly on both the Voodoo3 and the Nvidia 5900XT. It's possible that there could be more objects like this later on in the game, and that it's not just the menu which relies on paletted textures.

Hi Joseph I was reading this post of yours: Re: Table Fog & 8-bit Paletted Textures, for FF8

So I started testing on my GTX 1050Ti, which of course doesn't support 8-bit palettized textures.

The results were surprising:

1. 8bit Palettized Textures - FAIL on configuration
2. The background is washed out
3. The bars AREN'T completely distorted.
4. The lines on screen in Squall's room exist.
5. The lines on screen in Squall's room are also visible in the menu, something which doesn't happen to your Nvidia.

The 3rd one is most surprising from the testing point of view. Plus, the FFLauncher mod to fix the 8-bit palettized textures didn't fix the washed-out colors. So I am confused as to what the correct testing methodology.

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-10-26, 06:30:

The 3rd one is most surprising from the testing point of view.

You mean the distorted bars? That seems to be specific to certain older ATi cards. Likely an unrelated issue since my (newer) Radeon 9550 doesn't have the bar distortion. See here for a comparison.

Plus, the FFLauncher mod to fix the 8-bit palettized textures didn't fix the washed-out colors. So I am confused as to what the correct testing methodology.

I can't comment on what fan-made mods and patches fix since I don't use them. I'm only testing on real hardware, and there, the results are very consistent. No paletted texture support = washed out menu colors. This has been observed with multiple cards from different manufacturers.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-10-26, 06:52:

You mean the distorted bars? That seems to be specific to certain older ATi cards. Likely an unrelated issue since my (newer) Ra […]
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BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-10-26, 06:30:

The 3rd one is most surprising from the testing point of view.

You mean the distorted bars? That seems to be specific to certain older ATi cards. Likely an unrelated issue since my (newer) Radeon 9550 doesn't have the bar distortion. See here for a comparison.

Plus, the FFLauncher mod to fix the 8-bit palettized textures didn't fix the washed-out colors. So I am confused as to what the correct testing methodology.

I can't comment on what fan-made mods and patches fix since I don't use them. I'm only testing on real hardware, and there, the results are very consistent. No paletted texture support = washed out menu colors. This has been observed with multiple cards from different manufacturers.

Okay so the bars issue should be for one card. Can you comment on the texture issue that happens in the game screen, lines between the screen?

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-10-26, 07:39:

Okay so the bars issue should be for one card. Can you comment on the texture issue that happens in the game screen, lines between the screen?

I've seen this on some newer Nvidia cards like the GeForce FX and GeForce 6. Seems unrelated to paletted textures since it doesn't occur on ATi or Matrox cards.

Also, the developers of FF8 eventually released a GeForce patch for the full game. There are no lines on my GeForce FX 5900XT when that patch is applied.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-10-26, 07:47:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-10-26, 07:39:

Okay so the bars issue should be for one card. Can you comment on the texture issue that happens in the game screen, lines between the screen?

I've seen this on some newer Nvidia cards like the GeForce FX and GeForce 6. Seems unrelated to paletted textures since it doesn't occur on ATi or Matrox cards.

Also, the developers of FF8 eventually released a GeForce patch for the full game. There are no lines on my GeForce FX 5900XT when that patch is applied.

On my machine, the mirror scene in Squall's room looks as follows:

I found two more games which use table fog: Myth II: Soulblighter and Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord Special Edition.

Graphics cards tested:

• 3DFX Voodoo3 2000, using 3DFX reference drivers version 1.07.00
• Nvidia GeForce FX 5900XT using Nvidia reference drivers version 45.23
• ATi Radeon 9250 using ATi Catalyst reference drivers version 6.2

Games tested:

• Myth II: Soulblighter - retail CD version + official patch version 1.32
• Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord Special Edition - retail CD version

Myth II: Soulblighter - Mission #2 (Salvation)

Not every mission in this game has fog, but the second one called Salvation certainly does. The fog rendering is correct on both the 3DFX and Nvidia cards, while it's missing on the ATi card. This indicates that table fog is used.

Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord Special Edition - Crossroads in the Fog scenario

This game only uses fog in certain scenarios, but thankfully, the weather effects are listed in the scenario descriptions. As expected, Crossroads in the Fog makes heavy use of the effect. Once again, the fog rendering is correct on both the 3DFX and Nvidia cards, while it's missing on the ATi card. There are also old forum posts which indicate that this was a known issue back in the day, and that it affected several games from the Combat Missions series.

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-10-26, 10:36:

On my machine, the mirror scene in Squall's room looks as follows:

Heh, interesting. Is that with the GeForce patch applied?

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-10-26, 10:39:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-10-26, 10:36:

On my machine, the mirror scene in Squall's room looks as follows:

Heh, interesting. Is that with the GeForce patch applied?

With and without the patch, the mirror looks the same. I see a small difference in color too.

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-09-05, 18:38:

I recently discovered a game named Xarlor Infinite Expanse has support for both Table Fog and Vertex Fog. The HW I tested it with Win98 was very weak and used Vertex Fog automatically.

I tried this game today as well but I couldn't see fog anywhere.

Is there a particular level where the fog effect is supposed to appear?

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-10-26, 11:03:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-09-05, 18:38:

I recently discovered a game named Xarlor Infinite Expanse has support for both Table Fog and Vertex Fog. The HW I tested it with Win98 was very weak and used Vertex Fog automatically.

I tried this game today as well but I couldn't see fog anywhere.

Is there a particular level where the fog effect is supposed to appear?

This could be a little difficult to explain, but hopefully you can understand...

The game supports both Vertex Fog and Table Fog. You can get that in the very first level itself. Using a PC (not mine, @huh2 on DxWnd forums) running Windows 98 and utilising Vertex Fog, it was found that asteroids in the sky disappear into darkness when they are around 10,500 units away. On modern systems, the game always tries to use Table Fog even after it is running on unsupported hardware. The effect is the asteroids at around 10,500 units "get swallowed" instead.

Now to check what type of fog is used, you will have to open a file probably named wgt95.log, and is probably there after game has been run once. For example, this is what appears on my Windows 11 and the culprit:

116:00:42 FogTable: 1
216:00:42 FogVertex: 0