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ATI TruForm

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Reply 20 of 29, by slivercr

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A couple of pictures showcasing the difference in NWN. To enable TrueForm you must edit the nwn.ini file in the installation directory, find the line "Enable Truform=0" and change the value to 1. Also, TruForm must be enabled in the ATI drivers. The following are taken at 720p with AA off, notice first the chest and how it gets a bit messed up (1st one is TruForm off, 2nd is TruForm on);

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You can also see the "rounding" effect to the head and sleeves of the characters, it may be more apparent in these other shots;

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As I said before, its pretty much to each person if they like the way it looks or not. Me I prefer a higher-res with AA and other eye-candy options enabled. I'll try to upload pics of other games.

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Reply 21 of 29, by F2bnp

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Those are really cool, thanks for taking the time to post them. I really like what it can do, especially that chest in the first set of pics. A shame it was dropped after only one iteration and was left in software only for the 9xxx series.

Reply 22 of 29, by slivercr

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F2bnp wrote:

Those are really cool, thanks for taking the time to post them. I really like what it can do, especially that chest in the first set of pics. A shame it was dropped after only one iteration and was left in software only for the 9xxx series.

Yeah, its a really clever idea. I also think its a shame developers didn't exploit it. The chest picture was actually meant to show the sort of trouble you can get when using TruForm 😜 (the sides will not match the newly rounded top now)

Outrigger: an ongoing adventure with the OR840
QuForce FX 5800: turn your Quadro into a GeForce

Reply 23 of 29, by shamino

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From what I remember reading about this feature, I think there was supposed to be a way of flagging the geometry so the driver would know when to apply TruForm and when to bypass it. It seems that games didn't utilize this though, resulting in some problems like you showed.
I guess the few games that supported this feature didn't have it in mind during graphics design, so the appropriate flags were never set.

Reply 24 of 29, by swaaye

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I dunno. It's really just a quick n dirty way to boost game asset complexity and it has problems that can't be worked around. Best for objects that are inherently rounded but not so great around sharp edges. The better approach is designing the models to look better by default. Of course that wasn't happening because they had to target lowest common denominator hardware.

And back then like today Radeons were not the dominant player in marketshare so why go to extra lengths to implement some quirky ATI tech. Nevermind how flaky the drivers were for those cards. Regressions with every release. They don't like some VIA K7 chipsets. Etc. Sigh.

Reply 25 of 29, by RaVeN-05

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Thank you for discussions, really helpful.
I can share something. Done on later video card =( not hardware tesselation. But also very nice, i think you might be seen it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKo7gkcCAiE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wx0Y_rQyqM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkNj7iVhzkw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlUz1XeqPvA

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Reply 27 of 29, by vorob

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Since it was available in drivers on software level, maybe there is a hidden way to re-enable it? I'm on ati x1900 and would be happy to have it.

P.s. maybe there some other ways to enable it? Fan made emulators?

Reply 28 of 29, by RaVeN-05

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Wadi Basher 4x4 (Imaginations / Play Publishing, 2003).

This game has ATI TruForm mentions, need to check probably can work with that technology

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Reply 29 of 29, by RaVeN-05

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Far Cry.------------------------------ddraw,d3d9.eax,opengl,npatches?(ati truform),a3d.

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