Help - Fixed, Solution inside.

[Knight]

Ok heres the deal, ive finally come back Yipppe...anyway thats not what i want help with lol...its my damn computer and IL-2.

Ok basically the only thing ive changed since the last time ive played (10+months maybe) is my Graphics Card, which is now a HD4850(pci-e) Previous Card was a X1900XT(agp)....now that in itself isnt a major thing, ive had the new card playing all sorts of games in my time off and not a single hiccup at all infact its been perfect, that was untill yesterday when i put IL2 back on my system, set all the graphic options as normal and off i went...only to find out that i have Purple Lighting in All cockpits and when i fire the guns the cockpit will flash purple instead of the normal yellow.

I must state this is running in Opengl mode, BUT if i switch to DX mode it does neither of these things mentioned above, but it doesnt run as smooth as OpenGL does.

Now most of this probably confusing the hell out of ya, and i can understand why, so below are some screenshots of this happening.

And to add for clarity...Vista Ultimate 64bit, Latest uptodate Cat Drivers, no other problems in any games, apart from IL2

Excuse the lack of AA/AF turned these off to rule out that causing the problem.

Please click the Thumbnails for fullsize pics.

Arggh noticed in the wrong section of the forum...im soo sorry for that...if it can be moved please do so.

[Crash]

Hello Knight, might be worth asking on community help page @the Zoo

[Knight]

im not registered there, as to be honest i dont like the layout i.e the colour scheme

[Jabo]

Forgive the obvious question m8, but are you running the latest drivers? If not, you could try that. I'm not too hot on ATI, but I think there may have been a problem with one of the recent driver updates.

~S~ Jabo

[Snacko]

If you changed your card, you should probably run the IL2 Set program (il2set.exe) in the game folder and select the new card (or closest match) on the Video tab.

Snack

[Knight]

ya nick got the 8.12's, driving me insane this is, been at this since 9am this morning its now gone 9pm and still havent figured it out

snacko, ill try that and post back, totally forgot about that setting.

[Jabo]

If you changed your card, you should probably run the IL2 Set program (il2set.exe) in the game folder and select the new card (or closest match) on the Video tab.

Snack

You could just try setting it to 'maximum' - worked well for

[Knight]

changing any of the card settings didnt effect it in anyway at all, infact i got huge black areas in the land now and the terrain is all jaggy and spikey in places.

[Pooka]

~S~ Knight,

The newer cards, and I purchased one

[Blairgowrie]

I seem to recall Cold_Gambler having some issues with his 4850.

[Knight]

Cheers BG, temps for the card are perfect, 45c idle, and 65 fully loaded, which these cards are safe upto 100c, this card will run the latest gen games without any fuss at all, this is why its bugging me, why it wont run an older gen game...im starting to lean towards an OpenGL issue with the Ati 8.12 drivers, as already stated it doesnt do this in DX mode, but the performance is rubbish...heck, im used to fixing computers and troubleshooting problems, but this is just something that has me stumped. well 11pm now ill head to bed and continue this tomorrow, hopefully in time to fly.

I appreciate the help and suggestions guys, cant thank you enough.

Oh and BG, you dont have Tripple Buffering for OpenGL? hmm i think ive got mine on, ill try that tomorrow and see how it goes.

[Sid]

A couple of questions....

You've swapped from an AGP card to a PCIe on the same motherboard?

Have you tried this sequence? Remove the video drivers and 'clean up' any driver leftover files etc - Switch off and take the card out - Replace the card and reboot - Do a clean install of the drivers.

I appreciate you are using ATI but this worked for me with Nvidia when I had niggly driver issues and particularly when I changed cards - it became standard practice for me. I found that installing a different card and expecting it to run with the previous driver settings was a source of issues. Perhaps going from AGP to PCIe is the same?

Cheerzen 

[Perfesser]

1 This is an ATI card?

[BadAim]

Sorry I didn't see this earlier, but we'll get to the bottom of this. Two things I know Catalyst AI has to be set to standard, and triple buffering should be off as it will cause tearing. The purple lighting is something I've heard of, I'll find where. Don't worry. Your in good hands.

[BadAim]

Here's my Open GL section from my Config.ini, for starters:

[Render_OpenGL]

TexQual=3

TexMipFilter=3

TexCompress=0

TexFlags.UseDither=0

TexFlags.UseAlpha=0

TexFlags.UseIndex=0

TexFlags.PolygonStipple=0

TexFlags.UseClampedSprites=0

TexFlags.DrawLandByTriangles=1

TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=1

TexFlags.DisableAPIExtensions=0

TexFlags.ARBMultitextureExt=1

TexFlags.TexEnvCombineExt=1

TexFlags.SecondaryColorExt=1

TexFlags.VertexArrayExt=1

TexFlags.ClipHintExt=1

TexFlags.UsePaletteExt=1

TexFlags.TexAnisotropicExt=1

TexFlags.TexCompressARBExt=0

TexFlags.TexEnvCombine4NV=1

TexFlags.TexEnvCombineDot3=1

TexFlags.DepthClampNV=1

TexFlags.SeparateSpecular=1

TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=1

HardwareShaders=1

Shadows=2

Specular=2

SpecularLight=2

DiffuseLight=2

DynamicalLights=1

MeshDetail=2

VisibilityDistance=3

Sky=2

Forest=2

LandShading=3

LandDetails=2

LandGeom=3

TexLarge=1

TexLandQual=2

TexLandLarge=0

VideoSetupId=17

Water=2

Effects=1

ForceShaders1x=0

PolygonOffsetFactor=-0.15

PolygonOffsetUnits=-3.0

TypeClouds=1

I have the same card, and these settings work fine for me.

[BadAim]

O.K. if just replacing your settings with mine does not work try going into setup and unchecking the two boxes that reference vertex arrays. If that does not work re-check the boxes and don't fuck with it any more. Go to your happy place

[B16Enk]

I'm using an ATI 4870HD.

Couple of points.

1. Always use OpenGL, even with ATI cards - I have done on for years and performance is vastly superior to DirectX (IL2 uses a DirectX wrapper around the OGL).

2. Use IL2 Setup to set for the latest ATI Radeon card.

3. Open and edit conf.ini after step 2 to set screen area and then paste in the OpenGL settings from conf.ini pasted below. Note: there is a line 'videoSetupId=x' which I believe should not be changed in you conf.ini.

The above is posted for posterity, as a source for future queries!

Here's my conf.ini:

[Render_OpenGL]

TexQual=3

TexMipFilter=2

TexCompress=0

TexFlags.UseDither=1

TexFlags.UseAlpha=0

TexFlags.UseIndex=0

TexFlags.PolygonStipple=1

TexFlags.UseClampedSprites=0

TexFlags.DrawLandByTriangles=1

TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=1

TexFlags.DisableAPIExtensions=0

TexFlags.ARBMultitextureExt=1

TexFlags.TexEnvCombineExt=1

TexFlags.SecondaryColorExt=1

TexFlags.VertexArrayExt=1

TexFlags.ClipHintExt=0

TexFlags.UsePaletteExt=0

TexFlags.TexAnisotropicExt=1

TexFlags.TexCompressARBExt=1

TexFlags.TexEnvCombine4NV=0

TexFlags.TexEnvCombineDot3=1

TexFlags.DepthClampNV=0

TexFlags.SeparateSpecular=1

TexFlags.TextureShaderNV=0

HardwareShaders=0

Shadows=2

Specular=2

SpecularLight=2

DiffuseLight=2

DynamicalLights=1

MeshDetail=2

VisibilityDistance=3

Sky=2

Forest=2

LandShading=3

LandDetails=2

LandGeom=2

TexLarge=1

TexLandQual=3

TexLandLarge=1

VideoSetupId=8

Water=1

Effects=1

ForceShaders1x=0

PolygonOffsetFactor=-0.0625

PolygonOffsetUnits=-1.0

My CCC:

[Knight]

Ok, i put Badaims confi bit of opengl into mine, and it solved part of the problem,ground looks normal and the planes now look normal, that is untill you fire the guns, then everything flashes purple and yellow.

B16 your config file and CCC settings only took away the ground distortion and nothing else.

here 2 more screenshots of whats left only happens when firing guns or bomb explosions from any plane, inside and out ...I suspect its a lighting issue, but i could be wrong.

[Blairgowrie]

1 This is an ATI card?

[GreyKnight]

...If you can contact GreyKnight he was running a HD3870 last I heard...

Can't help here, I've always been a nVidia man myself.

You could always just listen to Purple Rain/Raspberry Beret/Sexy Mother-Fücker, non-stop, when you play IL-2 then?

[B16Enk]

OK back to basics.

What Mobo do you have?

Is it one of those Hybrid AGP/PCI-e models?

Any chance of a peek at your Dxdiag, both 32bit and 64bit?

Have you un-installed and carried out a driver clean up operation prior to installing the 8.12s?

Try removing Catalyst drivers, and manually delete the ATI files/folders in C:\. Then use this tool: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301 and remove everything Catalyst Control Center and CCC, and "Skins" related.

Then re-install ATI Cats again after reboot.

[Knight]

Ok basics...mobo was changed btw, i did forget to mention that...im now running a Gigabyte DS3 965P, all drivers installed correctly for that, at the time it was a Fresh install of Vista Ultimate 64bit.

dxdiags are here

DxDiag64bit.txt

[B16Enk]

OK.

I booted my Vista64 Ultimate, running 8.9s.

Gun flash is OK but dynamic lighting is porked, I get the same purple haze on wing-over in external view, and if 'sun light' falls on cockpit panel it takes on the same weird purple hue.

Looks like an ATI driver bug.

I recall a work around way back where using earlier driver files was possible, whilst retaining later drivers for other games/apps.

I'll see if I can remember how it was done.

Screen shots: (please attach images directly to the forums guys, they load much much quicker )

[Knight]

sorry about the screenshots, its a habit ive got, its usually quite fast...But finally its not me going crazy then, so nothing to do with any of my hardware but a driver issue, now that makes more sense lol looking forward to getting this sorted.

[B16Enk]

Well I tried earlier drivers.

Looks like we are stuck with it for now, unless someone knows an arcane trick with the conf.ini that fixes this..I'll pose the question over at UBI..

Earliest version that supports our card is 8.7 and the purple weirdness is evident with them

Used, for giggles, the 7.11 file and no purple haze, but about 0.5 frames per second (pre 4800 series driver).

For reference to get the older driver to work in IL2 only:

Download from ATI target driver only pack.

Extract using, say 7-Zip, the atioglxx.dl_ file to a folder (example c:\temp)

Fire up command console with start and type in cmd.

In console: cd c:\temp and hit enter.

Then type this command: expand atioglxx.dl_ atioglxx.dll

C:\Users\Roger\Downloads>expand atioglxx.dl_ atioglxx.dll

Microsoft ® File Expansion Utility