FIX for anti-aliasing problems with Nvidia cards

[Thrik]

As owners of many NVIDIA cards may be aware, Grim Fandango doesn't play very nicely with its anti-aliasing capabilities — a technology used to smooth the edges of polygons so the horrible 'jaggies' effect does not occur. This does not affect all NVIDIA cards.

 

Basically, enabling any of the available anti-aliasing modes via the NVIDIA driver panel will result in something like the below occurring, progressively getting worse as you move around the screen. Manny quite literally leaves bits of himself behind:

 

 

Although the issue usually manifests as seen above, it can look far worse or better depending on the anti-aliasing mode that's in use. Sometimes the entire screen can become full of graphical corruption.

 

I've been doing a bit of digging, and it seems that the issue is basically down to the algorithms used for anti-aliasing having evolved over the years. That is, the set of anti-aliasing modes offered in newer NVIDIA drivers are simply nothing like the older ones; this is why older NVIDIA cards that're probably running older drivers don't suffer from the problem.

 

So, how do you fix this? Fortunately, NVIDIA has left all old anti-aliasing modes buried in the drivers — they're just hidden. So, to unlock them you need to do do the following:

 

1. Download RivaTuner. This is a complicated tweaking application for NVIDIA cards, but it is only as complex as you make it. As long as you follow these directions you won't break anything, but be aware that messing around with other things can mess your graphics up.

 

2. Install RivaTuner, then open it. The software will configure itself and you'll end up with a screen much like the one below. Click the two buttons with arrows pointing towards them.

 

 

3. Go to the 'antialiasing' tab, and then open the drop-down menu. Select 2x2, and apply it; you can now close RivaTuner and enjoy your properly anti-aliased Grim Fandango.

 

 

Here's an image of it in action:

 

 

And here's an image of Grim Fandango without any anti-aliasing (it is considerably more noticeable when in full-screen):

 

 

Note #1: Running games other than Grim Fandango in 2x2 anti-aliasing mode is likely to be detrimental to their performance, and may even stop them working altogether. While playing newer games, you should set it back to determined by application or whatever it was set to by default, and then either use NVIDIA's modern driver control panel or your games' own settings to configure the anti-aliasing.

 

Note #2: As this is somewhat of a hack, you may find that the NVIDIA drivers will reset your anti-aliasing back to one of the regular modes from time to time. If this happens, simply follow the above directions once again to reactivate 2x2.

[Samnmax221]

I'll have to give this a try when I get some time.

[Chris]#]

Hmm, I'm going to try this. I don't have your problems though. All the characters dissapear or there is just a big smudge when i turn antialiasing on

[Chris]#]

Hmm, it doesn't save my settings. I set it to 2x2 then clicked apply, then Ok. Then i went back to the openGL tweaks thingy and it was set back to "determined by apllication"

[Chris]#]

Oh, hehe, thats because I wasn;t running it as administrator. Hehe

[Shuz]

Hooray, this always annoyed me. Thanks Thrik.

[Sethie]

Works indeed, thank you!

[Baja]

Still doesn't work with ATI cards, or does it?

[PhoenixFoley]

Okay, I use a Nvidia Gefore 7600GS and have tried the solution using rivatuner but when the characters are not moving I get this http://img19.imageshack.us/my.php?image=grim1aq3.png , where you cannot see the characters at all, and if they are moving a get this http://img167.imageshack.us/my.php?image=grim2zv4.png , where only part of the the moving character is shown! I'm using xp, have hardware acceleration on and have the patch installed. Please can you tell me how I can get anti-aliasing working.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Aha! This is exactly the same problem I'm having! So it's nothing to do with Vista then... Thanks, PF for pointing this out.

 

BTW - There graphics are missing from this post

[Samnmax221]

Vista? EWwwww.

[BeXXs]

My browser (firefox or opera) does not display the graphics in this post, so could anybody tell me, where the two buttons with arrows pointing to them and the antialiasing tab are?

 

Thanks, BeXXs

[Grifter_Grifts]

If you use a glide wrapper, but don't force glide on an app, you can still force AA, up to 16X without any issues. I use them for alot of games to get much better visuals than the game options allow for.

[Kazim]

Hi. I tried to do x2 Antialiasing as you said by Riva Tuner... after intros or after I skiped em game crashed ... appears error window "GrimFandango has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."... I tried to do Antialiasing x2 and by my Videocard interface... same result...

My system:

Windows XP SP2

Nvidia GeForce 8600GT

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+

Help me plz...

 

If you use a glide wrapper, but don't force glide on an app, you can still force AA, up to 16X without any issues. I use them for alot of games to get much better visuals than the game options allow for.

 

I didnt understand that... what is glide wrapper?

[Du Man]

can't help you much on the first thing, but I can tell you what a glide wrapper is.

 

Your video card doesn't do much but help the computer complie information so that it can be displayed on a screen. Overtime there have been many video cards produced by various companies with various technologies. Some games are designed to work with a varity of video cards, some games are not.

 

That's where the glide wrapper comes in, which a game runs through to be displayed on your computer, sometimes appearing as a seperate window that you play the game through. I did this once with the game I-war by downloading a wrapper that could emulate a voodoo video card.

[Kazim]

Thank Du man... I try to find good one and fix the problem...

By the way... I don't see Images in the fisrt post (May be I did something wrong in the Riva Tuner cause of that?) ... may be my problem is not like others... characters and active objects most pf the time are half transparency cause of stripes-type holes in them...

I', sorry for my english... ^__^

 

but I WANT TO PLAY GRIM FANDANGO NORMAL!!! ^___^

[grenadier]

I tried to apply the above fix, but the newest version of rivatuner doesn't have a 2x2 anti-aliasing option. I'm using an 8600GTS with the newest Nvidia drivers. Is there any other way to get this to work?

[Du Man]

Sorry I can't help you grenadier, hopefully someone else can soon.

 

However, I thought this news was relevant.

 

http://games.slashdot.org/games/07/09/16/1940215.shtml

[sniz]

I have an Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT, and like many others in this thread, the Riva Tuner thingy didn't work for me, either. So here's what I did:

 

In the installation directory (c:\program files\lucasarts\grim) there is a DirectX diagnostic utility called dxdiag.exe. You can start it by clicking on the icon or by selecting "Readme & Troubleshooting" on the initial Grim Fandango Launcher, and then the "Analyze Your Computer" option on the "Troubleshooting" panel. Click on the "Display 1" tab, and you'll see a set of 4 buttons in the "DirectX Features" section. I set DirectDraw Acceleration to "Disabled" (which automatically disables Direct3D acceleration, as well). Then I started the game.

 

The game is now limited to software acceleration, so the graphics quality ain't the greatest, but it's all there without the artifacts and stuff disappearing on me.

 

For some reason, just selecting software acceleration from the 3D settings in the game didn't work, Dunno why...

[Thrik]

Just posting to confirm that this fix is no longer applicible due to one or all of the following:

 

1. Newer NVIDIA drivers

2. Newer NVIDIA cards (GeForce 8)

3. Newer version of RivaTuner

 

I haven't really got the time to conclusively determine which of these factors is the problem, but all three apply to me and the additional anti-aliasing options simply aren't visible in RivaTuner anymore. Additionally, unless I force the game into software mode it will have very distorted graphics like this:

 

 

Looks like we're back to the drawing board once we all have newer hardware!

 

It's looking increasingly likely that eventually people will have to use virtualisation (convenient) or dual boot (inconvenient) to play Grim Fandango with anything more than software rendering, and even that may eventually start to fail. Unfortunately I don't think there's any way for virtualisation to make use of anti-aliasing at this time, unless the new-ish Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 can do it.

[Proddo]

I have an Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT, and like many others in this thread, the Riva Tuner thingy didn't work for me, either. So here's what I did:

 

In the installation directory (c:\program files\lucasarts\grim) there is a DirectX diagnostic utility called dxdiag.exe. You can start it by clicking on the icon or by selecting "Readme & Troubleshooting" on the initial Grim Fandango Launcher, and then the "Analyze Your Computer" option on the "Troubleshooting" panel. Click on the "Display 1" tab, and you'll see a set of 4 buttons in the "DirectX Features" section. I set DirectDraw Acceleration to "Disabled" (which automatically disables Direct3D acceleration, as well). Then I started the game.

 

The game is now limited to software acceleration, so the graphics quality ain't the greatest, but it's all there without the artifacts and stuff disappearing on me.

 

For some reason, just selecting software acceleration from the 3D settings in the game didn't work, Dunno why...

 

This let me run the game fine on my 8800GT Software mode only, but at least I get to run it!

[trustno1]

Thanks for the summary Thrik... I hope your pessimistic conclusion will eventually be contradicted... hopefully sooner that later...

 

I don't know why but jagged edges just drive me crazy... If anyone comes up with a way to enable AA please post it.

[MeddlingMonk]

For better or for worse (sounds like marriage) the best solution for AA--and for everything else in future--will probably be Residual.

[Thrik]

Yes, definitely. I really wish some people would take interest in continuing to develop that because from what I've been told it's essentially been in a state of limbo for years now, with basic things like the running animations still not implemented properly.

 

If it did work and was maintained it'd be a superb way to keep the game playable, but I suspect nobody will put too much work into it until Grim Fandango is unplayable on the vast majority of hardware. :/

[MeddlingMonk]

There's been some activity showing recently. Looks like maybe a couple of people are working on getting shadows to work. Not exactly a sign of rapid progress, though.