Blackness on night maps, varies system to system, investigating...

[Destructavator]

Thought I'd start this in a separate thread as the topic is different than where this first came up, so more people would notice this here - If you'll excuse me quoting myself:

I've had difficulty with night missions myself, as the dark areas are totally black for me, at least on Windows with my NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE video card in my desktop.  I don't know if the video card or OS makes any difference, although I haven't played around with the settings in the NVIDIA control panel much.  Actually, I just might try that within the next few days - If it makes any difference I'll post some feedback.

First I started with the game options, turning on and off graphics options (Shaders, Weather Effects, Lighting, etc.) which did not help with this issue.  I also tried adjusting the gamma and brightness, that didn't help either.

Then I went to the NVIDIA Control panel and saw a *long* list of options, which would take quite a while to sort through and play with to see what would make a difference.  I didn't experiment with them yet, but I did find out something interesting I made a note of:  In the menu where it stores default graphic configurations for various games, NVIDIA apparently misidentifies UFO:AI as being the game UFO: Afterlight, and uses settings optimized for Afterlight when running UFO:AI.  I'm still hunting for some option to override this, but I suspect that might potentially be an issue causing graphics problems in UFO:AI.

I experienced this on Windows XP MCE and Vista HP on my desktop with my NVIDIA 7300 LE PCI Express video card.  I also have Linux installed, but have not yet set up UFO:AI on the Linux partition.

I'd encourage any others on this forum to post information here, in this thread, if they experience the same symptoms, as it seems that some people have totally black areas dominating night mission maps while others can still see most of those maps.

P.S. - I'm working with the SVN development branch, 2.3.

[BTAxis]

Night missions look fine for me. Here's my specs:

Windows XP Pro Corporate SP2
geForce 8800GTX, driver version 169.21

I didn't do anything special to either the UFO:AI graphics options or the nVidia control panel ones. My guess is that this is some OpenGL issue.

[Satanic Mechanic]

I gets the blackness

UFOAI : 2.3 Dev
OS : Ubuntu Hardy Heron
Graphics Card : GeForce 6200
Driver : NVIDIA 173.14.12

Settings wise I haven't changed anything on the X Server from the default, let me know if there's any other info you need.

[Xeno]

I'd suggest to add monitor type (crt/ lcd/ glossy lcd) It might be the issue.
I'm on old crt display, I had to bump gamma to 1.3 to be able to see anything more than bunker entrances in this screenie posted by BTAxis.
IIRC there's separate 2D and 3D gamma correction (at least that's the case of ATI Catalyst drivers).

[BTAxis]

Using two CRTs here. Before I moved I was using two different CRTs of different brands. Never had a problem.

[Destructavator]

I have the blackness (as I stated) and I'm using a flat-screen.  I do have an old, beat-up CRT in the closet, and I suppose I could dig it out and see if that changes anything.  In fact, I think I'll try that some time today and see what happens.

[Xeno]

Is it this new glosyy (with glare surface) one? Those artificially enchance contrast to get more vivid colors, but also make dark scenes pitch black and bright almost white.

[BTAxis]

It's not that though. I've seen screenshots from people who get black night maps, and they look black even on my screen.

In fact, we should probably come up with a benchmark screenshot so people can compare and post their screenshots.

[Destructavator]

In fact, we should probably come up with a benchmark screenshot so people can compare and post their screenshots.

Perhaps we should all stick to choosing one map from the "Skrimish" mode and using the night version, picking the same map every time.

Regarding my old CRT, I discovered it is so old and awful I can't even read text on it - I wouldn't even be able to tell if the dark areas were all black or not.

In the part of the United States I'm in, CRT isn't even available anymore, everyone wants a flat-screen - they are far less heavy, less bulky, and very popular for reasons that vary depending on who you ask.  I actually live across the street from a major shopping mall and area with many stores, and haven't seen any old CRT monitors in any of the stores for quite some time.  The local mentality is that CRT is a thing of the past, junk, and unwanted in these parts, not only for computers but also for TVs.  Not that I fully agree with that mentality, as I've known some CRT screens in the past to work perfectly fine, but flat-screen is the latest rage in this area.  Heck, I get laughed at because I have an older TV set that isn't totally flat, and isn't gigantic in size - mine actually fits on a small stand while I've seen so many other people around here blow huge amounts of money (more accurately, credit) on ridiculously over-sized taking-up-an-entire-wall enormous TV sets, especially the sports fanatic type who center their whole life around watching baseball/football/whatever-ball games.  Flat-screens here are practically a status symbol, next to having the latest cell phone that does a zillion things.  (Personally, I have a very cheap cell phone that simply dials a number, and I'm happy with it.)

[BTAxis]

My gripe with LCD screens is that they have a native resolution, and anything not running in that native resolution looks like crap. I tend to use various resolutions for different things.

[Satanic Mechanic]

My gripe with LCD screens is that they have a native resolution, and anything not running in that native resolution looks like crap. I tend to use various resolutions for different things.

Here's to CRT!

[Valygard84]

I've got the same problem on my laptop. (LCD screen)

UFOAI : 2.3 Dev self-compiled SVN REV 20060
OS : Ubuntu Hardy Heron
Graphics Card : GeForce GO! 6200
Driver: Ubuntu Repo supplied 169.12 NVIDIA Stable
Laptop: Acer TravelMate C200

Note: The LCD screen (and UFO:AI) is running in its native resolution of 1024x768.

[TrashMan]

I get the blackness too.

Win XP SP3
NVidia Gforce 8800 GTX, 169.21 forceware

[Destructavator]

I get the blackness too.

Win XP SP3
NVidia Gforce 8800 GTX, 169.21 forceware

This looks just about the same as what BTAxis is using, except he has SP2 on a different version of Windows XP but he doesn't have the blackness problem.  I think we're on to something here...

Trashman, what type of screen or display are you using?

[BTAxis]

I was using SP3 before though.