HDR Gray Screen

[Zodiark10]

I had this issue on my laptop, where I would try HDR lighting and the screen went gray. However I just recently got a very powerful gaming tower, with a booty kickin graphics card ( AMD Radeon R9 290 ) and I'm STILL having this issue. I can have video settings to ultra high and it's all fine and dandy until I turn on HDR Screen Effects. Then I load it up and it's a world of HUD and blank empty gray.

I know of others who have had this issue but they never seem to be able to fix it. I'm kind of panicking too because one of the main reasons I got this PC was to be able to see Oblivion at it's full potential. It's my favorite game and I've been working with it since it came out. I can't see any reason for this to be happening other than my ignorance so any help is appreciated.

~Kaita77~

[Striker879]

Do you have antialiasing turned OFF in the game menus?

[Zodiark10]

Okay I deleted shader package 002 and replaced it with shader package 019 and it worked until I went and installed some mods. Now I don't even know which one is causing it lol. I'll do some trial-and-error deactivation of my mods but until then more gray. Also no, what is that? I didn't touch it so whatever Oblivion's default is.

Edit: I checked, it says anti-aliasing is off. I've checked all of my mods, i deactivated everything and I still have the gray. I have no idea what it is, back to square one I guess.

Edited November 26, 2014 by Zodiark10

[Striker879]

Here's what Koroush Ghazi has to say about the shader packages in his Oblivion Tweak Guide (see page 8 Advanced Tweaking):

 

 

 

bAllow30Shaders=0 - If set to 1, this option allows (but does not force) the use of Shader Model 3.0 on graphics cards which support it, namely Nvidia GeForce 6600 or newer, or ATI X1000 series or newer. This can potentially improve performance when using HDR rendering for example. Check your RendererInfo.txt file in your \Documents and Settings\User\Documents\My Games\Oblivion directory to see if your card supports SM3.0 next to the option '3.0 Shaders'. Note however that even by enabling this option, Oblivion still appears to use 2.0 shaders (check the 'PSTarget' and 'VSTarget' lines in Rendererinfo.txt). In any case, if you have one of the cards mentioned above, it cannot hurt to enable this option.

Update: To force the actual use of 3.0 Shaders after making the above change, you will also need to check your RenderInfo.txt file (see above), and on the last line of the file check which shader package it uses (e.g. Shader Package : 13). Then go to the \Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Data\Shaders\ folder and rename that particular package to something else (e.g. rename shaderpackage013.sdp to shaderpackage013._bak. Now copy shaderpackage019.sdp and paste it back into the same directory, and rename this new copy to the package name your card uses (e.g. rename it to shaderpackage013.sdp in this example). This will force Oblivion to use the Shader Model 3.0 shaders in the game, which may increase (or reduce) performance and typically shows no image quality difference.

 

 

Deleting a shader package isn't a good idea, renaming is the best plan. If you have deleted a package you can download replacements of the shaders here at Official Oblivion Shaders. If you rename Oblivion.ini (NOT Oblivion_default.ini found in your game's Oblivion folder) to something like Oblivionini.old (ignore the Windows warning about changing the extension) and then start the game it will build a new Oblivion.ini after detecting your hardware. Make sure you have restored all of the default shaders packages in their proper folder (Oblivion\Data\Shaders) before you rebuild the INI. Often you will need to reset your screen resolution and graphics settings afterwards (for some reason the game isn't able to recognize hardware that wasn't even dreamed of when the game was last updated ... go figure eh). As you are having problems I'd suggest a "do one thing and then test" approach. Tedious, yes, but it works faster in the long run than jumping into the deepend and then trying to figure out how to swim.

One more caveat concerning shaders ... Alenet (author of Improved Water among others) has recently stated that forcing shader model 3.0 does nothing for the game (you'll notice that Koroush also implies the same). Some of the users of IW has found that going back to shader model 2.0 worked better. If you do rebuild your Oblivion.ini it will be on shader model 2.0 ... you may want to run your first tests in that mode.

Edited November 26, 2014 by Striker879

[Zodiark10]

Before you responded I went and did a re-install of Oblivion and reset the ini afterwards. I adjusted my settings and launched - still gray. I'm running Windows 8 if that helps. Oblivion is basically at it's default state right now, none of my mods are active and the shaders are untouched.
Also I did the check in the renderer document, my graphics card doesn't support the 3.0 shaders.

Edited November 27, 2014 by Zodiark10

[Striker879]

What happens if you don't touch any setting before launching the game for the first time (i.e. rebuild Oblivion.ini and then change only one thing at a time, checking for the problem in between changes)? What I'm looking for here is does the game work at all default settings, nothing changed whatsoever.

[Zodiark10]

Yeah, I actually just tried that. I reset everything completely, it works. Even with HDR it works until I tick HDR under "Screen Effects".

[Striker879]

Mode is "Full screen" with VSync ticked and your video card name is displayed correctly and you have selected your monitor's native resolution?

[Zodiark10]

Yep everything's perfect. I didn't have the correct resolution but even when I fixed it I still have a gray screen.

[Striker879]

What about hitting the Reset to Default button and then only change to your monitor's native resolution (I think the reset should leave full screen and VSync on, will probably set Screen Effects to none, not sure what it'll do with distant trees etc). What I'm looking for is a base "this works" so that changing one thing at a time and checking between will reveal the culprit. I had a look at a PC Mag review of your graphics card ... it should be able to handle HDR without even breathing hard. This has got to be some "Oops I clicked on Ultra" or something similar that is making a setting that isn't agreeing with HDR.

 

For testing make sure you have either a profile for Oblivion in your graphics card control panel (I'm an NVidia guy, so I'm not sure what AMD/ATI may call it) or at least no antialiasing (though my understanding is that for AA + HDR you need to force AA in your graphics card and not in the game setting ... I'm saying no AA for now to get a square one to start from).