Oblivion AA disabling itself in-game

[Cornflake_7]

Hi all,

 

First I'd like to say this is my first post on the TESNexus forums. You all look like a friendly group of people; I used to post at the official Bethesda forums but since they delete threads every 90 days - and some of them can be quite unfriendly I decided this would be a better place. :thumbsup:

 

Ok, so my problem: I just started running Oblivion with AA + HDR on my system. I have an 8800GTX, and use nHancer as my tweaking program. So what happens is I set nHancer to use 4x multisampling AA with gamma correction and start up the game... It works great for a while, anti aliasing is on and HDR is fine. Well after playing for a little while I will notice all of a sudden the AA is disabled. If I then restart the game it's fine again but before I know it AA is off. I'm not sure what's causing this -- I will take notice next time it happens, but it seems to correlate with when I enter / exit a building or fast travel.

 

I'm using the 181.22 nVidia drivers currently. I noticed that in nHancer the 'Anti-Aliasing compatibility' setting is now set to '200100c5: Oblivion' by default (this setting is required to get in-game AA and HDR). The old setting people used to use to get AA and HDR working in oblivion was '00000045: AA & HDR'. But both of those setting choices show the same issue.

 

- If anyone else has had this issue or know of a way to solve it I'd really love to hear your thoughts! Thanks! :thanks:

[BossDweebe]

We had a nice little discussion on this topic a while back.

I swore up and down that I could make AA and HDR work together with my 8800GT.

Not so. nHancer or not.

What I have found is that I would turn on AA in either conrtol panel or

with nHancer, load the game again on a save where an NPC was all

jagged and fuzzy before, and hey presto, no more aliasing. I would pull out

a sword and look at nice clean edges. I thought AA was working.

Then I would get involved in the game and forget about the

AA for a while, and then sometime later the aliasing was back.

 

Conclusion:

As soon as I change cells the AA stops working. I have given up on AA.

 

I originally did not like HDR because of all the white glare, but after tweaking the

day light with Construction Set I will never go back to Bloom lighting jaggies or no.

[Cornflake_7]

Ah, thanks for the info :)

 

Yes, now that you mention it, the AA seems to go when changing cells. It doesn't happen until your travel a long distance and cause a new area to load... it also explains why it doesn't always happen after fast travel or a loading screen -- because it has to switch the cell "on the fly". It must reset something with the renderer that forces AA off.

 

However, Minimizing seems to get the AA working again. You have to be very careful about it because Oblivion loves to lock up after maximizing again. But I've found a reliable way to maximize without it freezing. This thread explains that if you keep task manager open in the background and use the "Switch To" function and then click the window, it maximizes with no problems. I've tested this about 5 times, works like a charm.

 

It's a shame it has to be a hassle, though.

 

- Thanks again

[BossDweebe]

Are you playing in a window ?

This is normally considered not to be the best option.

 

I also found that trying to force AA will cause more frequent crashes.

Apparently the ATI people are luckier than the nVidia with AA & HDR.

[Cornflake_7]

No, I play Oblivion in full screen (One of the few games I actually don't play in a window; I like to be immersed in this one). So far I haven't had any crashes related to AA yet that I know of.

 

Last time I had Obliv crash was when I was using OBSE, it was quite annoying.

[BossDweebe]

EDIT: That task manager fix is a ripper. I used it several times last night.

Goodbye jagged edges. Hello AA & HDR. It also comes in handy when I forget to

turn on FRAPS for screen shots. (I find the INI tweak unreliable.)

 

 

Got yah! I was thinking of minimising a window.

Lock up occasionally ? Mine locks up any time I minimise.

 

I'll have to have a go at that task manager fix.

Nice bit of research.

I would like to have the AA working. Especially out in the bright sunlight

where the aliasing tends to show up more dramatically on NPS's.