Grass problem.

[Ghoulz]

I recently updated my graphics driver and now im getting this.

 

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/6483/screenshot140w.png

http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/2804/screenshot141f.png

 

Any ideas?

[Striker879]

Try renaming your Oblivion.ini to Oblivionini.old (the one found in Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Oblivion for Win 7 and Vista or Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion for WinXP ... NOT the file Oblivion_default.ini found in your game's install Oblivion folder). Start the game as far as the main menu and then exit. Restart the game and readjust any settings that may have changed when the game recreated your Oblivion.ini (view distances etc.). If that has resolved the problem you can then go into the new Oblivion.ini and start to apply any specific tweaks you may have applied before. I'd do them in small related groups if you have a bunch, and test in between, so if something breaks you know where to start when troubleshooting.

 

I had a similar problem last year when one card in my SLI rig died, and with a single card I had the same sort of graphics problem. As part of my troubleshooting to ID the card failure I had upgraded my graphics drivers.

 

Another thing you could try, before going the rename Oblivion.ini route, is try turning HDR and Bloom off altogether, restart the game with vanilla graphics settings and then turn either HDR or Bloom back on (probably a good idea to turn antialiasing off in your Control Panel first, and don't turn it back on until you get HDR back on, if you are going the HDR route).

[Ghoulz]

Try renaming your Oblivion.ini to Oblivionini.old (the one found in Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Oblivion for Win 7 and Vista or Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion for WinXP ... NOT the file Oblivion_default.ini found in your game's install Oblivion folder). Start the game as far as the main menu and then exit. Restart the game and readjust any settings that may have changed when the game recreated your Oblivion.ini (view distances etc.). If that has resolved the problem you can then go into the new Oblivion.ini and start to apply any specific tweaks you may have applied before. I'd do them in small related groups if you have a bunch, and test in between, so if something breaks you know where to start when troubleshooting.

 

I had a similar problem last year when one card in my SLI rig died, and with a single card I had the same sort of graphics problem. As part of my troubleshooting to ID the card failure I had upgraded my graphics drivers.

 

Another thing you could try, before going the rename Oblivion.ini route, is try turning HDR and Bloom off altogether, restart the game with vanilla graphics settings and then turn either HDR or Bloom back on (probably a good idea to turn antialiasing off in your Control Panel first, and don't turn it back on until you get HDR back on, if you are going the HDR route).

 

Didn't help.

[Striker879]

Perhaps something is being forced by your new graphics driver. I've no experience with how the Catalyst drivers work, but in the NVIDIA control panel you can set a profile for each game. I'm pretty sure I'm just using the defaults that came with the Oblivion profile.

[Ghoulz]

Perhaps something is being forced by your new graphics driver. I've no experience with how the Catalyst drivers work, but in the NVIDIA control panel you can set a profile for each game. I'm pretty sure I'm just using the defaults that came with the Oblivion profile.

 

Ok, it's fine now. Either because I turned on antialiasing in the Launcher's options, or turned on antialiasing - gamma correction for Oblivion's settings in NVIDIA. So that means I can't use HDR now....

 

I don't get it. It works with the game's antialiasing, but it doesn't with NVIDIA's on instead.

[Striker879]

Hmm ... I've been using HDR with AA forced in the NVIDIA panel without issue. The standard advice is turn on HDR in Oblivion's menu with AA off in the NVIDIA panel and then force AA in the NVIDIA panel. When you change to HDR in the game menu it should prompt you to restart the game (and it will update the ini when you exit). Maybe if you have AA forced in the NVIDIA panel when you try to do that it gums things up. Edited January 9, 2012 by Striker879

[Ghoulz]

Hmm ... I've been using HDR with AA forced in the NVIDIA panel without issue. The standard advice is turn on HDR in Oblivion's menu with AA off in the NVIDIA panel and then force AA in the NVIDIA panel. When you change to HDR in the game menu it should prompt you to restart the game (and it will update the ini when you exit). Maybe if you have AA forced in the NVIDIA panel when you try to do that it gums things up.

 

Now the grass is missing :psyduck:

 

You still use NVIDIA? What settings you use?

[Striker879]

I recently had to downgrade my AA settings because I lost another video card and had to switch to a Geforce 9800GT 512 MB card I had sitting doing nothing (so that makes two Geforce 8800 GTS 640 MB cards down the tubes). When I had the SLI rig working I was using 8X AA with AA mode set to Override any application setting. When I lost the first 8800 GTS card and had to downgrade my setup to non-SLI I dropped to 4X AA (it would run fine with 8X but when I did get a slowdown I felt it wasn't as bad with 4X as it was with 8X ... same reason I ran 8X with the SLI setup instead of 16X). AA - Gamma correction and AA - Transparency were both left at Use global setting (Off). Anisotropic filtering was set at 8X and is still at 8X with my downgraded rig, with Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization set to Off and Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias set to Clamp.

 

All other settings were left at the default that comes with the Oblivion profile. It's easy to tell what settings you've altered by seeing that those settings are listed with bold text.

 

I did a Restore (top right button on the tab) to see what that profiles defaults are. Anisotrpic and AA goes to Use global setting (Application controlled) and Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias goes to Use global setting (Allow).

 

I should also point out that I don't use any graphics enhancing mods (Quarls, OBGE etc.) so that may make a difference in required settings.

 

- Edit - My NVIDIA graphics driver version is 270.61 ... not exactly the latest either.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Striker879

[Ghoulz]

I recently had to downgrade my AA settings because I lost another video card and had to switch to a Geforce 9800GT 512 MB card I had sitting doing nothing (so that makes two Geforce 8800 GTS 640 MB cards down the tubes). When I had the SLI rig working I was using 8X AA with AA mode set to Override any application setting. When I lost the first 8800 GTS card and had to downgrade my setup to non-SLI I dropped to 4X AA (it would run fine with 8X but when I did get a slowdown I felt it wasn't as bad with 4X as it was with 8X ... same reason I ran 8X with the SLI setup instead of 16X). AA - Gamma correction and AA - Transparency were both left at Use global setting (Off). Anisotropic filtering was set at 8X and is still at 8X with my downgraded rig, with Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization set to Off and Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias set to Clamp.

 

All other settings were left at the default that comes with the Oblivion profile. It's easy to tell what settings you've altered by seeing that those settings are listed with bold text.

 

I did a Restore (top right button on the tab) to see what that profiles defaults are. Anisotrpic and AA goes to Use global setting (Application controlled) and Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias goes to Use global setting (Allow).

 

I should also point out that I don't use any graphics enhancing mods (Quarls, OBGE etc.) so that may make a difference in required settings.

 

- Edit - My NVIDIA graphics driver version is 270.61 ... not exactly the latest either.

 

Monkey blood sandwiches!! That doesn't help either. Guess im stuck with the game's AA and Fraps for now.

 

My NVIDIA driver was like version 240 something before my brother snuck in and installed the latest one. New one really made no improvement for my other games either.

[Striker879]

Unfortunately the NVIDIA Beta and Legacy Drivers page only seems to go back as far as the 275.33 WHQL driver. You could try a Google search for a site hosting the 240 driver ... I tend to only download from NVIDIA myself though. Unless they've gone through another of their Control Panel applet 'improvements' (in other words change the driver interface and make everything useful harder to find) you should still be able to select Oblivion on the Program Settings tab of the NVIDIA Control Panel applet and tweak settings there.

 

If it's a latest and greatest beta version he installed I'd get him to uninstall that and then install one of the available WHQL versions ... they're considered the latest stable versions. You just uninstall from the Add/Remove Programs (in WinXP ... you'll need the equivalent in Vista's or Win 7's Control Panel) and then reboot. When Windows displays the found new hardware cancel out of them finding and installing drivers. The screen will come up butt ugly and super low resolution but don't worry. You run the driver installer you previously downloaded from NVIDIA and all will be fine after it's installed and you go through the mandatory reboot. Even though it's possible to update the drivers without uninstalling the old one and rebooting to butt ugly no driver Windows default, doing the full nine yard way is the preferred method.