Oblivion Gray Screen Bug (not HDR to my knowledge)

[zoneofdarkness]

Hey all. I've been having this problem for quite a while and I decided to ignore it and stop playing 'blivion rather than ask for help. Well, I'm wanting to get back into the game after playing Skyrim for a year but the problem is still there.

 

I have the infamous "grey screen" bug. Oblivion ran fine on my computer for the first few months after I got it, but then this rendering bug started happening. Most people say that the best fix is to tick off the "HDR" setting, and I've done that. I've also disabled AA. Neither option has helped fix this problem. The only thing that seems to change it is when I install OBGE, in which case a few textureless (pure white) items will render here and there, but no people.

 

I'm running on a radeon 6490m. I know it isn't a busted card because I had the motherboard (to which the card is attached) replaced after my heating fan died and damaged part of it. This was a few months after the gray ether infaded Tamriel. It's running the same driver it had when I first got the computer about a year ago. It used to run Oblivion perfectly fine, and it can still run both fallout games without a single (graphical) problem. I'm thinking it might be an issue with one of the games drivers. Would you guys suggest a fresh install? I've already torn all of the mods I had out of the data folder earlier today anyway. >_>

Edited January 22, 2013 by zoneofdarkness

[Striker879]

Try renaming your Oblivion.ini to Oblivionini.old (NOT the file Oblivion_default.ini found in your game's Oblivion folder but the one found in Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Oblivion for Vista and Win 7 or Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion for Win XP). Then restart the game all the way to the menu screen. Exit and restart again (you may need to reset your video setting as Oblivion was last updated long before your Radeon was ever dreamed of).

[zoneofdarkness]

Sorry, it didn't work.

[Striker879]

OK ... you can delete the new Oblivion.ini and rename Oblivionini.old back to Oblivion.ini or just save the renamed Oblivionini.old in case you need to refer to it to get some settings.

 

Other thing that comes to mind is shaders. Have a look in Oblivionini.old and see if you have the line 'bAllow30Shaders=1' (the default is 'bAllow30Shaders=0'). What I'm getting at is outlined in Koroush Ghazi's Oblivion Tweak Guide Advanced Tweaking section. Here's a quote:

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.

Back when the first of my two SLI cards died I had to reset which shader package was used, and before that I had gray sky.

[zoneofdarkness]

It's set to 0. I'm going to see if anything at all changes when I set it to 1.

 

EDIT: Nope, nothing.

 

EDITED EDIT: Wait. My shaders folder is missing. Could that be the cause?

Edited January 22, 2013 by zoneofdarkness

[zoneofdarkness]

That was it. I downloaded the official oblivion shaders from the nexus and installed them, and it's working. Thanks for your help, without that post I wouldn't have stumbled upon the problem. I know exactly when this happened too. I had installed some shaders that borked up the game (rendered fine but crashed when using spells) so I deleted the shaders folder, thinking that like with everything else the shaders are in a BSA. God, it's going to be nice to play this game again.

 

...

 

Crap, I need to reinstall all of my mods now. ^^;

[Striker879]

Could be ... as far as I know the game creates that folder. I know I never had to do anything other than edit it. Unless someone else chirps in with an idea you could try Bben46's Oblivion reinstall procedure. It has instructions for backing up your Data and Saves. Maybe a fresh install is in order.

 

- Edit - At least you know where in the woods you are ... now just a matter of walking out.

Edited January 22, 2013 by Striker879

[zoneofdarkness]

The graphics issue is fixed now. I downloaded a copy of the shaders from here: http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/20348 and tested the game. Works fine now, at least from what I can see.

[Striker879]

Cool, thanks for the link.

[HerrValkyr]

THANK YOU !!! THANK YOU !!! THANK YOU !!!

 

 

The Default Shaders package fixed my heavily modded Game as well ....

 

Cheers!!!

 

 

DKZ

FFF