FA Excessive bloom

[Luxor144]

Hi

Before everything, I know this forum is more about FAF than the game itself, but given that this is the last place with still active community, I don't know if there is anywhere else I could ask.

So...*cough*.., yeah, I'm currently running Steam version of the game with the most recent (I think, not sure) version of FAF, and facing this peculiar problem - game has bloom turned to the max. I'm not talking everything too shiny, I mean nuclear detonation/supernova/LSD trip kind of bloom. I can attach a picture if it is necessary, but I'm sure that if anyone has run into this problem before, they know what I mean. Borderline completely white screen.

Now, the obvious solution is to simply turn it off, but that does make the game look a lot more bland. I don't want to sound petty like this is game-breaking, but still.

One thing I noticed that immediately after I installed FAF, the problem was gone, I could turn the bloom on without detonating the sun (must have something to do with improved shaders, I think). But after a few days I checked again, and once again it looked like modern art.

Is this a known problem? Anything I could check or tinker with?

[Plasia]

Could you run a replay, give the number and show some screenshots?

[Gerfand]

Could you run a replay, give the number and show some screenshots?

A replay would probably not work, unless if its map related... this because you are downloading the information to
render a replay, Screenshots are better in this case.

[biass]

Post logs...

http://wiki.faforever.com/index.php?tit ... cal_Issues

[nine2]

a little known fact is that FA shaders are compiled and cached here:

C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Local\Gas Powered Games\Supreme Commander Forged Alliance\cache

that cache is shared between FAF and steam FA.

1. delete cache
2. run FAF (start an actual game)
3. try running steam FA and seeing if it uses the FAF cached file
4. convert to FAF because what are you doing?? if you love this game you need to stay here

[Luxor144]

Well, I uploaded the screenshot (hopefully)



The two screenshots on the right are a comparison of the same(-ish) place between bloom on/off.

game.log
[url]pastebin.com/embed_js/bh3TzqQR[/url]
forever.log
[url]pastebin.com/embed_js/frrHNN9t[/url]

I tried running the game through Steam, FA Forever manager and the executable in ProgramData/FAForever (after deleting cache folder every time), and the problem persisted every time (in some instances the shadows became very detailed and sharp, guess it's the FAF's shaders).

The Steam version seems to create it's own set of cache stuff, with 1.6.6 instead of 1.5.3650 at the end of each file.

I do love this game, but, honestly, I never was the multiplayer type of guy, so I never really felt like FAF was my kind of thing. Even now I'm here mostly because I want to finally finish working on my mod, make it compatible with FAF and...I dunno, move on, I guess.

[SeraphimLeftNut]

I second this. Bloom is unbearable on some maps, like cobalt valley. At the same time turning off bloom sucks because it helps to see move orders better.
ren_bloomkernelscale (default 1.5, 0 off)) setting is useful in making the problem better but it is very map dependent.

Also I have erased that cache folder a few hundred times over the last few years to see if it will ever making anything new or interesting, but the files are always identical to those before.(they are different, if you run a non FAF forged alliance)

[nine2]

Remember minimap used to not work? I fixed it. Run faf once and you will get my shader which has the fix. Fix in cache.

Then go play steam faf and (not sure) I think it will use mine instead of its own broken one.

[Luxor144]

Tried messing with ren_bloomkernelscale, and a value of around 0.8 can make the game look...alrightish. Yet it still looks rather weird, as if glow maps were gone altogether, and bloom affected everything equally.

Behold



At high fidelity setting (top left picture) UEF buildings lose the glow at the....glowey parts (like the sphere in mass fabricator). Regardless of ren_bloomkernelscale value, these stay dark for some reason. Turning the fidelity setting to medium makes them light up again, but this is more of a dancing around the issue rather than solving it.

One more peculiar thing I've noticed recently is that waves on water are gone (bottom right picture). The weird thing is that up until recently I could make them appear by turning fidelity to medium (they only appeared on medium), but now none of the options renders them.

[Luxor144]

Sorry to necro this thread, but I think I found the culprit to the problem. I think the problem all along was NVIDIA Control Panel related, or, rather, how it tries to augment SC's graphics. Either way, the fix I found to work is to create a shortcut of the game's executable and name it "SupremeCommander_x64.exe". Wolfenstein : The New Order needed the same trick to run properly, I got the idea from there.

Either that, or some fiddling with the graphics options in the nVidia control panel should do the trick. Did both, so dunno which one helped.