Ants in WoW

Fuzzy Logik

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 16, 2001
Messages
1,055
ok...

I have a :
4000+ San Diego Core
BFG Tech 7600 GT OC
Asus K8n SLI
2x 1 GB kit of Crucial memory (not sure the speeds but they came together sealed as a kit)
No sound card using onboard.
74 GB Raptor HDD
Liteon DVD/CDR blah blah burner
LaCie 19" Diamondtron CRT monitor
550 TPII PS ( I think it is the tpII )

I have all settings in World or Warcraft on highest. 1600x1200 resolution. In the graphics propertys I keep things on application controlled, didn't seem to make a difference in appearance or framerate setting Anis. 16x and AA 4x.

Looks awesome runs so smooth. I pwn as a Shadow Priest on Dark Iron, For the Horde!

In any event. I have the odd ant problem a lot of players have. Where the graphics look like this "staticy - ant - type activity" in certain parts of certain terrains when moving around the game.

When you are sucked in , you don't notice it. Though if you are looking for it, it's highly annoying.

Was wondering if anyone here has this issue and knows of ways to resolve it. I have heard someone say there are methods to resolve the issue, but highly taxing on system performace and not worth it.

Any thoughts or suggestions?
 
Maybe so...

I'll mess with that option and see if there is a difference. I hadn't considered that, I've been so in awe with how good it looks and runs I didn't want to lose any of the pearly bells and whistles =[

Though when I get home, I wil definetly try that =]

My roomate described the effect when traveling over layers of grass or flowers behind flowers, it's trying to render it through each other because it's still really a 2 dimensional effect to look 3 dimensional.

So it looks like static and ants moving around, like a flaw in the game design basically.

I may have to lose the shimmering if it is to blame. Or just keep shimmering and ignore the ants problem.

Also the WoW site listed this:

To resolve these problems turn Specularity and Pixel Shaders to "0".

1. Open the World of Warcraft folder on your hard drive.
2. Open the WTF folder.
3. Open the Config.wtf file using a text editor, like Notepad.
4. Change SET specular "1" to SET specular "0"
5. Change SET pixelShaders "1" to SET pixelShaders "0"
6. Save the file and start World of Warcraft again.

I could try that, but woudln't it degrade the graphic quality of the game? :(

I payed for my bells and whistles goddamnit! :D
 
Yes, that would make it look worse. For a real fix, try going to your nVidia control panel and setting 'image settings' from Quality to High Quality. I hear that fixes up most problems, and only has a little performance impact.
 
aggressor said:
Yes, that would make it look worse. For a real fix, try going to your nVidia control panel and setting 'image settings' from Quality to High Quality. I hear that fixes up most problems, and only has a little performance impact.

Failing, that, try a driver update if you aren't running the latest.

Or just buy an ATI card.
 
I had that problem when I used to play AC1 and it was "shimmering". I hated it. They had a check box for environmental textures to uncheck and that resolved it. That's what it sounds like to me anyway.

Any pics?
 
Fuzzy Logik said:
ATI has the same issue unfortunately. It's the game not the cards.
Very true. It's much more prevalent on nVidia cards, but changing to an ATi card is most definitely NOT going to fix the problem.
Change "Image settings" in the nVidia control panel to "High Quality", and set "LOD Bias Clamp" to "0".
 
banGerprawN said:
Change "Image settings" in the nVidia control panel to "High Quality"
I wouldn't do that. :p You can control the Trilinear and Anisotropic sample optimizations without using the "HQ" sledgehammer, which causes a huge performance hit of ~10% vs 3-5% by adjusting the IQ manually:



I've noticed the few games that do have shimmering can have it minimized or fixed by making the tweaks above and enabling 4xAA and 16xAF. That might be possible on a 7600GT if the gaming resolution isn't too high.
 
pxc said:
I wouldn't do that. :p You can control the Trilinear and Anisotropic sample optimizations without using the "HQ" sledgehammer, which causes a huge performance hit of ~10% vs 3-5% by adjusting the IQ manually:



I've noticed the few games that do have shimmering can have it minimized or fixed by making the tweaks above and enabling 4xAA and 16xAF. That might be possible on a 7600GT if the gaming resolution isn't too high.

what's the additional stuff that HQ adds that causes the hit beyond the optos?
 
lopoetve said:
what's the additional stuff that HQ adds that causes the hit beyond the optos?
I'm not sure, but it doesn't seem to be visible.

I made another post a while ago where I compared HQ, Quality with optimizations turned off and default Quality settings. HQ and Quality with optimizations disabled looked the same, but in benchmarks the HQ image setting gets a much bigger hit. The pictures don't all seem to be hosted anymore or i'd post a link to that thread.
 
pxc said:
I'm not sure, but it doesn't seem to be visible.

I made another post a while ago where I compared HQ, Quality with optimizations turned off and default Quality settings. HQ and Quality with optimizations disabled looked the same, but in benchmarks the HQ image setting gets a much bigger hit. The pictures don't all seem to be hosted anymore or i'd post a link to that thread.

noted. that should save me a few FPS
 
Its called shimmering, and it is much less noticeable on ATI cards. Its one of the reasons I use an ATI card, shimmering in most games I play (WoW is not the only game affected by this) is not as noticeable as nVidia cards.

I do not think it is solely the fault of the video game devs, but also that of the video card drivers texture optimizations, conflicting with the methods used in some games of texture management.
 
Fuzzy Logik said:
ATI has the same issue unfortunately. It's the game not the cards.


Nope...not true.

I played WOW for months with my X800XT then went to nvidia 6800GT waiting for new card to arrive...totally sucked with shimemrring. Gets worse with FSAA.

Now I am back to ATi and the shimmering is gone, even at 6x FSAA.

Plain and simple, if you don't directly live with both brands, you will not really know the difference.

It's better to borrow someones nvidia card just long enough to come to realize you have to change your new cards order to ATi. :D
 
I got rid of this problem by running the hardware override AA settings for my 6800U and X850XTPE. ...side by side I thought my 6800U looked way better than the X850XTPE, but now that they both have the same override AA settings up and running... they're both *almost* indentical (IQ) in WoW.

6800U on a dell 2001FP
X850XTPE on a dell 2001FP

side by side. :)
 
"Mr. Jackson, do you ALWAYS yell everything?"

"OF COURSE I DO MOTHER#######!!" HAVEN'T YOU SEEN ANY OF MY FILMS?"
 
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