rec.autos.simulators

I had been playing the game in 16 bit because I had a slow CPU, but I've
upgraded now and switched to 32 bit color and everything looks pretty much
the same. I am running in OpenGL and I have a GeForce 3 Ti 200. I have the
"use desktop color depth" checked in the OpenGL control panel and yes, the
desktop is set to 32 bit color. What gives? I am seeing 16 bit dithering on
things like the glass for the tachometer in***pit view. Also, the sky and
other things just don't look 32 bit to me.

Any ideas?

--
Joe

Better the pride that resides
In a citizen of the world
Than the pride that divides
When a colourful rag is unfurled
Territories - Neil Peart

Most of the textures in the game are compressed using DXTC (DirectX
Texture Compression).  Unfortunately a hardware bug in all Nvidia
chipsets prior to the GeForce4 causes the DXT1 decompression to always
be performed in 16-bit color mode internally.  This results in some
pretty ugly dithering, even when the game is run in 32-bit color.  The
only "solution" would be to switch to a card that does not have this
hardware limitation.

- Eric

Eric.....

RivaTuner has a set of patch scripts that I recall will fix this for pre-G4
Nvidia cards.  I haven't used a GF3 or earlier card for a while, but do
recall I had this S3TC compression problem on my GF3 when I first started
running N2002 and it was fixed with the RivaTuner (available at Guru3D:
www.guru3d.com/ ) settings (see OGL/Rendering Quality tab - make sure
"Compress to DXT3 instead of DXT1" is checked and "Disable dithering when
decompressing DXT1 textures" is also checked).  I'm not sure which NV ref
driver version initiates this fix.....I know at least starting with the
30.xx its there.  You guys are more on top of this stuff, perhaps you could
check it out on a pre-GF4 card and see if this "patch script" works properly
for N2003 and post it here?  I hope my memory is correct on this and that
this patch script works as I think it did for me.

Regards,

Tom

It don't work like that.

For some bizarre reason, OpenGL graphics have been tied to the desktop
setting since N4.

If you want 16 bit, you HAVE to set the desktop to 16 bit.

Larry

Eric's answer sounds better than mine.  Mostly because I think he actually
understood the question LOL!

Larry