G400 Quake II Dark

[SCompRacer1]

Got a 16MB OEM G400. Have to crank the monitor brighness up all the way on my Sony 400PS to get Quake II to look reasonably good in Open GL. I know my monitor is good cause with the brightness control max'd it totally washes out the 2D screen. Quake II has the 3.20 update and I have always had the latest drivers for the G400.

Before, with the VooDoo II cards, going from 2D to 3D required no change in Monitor settings, much brighter. I tried 256 and 16 bit on display propererties with no change.

Is this what folks gripe about the drivers being no good? Never seem to hear why they are suppose to be so bad. All I know is that each of these cards/drivers seems to have its better points, and it would be nice to see a card with the combined qualities.

No problems with FPS, get 63 at 800x600.

[Joelg]

Have you tried using the brightness slider bar under the Video options?

Joel

[SCompRacer1]

They are maxed.

Can you just go into Quake II without adjusting anything other than the sliders in the game video controls?

[Joelg]

I'm not sure what you're asking.

Joel

[SCompRacer1]

Can you go from your 2D screen, and play Quake II in Open GL without touching the monitor brightness/contrast adjustments?

In other words, use only the controls under video in Quake II menu and get a bright enough image to see in the shadows so to speak.

I cannot. I know the game is done in dark confines and all, but its barely acceptable for brightness compared to what I was used to with the VooDoo II's display. Hell, maybe this is what it is supposed to look like for all I know.

Thanks for helping with the Forsaken problem too.

Rich

[This message has been edited by SCompRacer1 (edited 08-07-99).]

[Joelg]

In Q2 I do have the brightness control turned all the way up in the video options and even then there are still some areas in the shadows where it is hard to see. I never have thought much about it because that's the way it has always been for me. I'm sure the game was designed with these areas in mind because of the nature of the game. But there is a way to increase the brightness without adjusting your monitor. Go into the Dispaly Properties/Advanced/Color Tab, check the Link box and then move the sliders up to brighten the picture. This will also affect the brightness of the 2D display but when you get finished with Q2 you can go back to the Color tab and hit reset and all will be as it was.

Joel

[rubank]

Have you tried
id software´s homepage?

There´s a utility called "idgamma" to correct this kind of trouble.

rubank

[Kruzin_K]

IDgamma is one way to go.
I prefer just adding a few lines to my autoexec.cfg file...

set intensity "1.0"
set vid_gamma "0.9"
set gl_modulate "3.5"
set gl_saturate "0"

These commands will cover most of what IDgamma does, and will let you make the game brighter than you can with the slider in the game. With these settings, I don't need to adjust my monitor at all when I play the game...

[SCompRacer1]

Thanks for the info, will give it a try.

Then I can retire the VooDoo's.

Rich

[Strider]

Using the game's video settings you should be able to get enough brightness without adjusting the moninor. There still will be areas in tunnels and some parts of hallways that are too dark to see. While the walls and floors will appear nearly black, any objects or enemies should still be visible.

[tylau]

I am not sure with these gamma settings, cos I am quake newbie, but its seesm that q3t 1.08 has got some gamma correction on its own, the gamma slider in the setting manual just gray out with my V3 latest driver installed; may be this is because of the gamma correction feature of this latest V3 driver, have to check.

[Joelg]

Hey tylau,

Looks like a poor driver support problem to me. Why don't you try calling their tech support and seeing how long it takes them to fix it.

BTW SCompRacer1 was asking about Q2 not Q3.

And speaking of Q3 when was the last time you were able to play at 1024x768x32bit with 32bit textures, trilinear filtering, and all graphics options at max settings. Oops I forget Voodoo3 can't do 32bit.

Joel

[tylau]

True Joel,
3dfx has got gamma problem for over a year, what is included in their recent driver is something called alpha blending; which I suspecting it has something to deal with gamma value ?

q3t is not really playable at present formation with 1024x768 on a V3, not until 3dfx improve on their OGL ICD and/or Id software got good SSE implementation in q3 future release. I certainly didnt forget my V3 16bit limit.

tylau

[SCompRacer1]

rubank, some of id's links just result in error messages so I couldn't find "idgamma".

Kruzin_K, did the autoexec.cfg edit, works great! Brightness just right now. G400 Quake II Open GL looks better than with the VooDoo II cards now. More colors, more details, more-better.

Thanks much..

Rich O.