[Graphical Bug] [special effects regress] [since v8.6.1]

[GabeKnight]

I'm quoting the Admiral from a different thread, but tested and compared it with effects of the game v7.1.4 and he's right.
Please fix. Looked so much better before.

Hi everyone...
While getting back to business, I noticed quite annoying GFX problems... With the unmodded game of course

At first I noticed that some effects look very poor and some are missing. I though that it's the effect quality.. no it is set to high. Particularly, naval gunfire looks awful, ship hits.. torpedo wakes are completely missing.
the second thing is the good old effect level problem, where the gunfire gets behind the unit object somehow. MG flash in particular

I tried the previous installation, Endsieg, and it works nice... I don't know what might happened

[Admiral_Horthy]

Thanks for reporting!! I'm sorry I wrote it to a bad place.

Well, it seems it's not my installation that is faulty... I will reinstall then, and keep working on what I can so far

[Horst]

At least I haven't noticed such graphical glitches with 8.6.0 and now 8.6.1 during Soviet campaign 1 and near end of 2 so far in the last two weeks. I run the game with the highest detail settings on a 1060 GTX.
Maybe a new graphic driver installed too much spyware again. One reason why I stopped updating these years ago. Everything still runs fine without this update-madness for the sake of collecting more meta-data bs and supposedly gaining 1-fps more than before.

[GabeKnight]

I did not compare some videos but had the v7.1.4 installed on the same system as the current (v8.6.1) one.

It's not that the effects look broken as such, but in comparison they're missing details. Especially the water effects with naval hits and torpedoes and the MG fire of land units.

For example, this is how naval battles looked before:

shells

Screenshot 250.jpg (729.87 KiB) Viewed 2617 times

torpedoes

Screenshot 247.jpg (744.22 KiB) Viewed 2617 times

Is it really still the same for you, Horst?

[GabeKnight]

This are torpedoes in my current version:

Screenshot 251.jpg (975.09 KiB) Viewed 2616 times

[Horst]

Now, I see it too at least with the lack of torpedo trails.
Only on Render Quality "Good" and lower, I see some trails which lack on "High" and "Highest". Yeah, I remember vaguely there should also be more water splashing on a torpedo-hit instead of only a little fireball explosion.
Yep, something is not looking right there. Could be just another "update" of the unity-engine FUBARing everything again. Don't touch a running system, guys! It's true!

[GabeKnight]

Don't touch a running system, guys! It's true!

Usually I couldn't agree more, but the "touching" part was necessary for the whole 4K scaling business, at least. Can't complain about that.

[Horst]

Don't touch a running system, guys! It's true!

Usually I couldn't agree more, but the "touching" part was necessary for the whole 4K scaling business, at least. Can't complain about that.

So you are to blame for this then. Thank you! HD works fine enough, you spoilt brats!

[GabeKnight]

You're welcome. I'm loving my big-ass 4K display - well, I've chosen "display" because the word "monitor" sounds kinda too small for the huge thing sitting on my desk...

[Admiral_Horthy]

Heheh))) I use a HD projector and my wall... for the price of a mid end monitor It's not 4K, but my eyes wouldn't pick any difference anyway...

[Horst]

Wasn't it mentioned lately that they abandoned WinXP/DirectX9 support? Maybe some effects are done with an old DirectX version. As dedicated Win7 user, I couldn't make use of any DX12 stuff either what could explain why I see more but still not all effects on "Good" and lower settings. I was never friend of these all-in-one graphic settings.

[GabeKnight]

Only on Render Quality "Good" and lower, I see some trails which lack on "High" and "Highest". Yeah, I remember vaguely there should also be more water splashing on a torpedo-hit instead of only a little fireball explosion.

Same here, and I am on Win10 with DirectX12.
Trails yes, water-splashing no.

[GabeKnight]

Please, please, please, do something about this. It's not only ruining the original DLCs, but also any new DLC with naval action.

Don't kid yourselves, contrary to some propaganda, looks are important and everybody's looking at the cover of a book first, before reading it...

[GabeKnight]

Well, I'm still a fan of the naval aspect of the game and I replay the "Pacific" campaigns regularly.

So, again, I'll just keep asking for this to be fixed. Thanks.

[Horst]

Yep, same for me who had to switch from Win7 to 10 this year, so no DirectX thing.
No idea why you see some torp trails (minus hit splash) from about halfway to target ship only on Render Quality Lowest to Good, but not higher.

I wish the original coder Lukas Nijsten would still do a return for a final revamp.
David Forster for a couple of AI tweaks couldn't hurt either, like less fog-of-war cheating.
Rest in peace, old gods!

[GabeKnight]

Amen!

[GabeKnight]

I'm gonna "bump" this topic for as long as I'm active here and play this great game...

To me, it's just sad to see those cool effects gone missing since some update years ago.

While my own PC hardware becomes more and more powerful...