Beta Client Textures stuck on low quality

Anarchy Online Support
1

Is there any sort of bug fixing still going on for the beta client?

The Texture resolution settings simply don’t work.
It always runs in low resolution mode, wich makes the improved engine utterly pointless.
I also noticed three oddities in this regard.

1. The old client has 3 lines in the prefs.xml regarding texture settings:

  • <Value name="DisplayCompressedTextures" value="false" />

  • <Value name="DisplayOtherTextureQuality" value="3" />

  • <Value name="DisplayTextureResolution" value="2" />
  • The new client makes no entry in the pref.xml related to texture resolution at all.
    In fact i searched all the config files in the user folder and there is no texture setting stored anywhere
    EDIT: Found the Variable, see replies.

2. When i switch texture resolution settings in the launcher, the dropdown list for Anisotropic Filtering greys out.

  • This is curious because Anisotropic Filtering shouldn’t have anything to do with the resolution of the textures. It hints at there being a bug in the launcher.

3. When i click through the texture resolutions ingame, i see the sky flicker for a frame or two.

  • It seems to register my click. But it always shows the same, mushy, low res textures.

EDIT:
Some aditional Information:

Steps i took:

  • Complete reinstall with fresh download of (beta) AO client from my account page
  • Completely deleted funcom folder in user directories multiple times during testing
  • Deleted profile in nvidia driver, tried without, then recreated a default one
  • Tried adding the old resolution lines to beta client prefs.xml and set it to write protected

None of this made a difference.

EDIT2: Screenshots of the issue

This is the Old Client:

scrn0000
scrn0000.jpg1920×1080 773 KB

These are 3 shots from the Beta client on low/medium/high respectively

scrn0001
scrn0001.jpg1920×1080 754 KB

scrn0002
scrn0003

2

If any mod reads this please move to bug reports.
It was late … :sweat_smile:

3

Sometimes I’ll get mushy textures in the new engine, and you’re right, the ingame settings don’t seem to do anything. Typically to fix it, I have to log out, open the launcher’s settings, then I set FXAA, Texture Resolution, and Texture Filtering to Off/Low/Bi-Linear. I log into the game like that, then ingame I set them all to high again and it seems to fix it.

4

Tried that and it doesn’t seem to work for me…

I made another observation though.
When i switch ingame Texture Res, the sky doesn’t just flicker, it actually changes. I can clearly see the difference between low, medium and high res. But the sky is the only thing that changes. Everything else is stuck on low still… :confused:

5

I found another piece to the puzzle.

The name of the variable for texture resolution is actually in the prefs.xml.
It’s called “DisplayStripMIPs”
And here it gets weird. It’s numbering is reversed.

If you go to \Anarchy Online\cd_image\gui\Default\OptionPanel and open the root.xml you can find these lines:

    <OptionRadioButtonGroup label="#TextureResolut" layout_borders="Rect(10,0,0,0)" opt_category="Main" opt_type="variant" opt_variable="DisplayStripMIPs">
      <RadioButton label="#Low" value="2"/>
      <RadioButton label="#Medium" value="1"/>
      <RadioButton label="#Full" value="0"/>
    </OptionRadioButtonGroup>

The highest value (2) is actually used for low res textures.
No other of the options uses this reversed numbering.

I’m starting to think somewhere between reading the config files and actually pulling the texture out of the DB this reverse numbering causes a problem (adds or subtracts to the variable wouldn’t work the same way for instance) and the game defaults back to low textures.

6

I’ve had similar issues with the Beta Client. I’ve also had issues with switching out of game and then back. I Alt+tab to go to Windows, look something up and either Alt+tab back or click the icon to bring the game up (still running). I get a moment of seeing the game with my character etc., then the screen goes black. I still hear audio and I think I’m still moving my character around but the screen is black and my PC is locked up. I have to reset the PC and login again. My character has moved so that is why I think the controls are still working. Any thoughts? It worked fine a few days ago. Possibly the video settings.

7

If you’re using the new engine, play in fullscreen windowed mode to avoid crashing like that. Also you don’t need to reset your pc if you do get a persistent black screen, just use the log off feature, and log back in.

8

Ensure the dx9 dlls are installed (they are missing by default in win 8 -10) Link https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=8109

Then follow this video.

9

Thanks Caloss but i had already tried both of those things.
My System32 folder already contained all d3dx9_XX files. I copied a few from a fresh runtime download to test but it didn’t change anything.

To further illustrate the problem i made some screenshots.
I will add them to the main post.

This is the Old Client:

scrn0000
scrn0000.jpg1920×1080 773 KB

These are 3 shots from the Beta client on low/medium/high respectively

scrn0001
scrn0001.jpg1920×1080 754 KB

scrn0002
scrn0002.jpg1920×1080 758 KB

scrn0003
scrn0003.jpg1920×1080 760 KB

Needless to say the Old Client looks the best right now.
I hadn’t even noticed the FoV is bugged too untill now.
(I think it changes back to normal on ALT-Tab)

10

Yeah I can see it, only one other person I know of had this issue; and the fix we found isn’t one I’d recommend but.

Copy the contents of you old engine installation and back it up somewhere.
Next copy the entire contents of your new engine installation and paste it over the old installation let it overwrite every time.
And try again.

Like I said, I don’t like this method but it did fix the issue for the person in question.

If it doesn’t you do still have the ability to revert with your old install backed up.

11

Ok i just tried that too.
No change. sigh

12

Shame, I don’t like that method because you can’t be sure what was actually changed but it did work in the instance I mentioned.

Other than double checking that the launcher is seeing your graphics card specifically covered in this video

13

Im having the same damn issue!
When I login for the first time everything looks good. Then I move then in a little bit it all goes to hell. It gets so bad I cant even read the text on the shop terms

14

Well, not sure what todays patch did yet (no patch notes…) but textures are still broken. :frowning:

15

Has anyone come up with a workaround for this? Built a new PC and downloaded the new engine client and my textures are all stuck in low res. It’s playable but makes the game look worse than it ever has. Tried all the suggestions in this thread but no luck.

16

Any solution to this ?
I can pitch in that i have the exact same problem as OP.
It worked OK on my last graphic card 1070.
Now i have 2080TI and playing on resolution 3440x1440 and im stuck in low resolution all the time.
I even tried to copy all the files from a computer where it works perfectly. But no luck. It still shows up in low rez.

17

Unfortunately, we aren’t able to provide any support for the beta client. I apologize for the inconvenience. I’ll forward this to the devs so the issue can get some exposure, though, thank you all for the valuable information.

1 Like
18

After thorough testing, it appears to have nothing to do with Prefs or screen resolution. When it does work the low/med/high settings look completely different from these blurred textures anyway. I strongly suspect it has something to do with graphics memory, that appears to be the only differentiator here. I have a 1080Ti, and a 1080 for testing. works fine with same install on same system with the 1080 in (8Gb), however swap the 1080Ti in (11Gb) and the blurring returned.

Just an observation from testing. If you could pass that along to the devs please, I’m sure many here would be very pleased with a fix if possible, as it appears there is nothing we the end user can do.

19

I have the same problem. Changed from 1080 to a 2080 TI. Only good thing is that I haven’t crashed once with the new graphic card and on new engine, used to crash a lot. Done beast, s42 and so on.
Left is old and right is new engine.

20

Hey, thought I would come back to this as it has reared it’s head once again. So I have tried multiple hardware configs and these are the results;

Intel 4790K on ROG Formula w/ 1080Ti - Blurry low QL textures
Ryzen 2600x on ROG Strix B450 w/ 1080 - High QL textures
Ryzen 2600x on ROG Crosshair VII w/ 1080Ti - High QL textures
Ryzen 3800x on ROG Crosshair VII w/ 1080Ti - Blurry low QL Textures

Due to liquid cooling (pain to swap processors quickly) I haven’t yet tested the 3800x in the ROG Strix with the 1080

However, one can notice that simply swapping the CPU from a 2600x to 3800x caused the issue with the game reverting to low res textures reappear.

Still at a loss, other than there may be some code compiled for a certain instruction set that’s broken. shrugs