fixed texture loading bug on mine (nvidia 8800gtx)

Post » Mon May 14, 2012 12:57 am

I'm using a 512 MB Geforce 8800 GTX, so this might be helpful to anyone with a similar setup.

I was having the horrid texture loading bug where I couldn't turn the camera at all without all the textures reloading.

I tried the basic nvidia control panel stuff (as in here : http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1236910-nvidia-users-click-here-for-fix/ ), adding the cache directory, etc This did not work.

I installed the beta drivers, and that didn't work either.

Finally, I found http://www.gamepur.com/news/5615-rage-pc-version-tips-adjust-graphical-settings.html

This instructs you to create the file "Rage\base\rageconfig.cfg" and add some commands into it to tweak the graphics settings. None of these were helping, but I noticed when I brought down the in game console and typed one of the variables it was supposed to change, eg, vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly2 it would print out that it was currently set to the default. For some reason, the game does not read my rageconfig.cfg file, so I copy pasted all the lines from that into "Rage\base\default.cfg" which contains key bindings and other stuff. Worked like a charm. So my advice to everyone is to make sure changes in the ini files are being applied in the game itself.

Once I did this I was able to play around with the settings. The options on the GamePur link seem like they are tailored to increasing the image quality as well as making the streaming work faster. I have a little bit of an older system (above the min specs for sure though) so some of the Gamepur settings crashed my game or made it slower.

First, since I have an older GPU I turned GPU Transcoding OFF. This makes the texture loading faster if you have a higher end graphics card, but if you have a bit of an older one like mine it will kill your framerate.

The following lines in my INI tell the game to quadruple the amount of memory it uses to cache textures on the GPU over the defaults. This shouldn't affect the loading speed, but once something is loaded it means it'll stick around for more than 1.5 seconds once I move the mouse.

seta vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly2 8192
seta vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly 8192
seta vt_pageimagesizeunique 8192
seta vt_pageimagesizevmtr 8192


I left compression on (the default) since that should make it upload faster.
seta image_usecompression 1

I played around with this but the default was the only thing that didn't make things worse.
seta vt_maxlockedpages 256

If I understand correctly, The following line sets the number of texture tiles that can be uploaded (or decompressed?) per frame. Anything above the default crashed my game, but setting it to half the default seemed to reduce popping a fair bit.
seta vt_maxppf 64


Once I did that the game became very playable. Not only was I able to keep my lunch down in the first room, I was able to finish the entire first mission and enjoy it. I don't know what framerate I'm running at because the framerate counter is broken on my system, but the game seems to be running ridiculously fast at 1600x1200. There is still some noticable texture pop in especially when I look at something I haven't looked at before but to a "this is a bit distracting" degree, not a "lose my lunch" degree. In general the graphics are gorgeous and for the most part quite sharp on my system... Yeah, there's plenty of muddy console textures too but none of the n64 looking crap other people were posting as a result of the game's broken default settings. So, there's hope. Otherwise the game still occasionally hitches, or the framerate goes to hell when i quickload, and the game is in general in DESPERATE need of some patches and optimization but I can play it and I'm having fun.
User avatar
Scott Clemmons
 
Posts: 3333
Joined: Sun Sep 16, 2007 5:35 pm

Return to Othor Games