[Help] "Red tint" visual and Super Backdrop problems

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[Help] "Red tint" visual and Super Backdrop problems

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Elear
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Post by Elear » Sun Jul 18, 2021 9:24 am

Hello all,

First to all of you who are in some way involved with the HVAU project - thank you very much. You don't just keep the XWA series alive, you take me back decades to my childhood. Thank you!
And a friendly warning, my English is still in early development, so most likely you'll come across a lot of typos and bad grammar. They will be fixed in the next patch.

So, about my problem. After installing XWAU I have visual problems that may be related to some cockpits and/or new shaders and effects. Also there is a Super Backdrop wisual problems too. I will attach screenshots, but first I will say what I have done so far in an attempt to solve the problem

My spec is R5 2600X / GTX 1070 / 16GB / 27 " @1920x1080 Win10 64;
the game is installed as an offline GOG installation, separate from GOG Galaxy;
GOG Galaxy is turnet off and I start the game from the propper .exe;
on a partition other than the operating system (SSD);
DEP is turned on only for essential OS programs;
with the latest video card drivers (just Drivers and PhysX, without that GF Exparience stuff) everything left to default;
I don't have any 3D party programs active (MSI Afterburner and the like);
the installation sequence is fresh XWA > XWAU2020> XWAU2020update_v4.0 and i have done this countless time the last week;
from Babu Frick configurator all graphic options are set to default;
on my son's PC everithing seems to work as intended;

The problem is that during the game (after launch sequence) some of the ship's cockpit looks in a very strange way - dark red, with missing active elements in some of them (such as number of missiles or various indicators like those for lasers in one of the links below), and at the same time all active elements such as ships, stations and so on the screen are as if covered with this dark red "film" or coating. Additionally, the target reticle seems to be positioned behind the active target, as if the target is between it and my ship.

During this, if i hit Ctrl+Alt+O, the red tint over cockpit and everything on screen disapears, target reticle starts to behave as intended and everythung seems to look and work normal (except the Super Backdrop problem, of which i will talk later). Here's how it looks in my game:

Before launch

Red tint

Reticle problem

Ctrl+Alt+O

Regarding the Super Backdrop problem - there is a dark line that runs through the whole backdrop, sometimes there are a few thinner dark lines, and in some places huge dark spots appear. It may be just my imagination, you can ignore the next couple of lines, but at times these lines seem to me like greatly enlarged parts of the cockpit (again, this can only be in my imagination, after a week of reading in forum posts, trying different things looking for a solution to these two problems and )

Here's how the Super Backdrop looks in my game:

Dark line

Dark Spot

Also, these two problems remain after the installation of TFTC.

I tried different things -
a special profile for XWA in Nvidia 3D settings, where I turned on and off different settings that I read about in the forum;
various variants in the Babu Frik's configurator, but either without success or at the expense of the new visual effects;
downloaded and installed all the last hooks using XwaHooksSetup;
downloaded and installed the latest beta version of Blue Max and overwrote the available files in the game;
I even dug out in my archives Super Backdrop 3.1 as a standalone installer from the time it was available as such (I've been following the forum probably soon after the project starts, although I only registered a year ago. Still keep most archives published before the Mega Patch)

None of what I've done so far has any effect

**second edit - there may be something that i have to double check if needed, but at some point i tried fresh WXA > XWAU2020 but without the patch v4 and when i started the game, there wasn't that red tint presented, but it is possible that this was due to the fact that I tried ships that by default do not have this visual problem. Or maybe I've only tried ships that don't have dynamic cockpits added or maybe I haven't tested enough to make sure things work properly without a patch v.4. If this seems important to solve the problem, say so and I'll go through a new installation, for check it out for sure. One thing is for sure, though - in any case, the problem with Super Backdrop was presented.

I would be extremely grateful if you could help me find a solution to the problem. Thank you in advance.

*edit - there is a problem with Lightshot uploading images corectly, so i have to post them as links

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Forceflow
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Post by Forceflow » Sun Jul 18, 2021 3:31 pm

@blue_max any ideas what could cause this? Especially the cockpit items being behind the target?
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blue_max
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Post by blue_max » Mon Jul 19, 2021 4:39 am

There are so many different and unrelated problems here that I'm guessing the video card might be the root cause. Let's try the following, @Elear:

* Make sure XWA is running with hardware acceleration on. Run the game, press ESC and in Video Options, make sure your nVidia 1070 is there. If not, you can force the game to run with hardware acceleration by creating a profile through nVidia's Control Panel. I run the game on a 1060, and it looks good.
* Use Babu Frik to configure the effects to use Deferred Shading. This is the shading mode with less memory overhead.
* For the background problems: press ESC while playing the game and go to Video Options. Make sure your detail level is set to High and that Mip-Mapping is enabled.

BTW, how much video RAM does your card have?

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Elear
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Post by Elear » Mon Jul 19, 2021 6:09 am

Hey huys, tnx for your imput. I have just couple of minutes before leaving home to double check everything suggeting. Usually I run through options every time after fresh installation. The hardware acceleration is on and the gtx nvidia 1070 is properly selected and displayed in options,, details and mip maping is set to high and the only thing in options that I have change is to turn off lens flare, as was suggested somewhere on YouTube.

Video cards is EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 SC GAMING 8G and usually the game is stable unless there are some exceptionaly crowded mission, when the gameplay may not the be soo smooth, but nothing that is worth mentioning.

I have time just to rerun Babu Frik and select Deferred option (the only one that I didn't try because it was suggested for VR and that may fools me not to try it). One minute into game and the cockpit looks cool and there was no dark line in background. Later on when i get back to my PC I will run several missions with different ships, especially the one that I know was with that red thing and will report back.

Appreciate the help!

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Elear
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Post by Elear » Mon Jul 19, 2021 6:23 pm

Ok guys, i'm coming back with a very weird report.

I decided to do a fresh installation again and try everything again. I installed XWAU + XWAU2020, checked the settings we mentioned in the previous posts and everything was as it should be - hardware acceleration and so on. Then launched a quick skirmish, chosed T/F and the cockpit of the T/F looked good. The dark lines on the Super Backdrop were there, but the cockpit of the few ships I tried was OK. However, this may not be the whole truth, as you will find out if you continue reading. Here come the weird part of my report.

I continued by installing XWAU2020update_v4.0, then I started a quick skirmish, chose again T/F and the cockpit looked great. I did a few restarts of the skirmish and everything was great. Then I changed the ship with T/I and everything was fine again. I restarted the skirmish - everything was OK. Then for some reason I decided to change the skirmish battlefield and from Deep Space I changed to the next >
* Asteroid Field > bam! Red cockpit! I went out, changed the next battlefield, which is
* Mine Field > the cockpit was OK! I changed to
* Deep Space > red cockpit, I change again to
* Asteroid Field > the cockpit was OK
* Mine Field > red!
* Deep Space > OK
:shock:

And I continued like this long enough to make sure that this pattern is preserved every time I change the next battlefield.

Then, on the next restart of the skirmish, I did not changed to the next battlefield, but left it on the same one and simply returned to the same skirmish > the cockpit remains as it was in the previous skirmish.

If I then restart and change the battlefield with the next one, the cockpit starts circulating again from red to OK every time I change the battlefield. If I do not change the battlefield, the cockpit remains as it was in the previous skirmish > if it was OK, it will stays OK, if it was red, it will stays red untill i changed the next battlefield.

This is valid for at least 4 or 5 ships, which I tried - T/F, T/I, B-Wing, Y-Wing and Assault Gunboat. Also, this is valid no matter what i chose from Babu Frik (Deterred included) so my previous observation was incorect - i was too in a hurry and didnt have enough time to search the background properly.

Again, all the time the black lines on the background were there, whether the cockpit was ok or not, but I will attach a few photos for you to see that these are not just lines, but have a certain shape that I can not relate to something familiar, but maybe some of you can recognise them.

Deep Space

Asteroid Field

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blue_max
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Post by blue_max » Mon Jul 19, 2021 7:27 pm

Elear wrote:
Mon Jul 19, 2021 6:23 pm
Again, all the time the black lines on the background were there, whether the cockpit was ok or not, but I will attach a few photos for you to see that these are not just lines, but have a certain shape that I can not relate to something familiar, but maybe some of you can recognise them.

Deep Space

Asteroid Field
Those images happen when your in-game detail is set to low, or you otherwise disable the background images. Have you checked that your in-game settings are set to high? There's also a key combination that will toggle the detail level while playing, I think it's Alt+D. You can try doing that the next time you see this problem to see if it helps.

As for the other problems... I have never seen anything like that. You said that your nVidia 1070 is recognized by the game (it appears in the Video Options menu), so are you running with the latest graphics drivers?

BTW: the background in this game is a big cube. Each face of the cube gets a texture to build the background. What you're seeing there are the edges of this background cube.

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Elear
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Post by Elear » Mon Jul 19, 2021 8:00 pm

Yes, the graphics drivers are the latest. I usually only install the drivers and the PhysX, without GF Experience, and I always remove the old drivers and install the new ones through the DDU. The card itself is presented in the game options, the hardware acceleration is turned on, the native resolution of the monitor is selected and in general all other settings are at max, except for Lance Flare, which is turned off.

I did a test with Alt + D - the game runs at maximum settings (highest) by default, and when I start switching from a lower to a higher setting, the planet that is part of the background disappears and reappears when I return to the highest setting. But the dark lines are there all the time.

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blue_max
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Post by blue_max » Mon Jul 19, 2021 8:48 pm

Elear wrote:
Sun Jul 18, 2021 9:24 am
DEP is turned on only for essential OS programs;
...
on my son's PC everithing seems to work as intended;
I am running out of ideas here, but maybe the DEP could be causing some of this? Can you check how DEP is configured on your son's machine?

You can also create a profile for xwingalliance.exe using nVidia's Control Panel. In the profile, make sure the game will run on the GPU using all the available cores. Also check that you're allowing the game to run at max performance.

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Elear
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Post by Elear » Tue Jul 20, 2021 6:11 am

DEP is set the same way on both PC's, but after reading this I tried the other way around - set it to every program exept those I poit it out and add xwingalliance.exe as exclusion. No luck.

From nvidia panel - did you mean that multithreded optimisation? Didn't tried it until your post but then I tried all of the available chooses with no succes.

At this point I have to get back and start to expore my PC more closely. I have to conclude that the problem isn't with the game, installation or the settings relevant to game, but maybe there is something in my PC enviorment that intervenes. in the game

I usually keep my PC with minimum active apps and tools loaded in background, but I still have some small apps like one for color profile and gama correction for my monitor. I have to go further and maybe try some unisual steps to try to solve this - reroll old driver, remove some preinstalled tools or something like this.

Btw, I have most of the old archives from the time of xwau 1.6 - super backdrop 3.0 current blue_max at that time in form of separate installer and all the fixes at that time before MegaPatch. I plan to try them the way I used them back then to see if i can get some hints about my current problem.

@blue_max, I want to thank you for your time and efforts you put into this - for your work into the new effects and helping me to solve that problem.

I will get back when i have some new and relevant info about my problem.

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Post by blue_max » Tue Jul 20, 2021 7:06 am

Hey Elear, thanks for your kind words. I'm sorry I can't be of more help here. I'm honestly stumped. I think maybe your videocard is running out of memory for some reason -- maybe some other process is taxing your GPU while you run. But you have a reference PC that you can use. I'd probably start by looking at which processes are consuming GPU resources. Also check if any antiviruses are blocking XWA (I've got Norton 360 and I had to manually exclude xwingalliance.exe).

One more thing: are you running xwingalliance.exe as Administrator?

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Elear
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Post by Elear » Tue Jul 20, 2021 5:56 pm

The video card generally sits with the fans off and at base frequencies when I'm not playing any games and holds 32*C according to the latest GPU-Z (while the CPU is at 33*C in idle). At the moment here is the peak of summer and the temperatures outside are +30*C. I mention this to emphasize that the PC is maintained in good condition, the operating temperatures are also low to normal and if there is a problem, it is not because the card is trotling from high temperatures or high load.

I played a mass scirmish with quite active objects on the screen and monitored the GPU activitiy with GPU_Z. In the beginning the card was at 0 load and low temperatures, after I started the skirmish it raised its operating frequencies and during the whole mass battle I don't think it ever pass 25% load and tepms around 65^C or something.

I use Kaspersky Security Cloud Free and after careful research in the logs I didn't find anything that made me think it was causing problems with the game, but I turned it off completely and kept it that way all afternoon while testing the game. Im gonna add the WXA exe to its exclusion list just in case, when i switch it back.

But there is one more thing I want to ask. At the moment, I'm focused entirely on this red tint and left the black lines from the backdrop in the background :) They are not as gamebreaking as that red stuff.

I spent the last afternoon reading and looking for a solution to this red tint. In most cases, it was recommended to check the monitor cable and whether it is securely connected to the monitor itself and to the video card, but this did not seem to concern me, with me everything is well enough secured. In addition, for me, this red tint only appears in XWAU. One more possible source of the problem was certain color profiles (which i am about to test to see what that may leads me).

However, I came across a case in which it was confirmed that the red tint in certain cases was related to Stereoscopic 3D. Because this Stereoscopic 3D doesn't ring any bell to me, except that I suspect it has something to do with VR, and I also didn't find an option that relates to Stereoscopic 3D anywhere in the NVidia Control Panel (probably because I don't have any peripherals that have anything to do with VR), so I ran a search for "Stereoscope" in the XWAU files and found a few readmes files that mention it, most often mentioning keyboard shortcuts related to it.

So, my question is - i dont have or use VR in any form, but is it possible that this Stereoscopic 3D is related to my problem and is there something related to it somewhere in the files that I can change/turn off to see if it won't help. Or maybe it may not be strictly related to Stereoscopic 3D, but it may have simmilar effect that may affect my install. Or maybe this doesnt contains any usefull info at all, but that is all i have for now.

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Post by blue_max » Tue Jul 20, 2021 7:36 pm

I don't think this problem is related to something physical, since you mentioned that when you press Ctrl+Alt+O, things go back to normal. This key combination disables most of the effects, so I think this is a software problem. But since there isn't a core dump, I have no idea where to look. Just to confirm: you checked that there isn't any thermal throttling happening either, right? In my case, when that happens, I don't get any artifacts, the whole window just freezes for a while. Just in case you really want to check if thermal throttling is a problem, I'd probably use a regular fan to cool down the GPU. In fact, that's exactly what I do in my laptop during summer: I attach an USB fan and point it at the laptop. It works.

There's no support for the kind of stereoscopic 3D that would tint the screen red/blue. There used to be an option by nVidia to enable stereoscopic 3D through polarized glasses, I believe (or someting like that); but nVidia dropped support for that a few years ago.

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Post by Elear » Tue Jul 20, 2021 10:02 pm

I know that XWAUP can be quite demanding on the hardware with all the visual enhancements activated, but GTX 1070 for 1920x1080 gaming should be more than enough.

In fact, I started a ten-minute skirmish session with a large number of active ships free for all and alt+tabbed and took a screenshots before and around the end of that 10-minute battle. These are the results of GPU-Z:
At the start ot the battle

At the end of the battle

The video card is initialized by the game, but does not seem particularly busy in any way. During this skirmish, the game was smooth, with no freezes or screen stuttering despite the fact there was constant on-screen explosions up close (most of which were on my own ship)/ :P
For comparison, X4 squeezes the card almost to the limit when it is at maximum graphics settings and with Reshade profile

Also the temperatures are far lower than the limit where I can expect throttling. 54 * C is a very modest temperature, the fans on the card worked only at 10% of their capacity. After this skirmish I ran AIDA64 stability test for 30 minutes with full load on the GPU and the card works for 30 minutes at 100% load and at 80 * C

It is also clear from the screenshot that of the 8GB of video memory, only 1.5GB is occupied. It looks like I can run multiple instances of the game at once.

Unfortunately, what I read and tried about the color profiles did not work for me, so I keep reading and trying :)


*EDIT:
After some more drastic steps (uninstalling AV program, some other hints from other topic around) i make another fresh install of XWAU and started fresh campaign. The first couple of missions went well, no red tint, just the same good old dark lines on the backdrop. But in that mission, when we have to sneak spice into Viraxo station, the red tint shows up again, but in more strange way. First, when i launched the family ship from the station everything was OK, then we take the nav buoy to Viraxo space and thats where the tint shows up again. I finish the objectives and get back to Azzameen space and once i jumped back the red tint disappeared. Seems like the game feels comfortable only when I'm in friendly space :D

That new behavior i have never experienced - for red tint to appears and disappears in different sectors in a single mission. As it wasn't strange enough already. :D

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