[deboerjo]

My friend and I were trying to play Halo the other night, a PC and a Mac (my iMac isn't up to the task of gaming, so I use an old PC for LAN parties, he's got a G5). Besides the fact that they wouldn't talk to each other (I've found plenty of info on that topic already), the Mac version looks completely crappy compared with the PC version, and I can't figure out why. We have all the detail settings and whatnot turned on to their highest settings. Some options are greyed out in the menu, and I can't for the life of me figure out why, since he's got a G5 with a GeForceFX 5200 Ultra, which should be far more capable than my old GeForce4Ti 4200. After doing some fiddling, I've discovered that you can make the PC version look as crappy as the Mac version if you have the -useff option turned on, or if you use a really old (GeForce 2MX or Radeon 7500) graphics card. But I can't figure out how to get the Mac version to go into high quality mode, if there is one. Anybody know what we're doing wrong?

[Truepop]

what version of halo is he running as well as version of mac os x?

[deboerjo]

Originally posted by Truepop:
what version of halo is he running as well as version of mac os x?

The latest Halo updates were applied to both systems, though it didn't change anything (he updated from 1.03 to 1.05 and nothing changed graphically). The PC is running 1.04. His MacOS version is 10.3.5, the latest.

-Jon

[Weezer]

you need to turn on the vertex and nvidia or ATI shaders

[deboerjo]

Originally posted by Weezer:
you need to turn on the vertex and nvidia or ATI shaders

How do I do that? The only options I haven't turned on in the video options are "Specular" and "Shadows", but both these options are greyed out and can't be turned on. Why they're greyed out I have no idea, since he has the latest and greatest video card.

To make it even more confusing, although these options are not greyed out on my PC, I have them turned off (set to "no"), and the PC still produces the better graphics.

-Jon

[deboerjo]

Thought I'd post some screenshots we took to illustrate what I'm talking about. These were all taken from the beginning of The Silent Cartographer, at 1024x768 with all options turned on. The first set are cropped down to forum-postable size, the last pair was both cropped and resized.

On the G5:

The PC, Note the realistic shimmering of the water, and the glare on the windshield.:

A better shot of the shimmering water on the PC, note the shadow:


Here's a shot of the elite's shield taking a hit. On the G5, it looks like Unreal Tournament in software rendering mode:

The PC, on the other hand, note the partial transparency. Also note the much better ground texturing, and the reflection of the sky in the shiny surface of the plasma rifle.


-Jon

[Weezer]

The options are only available when you first turn on the game, in a little window before it actually launches. Hold down the apple key when you launch the game, that should bring it up.

[P]

The Geforce4 Ti 4200 is actually more powerful than the 5200 Ultra unless you use FSAA.

[deboerjo]

Thanks, Weezer! He must have not set that up correctly when he installed the game. So I just command-double-click on the icon, or do I double-click on the icon and then hold down command while it loads? And then I should see a "vertex" option and a "nVidia or ATI shaders" option I can turn on?

Originally posted by P:
The Geforce4 Ti 4200 is actually more powerful than the 5200 Ultra unless you use FSAA.

Eh, define "powerful". The GeForce4Ti is faster (generally gets higher benchmarks) than the low-end GeForceFX models, but the GeForceFX are more powerful in the sense that they have a wider range of functions. On the PC version of Halo (dunno about Mac version), Halo looks better on a GeForce FX; the lighting, shadows, and reflections look a little better, and fog looks much better. But a GeForce 4Ti would get you higher framerates and/or higher resolutions than a GeForceFX 5200. I've been referring to the 5200 as being the superior card in this thread because this thread is concerned with visual quality, not framerates.

-Jon

[a2daj]

Double click then hold down command. I always have the startup dialog box appear by default so sometimes I forget that others disable it. It's helpful for running benchmarks.

You might also define "powerful" as in horsepower or in the case of GPUs, processing power, where the GF4Ti wins over the FX 5200. For Halo, I'd take a 4Ti over an FX 5200 any day.

The Mac version of Halo uses OpenGL, since, obviously, there's no Direct3D for Macs. So the pixel shader situation is a bit different on Macs. To help development time, the folks doing the Mac port (Westlake Interactive) chose to use ARB Fragement Programs for the 'pixel shaders' (PS being a Direct3D naming convention). They're roughly equivalent to PS 2.0. Because of that, only certain cards support that rendering path. Those cards being, the ATI 9600, 9700, and 9800 cards as well as the FX 5200. However, the FX 5200 didn't run that rendering path very well because, well the card does actually suck... When the 1.03 patch was released for Mac Halo, there was a new rendering path for NVIDIA cards only which use I believe use Register Combiners (a vender specific extension, which I think is equivalent to Pixel Shaders 1.3). At the time, only the environment was affected with the shiny goodness that pixel shaders provided. Mac version 1.05 introduced Model Reflections and the ability to turn them on and off. So, for the GeForce 3, 4Ti, and FX 5200, RCs are used so they're going to look similar. This is a good thing as the FX 5200 wouldn't be bogged down by the Fragment Progams used in the OpenGL standard graphics rendering path. The graphics quality won't be as high as the R300 based Radeon cards but many probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference without a side by side comparison. I'm curious if a patch would be released to allow the GeForce 6800 to use the "ATI" rendering path (which is really just the official OpenGL standard rendering path).

[deboerjo]

Originally posted by a2daj:
For Halo, I'd take a 4Ti over an FX 5200 any day.

Heck yeah, who gives a darn about how well fog looks, I want perfect 30fps when I'm taking aim at someone's head. Don't get me wrong, I'd take a 4Ti any day myself, I'm real dissapointed in the performance of the FX family, but like I said before, when I talk about "powerful" I'm trying to stay within the context of the topic of the thread; we're talking about visual quality, not framerates.

Your post was VERY informative, a2daj, thanks. So let me get this straight; On the PC version, there are four rendering codepaths; fixed function (GeForce2/4MX, Radeon 7xxx), pixelshaders 1.1 (GeForce 3/4Ti), pixelshaders 1.4 (Radeon 8500-9200), and pixelshaders 2.0 (GeForceFX/Radeon 9500+). On the Mac (as of Halo 1.03+), there's three. A basic codepath just like the PC fixed function (which obviously is what my friend is running), a "Register Combiners" codepath for JUST the GeForce3/4Ti/FX, and a "Fragment Programs" codepath equivalent to DX9.0 and PixelShaders 2.0. So am I understanding you correctly in that the Radeon 8500-9200 are stuck with using the basic codepath and do not support the RC codepath? And am I correct in understanding that model reflections is a recent (Halo 1.05) addition to JUST the RC codepath?

-Jon

[arekkusu]

"Stuck" is up to the Halo developers/porters.

There are several different nvidia register combiner and texture shader extensions; the GF2MX supports a set, while the GF3/4/FX support more.

On the ATI side, the 8500/9000/9200 have the ATI text fragment shader extension, which is not as powerful as the ARB fragment shader but still much better than fixed function.

It is really only the ATI Rage 128, Radeon 7000/7500 that are limited to the plain fixed-function pipeline; all of the other cards support some form of programable shading. And even on a Rage128 they could have added environment mapped reflections, since the texgen_reflection extension is supported on all cards. But obviously it is a ton of work for the developers to add a separate rendering path for every single card. They focus on the high-end cards first; the Halo market for Macs with Rage128s is ~zero.

See this table for a detailed list of what card supports what functionality.

[arekkusu]

Actually, if you remember when Halo was first shown at Macworld many years ago, it was running on a B&W G3 with a Rage128, and it had environment reflections then.

[a2daj]

deboerjo, I had a fairly long response read to post last night but the MacNN boards went down when I tried to post. I'll try and repost it tonight.

[capuchin]

Originally posted by arekkusu:
Actually, if you remember when Halo was first shown at Macworld many years ago, it was running on a B&W G3 with a Rage128, and it had environment reflections then.

It was a fake. A dummy movie rendered as an animation. Not actual gameplay. I wish I had the time to dig up Jason Jones' comments, but at that point they had nothing playable.

Oh yes. I am a *huge* Halo geek

[a2daj]

Originally posted by capuchin:
It was a fake. A dummy movie rendered as an animation. Not actual gameplay. I wish I had the time to dig up Jason Jones' comments, but at that point they had nothing playable.

Oh yes. I am a *huge* Halo geek

In an audio interview he mentioned that about a week and a half before the MWNY unveiling, they didn't have a working Mac version. They demoed the PC version to Jobs, but by the time MW came around, they had a working version.

[capuchin]

Huh.

I (at some point, can't find it now) had a movie where a bunch of the Bungie guys were doing commentary on old builds of Halo as they watched them. Pretty interesting to look at the first versions, which were a third-person strategy game, a la Myth, and how it evolved into what it is today.

Anyway, when they showed the MWNY footage, they said they had to render the whole thing as an animation, as they hadn't even started work on the AI. At all. All they had were models for MC, vehicles, and Elites.

Damn. Now I have to go and find that thing. It's huge, but if I find it I'll post it somehow. Fascinating stuff.

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by capuchin:
Anyway, when they showed the MWNY footage, they said they had to render the whole thing as an animation, as they hadn't even started work on the AI. At all. All they had were models for MC, vehicles, and Elites.

No, what they said was that it was entirely scripted. It was all footage from the in-game engine. The movie you were thinking of is available here.

[capuchin]

I stand corrected. My bad.

And thanks for the link to the movie!

[Amacapart]

The Nvidia Pixel shaders look very good. My problem has been with the "zoom" function, which doesn't work, even with the update that came out 3 days ago.

Looks great on 96/97/9800. Ugly on 8500.

I recently got to try it on a PC. Even with a Ti 4200, it looked MUCH better on PC.

Light sources are MISSING in Mac version. All over in PC version are light sources which just aren't there on Mac. Almost like they were forgotten or not gotten around too. Functionally, all the doors in PC version have red or green lights on them so you know if they are locked or not from a distance. Some Mac doors have this but most not. All of the vehicles have lights in PC version, most missing from Mac.

With Pixel shaders and the reflections & shadows turned on it looks good on your $2500 Mac. But it looks alot better on your neighbor's $400 Dell.

dp

[deboerjo]

Originally posted by Amacapart:
The Nvidia Pixel shaders look very good. My problem has been with the "zoom" function, which doesn't work, even with the update that came out 3 days ago.

Looks great on 96/97/9800. Ugly on 8500.

I recently got to try it on a PC. Even with a Ti 4200, it looked MUCH better on PC.

Light sources are MISSING in Mac version. All over in PC version are light sources which just aren't there on Mac. Almost like they were forgotten or not gotten around too. Functionally, all the doors in PC version have red or green lights on them so you know if they are locked or not from a distance. Some Mac doors have this but most not. All of the vehicles have lights in PC version, most missing from Mac.

With Pixel shaders and the reflections & shadows turned on it looks good on your $2500 Mac. But it looks alot better on your neighbor's $400 Dell.

I had not noticed the light sources thing. Is that an issue with all video cards or just the 8500?

As for the zoom function, make sure you have FSAA turned off in the nVidia/ATI drivers, if you enable FSAA it screws up zoom on the PC version, too.

The PC version of Halo doesn't look to great on an 8500 either. Particularly the water effects (not that that's really important). When I went from an 8500 to a Ti 4200 on my PC, I made the switch for dual-head support and had the pleasent suprise of finding that Halo looked much better.

-Jon

[a2daj]

Here's what I tried to post a few days ago while the forums were down. The forums had been down every time I had time to post.

The model reflections for the NV Shaders is new as of 1.05. It already existed for the ARB path. The 1.05 patch added the option to toggle the model reflection for both paths. The addition of model reflections brought the NV Shader renderer just about on par with the ARB path. There may or may not be effects still missing but we won't know until someone does a side by side. The latest patch released a few days ago will allow NVIDIA 6800 owners to use both NV Shaders and the ARB path.

There's actually 4 rendering paths in Mac Halo (all listed in the startup Options Dialog box).

ATI Pixel and Vertex Shaders (original called Pixel and Vertex Shaders)
Minimum card req: Radeon 9600 and Up. NVIDIA 6800 No vender specific extensions (of which I'm aware).

NV Shaders and Vertex Shaders (added inthe Mac 1.03 patch)
Minimum card req: NVIDIA only. No MX support. Uses register combiners. As Alex mentioned, they're NVIDIA only (vender specific extension).


Vertex Shaders Only (Just about everything graphic related is done on the card)
Minimum card req: R200 class chips (Radeon 8500-9200)

No Shaders (which moves all of the model bone transformations (up to 22 per character) from the graphics hardware to the CPU)
Minimum card req: Every card.


I have a web page up which details the rendering modes. It's a bit dated (last updated in February) but most of the information is still good. I should probably update it soon. If I remember when I wake up I might sit down and update it. The performance issue with Vertex Shaders Only with the Radeon 8500s-9200s may be caused by some of the Vertex Programs being too long for those cards. Brad Oliver mentioned that KotOR suffers from that very problem. So Halo may be switching to software Vertex Shaders.

http://homepage.mac.com/a2daj/HaloPerfInfo.html

Again, as Alex mentioned, the Radeon 8500/9000/9200 have the ATI text fragment shader extension for pixel shader effects but no path was written for the Mac version. If the Vertex Shader path has performance issues with that class hardware, the Pixel Shader effects would probably kill them.

[a2daj]

Originally posted by Amacapart:
The Nvidia Pixel shaders look very good. My problem has been with the "zoom" function, which doesn't work, even with the update that came out 3 days ago.

This is an OS X issue. With FSAA, Zoom is fubared. This was fixed in 10.3.3, but 10.3.4 broke it and it hasn't been fixed since.

Originally posted by Amacapart:

Looks great on 96/97/9800. Ugly on 8500.

That's due to lack of a Pixel Shader path for the 8500.

Originally posted by Amacapart:

I recently got to try it on a PC. Even with a Ti 4200, it looked MUCH better on PC.

Light sources are MISSING in Mac version. All over in PC version are light sources which just aren't there on Mac. Almost like they were forgotten or not gotten around too. Functionally, all the doors in PC version have red or green lights on them so you know if they are locked or not from a distance. Some Mac doors have this but most not. All of the vehicles have lights in PC version, most missing from Mac.

That sounds like an issue with the Lens Flares. If you turn them to Low or Medium, you get good performance but lack of screen glow around a lot of light sources. When Lens Flares are set to High or Extreme, the game looks correct but performance can drop tremendously due to how they're implemented, especially with FSAA enabled.

[Amacapart]

Eureka !!

Yes, I needed to turn on "Lens Flare"

I have 17 years in film production, "Lens Flare" is something to be avoided there, I always left on low.

So, the effects are there, even on an 8500.............

BUT >>>>>they are markedley muted compared to the PC version.

OpenGL thing?

I made a cool jpg to illustrate but can't seem to include image.

I am fairly certain zoom wasn't working on GF3 with FSAA off. FSAA kills Nvidia cards, I don't think I ever use it on them.

Will toss it in in next few days and re-check.

I agree 8500 is too slow to bother with Pixel Shaders.

It always bugs me to read "Oh, your Sawtooth/DA is too slow to use anything faster than a XXXXX, a Radeon 9800 would be a waste" Fact is, it will LOOK a whole lot better and it WILL be faster. In fact, it is these older processors which can use the freeing up from graphics rendering that a card like this offers. Once "Tiger" comes out, there will be no other option.

dp

[ReggieX]

Originally posted by Amacapart:
I made a cool jpg to illustrate but can't seem to include image.

http://www.imageshack.us/