Splinter Cell Ultimate Graphics Settings (Includes Indirect Fixes to Common Problems)

[Doomy Nature]

For this to work you may need to install the DirectX runtime files here[www.microsoft.com].

Hardware Required:
- GPU with full hardware support for DirectX 11 (DirectX 10 may work but I haven't tested it)
- Windows 7 or better

Once you have all that you can proceed with the steps below.

Splinter Cell Basic Tweaking

These are the video options you set in the game like shadow resolution, shadow detail (only takes effect in projector mode), and effects quality. Hopefully, everyone now has a fast enough PC so these settings would probably be all maxed out. 3d sound and EAX will have no effect as DirectSound3D was removed in Windows Vista and up.

dgVoodoo2

1. Download the latest version of dgVoodoo2 from here [github.com].

2. Extract the zip folder to some other folder called something like dgVoodoo that you can create. You can place that folder anywhere you wish.

3. In that folder, you extracted the contents to, run dgVoodooCpl.exe and select Add.

4. Browse to the system folder of the Splinter Cell game folder (i.e. E:\Games\Splinter Cell\system). You’ll need to figure out where Splinter Cell is installed to.

5. Once that’s done you should see the path you selected above under “Config folder / Running instance” (no quotes). If you don’t see it select it from the dropdown

6. Select the DirectX tab and where it says “VRAM” select something like 256 MB or 128 MB minimum if you don’t have enough RAM I guess.

7. Uncheck dgVoodoo Watermark and set “Videocard” (no quotes) under DirectX tab to GeForce4 Ti 4800 to render shadow buffers correctly.

9. Click ok then inside the MS\x86 folder in the dgVoodoo directory, copy D3D8.dll and place it into the Splinter Cell system folder.

Widescreen Fix

1. Download Splinter Cell Widescreen Fix from here [thirteenag.github.io]. This can be found by clicking the down arrow next to the download button.

2. Inside the SplinterCell.WidescreenFix zip folder, delete the dgVoodoo.conf file then navigate to the scripts folder and delete the modupdater.ini file. Then extract the system folder to the Splinter Cell folder, effectively merging the contents together.

3. Now look inside the scripts folder located in the Splinter Cell system folder and open SplinterCell.WidescreenFix.ini. Change the ResX and ResY to your resolution, x being width and y being height (i.e. ResX = 1920 ResY = 1080 which is 1920x1080). Set ForceShadowBuffer mode to 1, HudWideScreenMode = 1 (if using widescreen resolution), and keep WideScreenHudOffest the same if you have a 16:9 aspect ratio for the resolution you specified above (doesn't have effect if HudWideScreenMode is 0). You may need to adjust WideScreenHudOffset accordingly if your resolution is not 16:9. Also, make sure to set the file you just edited to read-only so it doesn't get set back.

Classic Shadows?

On native GeForce3/4/FX hardware, the shadows get rendered without the soft-looking filter around them. If you prefer that you can restore that with dgVoodoo2. When opening dgVoodooCpl.exe you can right-click on the dgVoodoo banner and select show all sections of the configuration. Make sure the path to Splinter Cell is selected under Config folder / Running instance. Then under the DirectXExt tab uncheck smoothed depth sampling and then click ok. Now when you run Splinter Cell the classic shadows will be rendered.

PlayStation 3 High Definition Texture Pack

From the same link under "Widescreen Fix" (no quotes) download the HD textures from the PS3 version. Again, this can be found by clicking the down arrow next to download under "Splinter Cell Widescreen Fix" (no quotes). Inside the SC1_PS3_Textures zip folder extract the textures folder to the Splinter Cell folder and overwrite everything.

GPU Control Panel

You can expand on this by configuring the settings in your GPU control panel. You can set things like anisotropic filtering, FXAA, and even vsync (Turning on MSAA in dgVoodoo will break the water shader so use FXAA instead if possible). You can even use ReShade if you like and use the version for DirectX 10 and up as dgVoodoo2 makes the game run in DirectX 11 mode or whatever you set it to.

Conclusion

This will work for Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, the steps are similar but you will need to find the fixes related to Splinter Cell Pandora tomorrow. Particularly the widescreen fix and the PS3 HD textures.

The end result can end up with FXAA support, anisotropic filtering, vsync, high-resolution textures in well-defined areas, fully functional shadow buffer support, and fixed widescreen support for resolutions that even include 4k.

Some Screenshots

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=749365260
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=749365223
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=749365121
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=749365068
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=749365011
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=749364966
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=749364868
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=749364775
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=749364743
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=749364933
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=749364715
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=749364667

[DayofReckoning]

I dont understand. I completed all the steps in this giude exactly correct, and the widescreen fix worked, im playing in 1080p, and the PS3 textures are working, but the shadows are still not fixed. What could be wrong? I'm on windows 10, with an i7 and 750ti

[Hellraiser9881]

only 1 problem d3d8 crashes the game

[Alanar]

İlk olarak Hellraiser9881 tarafından gönderildi:

only 1 problem d3d8 crashes the game

That's why the guide says "DO NOT EXTRACT THE d3d8.dll file and the d3d8.ini file from the SplinterCell.WidescreenFix zip folder!!!" in the section about the widescreen fix.

[Hellraiser9881]

Doesn't work for me

[Hellraiser9881]

İlk olarak Alanar tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Hellraiser9881 tarafından gönderildi:

only 1 problem d3d8 crashes the game

That's why the guide says "DO NOT EXTRACT THE d3d8.dll file and the d3d8.ini file from the SplinterCell.WidescreenFix zip folder!!!" in the section about the widescreen fix.

i didn't

[Hellraiser9881]

well widescreen fix works dgvoodoo2 doesn't

[ReamedBySteem]

I can't remove the dgvoodoo watermark. Everything works fine except I've unchecked the watermark box and it's still in game. I've even tinkered with the dgvoodoo ini to no avail.
Any suggestions? Please? It's driving me frigging nuts.


Edit: nm, I found the c:\users\"insertusernamehere"\appdata\roaming\dgvoodoo SECond instance which overrides any other config created in sayyyyyyyyyyy a utilities folder. ugh. At any rate it's totally sweet as now. Cheerio.

[ReamedBySteem]

İlk olarak Hellraiser9881 tarafından gönderildi:

well widescreen fix works dgvoodoo2 doesn't

you need to delete the dgvoodoo file (included with the widescreen fix) that's installed in the splinter cell system folder and add the D3D8.dll from the ms folder included with the dgvoodoo archive.


edit: the op's instructions are outdated and unnecessarily convoluted re the widescreen patch.

1. copy/paste the 'CONTENTS' of the widescreen patch to the splinter cell SYSTEM folder, inCLUding the msacm32.dll and msvfw32.dll files.

2. ignore all the mumbo jumbo about d1cking around with the widescreen fix ini, you can adjust those values in-game.

3. run dgvoodoo setup, apply changes as per the op, deLETE the widescreen patch's dgvoodoo CONFIG FILE from splinter cell's system folder and copy/paste D3D8.dll from the dgvoodoo archive to that same folder.

[Coverop]

Thank you for sharing the dgVooDoo 2 fix.

It helped me fix the shadows and lightings!

[blue_pill]

Great

[milan.mrlian]

USLESS - IAM NO HAčKER
IS STUPID YOU writte as for programators no how solve problems !

[YellowJello]

İlk olarak milan.mrlian tarafından gönderildi:

USLESS - IAM NO HAčKER
IS STUPID YOU writte as for programators no how solve problems !

You don't need to be a programmer to figure this out.

[Shralla]

İlk olarak Fried Brains tarafından gönderildi:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2887953123

So I did this and it worked almost perfectly, but now I'm getting permanent light trails all over the screen whenever I look around. Any thoughts?

[ounces]

Has anyone ever figured out how to stop the model "popping" As the camera gets close a more high res/poly count model is replaced and is very distracting watching a model pop as it gets closer to sam. Obviously in 2023 we dont need such optimizations.

[BeondTheGrave]

I had trouble recently getting the dgVoodoo patch to work, I had installed everything correctly but the screen would go black (sometimes with the watermark, if I forgot to unbox it), then white, then crash. The problem I was having was I used the newest version of dgVoodoo and not the one from the guide, which is 2.53. If you have similar issues, double check that youre using the *correct* version, which does matter.

I followed this guide and got my game to work:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_Splinter_Cell#Broken_shadows