3D Acceleration Fix

[teleguy]

Screenshot comparison

3D hardware with AA
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=558152966

Software
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=558153014

Solution 1: XWA Wrapper

The ddraw wrapper created for X-Wing Alliance now also supports the other games in the series (thanks to Reimar Döffinger).

Usage:

Grab the xwing_ddraw zip file from here
https://github.com/rdoeffinger/xwa_ddraw_d3d11/releases/latest
and extract ddraw.cfg, ddraw.dll and nopowervr.txt to both game directories
...\Steam\steamapps\common\STAR WARS X-Wing vs TIE Fighter
...\Steam\steamapps\common\STAR WARS X-Wing vs TIE Fighter\BalanceofPower

Solution 2: Aqrit ddraw

Usage:

Download http://workupload.com/file/fXsasZps (This is a modification of Aqrit's ddwrapper.)
mirror: www.vogons.org/download/file.php?id=18485
mirror: https://www.dropbox.com/s/58w5f5dzjt79cbn/aqrit%20ddraw%28ModifiedByTeleguy%29.zip?dl=0


Extract aqrit.cfg and the modded ddraw.dll to both game directories.
(...\Steam\steamapps\common\STAR WARS X-Wing vs TIE Fighter
...\Steam\steamapps\common\STAR WARS X-Wing vs TIE Fighter\BalanceofPower)

Windows 7 is the last OS that can do 3D acceleration natively though enabling any form of AA (with the exception of MLAA or FXAA) from the driver controlpanel will make ships invisible.

AMD users might have to downgrade their drivers to Catalyst 13.1 or put one of these atiumdag.dll files into the game folders. 

http://workupload.com/file/TSpxA5Tz
mirror: http://www.vogons.org/download/file.php?id=18776

Some Nvidia drivers can cause graphical glitches so you might want to try different versions.

If you aren't satisfied with it this way or if you're on a later operating system use dgVoodoo in addition to aqrit ddraw:

Download it here
http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2/
and extract dgVoodooSetup.exe / dgVoodooCpl.exe and D3DImm.dll to the game directories.

(If you use dgVoodooSetup.exe / dgVoodooCpl.exe to change settings  (like enabling AA and removing the watermark) make sure the conf file it creates is also placed in the game directories by clicking on the ".\" button. See dgVoodoo Readme.)

Before you put dgvoodoo's DDraw.dll into the game folders rename it to voodraw.dll

Then open aqrit.cfg and replace
RealDDrawPath =AUTO
with
RealDDrawPath = voodraw.dll

All files in one download:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/szc0unpec7yp6dq/Steam%20X-Wing%20Tie%20Fighter%20Hardware%20Fix%201.rar?dl=0 (Password: HardwareFix)
mirror http://workupload.com/file/9KpxrKp (Password: HardwareFix)



Windows 10 issue/invisible ships

On Windows 10 the game sometimes doesn't take advantage of dgVoodoo. This is immediately noticeable by the dgVoodoo watermark missing from the screen (that is unless you disabled it) and results in 3D acceleration not working on AMD and invisible ships with acceleration enabled on Nvidia.
The cause is as of yet unknown.
This only happened to me a couple of times when freshly applying the fix to BoP. Since I couldn't find any error in the configuration on my part I copied all the aqrit/dgVoodoo dll and config files from the BoP to the XvT folder unchanged. Surprisingly they worked like they should there. Then I moved the files back to the BoP directory and BoP was miraculously fixed as well.
Edit: Added Solution 5 to address this.

Solution 3: WineD3D

I finally found a way to make 3D acceleration work in the Steam version.

1. Go the the game directories.
...Steam\steamapps\common\STAR WARS X-Wing vs TIE Fighter
...Steam\steamapps\common\STAR WARS X-Wing vs TIE Fighter\BalanceofPower
2. Download https://www.dropbox.com/s/ydo8hg1yei7kd27/Wine%20for%20Star%20Wars%20games.zip?dl=0 and extract the files to the game directories.
3. Run wined3dcfg.cpl and select "backbuffer" as Offscreen Rendering Mode.
This way the old workarounds are no longer required and I was able to force AA from the driver controlpanel which didn't work before.

Edit: If your desktop color depth is lower than 32 bit or the game fails to launch you still need these workarounds:
4. a) Rightclick on z_xvt_.exe and set compatibility mode to 256 colors
or
b) Download https://www.dropbox.com/s/4cp63htqn5eyeon/opengl32.zip?dl=0 and extract the file to the
game directories.

All files in one download:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yfw2xooee3c7mvb/X%2CTie%20Fix%20Complete.zip?dl=0
http://workupload.com/file/8fhqXje

More up to date versions of these files:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6a23eoghu5qpiga/Wine3Dfix_Tie_X-Wing.zip?dl=0
mirror: https://workupload.com/file/cgXnZdr
The most notable improvement for me was increased performance on Win XP.

If you get poor performance try this:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/355250/discussions/0/620712999979153740/#c412448792356928912

Edit: Sometimes the keyboard fails to initialize for some reason. If that happens usually the game seems to hang at the start because it's displaying an error message in the background. In that case close Tie Fighter with Alt+F4 and try again. (You can skip this message with Esc or Enter but the Keyboard will not be available in flightmode so it's pointless.)

Edit2: I managed to fix the "Dinput Keyboard aquired failed message". Instead of setting 256 color mode download http://www.speedyshare.com/w8Ta6/TieWineFix.zip , extract the files somewhere and run install.bat with adming rights.

Uninstallation:

Delete ddraw.dll, wined3dcfg.cpl, libwine.dll Opengl32.dll and wined3d.dll from the game folder.

Solution 4: DDrawCompat

This is for everyone who can't get other the other solutions to work properly.

Usage:

Download ddraw.zip
https://github.com/narzoul/DDrawCompat/releases
and extract ddraw.dll to both game folders.
...\Steam\steamapps\common\STAR WARS X-Wing vs TIE Fighter
...\Steam\steamapps\common\STAR WARS X-Wing vs TIE Fighter\BalanceofPower

AMD users might have to downgrade their drivers to Catalyst 13.1 or put one of these atiumdag.dll files into the game folders. (The atiumdag.dll will probably not work on Windows 8 and above.)

http://workupload.com/file/TSpxA5Tz
mirror: http://www.vogons.org/download/file.php?id=18776


EDIT: The experimental/test release contains a fix for the driver issue so this workaround should no longer be needed.

Enabling normal AA from the driver controlpanel will probably make every ship invisible so use MLAA or FXAA instead.

Switching from flightmode to menus, map etc. may take it bit longer than usual. If you still only see a black screen after waiting a while, pressing the left/right arrow key on the keyboard should help.

Balance of Power might crash after the intro. This can be fixed by disabling the intro in the launcher.

Solution 5: DxWnd

This is basically Solution 2 done in a slightly different way.

Download Dxwnd v2_04_23 (direct link https://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/files/Latest%20build/v2_04_23_build.rar/download ) and extract it to an empty folder.

Download https://www.dropbox.com/s/2aboewobay7av84/Dxwnd3Dfix.zip?dl=0 and extract it to the same folder, overwriting dxwnd.dll.
mirror: https://workupload.com/file/bXmKfd2

Launch dxwnd.exe, click on File and import the XvT / BoP dxw files included with the Dxwnd3Dfix.

Rightclick on both new entries ->Modify, change the filepath so that it points to the location where the game/addon are installed on your PC and click on OK. The icons in front of the XvT and BoP entries should now have turned green.

Download dgVoodoo http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2/
and copy DDraw.dll, D3DImm.dll and dgVoodooCpl.exe to both main game and addon directory
...\Steam\steamapps\common\STAR WARS X-Wing vs TIE Fighter
...\Steam\steamapps\common\STAR WARS X-Wing vs TIE Fighter\BalanceofPower

Either launch the game directly from Dxwnd or have Dxwnd running in the background when launching from Steam.

On Windows 7 and prior, 3d acceleration might work without dgVoodoo however the same limitations apply as with aqrit ddraw, see Solution 2.

[Garrec]

I tried these out for the first time today (Win7 64 bit), tested both CD and Steam versions, and tested video capture (OBS) as well. Thanks to everyone involved in these projects.

Solution 1: XWA Wrapper
Amazing! Works beautifully in XvT and TIE95. But is there any way to force specific resolutions? Or does it always inherit desktop resolution? I didn't see any related options in the cfg file.

Solution 2: Aqrit ddraw
Nothing changed. 3D still crashes. Software mode still flickers during recording.

Solution 3: WineD3D
Software mode works great. Fixes flickering when recording the CD version.
3D mode has several artifacts. OpenGL has unplayable framerates.
Forced task switching is uniquely broken. Switching back into the game fails to acquire the window.

Solution 4: DDrawCompat
Software and 3D both work. Gameplay is smooth. But video capture framerates are low.

[*****]

Messaggio originale di Garrec:

But is there any way to force specific resolutions? Or does it always inherit desktop resolution? I didn't see any related options in the cfg file.

Well there is windowed mode, but I doubt you'd be happy with that.
What do you want it for?
I might be able to add it, but so far I just saw not much reason for it.

[Garrec]

Mostly I was concerned about video recording, output file size and CPU use since my computer is somewhat dated with mediocre specs.

But I was experimenting with capture settings earlier today and it seems to be within my CPU's limits (at 1024x768). The only problem is periodic stuttering in the output video, 1-2 frames every second.

This problem isn't specific to XWA Wrapper, or resolution, so I don't need custom resolution after all.

It looks great in game, though. Amazing work, thanks for maintaining it.

[*****]

The game will eat up all CPU time of exactly one CPU core.
So if you have enough CPUs everything should be fine. If not, you can use the PresentSleepTime setting in the config to make it not waste so much CPU just looking for keyboard input (because that's what the game spends about 90% of its time on on modern computers).
And the resolution setting is not as obvious to implement as I thought, so it's good you don't need it :)

[Phoenixflieger]

Ok, after killing a whole day now trying each and every solution, I quit ... I don't get it to work (unlike X-Wing Alliance). I get the strangest errors sometimes (like a plain red 4:3 screen when forcing Win7 plus solution1 e.g.) and never even come close to anything that a) looks like a better resolution (1280x1024 like in Alliance) or b) AA.

I tried on my Win10 64bit pro
Core2Quad6600
AMD 7900 machine.
Steam version of the Balance of Power (obviously ... this is a Steam forum after all)

I appreciate if 2017 starts better than 2016 ended. In every aspect btw!
Happy new year!

[*****]

Maybe you already tried all that, but quick checklist (for solution 1):
- ddraw.dll and ddraw.cfg also need to go into the Balance of Power folder
- you replaced them correctly if you can also play with keyboard and mouse now (and do not get the error box when you start the game with no joystick connected). If not, the replacement ddraw.dll is not actually working properly - or you used a version older than 1.4.6. Also your monitor should no longer switch to a different resolution when starting the game.
- by default, 3D acceleration is off. You need to switch it on in "config", and both for single- and multiplayer separately. While at it, you should also enable bilinear filtering and set mip mapping to "blurry" (the labels are swapped).
- the game will still be stuck at 4:3 aspect though, that isn't easily avoidable/fixable. But the image quality should be markedly higher (at your native desktop resolution, with AA and for distant objects with much higher quality textures - trivial to spot on the containers in the first training mission - also the best test case to test the effect of the "mipmap" blurry/noisy slider in the settings).
- there should be no need to set any compatibilty mode manually (Steam configures it during installation), and doing so might in fact break things - reinstalling the game is probably a good idea if you played with that setting.

[Phoenixflieger]

Messaggio originale di *****:

Maybe you already tried all that, but quick checklist (for solution 1):
- ddraw.dll and ddraw.cfg also need to go into the Balance of Power folder
- you replaced them correctly if you can also play with keyboard and mouse now (and do not get the error box when you start the game with no joystick connected). If not, the replacement ddraw.dll is not actually working properly - or you used a version older than 1.4.6. Also your monitor should no longer switch to a different resolution when starting the game.
- by default, 3D acceleration is off. You need to switch it on in "config", and both for single- and multiplayer separately. While at it, you should also enable bilinear filtering and set mip mapping to "blurry" (the labels are swapped).
- the game will still be stuck at 4:3 aspect though, that isn't easily avoidable/fixable. But the image quality should be markedly higher (at your native desktop resolution, with AA and for distant objects with much higher quality textures - trivial to spot on the containers in the first training mission - also the best test case to test the effect of the "mipmap" blurry/noisy slider in the settings).
- there should be no need to set any compatibilty mode manually (Steam configures it during installation), and doing so might in fact break things - reinstalling the game is probably a good idea if you played with that setting.

Yes, checked it all :-) But thx to remind me to set mipmapping to "blurry".
I read it, but it is so counterintuitive ...

I got it to work now on both of my PCs Win10 64bit pro, Core2Quad6600, AMD 7900 machine, Steam Version & Win 10 64 bit pro, I7-2700K, AMD R290X
by editing the DDRAW.cfg.
The XWAMode had to be set to "0" (for XvT/BoP), by default it is set to "1" (X-Wing Alliance).

In the radeon panel I forced AA and Anisoptric.

Now it looks smooth even in gunnery training (switch out of cockpit and check TIE fighter from all angles using keypad "/" & numbers).

I can't tell about stability though, but for starters it works now.

[*****]

Messaggio originale di Phoenixflieger:

I got it to work now on both of my PCs Win10 64bit pro, Core2Quad6600, AMD 7900 machine, Steam Version & Win 10 64 bit pro, I7-2700K, AMD R290X
by editing the DDRAW.cfg.
The XWAMode had to be set to "0" (for XvT/BoP), by default it is set to "1" (X-Wing Alliance).

In the radeon panel I forced AA and Anisoptric.

Maybe you kept an old version of the ddraw.cfg? Because the default for XWAMode is now -1 (for auto-detection), which should avoid that kind of issue for people copying the file between installations.
I'm not sure forcing anisotropic and especially AA in the control panel is a good idea, it shouldn't improve anything and might slow things down or trigger weird issues.
If it works you can of course keep it, but if you run into issues at least disable forcing AA again.

[Phoenixflieger]

Messaggio originale di *****:

Maybe you kept an old version of the ddraw.cfg? Because the default for XWAMode is now -1 (for auto-detection), which should avoid that kind of issue for people copying the file between installations.
I'm not sure forcing anisotropic and especially AA in the control panel is a good idea, it shouldn't improve anything and might slow things down or trigger weird issues.
If it works you can of course keep it, but if you run into issues at least disable forcing AA again.

You are right ... it has AA & anisoptric even without forcing it in the control panel (just deactivated it).
Now I am a bit confused, but where is it set how much AA and what level of anisoptric is used?
(like 8x AA or 16x ani)

Funny enough, the game crashed after exiting now that I deactivated the panel settings ...

[*****]

There's only on or off for these (in ddraw.cfg), with the maximum supported used.
Since the games are so old there isn't usually much need for any faster settings.
Even on a really poorly performing tablet with a weak Atom chip only AA needs to be disabled to get good performance (and from what I could tell, any level of AA is too much for that integrated graphics).

[teleguy]

Updated/cleaned up the OP and added Solution 5: Dxwnd.

[JCDisaray]

Thanks Teleguy for the update! :) I will have to try this with my Steam Version.

[Smokers :)]

its on sale today! Tried the 1st solution..does not work...so refund....pity..love to play it again.

[Harris]

Using Windows 10 x64, AMD-FX 6300 6-Core 35GHZ Black Edition, Geforce 1060 6GB.with XBOX One pad.

1: Using XWAWrapper (Option 1) works great for 3D when turned back on in 4:3, however I've noticed they've changed the mapping on the XBOX pads, is there any CFG file out there that can put t back to default?
(Left trigger is suddenly fire, A standard fire is now 1/3 throttle etc).
Even if you set it back to default within the game console it still sticks to this.

2: Agrit DDraw works on Windows 10, but has invisible ships etc

3: WineD3D console could run, but 3D wouldn't kick in in game.

Haven't tried 4 & 5 yet, but if I could get a standard CFG file for the joypad mappings at least, XWAWrapper would work nicely, especially if I can also get it to run in Tie Fighter & X Wing if possible.

[teleguy]

Messaggio originale di Harris:

Using Windows 10 x64, AMD-FX 6300 6-Core 35GHZ Black Edition, Geforce 1060 6GB.with XBOX One pad.

1: Using XWAWrapper (Option 1) works great for 3D when turned back on in 4:3, however I've noticed they've changed the mapping on the XBOX pads, is there any CFG file out there that can put t back to default?
(Left trigger is suddenly fire, A standard fire is now 1/3 throttle etc).
Even if you set it back to default within the game console it still sticks to this.

2: Agrit DDraw works on Windows 10, but has invisible ships etc

3: WineD3D console could run, but 3D wouldn't kick in in game.

Haven't tried 4 & 5 yet, but if I could get a standard CFG file for the joypad mappings at least, XWAWrapper would work nicely, especially if I can also get it to run in Tie Fighter & X Wing if possible.

On Windows 10 you have to combine aqrit ddraw and dgVoodoo.

Did you try remapping your controller outside of the game using a third party app or the Xbox Accessories?

It should also be possible to use the Steam overlay for that.
Enabling Steam overlay: https://steamcommunity.com/app/361690/discussions/0/1621726179565866814/