Poor AMD support for almost 4 years now

[Marius Maximus]

So even though I have been a fan of this project since 2016, I can't help but to express my immense dissatisfaction at the poor support for AMD hardware. You guys have almost had 4 years to optimise and improve AMD compatibility since the steam release, however every time I upgrade from one AMD graphics card to a newer one, the issues intensify. I have had an AMD HD 6970, RX 480, RX Vega 56 and now an RX 5700 XT and I still cannot play this game.... So let me start. Note that my feedback will be divided into two parts. Part one is for the current build and the second part will be for the xen beta.

Part 1:

Shadow quality is limited to only medium, this renders (no pun intended) the visual representation of the game sub-par. Cascaded shadow mapping is also disabled for some reason. All I get to see are large, dark blob shadows under NPCs. I also don't have flashlight shadows.

For some reason my game keeps crashing when quick saving each and every time. When loading the Residual Processing chapter it also freezes my game. It freezes so badly sometimes that I have to reset my PC because I cannot access Task Manager.

Part 2:

I can understand that this is only a beta so I will tone down my temper a bit when typing this out. So flashlight shadows work like a charm. Thanks a bunch for that. But the quick saving issue remains the same and I still cannot successfully load Residual Processing. I have the option to enable CSM now and to turn the shadows up to high, but there are many issues. The render distance of the CSM shadows are very short and fade quickly. The self shadows on the first person weapons don't render properly and when pointing to distant objects which cast shadows, those shadows appear on the first person weapon and hands even though it's metres away. So there are some spacing or distance drawing issues. I also still experience large, dark blob shadows though.

Also, why is anti aliasing removed? FXAA looks horrible and not everyone has a powerful GPU to render the game in 4k and downscale it to their screen's native resolution just to have less aliasing. I read here somewhere that there were issues with AA so you guys threw it out for compatibility reasons. Why must there be a compromise between one graphical setting for another. Having poor or no anti aliasing will make the overall graphics appalling for the sake of some other feature that we can do without. I'd rather invest in ambient occlusion or something that will make so much of a difference.

To conclude, I have tested the game in both Windows 7 and Windows 10 with different GPU drivers. I also redownloaded the whole game and removed all workshop addons. I even tried the "-force_vendor_id 0x10DE -force_device_id 0x1180 -dxlevel 95" workaround, but to no avail. It used to work for my RX 480 though.

My hardware is as follows:

MOBO: Asus ROG STRIX X370-F Gaming
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1700
GPU: AMD Asus ROG STRIX RX 5700 XT OC
RAM: G.Skill TridentZ RGB 16GB DDR4 3200Mhz CL14

I can't be the only one having these issues, and having had issues for almost 4 years now really makes me pessimistic about what lies ahead. Will we ever have AMD compatibility? At this stage I cannot recommend this game, nor experience it the way it was meant to be played.

[DIGITAL SPORTS]

We haven't seen AMD users reporting issues for quite some time, so I'm sorry to hear that you're having issues. To my knowledge, we don't have AMD wide problems in our game anymore, but rather certain issues with certain setups. I myself was the team's test guinea pig for AMD for quite some time, having 2 different AMD systems, and all is dandy for me. That's not to say there might not be legitimate issues, but it isn't something we've heard widely or seen reported a substantial amount.

For what you wrote, part 1 is basically irrelevant. That's a very outdated build of the game and will be replaced with our current Xen build. All that matters to us currently for the sake of feedback is the Xen build on the public-beta branch. That's had all our work put into it.

For the rest...have you started a new game from Residue Processing? Do you have any mods installed whatsoever? My recommendation would be removing all mods if you have any, verifying your game files, and then starting a NEW GAME from Residue Processing, and seeing if the issues persist. If they do, I can try and dig into it with you further.

We've never seen any issues reported with the way that CSM shadows render. Is it possible for you to make a video illustrating where you think the issues are? It's hard for me to visualise what your problem is from the description. Inaccurate CSM shadows was an issue we had that we solved way back in 2016, if I'm remembering correctly.

Then for blobby shadows...that's just how that looks. Don't know what else to say there. MSAA was removed because it literally doesn't work with our deferred renderer. It absolutely destroys performance and produces bad visual artifacts. The two technologies are inherently incompatible and cannot coexist. The FXAA implementation that we've got looks really good for what it is. Are you actually using it? It seems like you're speculating it rather than trying it and looking at it, though I could easily be mistaken about that.

[Terepin]

I can confirm that FXAA is... insufficient to say at least. I had to use SGSSAA to have actual anti-aliasing, but specular aliasing wasn't covered. I strongly suggest to ditch FXAA altogether and replace it with superior SMAA. But the best result would stem from SMAA T2x, which is almost magic, as seen in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. If you'd add it, a built-in sharpening filter would be nice.

But seriously, watching all the shimmering and crawling in motion is truly disgusting.

[Marius Maximus]

Thanks for the feedback.

I have reinstalled the game on a clean Steam installation with no mods whatsoever. It is currently set to the public beta and recorded the below short video to show the issues that I am having. Please watch till the very end because the video ends with the biggest issue that I am having...

https://youtu.be/-yCs5VnYCUA

So you are saying that the shadows are supposed to be so large and blobby under each and every NPC?

Also note that my game has its visuals set to the highest setting. Pressing F6 still crashes my game as well as loading up Residual Processing.

[Marius Maximus]

@DIGITAL SPORTS

Let me know if there is a workaround in the meantime, or something I can do to play without those crashes. The graphical glitches are... okay, but the crashes make this game unplayable on both Windows 7 and Windows 10.

I hope the video helped in some way though.

[poisondeathray]

Free pc repair is not included in the Black Mesa purchase price.

[Marius Maximus]

Your sense of humour is as bad as your profile picture... wait, not sure which is worse really. Either way, if you knew a single bit of IT and have read what I have done to test, then you would have had the sense to know that this is not "my PC".

Wait, "Steam level 0". Everyone please ignore all of what I have just said. This explains everything.

[Bruno]

He loves to spam threads with his "witty" comments. Best to ignore him, honestly.

[Ardour]

I have GeForce 1080 GTX and...Black Mesa melts my card: 70-75 degrees... lol why? Its not like crazy graphics hapenning there. I dont have dis even in games like witcher 3 or gears 5

[Utulek]

Originally posted by Marius Maximus:

Thanks for the feedback.

I have reinstalled the game on a clean Steam installation with no mods whatsoever. It is currently set to the public beta and recorded the below short video to show the issues that I am having. Please watch till the very end because the video ends with the biggest issue that I am having...

https://youtu.be/-yCs5VnYCUA

So you are saying that the shadows are supposed to be so large and blobby under each and every NPC?

Also note that my game has its visuals set to the highest setting. Pressing F6 still crashes my game as well as loading up Residual Processing.

Same here. RX 580 Driver 19.12.3

[poisondeathray]

Originally posted by Ardour:

I have GeForce 1080 GTX and...Black Mesa runs my card: 70-75 degrees.

well w/in the standard operating range

[Marius Maximus]

Originally posted by Atrocity:

Originally posted by Marius Maximus:

Thanks for the feedback.

I have reinstalled the game on a clean Steam installation with no mods whatsoever. It is currently set to the public beta and recorded the below short video to show the issues that I am having. Please watch till the very end because the video ends with the biggest issue that I am having...

https://youtu.be/-yCs5VnYCUA

So you are saying that the shadows are supposed to be so large and blobby under each and every NPC?

Also note that my game has its visuals set to the highest setting. Pressing F6 still crashes my game as well as loading up Residual Processing.

Same here. RX 580 Driver 19.12.3

Glad to know someone is sharing my problems. By the way, do you also have the freezes when quick saving and loading certain maps?

[Utulek]

temporary solution for CSM problem.

Originally posted by Leck:

how to change the distance render? i have at highest possible and the shadows only appears at 1 meter

any console command?

*UPDATE*

guys i think i found one command to extend the render,

open console and input without quotes: "cl_csm_max_shadow_dist 9999999999"

if want to have this setting persistent you must edit autoexec file and write that command

Also it seems that i needs a very big number to take effect, probably needs another command to extend it even more

Originally posted by Void-995:

That happens not only on AMD Hardware, that's one of the CSM quality settings. Don't really know how it might happen, but yes - it's there.

Question to developer, it seems that my csm quality is set to 2 but it doesnt let me set it to 5, why? Will that change render distance even further ?

[MaGicBush]

I have noticed zero issues with my RX 480 8gb GPU. 100+ fps on max settings and I don't notice any graphical issues, or crashes. I would take a look at your PC(reinstlall the drivers, verify the game, etc) if it's unstable like that, but it could be bugs within the game as all systems are different. Hard to say. I am not sure if I want to upgrade to the AMD 5700 XT honestly. I am about to buy a new GPU, but I keep reading a lot of issue with that GPU on various games. I may go with the 2070 Super and just fork out the extra $$.

[Marius Maximus]

I actually wish I had gone for the 2070 Super, but I don't like Nvidia all that much really. I am currently planning on downgrading to a Vega 64 since I have issues with many old games as well as DirectX 9 games. So yeah, go for the 2070 Super for the best compatibility.

I can tell that it must be the game since I have run multiple installations of Windows, redownloaded the game, had different video drivers on and did many things to try to circumvent the issue, however to no avail.

[Marius Maximus]

Originally posted by Atrocity:

temporary solution for CSM problem.

Originally posted by Leck:

how to change the distance render? i have at highest possible and the shadows only appears at 1 meter

any console command?

*UPDATE*

guys i think i found one command to extend the render,

open console and input without quotes: "cl_csm_max_shadow_dist 9999999999"

if want to have this setting persistent you must edit autoexec file and write that command

Also it seems that i needs a very big number to take effect, probably needs another command to extend it even more




Question to developer, it seems that my csm quality is set to 2 but it doesnt let me set it to 5, why? Will that change render distance even further ?

Thanks, I will try this out! Now I just need to have the blobby shadows removed as well as the game crashes.