What's the "bokah filter"?

[Valden21]

The forums mention turning this off as a method of solving crashes, but I don't even see it in the options. Therefore, I can't turn it off (yes, I did disable decals, no crashes so far). So does the game refer to it by another name, or what?

[ZaggRukk]

It's under advanced settings, half-way down.

[Valden21]

Publicado originalmente por ZaggRukk:

It's under advanced settings, half-way down.

Huh, must've not noticed it.

[ZaggRukk]

I'm not sure what it does (didn't bother looking that up). I turned it off after my game started to constantly crash.

[Valden21]

Publicado originalmente por ZaggRukk:

I'm not sure what it does (didn't bother looking that up). I turned it off after my game started to constantly crash.

That's why I wanted to know. Turning it off is supposed to be one of the main fixes for a crash, alongside disabling the decals.

[ZaggRukk]

Turning that off only postponed the crashes I was having. They went from every 20 minutes to every 2-3 hours. I don't remember what I did to fix this issue. I might have rolled back my Nvidia drivers.

Do a search for "known issues",, if this doesn't help. There is a post on here that covers a lot of the problems and known fixes.

[Merv71]

sometimes too many saves can cause memory probs,find your save game file and delete any unwanted saves and also clear out your log files exept last 2 or 3,this can be a vital thing to remember for many games if your pc specs are not up to it.

[Infinite_Data]

The Bokeh filter is a "cinematic" filter used (as far as I know) only in cutscenes. It adds that grainy effect (which arguably doesn't even look good). It also causes lots of various problems. Feel free to turn it off, although disabling decals should be enough to fix the crashes.

Publicado originalmente por merv71:

sometimes too many saves can cause memory probs,find your save game file and delete any unwanted saves and also clear out your log files exept last 2 or 3,this can be a vital thing to remember for many games if your pc specs are not up to it.

I have 5 save slots used and get practically no crashes. This is an 8 year old game, unless OP is using some ancient hardware from 2005 or something, the chances that the crashes are caused by insufficient PC specs are extremely low.

[Stake From JateFarm]

From JS3, Bokeh is a depth of field technique. It makes the distance look like it has some heat waves going infront of it. Looks nice imo.

[BlueAuran]

naw, this title is just one of those rare gems that you have to put up with as far as crashes are concerned. You can minimize them I am sure is all. I find that actually MINIMIZING in game causes some of the worst issues. Yet I am sure it is just one of those finicky titles, heck I had to download an exe off the Inet just to get the title I paid for to work here on steam (note HOW it is FUNNY the DEMO requires ZERO such fixes out of the box). Still am I happy I purchased? You bet, game is a rare gem for a couple bux on sale! So NOTE you can also use the GOG versions exe to fix Steams version currently. Would be NICE tho if the Dev/Pub could pop that on for future users ease. Remember to SAVE often, game has an excellent save system, and use steam cloud and whatever else you can IMO! Ah crumbola, just looked at the date on this thing, I necroed...oh wells maybe IT IS a good thing this time as there is so LITTLE information about this game currently. NOTE it was a steam forum post that directed me to the DL file I needed to get this to run...2 posts had extinct URLS, yet the third post I checked had a good one! Scanned clean BTW!

[Infinite_Data]

Publicado originalmente por BlueAuran:

note HOW it is FUNNY the DEMO requires ZERO such fixes out of the box

That's because none of the big problems with JC2 were present in the day one build. You could run the game with decals and Bokeh on and nothing bad would happen. It was one of the later updates that broke it somehow. And this isn't even the only time that's happened with a JC title.

I own both a physical copy of JC1 and the Steam release. JC1 was, admittedly, always practically unfinished, but the Steam version has major issues that weren't present in the original print.

I also bought JC4 on release and played it for many hours, but I was never able to complete it because one of the last updates made it crash every few minutes. I thought this was because I was still running it on Windows 7 (where it originally worked perfectly fine), but I have a completely different PC with Windows 11 now and I still can't find a way to get the game to run again.

Unfortunately, for reasons beyond my understanding, JC is one of the few Eidos IPs that Square Enix has chosen not to sell, and seeing as the only thing they've done with it since 2019 is announce a mobile game they promptly cancelled, I'm afraid it's very unlikely we'll ever see any official fixes for these titles - which would really only have to roll the games back to a previous, functional state.

Curiously, Mad Max - also developed by the same Avalanche studio that made JC1 and 2 - received an update that broke a lot of things as well, but that did actually get fixed in another update and the game was ultimately left in a good state.

[Solid Wolf]

Publicado originalmente por Infinite_Data:

The Bokeh filter is a "cinematic" filter used (as far as I know) only in cutscenes. It adds that grainy effect (which arguably doesn't even look good). It also causes lots of various problems. Feel free to turn it off, although disabling decals should be enough to fix the crashes.

Yes, disabling Decals should work. But I recommend disabling dual core optimizations for ASYNC10 first to see if that works - instructions found here[www.pcgamingwiki.com]. As for the Bokeh filter, it doesn't add the grainy effect to cutscenes (but that effect can be removed by applying this mod[www.pcgamingwiki.com]or by entering /filmgrain=0 in the game's launch options). It's a feature exclusive to NVIDIA cards that adds a cinematic depth-of-field effect, creating a blur in the background when you zoom in. Bokeh is a term derived from the Japanese word "boke", which means blur or haze.

[Infinite_Data]

Publicado originalmente por Solid Wolf:

Publicado originalmente por Infinite_Data:

The Bokeh filter is a "cinematic" filter used (as far as I know) only in cutscenes. It adds that grainy effect (which arguably doesn't even look good). It also causes lots of various problems. Feel free to turn it off, although disabling decals should be enough to fix the crashes.

Yes, disabling Decals should work. But I recommend disabling dual core optimizations for ASYNC10 first to see if that works - instructions found here[www.pcgamingwiki.com]. As for the Bokeh filter, it doesn't add the grainy effect to cutscenes (but that effect can be removed by applying this mod[www.pcgamingwiki.com]or by entering /filmgrain=0 in the game's launch options). It's a feature exclusive to NVIDIA cards that adds a cinematic depth-of-field effect, creating a blur in the background when you zoom in. Bokeh is a term derived from the Japanese word "boke", which means blur or haze.

Yes, I referred to the wrong effect back then. I really don't know why. Though in games, "bokeh" often referes just to the bright blurry spots created by a real bokeh filter (for example Unreal Engine uses this term for the spots that appear on lens flares). JC2 uses some forgotten 2010 Nvidia technologies, so I guess there was a time when they actually decided to do a real-ish Bokeh filter. I don't remember it being exclusive to Nvidia GPUs, but the last time I played the game with an AMD was like 10 years ago, so I guess I'm misremembering it.

I don't really feel like testing the supposed fix right now, but the description on PC Gaming Wiki doesn't make me too hopeful about it. I'm not sure what they mean by "newer PhysX drivers", but the crashing issue was introduced... I don't know, in 2011 or 2012, I guess? So if by "newer" drivers, they just mean ones from 13 years ago, this might actually work.

[Solid Wolf]

Publicado originalmente por Infinite_Data:

Yes, I referred to the wrong effect back then. I really don't know why. Though in games, "bokeh" often referes just to the bright blurry spots created by a real bokeh filter (for example Unreal Engine uses this term for the spots that appear on lens flares). JC2 uses some forgotten 2010 Nvidia technologies, so I guess there was a time when they actually decided to do a real-ish Bokeh filter. I don't remember it being exclusive to Nvidia GPUs, but the last time I played the game with an AMD was like 10 years ago, so I guess I'm misremembering it.

I don't really feel like testing the supposed fix right now, but the description on PC Gaming Wiki doesn't make me too hopeful about it. I'm not sure what they mean by "newer PhysX drivers", but the crashing issue was introduced... I don't know, in 2011 or 2012, I guess? So if by "newer" drivers, they just mean ones from 13 years ago, this might actually work.

I recently played the game with an AMD GPU and Bokeh Filter was not even listed as an option. The game removes it when said GPU is detected.

I didn't refer to the PhysX fix, which I haven't tried either, mainly because JC2 doesn't even use PhysX - Havok is its physics engine. Moreover, the link they provide doesn't even take you to the legacy drivers from 2013; it takes you to ones from 2019, so I suspect that "fix" is listed by mistake. The fix I referred to is lower down the page, the one that requires using NVIDIA Profile Inspector. That seemed to work for me even having Decals on.

[Infinite_Data]

Publicado originalmente por Solid Wolf:

I didn't refer to the PhysX fix, which I haven't tried either, mainly because JC2 doesn't even use PhysX - Havok is its physics engine. The fix I referred to is lower down the page, the one that requires using NVIDIA Profile Inspector. That seemed to work for me even having Decals on.

The way that section of the article is structured, it seems to imply that both fixes are related to issues caused by the PhysX drivers. Or just Nvidia drivers in general? It's kind of confusing. Maybe I'm reading it wrong and the proposed fixes are unrelated to the earlier info.

PhysX drivers are still around even to this day, Nvidia keeps updating them, so I assume they affect games that don't officially use the real PhysX stuff. Now, I've never actually seen anyone identify PhysX drivers as the source of JC2's issues, but they are very problematic in other games, so I could definitely see that being the case.

I might test the ASYNC10 fix one day. It would make sense that nobody knew about it back in the day, because it comes with a tradeoff that would have made it useless back when the issue first appeared anyway.

The Bokeh filter being an Nvidia exclusive is kind of funny to me. I definitely remember the fancy water features being unavailable on AMD and those really do look a lot better, but this frankly bad looking filter requiring a specific GPU is pretty amusing.

Now if you can tell me how the hell I can run JC4 on anything again, maybe I'll finally finish the only game in the series I didn't get to complete 100%...

[Solid Wolf]

Publicado originalmente por Infinite_Data:

The way that section of the article is structured, it seems to imply that both fixes are related to issues caused by the PhysX drivers. Or just Nvidia drivers in general? It's kind of confusing. Maybe I'm reading it wrong and the proposed fixes are unrelated to the earlier info.

Google's answer[www.google.com] suggests the fixes are unrelated. ASYNC refers to asynchronous compute, which is a performance-boosting feature that works whether PhysX is present or not. But JC2 appears to have no PhysX. And I just tried the PhysX fix from PCGamingWiki and the game crashed in about 10 min. In fact, if you have the latest PhysX driver, the one PCGW links to won't install due to being older. The actual legacy driver[www.nvidia.com] installed, but the game crashed with it too.

Publicado originalmente por Infinite_Data:

I might test the ASYNC10 fix one day. It would make sense that nobody knew about it back in the day, because it comes with a tradeoff that would have made it useless back when the issue first appeared anyway.

Not necessarily. The game was likely GPU-bound on most systems back then, and now, with my GTX 460 (2010) and 7600X, running at 1080p, v-sync off, all settings on/maxed except AA which is at 4x, ASYNC10 off, I'm getting 30-50 FPS. Not great, but playable. I bought the game recently and have been playing it only for testing - I won't play through until I upgrade my GPU.

Publicado originalmente por Infinite_Data:

The Bokeh filter being an Nvidia exclusive is kind of funny to me. I definitely remember the fancy water features being unavailable on AMD and those really do look a lot better, but this frankly bad looking filter requiring a specific GPU is pretty amusing.

After learning about the bokeh filter, I did some A/B testing and the difference is so minor I can't decide if I prefer it. Sure, it looks "cinematic", but not necessarily better as it's just increasing background blurriness when zoomed in. Between that, Motion Blur enabled by default and the film grain in cutscenes, Avalanche Studios must've been going for a cinematic look, but I say the game looks better without the blur and grain, and the bokeh filter is insignificant.