HL2: Episode 2 - No Projected Shadows

[Keating]

Hey guys, I have a radeon 9800pro and I'm not seeing any projected shadows. The shadow settings only go up to medium.

I'm pretty sure the videocard supports this type of thing, and the game run perfectly fine other than that. Am I missing something?

 

[soulslicer]

shadow must be at max for it to work..

 

[Keating]

Hm, my settings only go up to Medium. Dammit. I thought a 9800 would be able to run full-settings even if with a questionable framerate.

 

[soulslicer]

you mean you don't have a high option in there for you to choose? Never knew the game would limit these according to your gpu or specs..hmm

 

[Keating]

yeah, the shadow setting stop at medium. I guess I find this so strange becaue I've played FEAR with this video card and it support projected shadows. Grr.

 

[Stene]

Well, for me Ep2 forces Medium textures when I start it. I must edit config to make them High, and I mention no FPS change. Only the dynamic shadows lag in the first map.

 

[Pesmerga]

The ATI 9800 simply isn't fast enough.

 

[stewe231]

What is the console command to turn it on max?

 

[Keating]

Well, I'm sure I couldn't really run the projected shadows with a great framerate, but it'd be nice to at least see them. I mean, my card can't hand 16xanistropic filtering either, but I can select it if I want a 1fps slideshow. The Shadow option simply stops at medium. I guess that's what I find so strange.

 

[giant384]

thats very odd.

shadows shouldnt be a huge impact on it.

is it possible that its a shader model 3 only feature?

 

[Keating]

I'm not even sure what that means

 

[taiiat]

hmm, your card shouldnt make a diff whether or not the option ir there, can you post the specs of that card?

 

[Zephos]

I have the same problem with a 9600pro, but I assume it's just because it doesn't support Shadow Model 3.0.

 

[Keating]

hmm, your card shouldnt make a diff whether or not the option ir there, can you post the specs of that card?

Uh, guess these are the specs. ( I'm not a terribly tech savy person and I bought this card quite some time ago )

Graphics Technology
Radeon? 9800 XT, Radeon? 9800 PRO, or Radeon? 9800 graphics technology
Memory Configuration
128MB or 256MB of double data rate SDRAM
Operating Systems Support
Windows? XP
Windows? 2000
Windows? Me
Features
Eight parallel rendering pipelines
Four parallel geometry engines
256-bit DDR memory interface
AGP 8X support
SmartShader? 2.1
Full support for Microsoft? DirectX? 9.0 programmable vertex and pixel shaders in hardware
2.0 Vertex Shaders support vertex programs up to 65,280 instructions with flow control
2.0 Pixel Shaders support up to 16 textures per rendering pass
New F-buffer technology supports pixel shader programs with unlimited instructions
128-bit, 64-bit & 32-bit per pixel floating point color formats
Multiple Render Target (MRT) support
Shadow volume rendering acceleration
Complete feature set also supported in OpenGL? via extensions
SmoothVision? 2.1
2x/4x/6x full scene anti-aliasing modes
Adaptive algorithm with programmable sample patterns
2x/4x/8x/16x anisotropic filtering modes
Adaptive algorithm with bi-linear (performance) and tri-linear (quality) options
HyperZ? III+
3-level Hierarchical Z-Buffer with early Z test
Lossless Z-Buffer compression (up to 24:1)
Fast Z-Buffer Clear
Z cache optimized for real-time shadow rendering
TruForm? 2.0
2nd generation N-Patch higher order surface support
Discrete and continuous tessellation levels per polygon
Displacement mapping
VideoShader?
Seamless integration of pixel shaders with video
FullStream? video de-blocking technology
Noise removal filtering for captured video
MPEG-2 decoding with motion compensation, iDCT and color space conversion
All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
YPrPb component output*
Adaptive de-interlacing and frame rate conversion
Dual integrated display controllers
Dual integrated 10-bit per channel 400 MHz DACs
Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 compliant)
Integrated TV Output support up to 1024x768 resolution
Windows? Logo Program compliant

 

[Uber Kitty]

i was told that the 9800 and below dont have shader 3.0 or some crap.

Im pissed off that I dont get one of the biggest graphical enhancements of hl2.

 

[giant384]

i was told that the 9800 and below dont have shader 3.0 or some crap.

Im pissed off that I dont get one of the biggest graphical enhancements of hl2.

rofl not really