Changing LOD BIAS

[63OR63]

Question: Some 3rd party graphics card utilities such as Rivatuner and nHancer aren’t working with Release 256 drivers. Did something change?
Answer: Yes. In Release 256 and later drivers, NVIDIA has made some significant enhancements to the infrastructure of the 3D settings in the NVIDIA Control Panel. These infrastructure changes will make the 3D settings and profiles faster and more robust and provide 3rd party developers with full access and control through a new API. We are currently working with Rivatuner, nHancer, and other 3rd party tools to update their software to support our new API.

One of the major reasons for this change was to provide 3rd parties with a robust API to control our 3D settings. This will not only provide these tools with more options but also make the interface with our driver much more robust.

Here you will find the tutorial on how to change LOD BIAS for current NVIDIA drivers.
First of all, here is the short info:

The so called Level of Detail BIAS (LOD BIAS) controls at which distance from the viewer the switch to lower resolution mip maps takes place (see here for more details about mip maps). The standard value of the LOD BIAS is 0.0 (zero). If you lower the LOD BIAS below zero, the mip map levels are moved farther away, resulting in seemingly sharper textures (though, if the scene is moving, the textures start to shimmer) and the opposite cause textures to lose details in a shorter distance from the player. When LOD BIAS is set to extremely high value (like +10), the game starts to look "cartoonish" (much like TF2, I'd say) and it's easier to spot enemies. Also, FPS may boost a lot.

Here are few screens of Black Ops with LOD BIAS set to 10:



Note: orange sky and desaturated hands is the result of config tweaking.

Earlier you could easily change LOD BIAS with Rivatuner or nHancer, but their current versions don't support 2XX.XX versions of NVIDIA Forceware. NVIDIA Inspector can change it only for range from -3 to +3, so this is not appropriate for our needs. However, there is a workaround:

1. Download the attached .rar archive and extract it.
2. Run "Geforce_SLI_Profile_Tool.exe".
3. Click "Export SLI Profiles" and save your current profile.
4. Open it in any text editor, search for "Black Ops" and add there the following string:

Setting ID_0x00738e8f = 0x00000050 UserSpecified=true

Note: we should use the value of 0x00000050 because LOD BIAS setting in NVIDIA Forceware is in increments of 0.125. So to achieve an LOD BIAS of 10, that would be the 80th setting. Since the values in the profiles are in HEX, that would be 50.

Then it should look something like this:

Profile "Call of Duty: Black Ops"
    ShowOn GeForce
    ProfileType Application
    Executable "blackops.exe"
    Executable "blackopsmp.exe"
    Setting ID_0x0019bb68 = 0x00000000 UserSpecified=true
    Setting ID_0x002ecaf2 = 0x00000000 UserSpecified=true
    Setting ID_0x00738e8f = 0x00000050 UserSpecified=true
    Setting ID_0x0084cd70 = 0x00000000 UserSpecified=true
    Setting ID_0x00ce2691 = 0x00000014 UserSpecified=true
    Setting ID_0x00e73211 = 0x00000000 UserSpecified=true
    Setting ID_0x101e61a9 = 0x00000001 UserSpecified=true
    Setting ID_0x1033cec1 = 0x00000003
    Setting ID_0x1033dcd2 = 0x00000004
    Setting ID_0x10930f46 = 0x00000001
    Setting ID_0x1095def8 = 0x02402005
    Setting ID_0x10d2bb16 = 0x00000001 UserSpecified=true
    Setting ID_0x10ecdb82 = 0x00000001
EndProfile

5. Save the file (obviously)
6. Click "Import SLI Profiles" and select the modified file.
7. To achieve the best results add the following commands to the botom of your game config ("%Steam%\steamapps\common\call of duty black ops\players\config_mp.cfg"):

seta r_picmip "3"
seta r_picmip_bump "3"
seta r_picmip_manual "1"
seta r_picmip_spec "3"
seta r_picmip_water "1"
seta r_zFeather "0"
seta r_treeScale "0"
seta wind_grass_gust_strength "0" 
seta wind_grass_scale "0"
seta wind_grass_tension "0"
seta wind_local_frequency "0"
seta wind_leaf_scale "0"

8. ?????
9. PROFIT!!!11

Virustotal, Jotti.

[B4M]

/file approved

[lolbie]

nice does this make the gameplay faster too?

nvm i missed it

thanks i gonna try it

aw
does this also work for ati radeon?

[Heartview]

ATI users have tray tools. Google ATI Tray Tools for it. Go to (I think) Direct3D>Options>advanced>LOD.

While this helps some people, the only time I want my game looking at highest picmip, is when I am playing quake live some days. I would just as soon use a texture hack for removing the stuff I dont like and be done.

[xbeatsszzx]

Wow pics looks a lil wierd but anywasy nice tut.

[Skyline.]

you buy a game that's meant to be detailed graphics etc and you do this too it =/

not my style but others with laggy pc's would like this

[63OR63]

you buy a game that's meant to be detailed graphics etc and you do this too it =/

not my style but others with laggy pc's would like this

Personally I find pure colors and clean lines ugly by no means. In multiplayer I don't want the game to distract me from the process, I don't see pleasure in trying to spot the enemy through smoke, sparkles and bullet cases. Multiplayer is a challenge, and you should concentrate on gameplay, not on the shining piece of gold at the bottom of your screen, etc.

P.S. My PC easily runs BO on max settings without any problems btw.

[Skyline.]

Personally I find pure colors and clean lines ugly by no means. In multiplayer I don't want the game to distract me from the process, I don't see pleasure in trying to spot the enemy through smoke, sparkles and bullet cases. Multiplayer is a challenge, and you should concentrate on gameplay, not on the shining piece of gold at the bottom of your screen, etc.

P.S. My PC easily runs BO on max settings without any problems btw.

if you want to do that go play CSS. not black ops.

[Heartview]

if you want to do that go play CSS. not black ops.

Kinda what I was thinking. BO is just a casual shooter, and should be in no means taken seriously. I could understand the no smoke and stuff, but pretty much the only thing BO has going for it IS its graphics atm.

[scmogc0]

i cant get this working, my vidcard is a nVidia 320m

[63OR63]

i cant get this working, my vidcard is a nVidia 320m

Need more info. Now I can only suggest that if you can't make the app to export your profile, this is probably due to you're using mobile graphics card, and I believe the app named "Geforce SLI Profile Tool" doesn't support it.

[Blubb1337]

[63OR63]

Please, add the following quote to the first post to avoid showing off in future:

Question: Some 3rd party graphics card utilities such as Rivatuner and nHancer aren’t working with Release 256 drivers. Did something change?
Answer: Yes. In Release 256 and later drivers, NVIDIA has made some significant enhancements to the infrastructure of the 3D settings in the NVIDIA Control Panel. These infrastructure changes will make the 3D settings and profiles faster and more robust and provide 3rd party developers with full access and control through a new API. We are currently working with Rivatuner, nHancer, and other 3rd party tools to update their software to support our new API.

One of the major reasons for this change was to provide 3rd parties with a robust API to control our 3D settings. This will not only provide these tools with more options but also make the interface with our driver much more robust.

===============
Edit: some flame posts above were deleted. Just to clarify the situation

[Blubb1337]

Edited 1st post.

[63OR63]

Edited 1st post.

Nice, 10x.

BTW, it seems that Rivatuner will (unfortunately) never be updated. Dunno if nHancer will. Here is the quote of Alexey Nicolaychuk aka Unwinder, Rivatuner creator:

RivaTuner is discontinued, sorry. All other non-profit oriented activity here including providing direct MSI Afterburner feedback and collecting end user suggestions in the forum is discontinued as well. The only factors affecting the tools I develop now are direct and reasonable requests of vendors per contracts, asking MSI to allow recently introduced video capture functionality to be available to everyone instead of locking it to MSI hardware only was the last freeware related stupidity I did.
That's not a question of needing money and charging you. That's a question of huge "fan" base visiting this place and throwing personal insults left and right after each release and after rejecting each fake bugreport and I'm deadly tired of it. I'm 200% disappointed in freeware scene and have no interest in it anymore, sorry. It is absolutely not fun to waste good part of your life on contributing the community then see such "fan clubs" in the different forums inspired by the next RTFM hater.
Try to contact somebody like that mr. Matrices himself, I'm pretty sure that all of those "fan club" members are much more experienced and can provide their own products as a replacement and provide daily and high quality support as well. And whiny little bitch and ****ty ******* will gladly have a lesson of social skills from those nice and polite people.

So, ATM the method I presented is the only (or at least the easiest) one.