NVIDIA 1.88 Detonator Reference
Drivers: One User's Experience
Quake 2
I did experience a few glitches here. The
predominant glitch, which was reproducible before my reformat and after, was of the
"mouse cursor getting stuck in the center of the screen" variety. Have you ever
wanted to play a first-person shooter that literally points at all your targets for you?
Well, now you can! =) Seriously though... I haven't seen too many other posts on this one,
but for some reason, it's consistently reared its ugly head, even on my
"bare-naked" machine. How do I reproduce it?
Make a shortcut of the Quake 2 (v. 3.20) .exe,
and put it on your desktop. Now, double-click it and DO NOT MOVE THE MOUSE. This doesn't
mean you have to make a conscious effort to not move the mouse after the second click -
just don't go crazy with it. The first time the game is started (after an install or
reboot), I've noticed that it usually doesn't happen; in fact, it may not happen the
second time, either. Mind you, however, it DOES happen, and it becomes more than annoying;
it's only cure is to exit the game and restart...
This isn't a shortcut issue, either, as the
same "bug" can be produced via the actual .exe. On the other hand, neither
starting Quake 2 from the Start menu nor right-clicking the Quake 2 shortcut and selecting
Open produce the "bug."
There is also seaming in Quake 2, which isn't
nearly as pronounced as it is in Q3 Test, but it's there nonetheless.
Performance-wise, the 1.88 drivers, "out
of the box," are on par with the 1.7x drivers; however, enabling multitexturing in
the registry produces a significant increase. Without the multitexturing, I was able to
attain 39 fps at 1024x768 in 16-bit color. With the multitexturing enabled, I got a nice
bump - 46 fps... very nice! To learn about the multitexture "hack," check out D128.
One thing I DO have to rant about here is the
ever-elusive NVIDIA OpenGL VSync issue. This has been, in my opinion, "broken"
for far too long. Regardless of the in-game settings, both Q2 and Q3 Test display a good
deal of screen tearing. This is most noticeable with firing a machine gun or other
rapid-fire weapon. Enabling the option with the VSync "hack" with the older
drivers does correct the tearing, but it also brings OpenGL to a crawl. With the 1.88
drivers, the "hack" seams to do nothing at all. I really wish NVIDIA would
finally do something with this.
What about Direct3D?
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