Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow

[nintendo1889]

Before I begin, I just want to let you guys know that I have been on the nVidia forums to research this particular issue, but to no avail. I did see posts of people complaining about this issue, but there are no solutions posted. I like old games, notably Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow, but unfortunately, newer nVidia cards (6 series and above) are known to cause volumetric lighting/shadow issues. The game is playable, but levels such as Jerusalem are almost impossible to complete, yet ironically, the spotlights in the training level/TV station work just fine. One solution people proposed is editing the settings un D3D in pandora.ini. I looked at other files, such as DefUser.ini and Reference_default.ini and noticed that they all have the same settings for the D3D driver. What the heck? Does editing one effect the others? I didn't see any difference. The people on nVidia forums state that you should change volumetric lighting from "false" to "true" and 32-bit textures from "false" to "true", which doesn't do anything in any of the three files. Another spurious claim is wikipedia stating that it can forced on newer nVidia cards, but may cause system instability. Either these people on nVidia and wikipedia or liars, or there really is a solution. Perhaps these attached jpegs will explain this odd issue.


CPU: Core 2 Duo E8400 3.00GHz
GPU: eVGA GeForce 250 GTS
OS: Windows XP Home and Windows 7 Home
RAM: 4096MB DDR SDRAM

Please look at these jpegs!

Wikipedia claim:

http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh137/Nintendo1889/PandoraTomorrow_3.jpg

Settings in all three files:

http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh137/Nintendo1889/PandoraTomorrow_2.jpg

 

[nintendo1889]

BUMP. Nice to see my posts being ignored; these forums are more dead than Nancy Pelosi.

 

[smcd]

Or nobody else has the same problem, or a solution to it...

 

[nintendo1889]

you would think that with a game as popular as Splinter Cell, someone would've found a solution or at least way to force the lighting and shadows...

 

[Allnatural]

you would think that with a game as popular as Splinter Cell, someone would've found a solution or at least way to force the lighting and shadows...

Somewhere perhaps, but what makes you think a forum with as little activity as this one would be of help?

 

[nintendo1889]

Posting on the nVidia forums didn't help me much, and posting in the tech section on the Zsnes boards lead the admins to bite my head off, and not to mention those who wrote the wikipedia article are pathelogical liars. I thought that there would be the off chance of finding someone who might know a solution.

 

[Allnatural]

...and not to mention those who wrote the wikipedia article are pathelogical liars. I thought that there would be the off chance of finding someone who might know a solution.

Sorry, haven't played any of the SC titles on PC.

Who's to say wikipedia is wrong? Perhaps the "fix" does work with a very specific hardware + software combination, or some unknown x-factor in your system is preventing the fix from working (I've been down that road a time or two).

 

[LazerTag]

I know, old post and you may not be around anymore anyway but .....

I do remember an issue playing on my GeForce 8500 (I think it was the 8500) anyway I got around it by using 3D Analyze.

http://www.3dfxzone.it/dir/tools/3d_analyze/index.php

Don't ask me exact settings I did this a number of years ago. It was something like fussing with either the deviceID or pixel shaders maybe. Any this did sort out my issue. If I recall the screen simply was too dark no matter what on some levels.

good luck!