Graphic glitch pls help

Just a note, I had a brain fart and I have a GMA3150 not a GMA3500…

Did you search for alternative drivers (though, I am not familiar about if those exist for the intel chipset)?
Have you disabled Aero?

miyri wrote:
so far no luck

How disappointing, Miyri! After Vesko’s report that switching to Windows XP fixed a similar problem for him, I was confident that disabling Aero would do the trick for you (heavy sigh).

This is vanilla Freelancer that is causing trouble, right? At 800x600? With 3D sound turned off? Have you tried reducing Video quality in the Options menu (if you can even read the Options menu long enough to change anything)?

I wish I had a similar machine to test for you. The other thoughts that come to mind are almost in the Grasping-at-Straws Department:

• Reduce Hardware Acceleration for your video adapter.

• Check the BIOS setup for any available adjustments to video. If you can change the amount of memory that the video adapter uses, then set it to the maximum.

• Install Windows XP

None of the above feel like “solid leads”. They are just things to try for the sake of exhaustively checking all possibilities.

(Well, Windows XP is a good bet, but it may be a challenge to find all of the drivers for your netbook.)

I will point out that many people run Freelancer under Windows 7, so this is not a universal Win7 problem. They report that FLMM must be run in Admin mode. Otherwise, they report no trouble with Freelancer.

Make sure your user profile on the theStarport is set to send you an email when this thread is updated, just in case someone comes up with a good lead in the future.

@Cannon: Yeah, I knew that you meant 3150!

@Bas: Intel does a much better job with driver support than nVidia ever has.

@Miyri: If you want to try Bas’ idea, the best bet would be to try Vista 32 drivers for your adapter. The Vista drivers are more mature than the Win 7 drivers, and there was a time during the Win 7 beta during which people had good results with the Vista drivers. It feels like a long shot to me, but none of the normal things have worked. :S

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The options window and most other windows work okay. It’s just a few in game windows such as the equipment dealer.

Cannon wrote:
The options window and most other windows work okay. It’s just a few in game windows such as the equipment dealer.

Are you using Win 7, too, Cannon?

I wonder what is special about the windows that do not work? You mentioned that you suspect certain fonts. Could you do a quick test of changing the suspect fonts in fonts.ini and/or rich_fonts.ini?

For example, back up fonts.ini then replace all of the fonts with, say, Arial. Don’t worry about the sizes… just see whether it runs.

I just installed Freelancer on my netbook and it runs fine, including the Equipment Dealer. However, my netbook has Windows XP and a GMA 950 (which, logically, is the immediate predecessor to the 3150 :S ).

I was a little surprised at how well Freelancer runs on the netbook! Now I can really take Freelancer with me anywhere I go!

(Just watch out for the heat)

A class mate told me just today that Win 7 has some kind of Virtual Machine for XP inbuilt, which allows you execute applications the exact way like they are executed in XP.

Another option would be to install Win XP a t a VM - but I am not sure if a VM can handle 3D graphics nor I am sure about the performance…

Windows 7 Professional only; doubt most netbooks carry that around.

Plus, VirtualPC requires the processors to have virtualization support and you can bet Atoms don’t have that. On TOP of that, performance in a VM is horrible and I don’t think DX is supported.

Your suspicions are correct, Bas. Virtual machines do not have fancy virtual 3D graphics “adapters”. As FriendlyFire said, DX is not going to run.

Performance can be pretty good on a virtual machine, but the software-based VMs (such as VirtualPC) will never be as fast as the host operating system. That is especially true for disk access and video – two of the major requirements for games.

Virtual machines are great for many purposes, but gaming is not one of them.

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I have a suggestion…

There is a bootable XP system called Bart’s PE for XP.

It could be worth making one and booting it, to check if FL will run under XP.

StarTrader wrote:
There is a bootable XP system called Bart’s PE for XP.

Ooooh…. good “thinking outside the box”, StarTrader!

Unfortunately, similar to the Virtual Machine idea, PE is not the same as XP. The PE in “Bart’s PE” stands for Preinstallation Environment. It is a striped-down operating system with minimal features, which is why it can be run from a CD.

Among other issues, PE does not support fancy graphics.

PE is great for running diagnostics and utilities, but will not support a game.

We know that Freelancer runs on:

• netbooks

• Intel GMA adapters

• Intel GMA 3150 under Windows XP

• Win 7

So what is special about Miyri’s, Vesko’s, and Cannon’s setups?

The only piece that appears to be unique is the GMA 3150 under Windows 7. Unfortunately, that is also the only piece that I cannot test.

Following Cannon’s hunch about a font rendering issue, I looked at the vanilla fonts.ini and rich_fonts.ini. Freelancer, by default, uses only Arial, Agency, and FixedSys font families. Those are pretty standard fonts… it is hard to imagine any of them causing trouble under Windows 7, but not impossible.

Is there any chance that this could be unicode-related? Are any/all of you using Win 7 in languages other than US/English?

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this would however not affect the size but only the digits themselves. my first FL copy was from russia and once i run it on a new computer with European XP it showed me up either rectangles instead of digits or weird signs with curious apostrophes and similar. the coding is really only relevant for what is displayed not for the how.

Gisteron wrote:
the coding is really only relevant for what is displayed not for the how.

True, unless there is a bug in rendering. I agree that it is unlikely.

Since this problem appears to be specific to the combination of GMA 3150 and Win7, I still wonder about the video driver.

Hi Guys,

I’ve had the same problem when running FL on my Netbook (Samsung NC10 with Intel 945 Express chipset).

I’ve managed to correct the problem.

First off, I selected Windows Classic theme. This disables Aero etc. (not sure if it’s necessary but took the step anyway)
Second, downloaded and copied the extended/enchanced “flconfigdatabase.txt” added in the deviceID for the new 945 chipset into the Intel section

0x27AE = “945GM Mobile Express Chipset Family”

(again not necessary but it stops FL checking and/or not recognising the hardware

Then, using XP Compatibility mode on the Setup file, installed the XP drivers (version 6.14.10.4906 - still available on the Intel site)

I’m sure there’s 101 good reasons not to do this but so far so good… will let you know if i have any further problems.

Hope this helps someone.

Cheers,
Rik

using XP Compatibility mode on the Setup file, installed the XP drivers (version 6.14.10.4906 - still available on the Intel site)

Thanks for that update, Rik!

The GMA 945 chipset works fine for a lot of people, so I would guess that installing the drivers were the cause of your problem. I don’t know whether compatibility mode matters, but it is good to know how you made it work.

Turning off Aero, of course, helps a LOT of problems.

Thanks for letting us know how you did it.

B

No problem… I guess I should also have added a note of caution for those who are not familar with doing this sort of thing to their computer…

Take a backup and/or set a restore point first. If you’re not sure how to set a restore point in Windows 7 there’s plenty of documentation out there.

Neither Microsoft, Intel or any hardware manufacturer/reseller will support this fix, so be careful. If you’re not sure what you’re doing think very carefully about what you’ll lose if things go wrong.

Best of luck!
Rik

Intel Grafics + Freelancer = doesn’t work

Syd wrote:
Intel Grafics + Freelancer = doesn’t work

Actually, Intel Graphics work fine with Freelancer. The bloom shader mod does not work with integrated graphics. But Freelancer itself works very well.

A few people have had trouble with the GMA 3150, which has been replaced by newer adapters… except in the case of some netbooks.

hi i recently purchased a netbook with a gma 3150. to my dismay i found a serious glitch with the text in the game menus

i am running an atom 1.6 1 gig ram gma 3150 windows 7. i have discovered a fix for those who may be in the same situation

it seems that freelancer doesnt like the win 7 drivers. What i did to fix the problem was download the win xp drivers for the gma 3150. went to the device manager and told the system to roll back the current driver for the 3150. after the uninstall process and the restart i installed the win xp drivers using the self installer from intel’s website. it asks if you want to replace new drivers with the old win xp ones install and reboot and voila bugs gone…

hope this helps

Hi,
solves also my graphic problem. I now use the WinXP drivers for my Win7 system! O.O