Battle for Middle Earth (BFME 1) low details on ultrahigh settings (integrated card issue)

[MXavi1]

Hello everyone,

I have an HP Spectre laptop -- i7, 8GB ram, intel hd 620 integrated graphics card.

I am trying to play BFME1 on my laptop, with windows 10. I am able to run the game, that's not the problem. The problem is the graphics. Water and trees are not rendered correctly; they have low detail and are not correctly animated, even on UltraHigh settings. I've been tackling this problem for a month now and I'm 99% sure this is an intel integrated graphics card issue. The reason I'm so sure about this is that I tested the game on 3 different laptops with (different) intel integrated cards and the problem persisted. As soon as I installed the game on a friend's desktop (same installer) the issue is gone. Here's the comparison:

https://imgur.com/senf1Ba https://imgur.com/senf1Ba

VS

https://imgur.com/RNW44fE https://imgur.com/RNW44fE

There's more people complaining about the same. The common denominator -- they all have laptops with intel integrated graphics cards. Examples:

https://www.gamereplays.org/community/index.php?showtopic=942979&st=0&gopid=10144070&# entry10144070

https://forums.revora.net/topic/111135-bfme-1-graphics-bug/ https://forums.revora.net/topic/111135-bfme-1-graphics-bug/

You can find more details inside my https://www.reddit.com/r/bfme/comments/8yeql1/low_details_water_and_trees_with_ultrahighcustom/ reddit post.

I've trying everything to solve this issue in my HP laptop, including: running in compatibility mode, reinstalling the game, reinstalling graphics drivers, downgrading the graphic driver to the oldest I could find, experimenting with the options.ini file (including running it with read-only option ticked), meddling with the INI.big file in the game's directory which contains old graphical presets that could be overriding my ultra-high options, etc. etc.

I know older games are susceptible to this kind of thing. Sometimes, the games won't even launch, and when they do, there's usually graphical glitches all over. It's becoming more and more difficult to play DirectX9 games on modern machines (e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7ncr3y/regarding_amd_and_the_lack_of_directx_9_support_a/ AMD's recent adrenaline drivers totally lack dx9 support). I suspect intel cards also lack decent support for directx9.

My only hope is that intel will patch this for future versions of their drivers. Unfortunately, EA games no longer supports BFME (it lost its LotR license rights back in 2010).

Meanwhile, if you guys have any more ideas, I'm all ears.

Thank you for reading.

edit: broken link

[idata]

@milarepascave: We will be more than glad to assist you with this scenario.

To provide the most accurate assistance, we just wanted to confirm a few details about your system. You mentioned you test the game on 3 different laptops and on a desktop PC.

Please provide the model of the 3 laptops and the model of the processor each of them include.

From the Desktop PC:

What is the model of the motherboard?What is the model of the processor?Do you know if the PC is using an external graphics card, if it does, do you know the model of it?

Any questions, please let me know.

Regards,

Alberto R

[MXavi1]

Alberto, thank you for your assistance.

Laptops (all running windows 10):

HP Spectre 13-v103np

CPU: Intel Core i7-7500U

Packard Bell EasyNote TS11-HR:

CPU: Intel Core i5-2410M

Toshiba Satellite L50-B-16X:

CPU: Intel Core i7-4500U

I should mention that the Packard Bell and Toshiba laptops also have dedicated GPUs, but that, after many attempts, I was unable to force the game to open with them. NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M and AMD Radeon R7 M260, respectively.

Unfortunately, at the moment, I don't have access to the Desktop computer, but it was running windows 10 and had an NVIDIA graphics card.

Thank you

[idata]

milarepascave: You are very welcome, thank you very much for that information.

In this case, the problem is not related to the Intel graphics driver, it is actually related to compatibility, between the operating system Windows® 10 and the DirectX9 features. As you mentioned it is difficult to play DirectX9 games on modern machines because of the same reason, the modern machine and operating systems are based on newer versions of DirectX, like DirectX11 or DirectX12 and when you use a game that works with DirectX9 then some performance/compatibility problems might be expected as per the game/software manufacturers.

You said that you already tested different drivers versions, we recommend to install the drivers provided by the manufacturer of the computer, in this case HP, since that driver was customized by them to work with your specific problem. I looked on their web site and the specific model you gave us is not showing in there, so we can always try to install the graphics driver version 21.20.16.4526 that you will see on the link below or also you can get in contact directly with HP to confirm which is the proper driver for your system:https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-spectre-13-v000-notebook-pc/10862121/model/11715081 https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-spectre-13-v000-notebook-pc/10862121/model/11715081https://support.hp.com/us-en https://support.hp.com/us-en Just to let you know, there is a new Intel generic graphics driver available in our web site, version 24.20.100.6229. Since it is generic, it might or might not work with your system but we can always try to install that version to try to resolve the problem:https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/27894/Intel-Graphics-Driver-for-Windows-10%3Fproduct%3D126789 https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/27894/Intel-Graphics-Driver-for-Windows-10?product=126789 Additionally, as an option, you can always create a virtual machine on your computer, then install a compatible operating system with the game/application to confirm if the game will work better that way, it is just an alternative for this scenario. Any questions, please let me know.

Regards,

Alberto R

[MXavi1]

Alberto, I appreciate your suggestions (drivers), but they haven't worked. The texture problems remain. Indeed, I agree it is a compatibility issue involving Windows 10, but, still, a compatibility issue that only arises through intel graphics cards. Computers with external NVIDIA/AMD cards don't seem to have this problem, as I had the opportunity to confirm (again, see the Desktop PC vs Laptop images for comparison; both computers are running Windows 10, but one has an intel integrated card while the other has a NVIDIA external card).

I suspect a 2004 game like BFME will have terrible performance in a virtual machine. I guess my only option is to dual boot and try to run Windows 7 on my Hp Spectre and test the game there.

Thanks again

[MXavi1]

Alberto, I found this topic concerning texture flickering in dx9 games with intel cards:

where Intel admits it might solve the issue with future driver versions. Though the problem I described doesn't involve flickering, is there any change Intel might consider solving the BFME texture issue I described in a future driver update? Thanks

(btw, I gave up on installing w7 in my hp spectre, since it only has usb-c ports)

[idata]

milarepascave: Thank you very much for bringing this issue to our attention, we will look into this problem with this game, but we cannot promise any particular outcome.

Any questions, please let me know.Regards,Alberto R