Crash with AA turned on in launcher (otherwise stable)

[Michael Z Freeman]

Hi,

PR has been stable for me for ages. For one reason or another I decided to turn on AA using the setting in the PR launcher. I'm suddenly getting crashes and I played a known stable map that I've been in for hours before. I did initially force AA in the AMD Radeon control panel but that blurs the in game UI as well. BF2 internal AA does not do that (think I'm correct about that). So I'm gonna to try again using forced AA and see if I get the same thing. But it's odd. I can find no reference to this issue anywhere. Has anyone had this, or do you maybe have any idea what might be causing the issue ? Cheers.

[AlonTavor]

Please replicate the crash when running procdump and send me the dump file.

procdump: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysint ... s/procdump

Run from CMD with the following parameters, after the game is running: procdump.exe -mm -b -e 1 -g prbf2.exe

[Michael Z Freeman]

AlonTavor;2171056']Please replicate the crash when running procdump and send me the dump file.

procdump: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysint ... s/procdump

Run from CMD with the following parameters, after the game is running: procdump.exe -mm -b -e 1 -g prbf2.exe

Thanks ! I'll give that try and get back to you.

[Michael Z Freeman]

OK. I've got it. A little intermittent. But I just ran Khamisiyah with 8x AA set in the launcher and it crashed after a few minutes. Dump linked here.

[AlonTavor]

Something AI-pathfinding related something heightmap.
Whatever caused this crashed, it has nothing to do with your AA settings.

Collect more I guess.

[Michael Z Freeman]

Something AI-pathfinding related something heightmap.
Whatever caused this crashed, it has nothing to do with your AA settings.

Collect more I guess.

OK, thanks. Odd. I played that same map with AA off for around 2 hours and it was stable.

[Michael Z Freeman]

Something AI-pathfinding related something heightmap.
Whatever caused this crashed, it has nothing to do with your AA settings.

Collect more I guess.

Been playing for a while without AA and everything is stable again apart form Temelin but that was just fixed by the dev team.

I can't do extensive testing right now but how would I read these dump files myself to check the same thing you are ?

[AlonTavor]

Best you could do is open them in VisualStudio and see which .dll crashes. That probably won't tell you much. but if its aidll.dll its probably AI related, which would be very weird if a graphic option is somehow related to it.

To get a bit more, you'll need to know x86 assembly and use IDA to figure out the function it crashes in, this involves placing breakpoints on the function, launching the game and figuring out when it fires and how it behaves usually, comparing the usual given input to the input that crashed it. Then checking what calls it and hoping that DICE compiled in some debug assertion strings in the area that would tell you more about its role. In this case, it was in AIDLL.dll, and it was called from a function that gets something related to the map's heightmap for AI pathfinding.

tl;dr

Don't bother.

[Michael Z Freeman]

Best you could do is open them in VisualStudio and see which .dll crashes. That probably won't tell you much. but if its aidll.dll its probably AI related, which would be very weird if a graphic option is somehow related to it.

To get a bit more, you'll need to know x86 assembly and use IDA to figure out the function it crashes in, this involves placing breakpoints on the function, launching the game and figuring out when it fires and how it behaves usually, comparing the usual given input to the input that crashed it. Then checking what calls it and hoping that DICE compiled in some debug assertion strings in the area that would tell you more about its role. In this case, it was in AIDLL.dll, and it was called from a function that gets something related to the map's heightmap for AI pathfinding.

tl;dr

Don't bother.

Noooo ! I thought it would be easy

Oh well. Gives me new respect for PR debugging procedures. I'll try and generate another dump.

[WeeGeez]

Your right about AA setting in radeon control panel, these should be set to application controlled. This is also true for both nvidia and intel graphics.

I'd also suggest purging the shaders under my docs > pr > mods > cache and try to generate them again.

[DogACTUAL]

Is it true, that if you disable anti aliasing, some objects won't render at long ranges, especially when looking at them from the edge of your field of view? I noticed this myself while flying CAS high near the edge of the view distance and surveying the ground, buildings and vehicles popping in and out and appearing only when getting way closer.

I can't tell if it is because of the anti aliasing settings though.

[WeeGeez]

The pop up thing is an optimization feature a mapper can uses IIRC, unsure what its called. It happens if the player is in an area with alot of statics (whatever is behind isn't rendered but pops up as soon as you walk around the corner). It could also happen to statics at extreme distances from the player but I'm not sure.

Maps are well thought out so that its not noticeable.

[AlonTavor]

I don't think AA is related to Level of detail or Cullingin any way.